QT but all can comment - How would you refute the argument that The phrase "transwomen are women" presupposes that there is a cultural role for women to fill?

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[–]peakingatthemomentTranssexual (natal male), HSTS 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

Given your inability to provide concrete examples thus far, you aren’t able to make this argument.

I feel like the only examples needed are that sex-based oppression is real and happens because of sex and sex-based socialization. If you remove the ability to discuss sex by taking the words away to describe an adult female or a female child, we aren’t able to talk about the problem and organize against it. That seems like an obvious harm to women. It also obscures who is doing the harm and who is being harmed.

Transgender people would benefit from an identity-based gendered society, GNC people would benefit, natal women and natal men would benefit, literally everyone would benefit from a transition away from expression-based gender to identity-based gender.

Please explain how anyone other than some subset of trans people (and I say subset because I don’t see how it would benefit me or others like me) would benefit. Why can’t people just be how they are rather than have to assign themselves a box?

[–]transwomanHesitantly QT? 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

If you remove the ability to discuss sex by taking the words away to describe an adult female or a female child, we aren’t able to talk about the problem and organize against it.

If "woman" is about sex there wouldn't be so much talk about "socialization" playing such a heavy role in what it means to be a woman. My position is that terms such as "woman" and "man" would not exist in a postgenderist society, because they are solely dependent upon the sociocultural and historical understanding of gender which exists in one place or another. Therefore, it would be not only more pragmatic, but also more accurate to use "female" in relation to sex and sex-based oppression.

It also obscures who is doing the harm and who is being harmed.

Not really? What specifically can I not accurately explain about the concept of sex-based oppression from the perspective of QT which is an obscurity compared to that of the GC perspective? (Aside from personal experience, which I do not have with regard to sex-based oppression)

Please explain how anyone other than some subset of trans people (and I say subset because I don’t see how it would benefit me or others like me) would benefit. Why can’t people just be how they are rather than have to assign themselves a box?

We live in a heavily gendered society, I don't think anyone disagrees with this. This is due to the fact that gender is expression-based and expectation-based. This is harmful to everyone who lives under it, because we are restricted from being who we are. That being said, gender abolition should be a long term end goal; however, the ends don't always justify the means.

Culturally speaking, society is not ready to let go of gender in its entirety. This is why we have this clash of identity vs expression in gender right now, and confusion around gendered language and conflations of these ideas with biological realities. Most people in society currently would not be willing to drop the social construction of gender because they have been socialized to believe we need it. Therefore, an adverse reaction to things such as gender abolition.

Wouldn't it be easier to work with identity-based gender, where anyone can be who they are and ascribe whichever label they wish for themselves, to reach the long term goal of gender abolition? Pragmatically and from a harm reduction perspective, this seems to be most ideal.

[–]peakingatthemomentTranssexual (natal male), HSTS 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

If "woman" is about sex there wouldn't be so much talk about "socialization" playing such a heavy role in what it means to be a woman. My position is that terms such as "woman" and "man" would not exist in a postgenderist society, because they are solely dependent upon the sociocultural and historical understanding of gender which exists in one place or another. Therefore, it would be not only more pragmatic, but also more accurate to use "female" in relation to sex and sex-based oppression.

Woman is about sex. Like everything else, society makes assumptions about people based on what they are, but that is just baggage attached to a word that means nothing other the fact that someone is a female and an adult. Trying to get rid of the baggage seems like the better thing to do rather make it only about the baggage. Unless you think somehow the majority of female people would stop identifying as women in your scenario, you would be actively making things worse for them, by naturalizing that females who don’t identify out of womanhood accepting the baggage (especially since you’ve previously said you think there is a biological cause for gender dysphoria).

Not really? What specifically can I not accurately explain about the concept of sex-based oppression from the perspective of QT which is an obscurity compared to that of the GC perspective? (Aside from personal experience, which I do not have with regard to sex-based oppression)

If anyone can be a woman and it’s just an identity then male violence perpetrated by males who identify as women will not be seen as the sex-based violence that it is. It is something that is already happening. When transwomen commit violent crimes and sexual crimes against women or children, they are often reported as a woman committing a crime against another women or a child. We won’t be able to accurate statistics about these type of violence and be able to correctly identify is because of changing theses words to be about identity rather than sex.

Wouldn't it be easier to work with identity-based gender, where anyone can be who they are and ascribe whichever label they wish for themselves, to reach the long term goal of gender abolition?

I don’t think so because the categories will still be prescribed for most people. If you try to make woman about something other than being a female it will make it harder for females (unless you think they all will de-identify, which seems unlikely if not impossible). Same for males (especially GNC ones). I feel like the goal of abolishing gender would be better served by making any sort of baggage around sex less naturalized rather than more naturalized. Women and men, boys and girls, can come in millions of varieties and that is fine. I feel like I would have had an easier childhood if that had been the message. If someone really feels like they want a label for their gender, they can make one up that isn’t already a sex word.

[–]transwomanHesitantly QT? 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

baggage attached to a word that means nothing other the fact that someone is a female and an adult.

Do you think words can change meanings, or are there specific definitions we should follow prescriptively speaking?

Trying to get rid of the baggage seems like the better thing to do rather make it only about the baggage

My position is the removal of both physiological and socialized concepts attached to gendered terminology. I don't think there's a pragmatic usage to gender as a concept outside of its sociocultural expectations, nor terms such as "man" or "woman," which only exist as a result of living in a gendered society.

especially since you’ve previously said you think there is a biological cause for gender dysphoria

I don't believe there is a biological cause to gender dysphoria, if I said that previously I mistyped. Gender dysphoria is entirely a product of an individual being socialized in a gendered society. I would contrast this with "sex dysphoria" which is more rooted in physiological phenomenon, but might also have some socialized/learned causes as well.

We won’t be able to accurate statistics about these type of violence and be able to correctly identify is because of changing theses words to be about identity rather than sex.

Use "male" and "female" as a means to classify crimes and violence. My position is for identity-based gender in the social context, not in the legal context. There are ways to aggregate this data appropriately under this proposition, and I don't see how this is any more or any less accurate or more obscure than any GC take on this particular issue.

If you try to make woman about something other than being a female it will make it harder for females

But the question is how? I've mentioned in previous comments on this thread that I do not support self-id based legislation and I strongly advocate for using terms such as male or female in specific contexts (medical, crime stats, violence, prison systems, etc). Only in the social context would these terms (like man and woman) be based in identity. I'm failing to see where things become more obscure in terms describing sex-based oppression.

That being said, I'm not female so I will never have a complete understanding of such oppression; however, in the sense of describing it as an issue, I don't see how QT is more or less accurate than GC in this particular position I have taken.

I would go further to argue that GC actually obscures the oppression many trans individuals face in society, in the sense that their oppression is analyzed from the birth sex of the individual, which isn't always reflective of the lived experiences of said individual. Therefore, if we're talking about obscurity and inaccuracies, I would argue QT does a better job at avoiding such obscurities.

[–]peakingatthemomentTranssexual (natal male), HSTS 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Do you think words can change meanings, or are there specific definitions we should follow prescriptively speaking?

I feel like words can change meanings, but I’m speaking about what the word means now and how it is used.

I don't think there's a pragmatic usage to gender as a concept outside of its sociocultural expectations, nor terms such as "man" or "woman," which only exist as a result of living in a gendered society.

I agree with the first part, but not the second part. Man and woman are words that describe adult human beings of a certain sex the same way buck and doe describe deer of a certain sex.

Use "male" and "female" as a means to classify crimes and violence. My position is for identity-based gender in the social context, not in the legal context. There are ways to aggregate this data appropriately under this proposition, and I don't see how this is any more or any less accurate or more obscure than any GC take on this particular issue.

I feel like the problem is that these things don’t exist in a vacuum. If you change the social meaning of words, it will change the way things are recorded, like in the examples I provided. We are already seeing this both formally and informally. We can wish it wasn’t the case, but if you say that someone is a woman because they identify as one and it helps if you treat them and address them that way, you can’t expect people not to codify those things. I don’t think you can just separate those things and say you support one and not the other because one leads to the other.

But the question is how?

I feel like it’s naturalizing gender roles. If you take an existing word like woman that means adult human female but also has behavioral expectations and stereotypes attached to it and say that this male person is also that, the only conclusions that makes sense, because the person is male, is that they are a woman due to fitting into some other part of the definition (the baggage). It emphasizes the importance of that baggage to being a woman and works against the long term feminist goal of our sex just being a neutral thing that has nothing to do with behavior, personality, career choices, etc. I feel like butch and gender nonconforming women are already experiencing being asked their pronouns or pressured to identify as trans in a way they weren’t years earlier because of the way trans identities reinforce stereotypes. If someone wants to define themselves with a gender word, I think that is fine, but they should choose one that isn’t already forced onto half the population.

GC actually obscures the oppression many trans individuals face in society, in the sense that their oppression is analyzed from the birth sex of the individual, which isn't always reflective of the lived experiences of said individual.

That could true, but I don’t think it makes sense to harm females just so aspects of my life would be understood slightly better.

[–]transwomanHesitantly QT? 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

That could true, but I don’t think it makes sense to harm females just so aspects of my life would be understood slightly better.

But how are females harmed?

There is nothing about gender identity which naturalizes gender roles. Even if 100% of trans people conformed to gender stereotypes, I would only take issue with the specific individuals which did so claiming their identity was rooted in such conformity and/or claimed there was a specific gender expression required to be one gender or another.

The entire conceptualization of gender identity is rooted "you are X gender because you identify as such". Nothing about the promotion of this in the social sense amplifies gendered associations. In fact, it openly opposes the current gender dichotomy. It is a transitory step in the process of developing a postgenderist society. Eliminate gendered associations, then abandon gender completely over time.

The issue you mentioned:

If you change the social meaning of words, it will change the way things are recorded, like in the examples I provided

Is something which can be resolved by not redefining the sex dichotomy (male/female), something which the modern trans movement is seeking and has been seeking to accomplish. This is why we're seeing so much confusion about sex, gender expression, and gender identity right now. Which is evident given the spike in social awareness of trans people.

Second, I disagree with the notion that man/woman are used to refer to sex in the current sense. Perhaps in the broadest sense, these terms refer to a combination of sex and gender; however, the amount of weight in the defining traits of the terms vary drastically in various regions.

For example, in the US South, pretty much anyone with long hair and a feminine to androgenous-leaning-feminine appearance typically might be called a woman (or refered to with she/her) regardless of their sex and regardless of their gender identity. Meanwhile, other areas are more accepting of both gender nonconformity and of gender identity (i.e. preferred pronouns). Other regions may place more weight on sex to define what a man or a woman is.

I would argue neither these physiological nor sociocultural bases should refer to gender. Simply put, gender identity is a temporary solution as we transition from a society which is heavily rooted in the gender dichotomy to a postgenderist one. Sex can remain the same, I don't think its unfathomable that male/female could be 100% correlative with sex, and man/woman could be 100% correlative with gender identity.

The question becomes: "Well, why can't people just be themselves without any of these labels?"

The answer is that I think it's unreasonable to think that people are going to change their way of thinking about gender and sex overnight. It's going to take centuries to bring about a postgenderist society. In fact, I actually have doubts that a gender-free world might be even possible, given the heavy variance that gender has in different cultures. I worry that gender abolition carries some aspects of colonialism with it, that can irrevocably damage the cultures of different people.

It's a very complicated task, and I think gender identity is an important step in the right direction. It's not the solution, but it's a step in the right direction nonetheless. Although, even with this concept on its own, we can see what happens when gender identity is taken to an extreme legally and socially speaking. For example as your mentioned:

I feel like butch and gender nonconforming women are already experiencing being asked their pronouns or pressured to identify as trans in a way they weren’t years earlier because of the way trans identities reinforce stereotypes

This is incredibly problematic. And I think this is because we are trapped between two definitions of gender socially speaking right now: one that is expression based and one that is identity based. I think this is something that will clear up with time, but also something which deserves to be challenged, especially when we have gender clinics putting young females on cross sex hormones which permanently alter their lives.

Even accomplishing a transformation of gender from gendered associations to gender identity will be a complex transition. So I don't pretend I know all the answers. I just don't support the notion that the QT position on this issue (or at least, my slightly watered down version of it, as I'm not 100% on the QT train) is arbitrarily less effective in defining the nature of sex-based oppression than the GC position on this issue.

[–]peakingatthemomentTranssexual (natal male), HSTS 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

But how are females harmed? There is nothing about gender identity which naturalizes gender roles.

I’ve explained how changing woman to an identity naturalizes gender a couple of different ways. I’ll try again. If you say you are a woman or that someone is a woman based on anything other than the chance of being born female you are reinforcing gender because there is nothing else in that concept. Turning woman from a physical descriptor into a “gender” that can be used by anyone makes it worse for females who are prescribed that gender. I’m really not sure how else to say it unless you don’t understand how naturalizing gender harms females, then I feel like you need to get a better understanding feminism before engaging with these topics.

The entire conceptualization of gender identity is rooted "you are X gender because you identify as such".

That would be true if you were using made up words that didn’t already have generally accepted meanings. Like if you identified as star gender that would be fine because no one is born into star gender that would have to deal with whatever was important to you about star gender, but if you take an existing category, then you are making it about something other than sex which naturalizes sex based categories as having meaning outside of sex. I just don’t see any way around it.

Second, I disagree with the notion that man/woman are used to refer to sex in the current sense.

I guess we can just disagree on that. Even if you think are defined some other way, making them about sex avoid them being about gender (as much as that is possible).

I’m not sure how to address the rest of what you said other than to reiterate that gender identity that uses man or woman (or boy or girl) reinforces gender so it seems like it is moving us in the opposite direction of gender absolition and making like more difficult for females and males, especially those of us who are gender nonconforming. I feel like many of my beliefs on this subject have a lot to do with being a feminine, gay child. People believing in gender roles as natural hurts GNC kids the most.

I worry that gender abolition carries some aspects of colonialism with it, that can irrevocably damage the cultures of different people.

I feel like this comment is super revealing about your priorities.

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

Turning woman from a physical descriptor into a “gender” that can be used by anyone makes it worse for females who are prescribed that gender.

It doesn't though. Allowing people to identify as whatever gender they choose for themselves would lead to less people being forced/prescribed a certain gender from birth. That's a natural implication. It normalizes identity-based gender, not expression-based gender.

I’m really not sure how else to say it unless you don’t understand how naturalizing gender harms females, then I feel like you need to get a better understanding feminism before engaging with these topics.

I feel pretty comfortable engaging in these topics, as they not only affect me but I have a heavy interest in feminism, feminist theory, literature, etc. If I wasn't, I wouldn't bother coming here to engage with a form of feminism I do not fully understand/am not willing to completely prescribe to. Besides, I don't engage in topics that I'm not particular knowledgeable in, or make conclusions without having a reasonable level of understanding of these topics.

but if you take an existing category, then you are making it about something other than sex

It's evidently more than sex, even in its current definition. Even so, there's no harm induced by an individual identifying as a woman and going about their lives. So long as that individual does not demand conformity to gender roles for other women to be valid as their gender nor claiming to speak for all women's experiences, there is no harm.

making them about sex avoid them being about gender (as much as that is possible)

I would agree with this if we didn't live in a gendered society. I would also argue making them about sex is unpragmatic in the linguistic sense. Either way, we will have to move on from this out of disagreement.

reinforces gender so it seems like it is moving us in the opposite direction of gender abolishion and making like more difficult for females and males, especially those of us who are gender nonconforming. I feel like many of my beliefs on this subject have a lot to do with being a feminine, gay child.

Again, I'm not reinforcing gender roles, I'm in direct opposition to it. A society using identity-based gender is far closer to the end goal of a postgenderist society than one using expression-based gender.

People believing in gender roles as natural hurts GNC kids the most.

Yes, which is how most people view and describe gender in the current sense, unfortunately. Ideally, we would eliminate this completely, but we don't live in an ideal world.

[–]peakingatthemomentTranssexual (natal male), HSTS 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You earlier:

Gender abolition is going to take centuries.

This comment:

Allowing people to identify as whatever gender they choose for themselves would lead to less people being forced/prescribed a certain gender from birth.

You earlier:

I think it's unreasonable to think that people are going to change their way of thinking about gender and sex overnight.

So I’m confused about how you think that gender abolition would take hundred of years and people won’t change there views of gender and sex very quickly, but somehow allowing people to choose their gender would happen very quickly and we should focus on that instead? This seems like an extremely naive and unconsciously privileged take. Males choices are much more respected than those of females throughout the world. Allowing males to opt into womanhood naturalizes womanhood as being about something other then just being female for billions of females who won’t have the freedom that you have. I understand wanting volitional gender because you feel like it helped you, but you need to understand that this belief is coming from a place of privilege.

Even so, there's no harm induced by an individual identifying as a woman and going about their lives. So long as that individual does not demand conformity to gender roles for other women to be valid as their gender nor claiming to speak for all women's experiences, there is no harm.

There is harm though. That is the point I’ve been trying to make. If you accept it and you care about women, it will cause you very uncomfortable cognitive dissonance unfortunately. I’m sorry. I don’t see any way to avoid that. I can understand not wanting to accept it to avoid those feelings though so I won’t continue to restate it.

I would also argue making them about sex is unpragmatic in the linguistic sense.

Can you explain why? It seems like it’s worked fine so far.

Again, I'm not reinforcing gender roles, I'm in direct opposition to it.

If you are a male person who says you are a woman, you are reinforcing and naturalizing gender roles. Your behavior or presentation has nothing to do with it.

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

I feel like this comment is super revealing about your priorities.

Care to elaborate?

[–]peakingatthemomentTranssexual (natal male), HSTS 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I guess like that you want to consider cultural context in reference to gender roles (even though those roles only exist to keep women subordinate, regardless of the culture), but you don’t see any problem with a man appropriating womanhood. For the first one, you recognize a power imbalance and think about coming from a place of privilege and potentially taking something from a culture should be carefully considered. For the second one, you don’t recognize a power imbalance and believe that your redefinition of woman is better regardless of women’s feeling on the subject. I feel like it might be worth reflecting on why patriarchal structures receive more consideration from you than females do.