GC: Are men entitled to male-only spaces?

submitted by womanual from self.GCdebatesQT

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[–]SnowAssMan 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

Every time a female-only anything is made then society labels the formerly unisex (but never defined) thing male. I guess, bc our culture is obsessed with "binaries" & "opposites". These retroactive changes can be seen outside of gender too, like ethnicity. "White" was never an ethnicity until after all the others were categorised as such. Labelling norms disguises them, makes them blend in with the othered. Do "white", & "man" really exist as concepts, or do they simply define a lack, or like the word "normal", only exist for practical reasons to distinguish from "abnormal" & even help emphasise abnormality?

I may be overthinking this...

[–]BiologyIsReal 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (11 children)

Of course the concept of man is real. The male sex is the one who produces small gametes. A man is an adult human male. A man doesn't stop being a man just because he is not a walking stereotype. Trying to dissociate the word man (and woman) from biology is exactly what gave rise to transgenderism.

[–]SnowAssMan 9 insightful - 4 fun9 insightful - 3 fun10 insightful - 4 fun -  (10 children)

'Man' used to just mean human, but on some level it still does. If I tell you about a person I met, without mentioning whether they are male or female you will imagine a man. If I say the word 'kid', you are going to imagine a male kid, bc by imagining a gender-neutral kid you imagined a male kid. That means that male is gender neutral & gender neutral is male.

Every word is culturally-contaminated. Yes, the denotation of 'man' is still adult human male. Nature recognises two sexes, but society only made one gender: femininity. 'Masculinity' is just what our culture considers positive, neutral, as well as the extreme opposite of femininity (basically everything, except femininity). 'Masculinity' is a word for something that doesn't really exist. Creating a label for "masculinity" is like creating a label for all the colours of the rainbow put together, except pink.

[–]BiologyIsReal 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

I know all that already. And in my natal tonge, Spanish, there is also the generic masculine in grammar. It doesn't change the fact there are only two sexes. If we have to talk about what society expects from each sex, there is already the words feminine and masculine. I don't see the need to start questioning what is a woman or a man from a non biological perspective when that is exactly what lead to all the pro-TRA laws and policies.

[–]SnowAssMan 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (8 children)

I don't see the need to start questioning what is a woman or a man from a non biological perspective when that is exactly what lead to all the pro-TRA laws and policies

That's like saying 2nd wave feminism lead to self-ID bc a lot of it is a nature vs. nurture debate regarding femaleness vs. femininity. What lead to self-ID is the adoption of Thatcherism. Thatcher is notorious for having said "there is no such thing as society only individual men & women" – this is the guide to choice-feminism (self-ID's staunchest ally). Choice feminism believes every individual's choice is an exercise in agency. "Freedom of choice" is the right-wing answer to the nature & nurture debate, bc the right is generally scientifically illiterate. So when malestream feminists adopt this philosophy then they are no different from patriarchists.

I don't think its unsafe to examine the connotation of words, since the root cause of self-IDing as the opposite sex is in individualism. It's futile to curtail ones thoughts or words in an attempt to stop them from being twisted, bc anything you say can be & will be misinterpreted, deliberately as well as unintentionally.

[–]BiologyIsReal 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

It is absurd to reject sexism and then define women and men by stereotypes. We should be able to talk about sexism and misogyny without doing so.

The root of current affairs around people who reject to "identify" as their sex lies in the doctors and psychologists who decades ago decided that some men were better off as "women" for not being "manly" enough. By making "sex change" surgeries a thing and using unaccurate anatomical terms to describe them, they gave legitimacy to the idea that men can become "women" somehow. This eventually evolved, among other things, to laws that allowed people to change the sex markers registered on their documents. And I'm not talking only about self-ID laws here, rather I'm also including laws that ask(ed) for meaningless requirements before a "legal sex change" like a clinical diagnostic of gender dysphoria or equivalent (you're still not the opposite sex), undergoing "sex reassigment surgery" (there is no such a thing) or living a certain amount of time as the opposite sex (what does that even mean?!). Society have enabled the lie that some men really are women, or viceversa, for far too long. Why, then, should we keep trying to dissociate the concepts of women and men from biology?

[–]SnowAssMan 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

There isn't a human whose identity hasn't been shaped by culture, likewise our culturally-saturated upbringing is gendered. Billion-dollar industries rely on demographics following behavioural trends. Men & women generally follow two respective, & distinct behavioural trends. These behaviours are not biologically determined (unless you're talking to an evolutionary biologist), they are socially determined. Men & women aren't defined by stereotypes, but social identities exist for which sex is only the catalyst, not the cause.

Cross-sex identity isn't possible. If you're born & raised American, no amount of learning Japanese culture can erase & replace that, same goes for gender. Bruce Jenner cannot be a woman without every man being a woman.

The only way a genuine cross-sex identity could be possible is if everyone was fooled from birth that you are the opposite sex, so I guess it only exists in women with androgen insensitive syndrome, since they are technically male, but have female primary & secondary sex characteristics (apart from internal, male gonads) & so receive the gendered upbringing that any girl would have received.

Even though there is a difference between gender as a social construct & gender as a biological sex, which feminists insist on referring to as "gender & sex" respectively, for some inexplicable reason (everyone else just calls both 'gender'), there is always a complimentary correlation between the two, with no mismatches. The self-ID cult have never substantiated this so-called mismatch in individuals who identify as the opposite sex.

[–]BiologyIsReal 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Gender has no place in biology. The correct term has always been sex, which you could corroborate by seeing some related terms: sexual reproduction, sexual dimorphism, sex determination, sex chromosomes, sex hormones, sex-linked inheritance. None of them use the word gender.

Originally, gender belonged to grammar. For example, Spanish is a gendered language where nouns, adjectives and articles are either masculine or feminine. When not linked to sex, the gender of a word is quite arbitrary and it doesn’t tell you anything about social norms, either. For instance, all the sciences are feminine nouns in Spanish, but that doesn’t mean science is regarded as a feminine pursuit in Spanish-speaking countries.

It was later that English speakers decided to use the word gender to refer to the different stereotypes and social roles that are expected from women and men. And at some point, for some reason, some English speakers decided to replace the word sex for gender. This latter use was the one that extended it the most and, yes, it was adopted even by some scientists and health care professionals. It must be said, though, this aversion for the word sex don’t exist outside the English-speaking world (not until very recently at least). However, because of the cultural and political influence of English speaking countries, particularly the United States, all those new meanings of gender (included the meaning of "gender identity") have been exported to many non-English speaking countries. This process was facilitated by the fact there is no lack of people who are pretty eager to adopt the latest American fashion without any care if it makes any sense. So, even though in Spanish the word sex has not been removed from daily speech in the same way it was in English, the use of gender for non-grammatical purposes have been slowly creeping into our language and I hate it.

Anyway, you have said nothing about how defining women and men in non-biological terms is what now allows males to be “legally female” in many places. You said nothing either about how it makes sense to both reject sexism and define men and women by social trends.

Moreover, it’s not only evolutionary biologists who care about our sexed bodies. When you go to the hospital, your doctors won’t care about how you was socialized, but also what is your sex. For example, urinary tract infections are more common in women, because our urethras are shorter and closer to the anus. It was no male socialization what allowed Laurel Hubbard to debut at the Olympics at 43 years of age, either. It is not because of female socialization that sex selective abortions happen and now men outnumber women by a large margin in some countries. But you focus so much in socialization that you end up thinking that biology does not matter at all.

[–]SnowAssMan 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I think it unwise to allow the self-ID cult to co-opt any terms, including gender. Gender has two meanings: the male & female sexes, or the masculine & feminine constructs. When the self-ID cult refers to gender however, they are not referring to either of these definition, but a third undefined definition (bc definitions are "exclusionary" = make their ideology vulnerable to attack). Everyone uses the word 'gender' to refer to biological sex, the majority of the time, within colloquial language, as well as academia, even the self-ID cult often does this:

gender inequality (inequality between the sexes)

gender ratios (male sex:female sex ratio)

gender reveal party (revealing the biological sex of a baby)

"gender & covid-19" (the different ways in which the virus & vaccine effect male vs. female biology)

gendered (sexist)

gender dysphoria (depression based on the mismatch between a person's sex & their preferred sex, treated with cross-sex hormones)

It's a mammoth task for the self-ID cult to change the definition of gender to nothing, why help it along? If they monopolise the language they monopolise the discourse, which always wins over debates.

Regarding foreign languages: some languages like German don't make the distinction between gender (sex) & linguistic gender. If someone's sex is female then it's "weiblich", likewise if a word is feminine it's called "weiblich". We should try to get them to adopt the word "feminin".

It's sex AND socialisation, not sex OR socialisation, it's not an either/or thing. In fact the latter is dependant on the former. It's not exactly a respective cause & effect either though, more of a catalyst & effect. Both nature & nurture impact identity to the exclusion of all else. The same way that the Bruce Jenner's of the world are not female, biologically, is the same way that they are not female socially either. So I'm not undermining biological sex at all, you're the one trying to undermine socialisation.

[–]BiologyIsReal 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

The correct term for sex is... well, sex... Gender is only used as an euphemism because... honestly, I'd really like to know why some many English speakers do it. Is it prudishness? Are they only following the flow? Yes, it's true this euphemism is used even in academia. And, yet, no one says (yet) genderual reproduction or gender chromosomes because people (still) realize how dumb that would sound.

By the way, beware that TRA, when talking about this gender ratios, they are likely classifying people by "gender identity", not sex.

I don't know German, so I won't speak about it. But I can I tell you that expanding the meaning of the word for gender in Spanish has been a mess. For instance, in 2012 the gender identity law was passed in Argentina. This law legalized self-ID here and declares that everyone has a right to a "gender identity", which must be respected. Despite all the talk about "gender identity", the word actually used in our documents is sex because as I said the word sex is still widely used in Spanish speaking countries. The term gender is also used to talk about women's issues and you now have words like violencia de género (gender based violence), which I think it gives credit to the QT theory that women are discriminated against because of femininity and not our sex. And now in the news (and I guess in the justice system too) murders of males who identified as trans are counted as "femicides"...

I'm not trying to undermine socialization, that is ridiculous. I'm well aware that women and men are treated differently since, or before, they are born. I think differences between male and female behaviour is a result from both nature and nurture. I said you're disregarding biology because it seems you think biology only matters in deciding how one will be socialized.

By the way, are you going to tell me how including sex roles and stereotypes within the definition of women and men is any different thatn what TRA does? How can one reject sexism and define women by stereotypes at the same time?