About nine genders
Hmm. Nine genders? Are we drawing close to precision and clarity at last?
“About” nine. Interesting mix of precision and vagueness.
Starts here:
It was all going well at first, she says, but now there’s “the kind of debate, divisive debate that we have seen in the UK, America and Canada.” Sorry for being so divisive and all, but when people are divisiving women into subsets that include men, women can get a bit annoyed and stubborn-like.
“The state did not recognise the true people that they were living the lives of.”
Whose lives are you living the lives of? I’ve lost count of mine.
Ah no, other way around. “Gender identity” that differs from physical sex is indeed a “theory” (aka a fairy tale) as opposed to a reality. It’s a fiction, a fantasy, a fad, a mood, an emotion, a story. The emotion may be real but it doesn’t change the physical reality.
That’s so childish. Maybe you know in your heart and soul you’re a rabbit or Artemis or a planet or the cosmos or the Buddha or a field of tobacco, but even if you do, you can’t require anyone else to agree.
What a load of codswallop.
https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/an-infinite-diversity/
There is an infinite diversity of genders in the world. Each person has a totally unique interpretation and relationship with any gender they inhabit, and there are at least as many genders as there have been humans who have lived. Genders can overlap and negate one another, they can be positive or negative, fixed or in flux, and they can coalesce in any number of combinations.
It’s a wave and a particle! It’s a dessert topping and a floor wax!
She needs the votes from people who think two’s and nine’s are arbitrary. Yeah, that bunch. :P
@4: What? Am I missing a joke or reference? Second Amendment, Ninth Amendment?
Well GW, if you think there are nine genders and not two, then you might be missing something. ;)
This either means that they’ve finally derived a test for being Truly Trans from all those weak neurological correlations they’ve been waving about, or doctors have got some sort of checklist for all the different genders.
“Although you have XY chromosomes, do you dislike sports?”
“No, I love sports.”
“Ah, a point against being a transwoman, then.”
“But I love them the way a super cool woman does!”
“Okay, I’ll give it.”
iknklast@#1:
Oh, I dunno. There could be more genders out there than there are stars in the sky. Then again, maybe not. But there are definitely more than 57 varieties of codswallop. That’s for sure.
Brings to mind Arthur C Clarke’s short story “The Nine Billion Names Of God”. Read it, if you haven’t already.
@6: Ah, of course! I’m not sure how I missed that.
What the trans dogmatists do, is try to get agreement that gender “identity” can sometimes be *different* than biological sex, and that it’s a “spectrum,” or a “constellation” (according to Michelle Forcier in the Matt Walsh film, of which I caught a short clip of). Once they cause confusion with this, then they try to confuse further with claims that biological males can have female gender “identity,” which then (if by magic) morphs into them being female gendered, not just “identified as.” The coup de grâce is that since this person is now of the female gender, they reverse their position on sex and gender, and then say that gender is the *same* as biological sex, so their conclusion is that “gender identity” = gender = biological sex. When questioned whether sex and gender are different at this point, they revert to the original position that gender “identity” and biological sex are two different things, and this restarts the feedback loop. It’s convoluted enough that if a person is not able, or too lazy to unpack the claims, then they can potentially be fooled by these con artists. Ultimately, gender “identity” is little more than a preferred stereotype.
Why revert at that point? Wouldn’t it be more advantageous at that point to say: “No, they’re the same of course, and therefore women who come from a trans experience, who have female gender, are simply women, the female sex.”
GW, I think Willy Thomas’ sex is male, and his gender is male. If someone tells me his gender “identity” is female, then I don’t agree, but there are people who can be persuaded that his gender “identity” is more than just him pursuing a female stereotype and pretending he’s a female (which is how I see it). You’re right though, the short version is to insist that TWAW, with no debate.
@13: I would agree that Willy Thomas’s sex is male, of course. (Yes, that “of course” is only because this is the comment section on B&W. Many people out there in the big world would disagree. They’re wrong, of course.) I can’t agree or disagree on your assertion that his gender is male, because you haven’t defined gender, and I’m not convinced that it’s a useful or meaningful concept in describing human beings. It’s useful for discussing grammar, e.g. “The word la table is of the feminine gender, and the word das Mädchen is of the neuter gender.”
I don’t know what it even means to ask about what Thomas’s gedren is, but I’m pretty sure it’s lame…
The way the TRA use of “gender” has changed in less than 10 years goes to show, once again, that gender critical feminists are not the ones who have changed*, been “radicalized”, betrayed their cause, drunk the kool-aid etc. As I remember, TRAs themselves were the ones who used to insist on a strong distinction between “sex” and “gender” and how being “male” or “female” was about a person’s sex while being a “man” or “woman” was about “their” “gender”, and only an idiot could possibly fail to make such a basic distinction. Of course no one should have conceded the language to them back then (and, to be fair, not everyone did), then again, who wants to get bogged down in tedious disputes over semantics? I think we can all see the temptation to focus on the content and frame the arguments in terms of “sex-based rights”, “female-only spaces” etc.
Of course it didn’t take long before the very same people who insisted on a strong distinction between “sex” and “gender” in the first place were the most eager to conflate the categories they had imposed on the rest of us. It didn’t matter how far you went out of your way to specify that you were only talking about sex and biological females whatever you prefer to call them, and that nothing you were saying had anything to do with “gender” (whatever that’s supposed to mean?), the TRAs would still go on acting as if you were talking about “gender” and making claims about other people’s “inner sense of self” etc. I have often said that everything about gender ideology comes down to a “bad pun”. But it’s actually worse than that: A pun (or equivocation to use the more technical term) consists of conflating the meanings of words that happen to be spoken and/or written the same way (i.e. homonyms) in a particular language (fruit bats vs. baseball bats etc.). What we are talking about here is conflating the meanings of words that don’t even resemble each other (“sex” vs. “gender”, “female” vs. “woman”, “male” vs. “man”) in that superficial sense and that the TRAs themselves have been telling everyone else not to conflate. It just goes to show, once again, how gender ideology fails even by its own criteria.
*Contrary to the official TRA narrative according to which biological sex is a recent Western cultural invention, being a “woman” has always meant thinking/feeling/identifying/”presenting”/etc. in certain ways best left unspecified (as it still does in cultures uncontaminated by Western cultural imperialism), and
Oceania has always been at war with East-Asiafeminism was always about standing up for people (regardless of biological sex) who do indeed think/feel/identify/”present”/etc. in the ways required until, quite recently, the evil TERFs (allied with white supremacists, Trumpists and Nazis) started promoting the nonsensical idea of “biological sex” for the sole purpose of excluding the most oppressed subset of “women” out of blind, visceral hate and evil for the sake of evil.More messed up than that, actually. They conflate the meanings of synonyms, synonyms that they get everyone to say aren’t, which lets them exploit intuitions derived from the fact that the words actually are and always have been synonyms (and everyone knows it).
Nullius #18
Hence the observation that “no one should have conceded the language to them back then”. I agree that to most people “gender” is indeed just a synonym for “sex”, “woman” is a synonym for “adult human female” etc., and TRAs are deliberately and dishonestly conflating this common usage with their own non-standard one in order to make it seem as if e.g. anyone who uses the word “gender” instead of “sex”, calls herself a “woman” etc. is implicitly embracing the whole framework of gender ideology and personally identifies as whatever the word “woman” happens to mean in Genderspeak.
Still, it didn’t have to be that way. If they had given us a set of clear, unambiguous, definitions, applied them consistently, been honest and upfront about how they are using each word in each particular context, been honest about how other people are using the same words etc., we could still work within their vocabulary and have a meaningful conversation, kind of the same way I’m doing right now by communicating (or trying to do so) in English rather than Norwegian. As I keep saying, there is no such thing as what a word “really means”. Words don’t mean anything in themselves but get their meanings from us. The main problem with the TRA use of language is not that they are using words in an alternative sense, but that they are being dishonest about it. Unfortunately, the dishonesty is pretty much the whole point of the redefinition in this case, thus even if we accept their definitions (assuming for the sake of the argument that they had any meaningful definitions…), there is no way to make their case without cheating.
I have seen cell towers that identify as trees, and some of them are getting pretty good at it. If you were riding along on a train and one of these towers was among some real trees, you probably wouldn’t notice it unless you were really paying attention. Eventually they might be such good representations that unless you investigated closely, they could appear indistinguishable from trees from a distance. Birds nest in them, insects make their homes on them, and they become a background feature. >> https://www2.palomar.edu/users/warmstrong/faketree.htm
But a cell tower is not a tree, and a transwoman is not a woman. Beyond language, you could go up to one of these cell towers and easily discover that it’s not a tree, assuming you know what a tree is. It is a certain thing, despite any language difference or no language at all. Despite superficial appearances, trees and cell towers have very few qualities in common. We can easily make a distinction, even at a very young age. Even the birds and insects know the difference; there will be no woodpeckers or termites inhabiting them, because they only nest in trees. Some birds and insects will nest in odd man made structures. Just like some bird brains think that males can be female or vice versa.
As I understand it, decades ago feminists and psychologists separated “sex” and “gender,” with the latter meaning “how a society perceives masculinity & femininity.” We talked about gendered behavior, gendered interests — “girls play with dolls, boys with trucks.” Feminists wanted to smash or minimize gender; psychologists used it in evaluations. We didn’t really talk about someone’s “gender.” That would have meant that a gender non-conforming woman would be verbally and conceptually separated from being a woman. “Gender” was a term describing society’s relationship to prescribed/proscribed behavior related to sex. It wasn’t an identity.
This definition of “gender” has the virtues of making sense and being useful. It’s only problem was the way it’s open to being exploited.
The TRA position goes
1.) Sex & Gender aren’t the same thing. Sex is biological category; Gender is socially constructed distinctions between the sexes.
2.) Gender therefore includes stereotypes— but that’s not all! It’s how society & the individual perceive who is a woman. Yes, sometimes it means stereotypes, but sometimes it’s something vital and basic to the self. Suddenly, a miracle occurs: Gender #1 — and Gender #2
3.) Therefore, everyone has both a Sex, and a Gender #2
4.) Gender #1 is sexist, harmful, and restrictive.
5) When there’s a conflict, Gender#2 is more important than Sex, because gendered stereotypes (Gender #1) are based on Sex, and prioritizing Gender #2 avoids that whole sexist entanglement. It allows people to just be themselves.
I think they need to be more specific here in Step 2.
Sastra, I just consulted my Judith Butler performativity guidebook, and it says your 2.) is perfect as is. :D
Bjarte:
To clarify, I wasn’t expressing disagreement with your point. Rather, I was attempting to intensify or extend it, because your description of their long-term rhetorical strategy is very good. To wit, contrary to their stated position, they benefit from “conflating sex and gender”, a fact that explains why Money et al invented the distinction. That is, where there’s only one thing, there’s nothing to conflate.
@Bjarte: You’re totally right. Restricted to use as a term of art, there’s nothing at all problematic about using gender to describe social phenomena. People using the specialized language of their fields are aware that their usage differs from other contexts. When a term of art escapes its proper domain, that’s when things get sticky.
Even ignoring the possibility of bad actors’ terminological abuse, introduction of alternative-yet-similar senses causes interpretive confusion. The novel sense’s presence per se renders ambiguous existing instances of the term that were previously clear. (That is, every instance of foo in every context can now be read in the alternative sense.) If the new sense is sufficiently dissimilar, then the intended meaning may be obvious, but if the new sense closely resembles or even (as with gender-social and gender-physical) supervenes on the original sense, distinguishing the intended meaning isn’t a straightforward exercise.
@ Sastra: As far as the sex/gender distinction goes, I believe it was first introduced in 1940s psych, popularized by John Money beginning in the 50s, expanded by other psychologists in the 60s (e.g., the introduction of the term gender identity in 1964 by Robert Stoller), and finally adopted by academic feminism in the 70s.
The TRAs need to be more specific in step two, yes, but I’d say they must also be more explicit in step one. An intellectually honest person would qualify step one with, “For the purposes of this discussion, …” By not doing so, step one becomes an attempt at universal redefinition. A persuasive one, at that.
Maybe the “probably nine genders” might be an attempt to limit just how far she’s willing to pander. The more you include, the sillier it gets. You’ve gotta draw the line somewhere, right? Nine and that’s probably it. Obscure genders (I know, are there any that aren’t?) like “femme demi-boy neutrois,” or “pizza,” are not really worth stretching for, as the number of votes they represent is likely to be small. Never mind that she’s just INVALIDATED the identities of anyone whose gender failed to crack the top nine. THAT”S GENOCIDE! She can expect mass marches of the arro-omnigender hordes to protest loudly and proudly. Maybe they can enlist the help of the Black Pampers to help them win a higher profile, if not hearts and minds.