Respect the Categories
I guess if all else fails just keep saying “but it’s written down somewhere, so it’s obviously true.”
Witness for instance Morgane Oger:
Where am I arguing there is a “female essence”? I am stating a fact: I am categorized as a human adult female (and it deeply bothers fools).
That’s a very silly, tricksy, childish kind of “fact.” It’s like saying “I am too so the Queen, it’s in writing!” when it’s in writing because you just wrote it down. Oger is “categorized as a human adult female” by whom and since when and for what reason?
Writing down some words doesn’t necessarily create a fact beyond the fact that those words were written down in that place.
And even when we go beyond silly tricks to talk about official or quasi-official documents, they are not necessarily infallible or accurate or reasonably founded either. Think of the many ways despised people have been “categorized” in the past, and the way some still are. Think of the category “Dalits” for instance, which used to be the category “untouchables.” Think of the category “slaves.” Think of “savages,” “serfs,” “UnAmerican activities.” Think, even, of the category “cray-cray.”
…just makes you cray-cray trans women are categorized female, donnit?
Leaving cray-cray aside, it’s just naïve to treat categories as truth-determining. I doubt that Oger is really that naïve in everyday life, but when it comes to defending the claim that men are women if they say they are, it’s time to become gormlessly credulous about the Reality of categories.
Jane Clare Jones has a fine response:
Trans activism in one tweet:
1. Yes we’re erasing and appropriating your sex
2. Yes we know you find this extremely distressing
3. Yes we’re going to try and make sure you can’t do anything about it
4. And then yes, we’re going to mock you and gloat about it.
I’m categorized as The Destroyer of Categories. How do I know? Well, look for yourself, it’s right there in writing.
I am an otter. It has been written down many times (by me). And now I am going to write it down in more detail: I am an otter who likes lemon bars.
It is written. It is true. And now I am going to write down that I am the President of the United States. It is written, so I can go move the current usurper out – except, well, it’s also written down that he is President of the United States. Oh, dear, now my head hurts.
I am stating a fact: You are not categorized as a human adult female (and it deeply bothers autogynophiles and their enablers).
He’s the fool. I’ll wager that every single person around him who humours him when he says he’s literally female is doing so out of pity or to exploit him for political gain. Nobody really believes he’s literally female. And if they truly respected him as an intelligent adult they would say so. His friends who humour him do so because they believe he can’t handle the truth, and the people in the BC NDP Party humour him because it gives them virtue cred. Poor man, what a loser.
“It is written” has been something of an ace in the hole in times past. “I saw it in a book” was all one needed to win any playground argument when I was around 8 years old.
Omar, that was the standard on Beverly Hillbillies. “It must be true, Uncle Jed, it was in a book.” So Morgane is now arguing like Jethro Bodine. High philosophy there.
iknklast:
One of Australia’s greatest poets,Henry Lawson wrote of the same childhood gullibility:
“And we learnt the world in scraps from some ancient dingy maps/ Long discarded by the public-schools in town;/ And as nearly every book dated back to Captain Cook/ Our geography was somewhat upside-down./
“It was ‘in the book’ and so — well, at that we’d let it go,/ For we never would believe that print could lie; /And we all learnt pretty soon that when we came out at noon/ ‘The sun is in the south part of the sky.'”
As a young Australian kid, I was given a copy of Arthur Mees’ Childrens’ Encylopaedia which I treasured and read all 5 volumes from cover to cover. But that had the same northern bias as I recall.
(The full set is now with my grandchildren, so I can’t look the matter up.)
.http://www.ironbarkresources.com/henrylawson/OldBarkSchool.html
So the debate on whether trans women are women is resolved by an appeal to religious tolerance.
If “womanhood” is like Christianity,” there are many things Christianity is not. It’s not Hinduism, or Satanism, or Marxism. It’s not train spotting or spoon collecting or chewing gum. You can still be not included in the-thing-with-many-parts.
Besides — if womanhood isn’t like citizenship, then shoving official categories under people’s noses shouldn’t constitute an argument.
It’s a particularly bad move to throw in that religious argument. When I was in school there was a bit of debate over whether scholars of religion should be stewards or critics of religious belief. I suspect the consensus is edging towards criticism these days.
Here’s an important bit there:
The critical side of religious studies doesn’t allow Christians and similar to self-define, rather, it’s academia that gets to put them in useful sociological boxes.
“I am stating a fact: I am categorized as a human adult female … [by] fools.”
FTFY
Let us not forget that in the USA, a tomato is legally a vegetable, despite being a fruit in a botanical sense. So because there is a law that says it’s a vegetable that was written in order to avoid certain taxes, that makes it botanically true as well, right?
You’re a MAN, Oger. A sneering, annoying MAN.
Dang, so tomatoes are transvegetables?
This is a curious move and strengthens my conviction that the argument for the current trans ideology is pure sophistry. If there’s no objectively true definition, then what’s your argument against people using a different definition than the one you prefer? Totally undercuts the ontological totalitarianism that they’re attempting.
If “womanhood”/”manhood” are not categories that we can argue about because they’re centered in people’s beliefs about themselves (the absolute polar opposite of “social construct”), then the only true statement about this that a trans person can make is “I believe I’m a woman/man”. And the only way that the mantra can work is if we amend it to “I believe trans women are women/trans men are men”. There’s no “period”, “full stop”, “you must remember this” because the ideology has ceded the field. And there’s no basis for arguing with someone who disagrees with you except to point out that beliefs about social constructs differ, exactly as religious beliefs differ.
What an odd flex. But I guess if you have a losing hand, your only choice is to play the cards that you’ve dealt yourself.
Sastra #7
It’s telling that Oger compared womanhood to Christianity and not, say, Islam or Judaism, or Catholicism. Those are identities that generally do come with conditions and aren’t open to anyone in quite the same way blanket “Christianity” is.
The ‘womanhood is like Christianity’ argument might also be making a different point, and a more reasonable one. It’s comparing “what do Christians believe?” to “what is a woman?” and even if we use “an adult human female “ we know that biology is rather messy. There’s no one single thing which is completely fixed in stone. Chromosomes can be other than XX and XY; hormones and primary and secondary sexual characteristics can vary around. When it comes to determining sex it’s a congruence of factors, just as with religions or any other complex systems. Some Christians don’t believe in the Trinity. The Trinity is optional.
Then they make the fallacy of composition: what applies to the parts, applies to the whole. If every element in a category is somewhat fluid and therefore not clearly definitive, then we must think of that category itself as somewhat fluid and undefined. Everything is optional. Anything might be in it. Transgender women and men have some of the traits of biological women and men, so it’s legitimate to count them as women and men. If you disagree, then that’s like saying Mormons aren’t Christians because they don’t believe in the Trinity.
But it’s also like saying Humanists aren’t Christian because they don’t believe in enough of it.
Sastra, they are missing their own concept of spectrum. Because gender (and sex, too, if we’re honest) exist on a spectrum, a woman can fit within a wide variety of characteristics. But the reality is, these ranges are still restrained. As a trained plant taxonomist, I know that a plant may fit all the characteristics of the species that are in the taxonomic key. But there are variations, ranges of the characters, and those ranges overlap. So we have to use a system that compares multiple characters, so you may have two plants that fit the overlapping size range for seed, for instance, but one of them is wrinkled and one is smooth, and that characteristic may allow one to make a determination.
In short, a spectrum actually fits better with our ideology than theirs, because there is a range of values that can differentiate ‘woman’ from ‘man’ but those ranges overlap. It is only by a congruence of the characters that we can determine. So yes, I have no uterus (anymore), and having a uterus is part of being a woman. For any woman that happened to be born without one, there are a myriad of other characteristics that determine a woman.
The thing is, the biological characteristics that specifically say “woman” are ones that men don’t have. Size isn’t really an indicator. Though often used in fossils, if there are other features present they will preferentially use those; if size is all they have to go by, they will say “possibly” a woman. But there are so many characteristics of being man vs. woman, and none of them have to do with feelings. They have to do with physical data, and people who are intersex are the exceptions, or people with a chromosomal anomaly.
So what they are asking us to do is take the fact that there are ranges, and those ranges overlap, to insist that there are two boxes, one labelled man and one labelled woman, and people can live in whichever box they please and fit in that box perfectly.
The problem is, if I told you Raisin Bran was Cheerios, it would still taste like Raisin Bran. It would still be Raisin Bran. Or to use a favorite analogy of theirs, if I told you a Cherry PopTart was a Chocolate PopTart, that would not make it taste like, or be, chocolate.
I realize I’m not articulating a new point here, but maybe someone can bring me up to speed on the arguments:
I accept the concept that “sex” and “gender” are two different things, and that the former is biological, and the second is internal/psychological/identity-based. Why does it follow that “gender” should be the determinant of things like which sporting category you compete in, which bathroom you use, whether you are eligible to use a particular shelter, hold a particular political position reserved for women, etc.?
For sports in particular it seems fairly uncontroversial to say that the reason we separate men and women in most sports is because of biological considerations; it has nothing to do with what goes on in people’s heads. (The other items seem like closer calls to me.)
It follows because “gender” is the thing that counts, “gender” is what decides everything, “gender” is what makes you who you are, “gender” is what you feel deep inside, “gender” is your soul. Obviously gender trumps sex; it’s so crass and materialistic and earthbound to think it’s sex that does.
I suspect he’s referring to legal fiction. In the UK and the United States, trans people can be officially declared the sex they wish they were on documents such as driver’s licenses, id cards, and such.
So, yeah. Morgane’s female, in the same way that Microsoft is a person (in the US, corporate personhood is a famous legal fiction.)
Enjoy your femalehood, Morgane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_fiction
Well he would sure as hell say no he’s not, it’s not any kind of fiction, how dare you. His whole point is he’s categorized as female so shut up forever.
Kind of the whole point innit. Fine, be a woman in your head, we don’t care – but no that doesn’t mean we all have to pretend along with you. Go cuddle your passport.