I think he absolutely does understand. He just doesn’t want to admit it. He’s not stupid.
I’ve seen a similarly willful obtuseness among both men and women who don’t want to “get it” because their desire to be seen as noble supporters of the (oppressed trans-identified man) underdog overrides their relationship with the truth. This leads to a stubborn denial of the irrefutable, fundamental distinction between males and females: men, regardless of how they identify or how much nail polish they’re wearing, have built-in physical advantages in size and strength compared to women. (Are we still discussing this? Really? This is why I have a hard time taking Freddie’s arguments seriously.)
Men are bigger, stronger and faster than women, which we’ve known forever up until yesterday. This is why athletic competitions are single-sex. Otherwise, the level playing field, essential for fair competition, could not exist, unless the males in question are five years old.
Take 30 seconds and look up the stats for men vs. women in cycling, for instance. With men in the race, women don’t stand a chance. Mixed martial arts with men in the field represent an existential threat to women’s safety. Women have sustained serious neck injuries in volleyball, not usually considered a contact sport, because one man on the opposing team is all it takes to spike the ball into the face of the woman on the other side of the net. This has happened more than once.
The number of men on a team or in a sport is irrelevant. It only takes one to destroy the level playing field. It’s like the argument about men in women’s prisons: there are just a few of them, so what’s the problem? Which begs the questions: how many men does it take to rape a woman? And how many rapes are an acceptable number? One a day? a month? an hour? Please, Freddie, stop with the disingenuous pseudo arguments.
If you don’t care about the safety of women, or our right to compete on a level playing field where, if we lose, we’ve lost fair and square…then come out and say it loud and proud: YOU DON’T CARE if women’s striving and years of training get us nowhere when a mediocre dude takes home the medal because he’s a dude and the officials and coaches with the power to exclude him are afraid of being called bigots.
I have read some of FD’s stuff and I am reasonably sure he is a clownfish. MM, you are rock solid and clear as a bell and completely correct in your assessment of this socially contagious approval of perversion.
Meghan, you make so many good points in your essay that I agree with, that I feel I should have made my points clearer in response to yours. There’s nothing in your essay that I disagree with! Where we part company is in the area of strategy. So this is part two of my original post.
You’re hoping to reach Freddie through facts and logic, but you’re not getting anywhere, and you’re frustrated. I can relate. I’ve been having the gender conversation since the late 1970s, with people who refuse to budge. This includes radical socialist lesbian feminists and professional organizers for abortion rights. Facts, logic and proper definitions carry no weight. Even though I myself am a lesbian feminist and have marched for 50 years for gay/lesbian and feminist causes, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a waste of time to discuss trans/gender with people who are entrenched in their position. People have to get curious and open the door themselves, after which they become receptive. A great example of this is Michael Shellenberger, an objective muckraker who released the WPATH Files and publicly changed his position on trans.
Gender is almost entirely a Progressive problem. Progressives are motivated by beliefs and customs that sabotage facts and logic: hierarchical identity categories, virtue signaling, the fear of being ostracized or seen as a bad person, family constraints, unacknowledged sexism, and loyalty to groups they identify with, however irrational that may be.
Progressive virtue signaling is a social imperative if one wants to have friends. The Progressives I know have devoted much time to “educating” themselves by absorbing the justifications, jargon and pseudoscience of gender ideology, until they have eradicated all cognitive dissonance when asserting that men can get pregnant. IN THE GENDER OPPRESSION OLYMPICS, TRANS-IDENTIFIED MEN TRUMP HETEROSEXUAL (“CIS”) WOMEN, INCLUDING IN SPORTS AND PRISONS. Quoting Colin Wright on gametes and chromosomes is a waste of time. Even "Scientific American” has updated its knowledge base. Sex is a spectrum, and you, Meghan Murphy, are an ignorant bigot. Women’s vulnerabilities vis-a-vis men are eradicated in this process. This is why I assert that Freddie deBoer does not care what happens to women in sports and prisons. He supports the victim.
In other words, it’s time for incarcerated women and women athletes to slide their butts under the bus, because their oppressed trans-sisters need the seats. It’s only fair. In order to obfuscate any inconvenient truths, we’re going to lie and say that there are no biological differences between the sexes, that women easily defeat men in sports, and that male felons who identify as women never assault, molest or rape women and children. This is tribal territory.
Call it woman’s intuition, and maybe I’m way off base...but I get this feeling that MEN who support trans-identified MEN in women’s spaces are identifying with those MEN, because they’re MEN. Just a hunch. If you’ve gotten this far, thank you for letting me spew.
I agree that it's mostly a waste of time to try to convince people who have made it clear they will not be convinced, no matter what, though I think perhaps those debates can have a use in changing other people's minds? Maybe?
Yes, absolutely, these debates are valuable. I've been amazed at the number of "likes" I've received on these posts. What it tells me is that you have a ton of committed subscribers who care deeply about this issue, which is a testament to your tenacity, integrity, and fearlessness.
The more information and context you provide your readers, the more readers you'll acquire and the more ammunition they'll have. Then it will become easier for folks to debate the issue with the fence sitters in all of our lives.
My comment about wasting time was specifically about Freddie, who should know better. You KNOW that he knows, and yet he continues to evade and avoid. Why? Any intelligent, objective journalist who can't see the unfairness and irrationality of trans policies towards women and children is either brain dead or disingenuous in the extreme. Where Freddie is concerned, I'm going with the latter.
And although I didn't say this before, journalists who take the gender critical position are going to find their work life radically altered. You know this better than anyone. It's a huge step to decide to go there, and clearly, he doesn't want to. I get it, but he's of no use. He would have to change himself, and I see no evidence that he cares to do that at the moment. That's the definition of a waste of your time.
This is why I mention Shellenberger. He's a real investigative journalist. He doesn't attach himself to a cause in order to win virtue points. He's actually looking for the truth and trying to improve the world, one gigantic topic (the environment, homelessness) at a time.
"The First Amendment allows free speech. It does not protect the “right” of adult men to identify as girls so they can walk into a female change room and take their dicks out. That is still (or should be, in any case, a crime.)" There it is. I compare this to someone "identifying" as a bank customer, who then pulls a gun on the teller to rob the bank. The bank robber could dress to fit in and carry a checkbook and a pen, but the accoutrements don't make one a bank customer.
“DeBoer complains that few engage with, to him, “the essential question,” which is “whether we recognize the right of people to identify with a gender other than the one they would traditionally be assigned and to do so in peace.”
This is ironic because he turns off comments whenever he lobs a bomb into the trans debate.
Willy “Lia” Thomas will singlehandedly bring down men’s attempt to enter women’s sports and locker rooms in order to practice their autogynephilac fetishes and steal women’s medals, scholarships and sports records.
Am reading Freddie deBoer's article in New York magazine. In my mind, I'm swapping out "mentally ill" for "trans" and it works almost perfectly. Ironically he argues that society needs to take a hard stand with mentally ill people. He blames the media for colluding with the narrative that mentally ill people are sacrosanct : "The perspective of the American media and the liberal journalists and writers who dominate it is that these fears [of violence on the part of the mentally-ill] are wicked, bigoted and even 'bourgeois.'" Sound familiar (except for the bourgeois part?) You can apply this mental trick to almost every paragraph throughout his article. He even argues that even though (according to statistics) New Yorkers are safe on their subways, we need to take their worries seriously because mentally ill people are - in fact- a problem. He writes, "Is the public simply irrational? I would argue that they are not, or if they are, understandably so." He defends the public's fear about mentally ill people, but he dismisses people who claim that trans-ness is a mental health condition and worry about the well-being of people caught up in this craze . He writes, "It is absolutely true that most people use the subway and otherwise occupy public spaces do so without incident. It is also true that a highly disproportionate number of random acts of public violence are committed by the mentally ill. The research tell us so." What about the "few" men in women's prisons who terrify and assault women? What about the "few" perverts in changing rooms? Later he writes, "Yes, people with mental illness are, in fact, more likely to commit violent crimes, and the recent liberal pretense that this is not true is a glaring example of our culture's addiction to wishing away complicated social problems." Swap out "mental illness" with "trans" and "likely to commit violent crimes" with "likely to self-mutilate." Or don't swap out the part where it says "likely to commit violent crimes" and consider the spate of murders by trans identifying people (the most recent one a few days ago in Utah where a man who said he was a woman murdered his parents) and compare that to crime on the NY subway: do mentally ill people (especially people made worse by hormones) commit more murders than "cis" (ahem) people? Should the public be worried? Should parents be terrified that their kids will be caught up in this mess? I'll stop now. It's like the trans issue is swirling around in Freddie's subconscious and it is leaking out of every pore. He just can't see that we need to take a firm stand on reality because reality is better for all of us.
Further on he writes, “Part of the difficulty in getting people to grapple with this reality is the rampant deployment of a strategically deceptive observation - that the mentally ill [trans] are more likely to be victims of violent crime than the perpetrators of violent crime.” The article just keeps on giving.
Some good points -- old Freddie is definitely rather clueless about the difference between sex and gender, and rather too gutless to consider any corrections. Though one might say the same about too many feminists.
Maybe you should all "stop writing about the trans debate if (you don't) understand what (others) are talking about". Apropos of which you might consider Merriam-Webster's Usage Guide on "gender":
MW: "Among those who study gender and sexuality, a clear delineation between sex and gender is typically prescribed, with sex as the preferred term for biological forms, and gender limited to its meanings involving behavioral, cultural, and psychological traits. In this dichotomy, the terms male and female relate only to biological forms (sex), while the terms masculine/masculinity, feminine/femininity, woman/girl, and man/boy relate only to psychological and sociocultural traits (gender)."
You clearly think "woman" is based on sex -- "adult human female" -- whereas Freddie and his ilk see it as a gender -- anyone who exhibits any sort of a passing resemblance to typical "adult human females".
The whole transgender clusterfuck often seems, at worst, no more than a Lilliputian civil war over egg (ova) cracking protocols, over transwomen's envy and women's vanity contending for "the golden apple -- for the fairest".
I agree the sex/gender confusion confuses... But surely people like Freddie understand that when we are talking about sport we are talking about *sex*, not one's feelings about gender roles?
Freddie's closing comment: "I don’t really understand the dimensions of what people want, at this point, as it pertains to that preemptive statement that of course, adults should be free to be trans. Clarity could be useful. In particular, what part of 'of course, but' is more important?"
Of course transwomen can identify as women -- as a gender -- but that doesn't change their sex which is the basis, wise or not, for various social segregation purposes. Something he rather pigheadedly refuses to consider.
I mean, you can't identify as a woman if you are a man, no matter how you slice it... You can... not like masculine stereotypes? Or prefer some aspects of femininity? That's all gender means... (I appreciate your efforts to challenge him on this — this is a large part of my frustration with this whole debate: the 'gender' word is confusing to people, so I wish we just wouldn't use it so much, though I suppose it's a bit too late for that!)
Why it's rather important, particularly these days, to specify the criteria required to qualify as members of particular categories. Which many people, on virtually all sides of the transgender clusterfuck, refuse to do for less than edifying reasons.
But you might also have some interest in some of my other recent Notes 🙂 and comments on the topic, these about gender-criticals, and Albertan lesbian Substacker Eva Kurilova:
While I appreciate your "wish wouldn't use it so much", the problem is that "gender" has a great deal of currency -- and some scientific justifications. All we can do is try to put the concept on something of a more scientific footing:
See, I sorta think the opposite: rather than put the concept on scientific footing, which I think really just confuses people and is unnecessary, I think we just say what we mean, which is "sex." No?
That some people are "confused" by science doesn't seem like a very good reason to abandon or corrupt the whole field and the principles which undergird it ...
But not at all sure what you mean by "say what we mean". What reputable biologists mean by "male" and "female" is really no more than "has functional testicles" and "has functional ovaries". That is it -- period:
Too many so-called biologists and philosophers -- like Colin Wright and Alex Byrne, grifters and scientific illiterates, at best, if the truth be known -- are busily engaged in corrupting those definitions for fun and profit. More a part of the problem than of the solution.
But none of those standard biological definitions say anything at all about Kurilova's "men and women have behavioral, emotional, and psychological differences on average as well." And for the very good reason that those differences come in under the heading of gender. That's the benefit of the SCIENCE behind the sex-gender dichotomy: keeping separate the reproductive traits that are "essential" to qualify as male or female, and those psychological traits that are typical of each sex even though they're not necessarily unique to either.
Without binary sexes the word “gender” makes no sense and has no utility; it literally has no anchor in reality to refer to anything.
“Gender” simply refers to commonly understood stereotypical presentations of male and female in appearance or behaviours. For the word to make any sense when used everybody has to understand the difference between male and female humans.
Not quite sure what your point is. You think I'm trying to deny that sex is binary?
Yes, I quite agree with your points about "makes no sense", "stereotypical behaviours", and "understand the difference" between the sexes".
But that's the whole point and principle behind sexual dimorphism. One can't possibly say which traits are more common or typical of one sex than the other if one hasn't FIRST said what it takes to qualify as male and female:
That's also largely the import of Kurilova's, "men and women have behavioral, emotional, and psychological differences on average as well". But those "sexually dimorphic" differences are generally not unique to either sex.
For examples, both heights and "agreeableness" are such "sexually dimorphic" traits: men tend to be, on average, some four inches taller that women. And women tend to be, on average, some 10 percent more agreeable than men. But there are some women who are taller than the average man -- one might say such women have a "masculine height". Similarly, some men are more agreeable than the average woman -- one might say such men have a "feminine agreeableness score".
But the further point there is that heights and agreeableness scores are not at all any part of the definitions for male and female -- as sexes. ALL that it takes to qualify as male and female, at least by standard biological definitions, is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless:
"Women's vanity contending for "the golden apple -- for the fairest." It's okay for either sex to try and look attractive, and dudes have the right to pile on removable makeup, just as men (and women) have the right to get a tattoo, permanent makeup. There's no civil war over vanity but there has been an intentional destruction of sex-based rights and the destruction of guardrails around children.
I think he absolutely does understand. He just doesn’t want to admit it. He’s not stupid.
I’ve seen a similarly willful obtuseness among both men and women who don’t want to “get it” because their desire to be seen as noble supporters of the (oppressed trans-identified man) underdog overrides their relationship with the truth. This leads to a stubborn denial of the irrefutable, fundamental distinction between males and females: men, regardless of how they identify or how much nail polish they’re wearing, have built-in physical advantages in size and strength compared to women. (Are we still discussing this? Really? This is why I have a hard time taking Freddie’s arguments seriously.)
Men are bigger, stronger and faster than women, which we’ve known forever up until yesterday. This is why athletic competitions are single-sex. Otherwise, the level playing field, essential for fair competition, could not exist, unless the males in question are five years old.
Take 30 seconds and look up the stats for men vs. women in cycling, for instance. With men in the race, women don’t stand a chance. Mixed martial arts with men in the field represent an existential threat to women’s safety. Women have sustained serious neck injuries in volleyball, not usually considered a contact sport, because one man on the opposing team is all it takes to spike the ball into the face of the woman on the other side of the net. This has happened more than once.
The number of men on a team or in a sport is irrelevant. It only takes one to destroy the level playing field. It’s like the argument about men in women’s prisons: there are just a few of them, so what’s the problem? Which begs the questions: how many men does it take to rape a woman? And how many rapes are an acceptable number? One a day? a month? an hour? Please, Freddie, stop with the disingenuous pseudo arguments.
If you don’t care about the safety of women, or our right to compete on a level playing field where, if we lose, we’ve lost fair and square…then come out and say it loud and proud: YOU DON’T CARE if women’s striving and years of training get us nowhere when a mediocre dude takes home the medal because he’s a dude and the officials and coaches with the power to exclude him are afraid of being called bigots.
I have read some of FD’s stuff and I am reasonably sure he is a clownfish. MM, you are rock solid and clear as a bell and completely correct in your assessment of this socially contagious approval of perversion.
I genuinely keep assuming I'm missing something, but every time I try I'm like "what???!"
Meghan, you make so many good points in your essay that I agree with, that I feel I should have made my points clearer in response to yours. There’s nothing in your essay that I disagree with! Where we part company is in the area of strategy. So this is part two of my original post.
You’re hoping to reach Freddie through facts and logic, but you’re not getting anywhere, and you’re frustrated. I can relate. I’ve been having the gender conversation since the late 1970s, with people who refuse to budge. This includes radical socialist lesbian feminists and professional organizers for abortion rights. Facts, logic and proper definitions carry no weight. Even though I myself am a lesbian feminist and have marched for 50 years for gay/lesbian and feminist causes, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a waste of time to discuss trans/gender with people who are entrenched in their position. People have to get curious and open the door themselves, after which they become receptive. A great example of this is Michael Shellenberger, an objective muckraker who released the WPATH Files and publicly changed his position on trans.
Gender is almost entirely a Progressive problem. Progressives are motivated by beliefs and customs that sabotage facts and logic: hierarchical identity categories, virtue signaling, the fear of being ostracized or seen as a bad person, family constraints, unacknowledged sexism, and loyalty to groups they identify with, however irrational that may be.
Progressive virtue signaling is a social imperative if one wants to have friends. The Progressives I know have devoted much time to “educating” themselves by absorbing the justifications, jargon and pseudoscience of gender ideology, until they have eradicated all cognitive dissonance when asserting that men can get pregnant. IN THE GENDER OPPRESSION OLYMPICS, TRANS-IDENTIFIED MEN TRUMP HETEROSEXUAL (“CIS”) WOMEN, INCLUDING IN SPORTS AND PRISONS. Quoting Colin Wright on gametes and chromosomes is a waste of time. Even "Scientific American” has updated its knowledge base. Sex is a spectrum, and you, Meghan Murphy, are an ignorant bigot. Women’s vulnerabilities vis-a-vis men are eradicated in this process. This is why I assert that Freddie deBoer does not care what happens to women in sports and prisons. He supports the victim.
In other words, it’s time for incarcerated women and women athletes to slide their butts under the bus, because their oppressed trans-sisters need the seats. It’s only fair. In order to obfuscate any inconvenient truths, we’re going to lie and say that there are no biological differences between the sexes, that women easily defeat men in sports, and that male felons who identify as women never assault, molest or rape women and children. This is tribal territory.
Call it woman’s intuition, and maybe I’m way off base...but I get this feeling that MEN who support trans-identified MEN in women’s spaces are identifying with those MEN, because they’re MEN. Just a hunch. If you’ve gotten this far, thank you for letting me spew.
I agree that it's mostly a waste of time to try to convince people who have made it clear they will not be convinced, no matter what, though I think perhaps those debates can have a use in changing other people's minds? Maybe?
Yes, absolutely, these debates are valuable. I've been amazed at the number of "likes" I've received on these posts. What it tells me is that you have a ton of committed subscribers who care deeply about this issue, which is a testament to your tenacity, integrity, and fearlessness.
The more information and context you provide your readers, the more readers you'll acquire and the more ammunition they'll have. Then it will become easier for folks to debate the issue with the fence sitters in all of our lives.
My comment about wasting time was specifically about Freddie, who should know better. You KNOW that he knows, and yet he continues to evade and avoid. Why? Any intelligent, objective journalist who can't see the unfairness and irrationality of trans policies towards women and children is either brain dead or disingenuous in the extreme. Where Freddie is concerned, I'm going with the latter.
And although I didn't say this before, journalists who take the gender critical position are going to find their work life radically altered. You know this better than anyone. It's a huge step to decide to go there, and clearly, he doesn't want to. I get it, but he's of no use. He would have to change himself, and I see no evidence that he cares to do that at the moment. That's the definition of a waste of your time.
This is why I mention Shellenberger. He's a real investigative journalist. He doesn't attach himself to a cause in order to win virtue points. He's actually looking for the truth and trying to improve the world, one gigantic topic (the environment, homelessness) at a time.
"The First Amendment allows free speech. It does not protect the “right” of adult men to identify as girls so they can walk into a female change room and take their dicks out. That is still (or should be, in any case, a crime.)" There it is. I compare this to someone "identifying" as a bank customer, who then pulls a gun on the teller to rob the bank. The bank robber could dress to fit in and carry a checkbook and a pen, but the accoutrements don't make one a bank customer.
“DeBoer complains that few engage with, to him, “the essential question,” which is “whether we recognize the right of people to identify with a gender other than the one they would traditionally be assigned and to do so in peace.”
This is ironic because he turns off comments whenever he lobs a bomb into the trans debate.
Seriously! Like ok, let's engage then?
He writes to irritate not inform.
Willy “Lia” Thomas will singlehandedly bring down men’s attempt to enter women’s sports and locker rooms in order to practice their autogynephilac fetishes and steal women’s medals, scholarships and sports records.
That will be his legend.
Agree
He’s thick as plaster and not worth the time it takes to read him.
Thank you for bringing to much clarity to this muck. 🎯🙏
OK? A Resounding yes.
Am reading Freddie deBoer's article in New York magazine. In my mind, I'm swapping out "mentally ill" for "trans" and it works almost perfectly. Ironically he argues that society needs to take a hard stand with mentally ill people. He blames the media for colluding with the narrative that mentally ill people are sacrosanct : "The perspective of the American media and the liberal journalists and writers who dominate it is that these fears [of violence on the part of the mentally-ill] are wicked, bigoted and even 'bourgeois.'" Sound familiar (except for the bourgeois part?) You can apply this mental trick to almost every paragraph throughout his article. He even argues that even though (according to statistics) New Yorkers are safe on their subways, we need to take their worries seriously because mentally ill people are - in fact- a problem. He writes, "Is the public simply irrational? I would argue that they are not, or if they are, understandably so." He defends the public's fear about mentally ill people, but he dismisses people who claim that trans-ness is a mental health condition and worry about the well-being of people caught up in this craze . He writes, "It is absolutely true that most people use the subway and otherwise occupy public spaces do so without incident. It is also true that a highly disproportionate number of random acts of public violence are committed by the mentally ill. The research tell us so." What about the "few" men in women's prisons who terrify and assault women? What about the "few" perverts in changing rooms? Later he writes, "Yes, people with mental illness are, in fact, more likely to commit violent crimes, and the recent liberal pretense that this is not true is a glaring example of our culture's addiction to wishing away complicated social problems." Swap out "mental illness" with "trans" and "likely to commit violent crimes" with "likely to self-mutilate." Or don't swap out the part where it says "likely to commit violent crimes" and consider the spate of murders by trans identifying people (the most recent one a few days ago in Utah where a man who said he was a woman murdered his parents) and compare that to crime on the NY subway: do mentally ill people (especially people made worse by hormones) commit more murders than "cis" (ahem) people? Should the public be worried? Should parents be terrified that their kids will be caught up in this mess? I'll stop now. It's like the trans issue is swirling around in Freddie's subconscious and it is leaking out of every pore. He just can't see that we need to take a firm stand on reality because reality is better for all of us.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/the-case-for-forcing-the-mentally-ill-into-treatment.html
Further on he writes, “Part of the difficulty in getting people to grapple with this reality is the rampant deployment of a strategically deceptive observation - that the mentally ill [trans] are more likely to be victims of violent crime than the perpetrators of violent crime.” The article just keeps on giving.
Some good points -- old Freddie is definitely rather clueless about the difference between sex and gender, and rather too gutless to consider any corrections. Though one might say the same about too many feminists.
Maybe you should all "stop writing about the trans debate if (you don't) understand what (others) are talking about". Apropos of which you might consider Merriam-Webster's Usage Guide on "gender":
MW: "Among those who study gender and sexuality, a clear delineation between sex and gender is typically prescribed, with sex as the preferred term for biological forms, and gender limited to its meanings involving behavioral, cultural, and psychological traits. In this dichotomy, the terms male and female relate only to biological forms (sex), while the terms masculine/masculinity, feminine/femininity, woman/girl, and man/boy relate only to psychological and sociocultural traits (gender)."
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender#dictionary-entry-1
You clearly think "woman" is based on sex -- "adult human female" -- whereas Freddie and his ilk see it as a gender -- anyone who exhibits any sort of a passing resemblance to typical "adult human females".
The whole transgender clusterfuck often seems, at worst, no more than a Lilliputian civil war over egg (ova) cracking protocols, over transwomen's envy and women's vanity contending for "the golden apple -- for the fairest".
I agree the sex/gender confusion confuses... But surely people like Freddie understand that when we are talking about sport we are talking about *sex*, not one's feelings about gender roles?
Seems rather moot. ICYMI, where I've commented on his post:
https://substack.com/@humanuseofhumanbeings/note/c-59027532
Freddie's closing comment: "I don’t really understand the dimensions of what people want, at this point, as it pertains to that preemptive statement that of course, adults should be free to be trans. Clarity could be useful. In particular, what part of 'of course, but' is more important?"
Of course transwomen can identify as women -- as a gender -- but that doesn't change their sex which is the basis, wise or not, for various social segregation purposes. Something he rather pigheadedly refuses to consider.
I mean, you can't identify as a woman if you are a man, no matter how you slice it... You can... not like masculine stereotypes? Or prefer some aspects of femininity? That's all gender means... (I appreciate your efforts to challenge him on this — this is a large part of my frustration with this whole debate: the 'gender' word is confusing to people, so I wish we just wouldn't use it so much, though I suppose it's a bit too late for that!)
If Bruce Jenner can cut his dick off and garner a "woman of the year" award from Glamour then I guess a man can "identify as a woman" ... 🙄
That's the problem with contradictory and inconsistent definitions. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion
But one really can't "identify as" X if one can't pay the membership dues to qualify as an X:
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/identify-as
Why it's rather important, particularly these days, to specify the criteria required to qualify as members of particular categories. Which many people, on virtually all sides of the transgender clusterfuck, refuse to do for less than edifying reasons.
But you might also have some interest in some of my other recent Notes 🙂 and comments on the topic, these about gender-criticals, and Albertan lesbian Substacker Eva Kurilova:
https://msediewyatt.substack.com/p/reflection/comment/59066528
While I appreciate your "wish wouldn't use it so much", the problem is that "gender" has a great deal of currency -- and some scientific justifications. All we can do is try to put the concept on something of a more scientific footing:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/a-multi-dimensional-gender-spectrum
See, I sorta think the opposite: rather than put the concept on scientific footing, which I think really just confuses people and is unnecessary, I think we just say what we mean, which is "sex." No?
That some people are "confused" by science doesn't seem like a very good reason to abandon or corrupt the whole field and the principles which undergird it ...
But not at all sure what you mean by "say what we mean". What reputable biologists mean by "male" and "female" is really no more than "has functional testicles" and "has functional ovaries". That is it -- period:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
https://web.archive.org/web/20170902010637/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
Too many so-called biologists and philosophers -- like Colin Wright and Alex Byrne, grifters and scientific illiterates, at best, if the truth be known -- are busily engaged in corrupting those definitions for fun and profit. More a part of the problem than of the solution.
But none of those standard biological definitions say anything at all about Kurilova's "men and women have behavioral, emotional, and psychological differences on average as well." And for the very good reason that those differences come in under the heading of gender. That's the benefit of the SCIENCE behind the sex-gender dichotomy: keeping separate the reproductive traits that are "essential" to qualify as male or female, and those psychological traits that are typical of each sex even though they're not necessarily unique to either.
Without binary sexes the word “gender” makes no sense and has no utility; it literally has no anchor in reality to refer to anything.
“Gender” simply refers to commonly understood stereotypical presentations of male and female in appearance or behaviours. For the word to make any sense when used everybody has to understand the difference between male and female humans.
Not quite sure what your point is. You think I'm trying to deny that sex is binary?
Yes, I quite agree with your points about "makes no sense", "stereotypical behaviours", and "understand the difference" between the sexes".
But that's the whole point and principle behind sexual dimorphism. One can't possibly say which traits are more common or typical of one sex than the other if one hasn't FIRST said what it takes to qualify as male and female:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism
That's also largely the import of Kurilova's, "men and women have behavioral, emotional, and psychological differences on average as well". But those "sexually dimorphic" differences are generally not unique to either sex.
For examples, both heights and "agreeableness" are such "sexually dimorphic" traits: men tend to be, on average, some four inches taller that women. And women tend to be, on average, some 10 percent more agreeable than men. But there are some women who are taller than the average man -- one might say such women have a "masculine height". Similarly, some men are more agreeable than the average woman -- one might say such men have a "feminine agreeableness score".
But the further point there is that heights and agreeableness scores are not at all any part of the definitions for male and female -- as sexes. ALL that it takes to qualify as male and female, at least by standard biological definitions, is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170902010637/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
"Women's vanity contending for "the golden apple -- for the fairest." It's okay for either sex to try and look attractive, and dudes have the right to pile on removable makeup, just as men (and women) have the right to get a tattoo, permanent makeup. There's no civil war over vanity but there has been an intentional destruction of sex-based rights and the destruction of guardrails around children.
That "golden apple" is a reference to a famous myth about 3 Greek goddesses in a contest to determine who was "the fairest" -- vanity writ large:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_of_Paris
Which I had extended to include transwomen -- or trans-identified males -- and their rather pathological envy:
https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/263fd13a-3844-4bee-93b4-31c87853a2d5_697x697.jpeg
Don't you think the transwoman on the left is the spitting image of Dylan Mulvaney? 🙄
For further details, see my:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/the-spergy-letter-project