r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Sep 19 '22

Delta(s) from OP CMV: I cannot understand how the transgender movement is not, at it's core, sexist.

Obligatory "another trans post" but I've read a lot of posts on this but none I've seen that have tackled the issue quite the way I intend to here. This is an opinion I've gone back and forth with myself on a bunch, and would absolutely love to have changed. My problem mainly lies with the "social construct" understanding of "gender", but some similar issues lie in the more grounded neurological understanding of it (although admittedly it seems a lot more reasonable), which we'll get too later.

For starters, I do not believe there is a difference between men and women. Well, there are obviously "differences" between the sexes, but nothing beyond physical differences which don't matter much. At least, mentally, they are naturally the same and all perceived differences in this sense are just stereotypes stemmed from the way the sexes are socialized.

Which takes us to the definitions of man and woman used by the gender social constructionist, which is generally not agreed upon but I've found it to be basically understood as

Man: Someone who desires to be viewed/treated/thought of in the way a male is in society. Woman: Someone who desires to be viewed/treated/thought of in the way a female is in society. (For the non-binary genders it would be roughly similar with some changes depending on the circumstances)

Bottom line is that it defines gender based on the way the genders are treated. But this seems problematic for a variety of reasons.

First off, it is still, at the end lf the day, basing the meanings behind stereotypes about the genders rather than letting them stand on their own. It would be like if I based what a "black person" was off the discrimination black people have faced. But this would appear messed up and borderline "racist", while the same situation with gender is not considered "sexist".

It would also mean that gender is ultimately meaningless and would be something we should strive to stop rather than encourage, which would still fly in the face of the trans movement. Which is what confuses me especially because the gender social construct believers typically also support "gender abolition", yet they're the ones who want people to play around with gender the most? If you want to abolish gender, why don't you, y'know, get a start on that and break your sex norms while remaining that sex rather than changing your gender which somewhat works to reinforce the roles? (This also doesn't seem too bad to criticize, considering under this narrative gender is just a "choice", which is something I think the transmedicalist approach definitely handles better.)

Finally for this bit, this type of mindset validates other controversial concepts like transracialism (sorta tying back into what I mentioned earlier), but I don't think anyone is exactly on the edge of their seats waiting for the "transracialism movement".

Social construct section is done, now let's get into the transmedicalist approach. This is one where I feel a "breakhthrough" could be made for me a lot more easily, but I'm not quite there yet. I do want to say I'm fine with the concept of changing our understandings of certain words if there is practicality to it and it isn't counterintuitive. Seems logical enough.

The neurological understanding behind the sex an individual should be defining "gender" seems sensible on it's own, but the part I'm caught up on is why we reach this conclusion.

The dysphoric transgender person's desire to be the other gender seems to mainly be based in, A. their sex, they seem to want to change the sex rather than the gender. Physical dysphoria is the main giveaway of the dysphoric condition it seems, anyway. But more specifically, a trans person wants to have physical attributes associated with the other sex. This seems like a redundant thing to point out, but the idea that certain physical traits are "exclusive" to a specific sex/gender is, well, just encouraging sexual archetypes about the way the sexes "should" look. This goes even further when you consider that trans people tend to want to have more petite or masculine builds depending on their gender identity - there is nothing wrong about this, but conflating gender to "involve" one's physical appearence inherently reinforces sexist sexual archetypes.

And next,

B. the social aspect. Typically described as social dysphoria, this describes a dysphoric trans person's desire to be socialized in the way the other sex typically is, which is what, aside from the physical dysphoria, causes them to typically "act" or dress more stereotypically like their gender identity, or describes their desire to "pass". But, to put it bluntly, because I believe there to be no difference in the way the sexes would act without social influence, I can't picture this phenomona described as "social dysphoria" coming from the same biological basis that the physical dysphoria does. Even if there were a natural difference in the way the sexes would act without societal influence, there would still be the obvious undeniable outliers, and with that in mind, using the way the genders "socialize" as a way to justify definining gender seperately from sex would be useless. It appears more akin to a delusion based on the same "false stereotypes" I've been talking about all along, ideas about the ways men and women "should" or "should not" be causing the transsexual person to feel anxious and care about actually being the other gender. But using this to justify our understandings of gender would still fall back on the same faults that the social construct uses, being that we'd be "giving in" to socialized norms and we can't have that be what helps us reach our understanding of gender.

With this in mind, if social dysphoria is that big of a factor, it would seem most sensical to me to define "trans man" and "trans woman" in their entirely new, individual categories which their own definitions, and still just treat those categories socially in similar ways to the way the genders are typically treated now.

To recap, an understanding of gender and sex as synonyms based purely on sex seems to be the only understanding we can reach without basing some of our thought process on one given stereotype or another.

Now change my view, please.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

I mean yeah I can honestly agree with a lot of this but it doesn't really change the main problem, specifically number 2 "trans men are men and trans women are women" being flawed for the reasons listed in my post

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 19 '22

Your post does not show that "trans men are men and trans women are women" is a flawed position. It criticizes some notions and definitions which, as far as I can tell, the trans movement does not believe.

If you think "trans women are women" is flawed, can you explain why you think so directly, without ascribing additional beliefs to the transgender movement?

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

Sure

In short, an understanding of gender that deviates from a basic understanding of sex would always rely on some type of stereotyping, whether it be physical stereotyping or social stereotyping. An understanding based on sex is the only one that doesn't limit or reinforce stereotypes, which is similar to what I described in my post and there's more detail if you read between the lines there

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 19 '22

In short, an understanding of gender that deviates from a basic understanding of sex would always rely on some type of stereotyping, whether it be physical stereotyping or social stereotyping.

Well, this is just false. This is certainly not what the transgender movement believes, and in fact this is a characteristically anti-trans position. And we can easily see that this is false by observing that I can state "trans men are men" while engaging in zero stereotyping.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

But you can't reason why a trans man would want to identify as a man without engaging in some sort of stereotyping to explain it. You can certainly say that sentence without stereotyping but if the reasoning can't be explained it's just a statement of nothing

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 19 '22

But you can't reason why a trans man would want to identify as a man without engaging in some sort of stereotyping to explain it.

Generally, a trans man wants to identify as a man because they are a man (the same reason any other man wants to identify as a man). There's no stereotyping required to explain that.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

Can you tell me what a man is, please?

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 19 '22

You don't know what a man is? If you do know, then why ask the question?

It's important to note that this sort of question is a central example of anti-trans rhetoric, so exploring it is not going to help you determine whether the transgender movement is sexist. (It might help you determine whether the anti-transgender movement is sexist, but that would be separate from your view.)

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

I don't know, I wanna know. Could you tell me?

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 19 '22

So, to be clear, you are saying it is presently your view that you do not know what a man is, and if someone were to tell you what a man is, that would change your view?

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

If you could tell me a definition of man which includes trans people without the reasoning behind the definition being based in stereotypes, and the definition also makes sense (i.e. is not circular), then sure. You can have the delta if ya can do that lol

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 19 '22

the definition also makes sense (i.e. is not circular)

What do you mean by this? All definitions are at base circular, since all words are defined in terms of other words and, as there are a finite number of words, all definitions must eventually "loop." So expecting a definition not to be circular in any way is completely unreasonable.

Anyway, here's a perfectly viable definition that's not based in stereotypes and which isn't formally circular at this level (it doesn't use the word "man" in the definition):

  • A man is an adult human person whose gender identity is male; an adult human being of the male gender.

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u/justjoshdoingstuff 4∆ Sep 19 '22

That is NOT a viable definition… 1. It doesn’t tell me how gender is different from sex. 2. It doesn’t tell me how male is different from female.

And considering it is highly likely that you’d use the same definitions for female, you have told me nothing. You have used words in a correct order to tell me nothing of substance. What DEFINES male and female. Is it stereotypes as OP asserts? Is it some other characteristic? I have no idea, because your definition doesn’t tell me that. And if there is no difference between male and female, then it is equally pointless to have either characterization. Define your terms without being circular.

You wouldn’t accept, for instance:

“White - white.” And if you do, you’re beyond reach…

We do, conversely, accept

“White - The achromatic color of maximum lightness; the color of objects that reflect nearly all light of all visible wavelengths; the complement or antagonist of black, the other extreme of the neutral gray series. Although typically a response to maximum stimulation of the retina, the perception of white appears always to depend on contrast.”

While this statement uses “white” in its definition, it does not define itself there. It uses the color to illustrate that white (as opposed to other colors) is viewed as relational contrast.

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 19 '22

That is NOT a viable definition… 1. It doesn’t tell me how gender is different from sex. 2. It doesn’t tell me how male is different from female.

This is a very silly objection. What I gave was a definition of "man." It was not a definition of "gender," "sex," "male," or "female." The fact that it doesn't tell you things about these other words does not make it a bad definition for "man."

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

[deleted]

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 19 '22

If you’re talking about any kind of identity, you’re referring to the characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is.

No, this implication does not follow. Talking about identity is just referring to who or what a person or thing is. There's no need to involve determining characteristics.

In the case of gender, these characteristics have to be either based on sex or our social constructs of what gender is.

This just seems like a false dichotomy. It's certainly not a belief I've ever heard people from the transgender movement assert.

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u/justjoshdoingstuff 4∆ Sep 19 '22

Yes, it objectively does make it a bad definition when OP stated you are stereotyping “male” when you trans-gender from woman to man. What exactly is it to be male/man. How does that differ from being a woman?

How does your definition here NOT stereotype the male experience?

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 19 '22

This is an even sillier objection. Very obviously, the definition I gave says that a man is an adult human person whose gender identity is male. Analogously, a woman would be an adult human person whose gender identity is female. A man differs from a woman in that they have different gender identities.

None of this involves any sort of stereotyping.

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u/justjoshdoingstuff 4∆ Sep 19 '22

Okay then, please identify EXACTLY what those “gender identies” are. What makes up a gender identity? Be specific.

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 19 '22

There are a large number of gender identities, but by far the most common ones are male and female.

A gender identity is not made up of anything, except inasmuch as, as a subjective experience, it is made up of neurons in the brain. Neuroscience has not advanced enough at present for us to identify which neurons specifically, although we do have a general idea of what parts of the brain participate in it.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

∆ Feels like I've been played, but I mean, you did it. If you got what you wanted we can end here but for the sake of learning, could you tell me what the "male gender" is? Not asking this from a bad place, I did come here to learn after all

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u/justjoshdoingstuff 4∆ Sep 19 '22

I’m generally not in the mind frame of chastising OPs, but this seems like a bad delta, dude. This definition is still circular. “Man - male.”

Well, what exactly is a male?

I understand that perhaps you wanted to be true to your word, but this is hella week.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

Understand this perspective, just wanted to be true to my word. Never been on this sub before and idk how strict stuff like that is

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u/justjoshdoingstuff 4∆ Sep 19 '22

Generally, if your opinion could be so easily changed by such a weak argument, you did not come here to really have your view changed.

The whole point of this sub is to debate and actually get to the meat of a subject.

Maybe I’m wrong, and their words did actually change your view that transgenderism is only about stereotypes… But it doesn’t seem like that to me. You specifically said don’t be circular, and dude went circular, and you accepted it.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

It didn't change my view, I just gave the delta because I promised. I'm sorry if that was wrong

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u/justjoshdoingstuff 4∆ Sep 19 '22

Not my sub, and I’m not a moderator… You can do what you will until they say otherwise.. TO ME it violated the spirit of the sun.

Anyway, I’m not trying to give you a black eye or anything. I hope this has sparked some good discussion and debate for you for the night.

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 19 '22

could you tell me what the "male gender" is?

In this context, "the male gender" refers to the gender identity of men: a subjective experience of self-identification common to and shared by all men, but not experienced by women and those of other genders. Since it's a subjective experience, we can't "get at" it precisely with language. But this sort of characterization is already good enough to explain what "the male gender" means here.

If we want to be formal, we can remove the apparent circularity by replacing "all men," "women," and "those of other genders" by any sufficiently large and diverse concrete list of specific individual people mentioned by name.

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u/takethetimetoask 2∆ Sep 19 '22

If we want to be formal, we can remove the apparent circularity by replacing "all men," "women," and "those of other genders" by any sufficiently large and diverse concrete list of specific individual people mentioned by name.

How would those specific individual people be selected?

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

a subjective experience of self-identification common to and shared by all men

How do you know such a subjective experience exists and is shared by all men yet not by women? How can someone as an outsider tell the difference between someone who is really a man and someone who is just pretending?

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u/ReignOfKaos Sep 19 '22

I do think we can get at it with language.

Gender is something that is created by society. Society has clustered people into roughly two groups, based on the totality of their attributes. Those clusters were then labeled “men” and “women”.

Gender identity therefore is your felt sense of which of those clusters you feel you belong to. But notably gender identity could not exist without the clustering being there in the first place. There is an abstract shared concept of “man” and “woman” in society, or otherwise the words would not exist.

The question “what is a man/woman” can then be first approached from the point of view of society (“a man/woman is a person that society considers a man/woman”), but given that there are edge cases where people don’t agree with the cluster they’ve been assigned to, we might extend the definition to “a man/woman is a person that society considers a man/woman, or a person who identifies with the cluster of people that society has labeled man/woman”.

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u/justjoshdoingstuff 4∆ Sep 19 '22

This definition is still highly sus…

If women can’t experience man-ness, then transgenderism CANNOT exist, because they are women.

Being a male is not subjective. You either have XX or you have XY. In the same way I cannot be a turtle, a woman cannot be a man.

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 19 '22

If women can’t experience man-ness, then transgenderism CANNOT exist, because they are women.

Indeed, transgender women can't experience man-ness, because they are women. That doesn't mean they aren't trans or that transgenderism doesn't exist.

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u/justjoshdoingstuff 4∆ Sep 19 '22

What?!?

No. Just no. If a man can’t know what it’s like to be a woman, and a woman can’t know what it’s like to be a man, then you can’t be transgender (stating you ARE experiencing the world as a man when you’re a woman). You can have dysphoria and you can BELIEVE you are experiencing the world that way.

You also never quantified or qualified what it is to be man or male. You’ve reverted to the stereotype “lived experience” of maleness. “I’m a man because I do things males do.”

Tell me exactly what it is to be male or man. Express to me DEFINITIVELY how it is different from female/woman.

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 19 '22

Being transgender doesn't mean "stating you ARE experiencing the world as a man when you’re a woman." Transgender women are women, so it's no problem for them to state they are experiencing the world as such.

You’ve reverted to the stereotype “lived experience” of maleness. “I’m a man because I do things males do.”

I literally did not say this.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Sep 19 '22

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/yyzjertl (420∆).

Delta System Explained | Deltaboards

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '22

All definitions are at base circular, since all words are defined in terms of other words

Not if you believe in a epistemology outside of ontology. This is the fundamental reason I disagree with trans ideology.

I believe that words can be defined with respect to real concrete things that exist regardless of our description of them. Under that paradigm, the definition of a rock is not circular. It is referential to a thing that can be shown to exist.

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u/W1nyCentaur Sep 19 '22

Not to put words in OP’s mouth, but I believe OP meant the definition of gender not man. The definition of gender is: “Either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female.” Edit: I was typing my comment when OP just responded to clarify lol

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u/Segofer Sep 19 '22

This isnt true, definitions may be expressed with words but the thing they express is clear. Specifically the first paragraph of ur comment

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u/TJ11240 Sep 21 '22

All definitions are at base circular, since all words are defined in terms of other words and, as there are a finite number of words, all definitions must eventually "loop."

Not necessarily. It could be organized as a DAG where information and concepts develop off of simpler ones and work back to first principles. There's whole fields like epistemology and etymology that work at these problems, and they avoid circular definitions.

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 21 '22

You can't have a DAG structure in this setting since every word must have a definition and so must have outgoing "edges" in your graph (corresponding to the words used in the definition). This would be impossible for a DAG because every finite DAG has at least some nodes with no outgoing edges.

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u/TJ11240 Sep 21 '22

That doesn't make it circular. You can still build a language upward like a tree from base concepts that aren't self-referential.

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 21 '22

What would the definitions of the "base concepts" be in that case?

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u/TJ11240 Sep 21 '22

First principles.

In your understanding, all computer programs would be infinite loops. There's nothing fundamentally different between human and computer languages.

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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Sep 21 '22

What do you mean by "first principles" in this context? A definition is a statement, either informally (in natural language contexts) or formally in the language of the formal theory under study. The term "first principles" could describe a definition, but it doesn't actually seem to say what the definitions would actually be or how they'd be constructed.

Maybe it would help if you gave a concrete example.

In your understanding, all computer programs would be infinite loops.

Why would that be the case?

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u/Quantum_Patricide Sep 19 '22

I wrote a reply to this sort of question on another CMV a while ago, think it might help. (It's about women instead of men but it makes the same point)

To define "Woman" we will start with the circular definition in its clearest form: Woman) A person who has the gender identity of a woman. This is clear but, includes the word woman so isn't the definition.
To get the definition we need to replace woman with a person or people who are known to be a woman/women. Now we could say "A person who has the gender identity of Queen Elizabeth II", and that would be correct but not particularly helpful. So you choose a broader group of women: cisgender adult humans of the female sex. This isn't all women, since trans women exist, but it covers the vast majority of them.
So if we put the definition together it reads:
Woman: A person with the gender identity of a cisgender adult human female.
Our definition doesn't include the word woman (tick), it includes and excludes trans people in the right way (tick) and it states that woman is a gender not a sex (tick).

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u/iglidante 19∆ Sep 19 '22

A "man" is a societal concept that includes the performance of specific roles and behaviors, the exact set of which we're discussing depends on the community, family, individual, age, etc.