That’s a common trans-exclusionary-radical-feminist argument. Wrong because:
1) Would you feel uncomfortable wearing a swastika? Would that send the right message about you? In India swastika is a holy symbol, not a Nazi symbol, the meaning is arbitrary. “Dress” means “I’m feminine” in our culture. It’s part of our language.
Suppose in Atlantis, the mouth-sound “love” happens to mean hate and the mouth sound “hate” happens to mean love. It’s still acceptable for an English speaking person to want to mouth-sound “I love you” and not “I hate you” even though the meanings of the mouth-sounds are cultural.
2) Things need not be biological to be okay. Culture-induced preferences are valid. (Though, in this case, I think gender expression is probably biological).
But I normally understand “I’m feminine” to mean “I want to do (list of things)”. If someone wants to do those things because doing those things is feminine, they seem to be saying “I want to do these things because it means something which in turn means that I want to do these things”—it’s circular.
“I want to do a list of things” includes “I want the people around me to perceive me in a certain way” and “I want to perceive myself a certain way”- which is generally a big drive for clothing, adornments, and body-modification in general.
I’m not sure I understand the concept of “self identity as X” that is independent of wanting to do any particular things that X do. If there was such a thing, it would be meaningful to say “I’m feminine but I don’t want to do any feminine things” which I’m pretty sure would not be accepted very much. And I can’t think of any other cases when we accept that., either.
(I suppose “being treated by others as X” isn’t the same as wanting to do X-type things yourself, but it doesn’t seem to me that that is what is being talked about. And it’s not that differtent anyway.)
I’m not sure I understand the concept of “self identity as X” that is independent of wanting to do any particular things that X do.
“being treated by others as X”
Consider X = “medical doctor”.
A medical student is not a doctor, and knows they are not a doctor. But they want to be a doctor; that’s why they are a medical student. Like most people in societies that have doctors, the medical student has a node in their mental map for “being a doctor”, which seems separate from nodes such as “having high social status” and “helping sick people” and “earning more money than a janitor does” and “wearing a white coat”.
Sociologists call this “reification”: taking a bag of properties and treating them as a real thing. A reified social category such as “doctor” is more than just a shorthand for an arbitrary bag of properties. It represents an actual cluster in social thingspace: there are people whom everyone agrees are doctors. (There are also people who are akin to doctors, but aren’t doctors, such as nurses. There are also people whom some think of as being doctors, and others think of as being fake doctors, such as chiropractors.)
But even though “doctor” is a social classification that people basically (collectively) made up, it’s one that almost everyone has a remarkable amount of agreement on.
And people can be right or wrong about it. Someone who is a doctor can think “I am a doctor” and be thinking something correct. A medical student can think “I want to be a doctor”. A doctor might find herself thinking, “I am a doctor, but people don’t act toward me the way they act towards other doctors, because they are weirded out by the idea of a black woman being a doctor. Their immediate (and erroneous) impression of me is that I am a physician’s assistant or something. I want to be treated as the doctor that I am.”
But being a doctor still has a core definition. You’re not a doctor if you don’t treat sick people or have the ability to treat sick people. There are also peripheral aspects such as how others treat you, or things that most doctors do without this being part of the definition of doctor, but being a doctor is not entirely about those peripheral things. Transsgender (at least in the absence of SRS) doesn’t seem to be that way
Or to put it another way, nobody says “I’m a transphysician. I feel like and identify with being a doctor. I want to wear a white coat and have people put “MD” after my name. This makes me a doctor, even though I don’t know how to treat sick people.”
Sorry, the analogy isn’t that close. I was just trying to get at the idea of there being a “doctor” node which is different from any one particular property of doctors, because it’s a socially defined cluster, not a natural kind.
Or to put it another way, nobody says “I’m a transphysician. I feel like and identify with being a doctor. I want to wear a white coat and have people put “MD” after my name. This makes me a doctor, even though I don’t know how to treat sick people.”
But a lot of people want the status benefits of being a doctor without having to do the hard work of going throw med school or even knowing how to heal people. Come to think of it, this isn’t a bad analogy of transwomen. A man want the status and attention that women get, especially in nerd or SJW circles. Furthermore, these days by declaring himself a “transwoman” he even becomes more special then ordinary women.
That’s a common trans-exclusionary-radical-feminist argument. Wrong because:
1) Would you feel uncomfortable wearing a swastika? Would that send the right message about you? In India swastika is a holy symbol, not a Nazi symbol, the meaning is arbitrary. “Dress” means “I’m feminine” in our culture. It’s part of our language.
Suppose in Atlantis, the mouth-sound “love” happens to mean hate and the mouth sound “hate” happens to mean love. It’s still acceptable for an English speaking person to want to mouth-sound “I love you” and not “I hate you” even though the meanings of the mouth-sounds are cultural.
2) Things need not be biological to be okay. Culture-induced preferences are valid. (Though, in this case, I think gender expression is probably biological).
But I normally understand “I’m feminine” to mean “I want to do (list of things)”. If someone wants to do those things because doing those things is feminine, they seem to be saying “I want to do these things because it means something which in turn means that I want to do these things”—it’s circular.
“I want to do a list of things” includes “I want the people around me to perceive me in a certain way” and “I want to perceive myself a certain way”- which is generally a big drive for clothing, adornments, and body-modification in general.
To you really think it’s not about self identity?
I’m not sure I understand the concept of “self identity as X” that is independent of wanting to do any particular things that X do. If there was such a thing, it would be meaningful to say “I’m feminine but I don’t want to do any feminine things” which I’m pretty sure would not be accepted very much. And I can’t think of any other cases when we accept that., either.
(I suppose “being treated by others as X” isn’t the same as wanting to do X-type things yourself, but it doesn’t seem to me that that is what is being talked about. And it’s not that differtent anyway.)
Consider X = “medical doctor”.
A medical student is not a doctor, and knows they are not a doctor. But they want to be a doctor; that’s why they are a medical student. Like most people in societies that have doctors, the medical student has a node in their mental map for “being a doctor”, which seems separate from nodes such as “having high social status” and “helping sick people” and “earning more money than a janitor does” and “wearing a white coat”.
Sociologists call this “reification”: taking a bag of properties and treating them as a real thing. A reified social category such as “doctor” is more than just a shorthand for an arbitrary bag of properties. It represents an actual cluster in social thingspace: there are people whom everyone agrees are doctors. (There are also people who are akin to doctors, but aren’t doctors, such as nurses. There are also people whom some think of as being doctors, and others think of as being fake doctors, such as chiropractors.)
But even though “doctor” is a social classification that people basically (collectively) made up, it’s one that almost everyone has a remarkable amount of agreement on.
And people can be right or wrong about it. Someone who is a doctor can think “I am a doctor” and be thinking something correct. A medical student can think “I want to be a doctor”. A doctor might find herself thinking, “I am a doctor, but people don’t act toward me the way they act towards other doctors, because they are weirded out by the idea of a black woman being a doctor. Their immediate (and erroneous) impression of me is that I am a physician’s assistant or something. I want to be treated as the doctor that I am.”
But being a doctor still has a core definition. You’re not a doctor if you don’t treat sick people or have the ability to treat sick people. There are also peripheral aspects such as how others treat you, or things that most doctors do without this being part of the definition of doctor, but being a doctor is not entirely about those peripheral things. Transsgender (at least in the absence of SRS) doesn’t seem to be that way
Or to put it another way, nobody says “I’m a transphysician. I feel like and identify with being a doctor. I want to wear a white coat and have people put “MD” after my name. This makes me a doctor, even though I don’t know how to treat sick people.”
Sorry, the analogy isn’t that close. I was just trying to get at the idea of there being a “doctor” node which is different from any one particular property of doctors, because it’s a socially defined cluster, not a natural kind.
Nurses also know how to treat sick people and treat sick people. That doesn’t seem to be primarily what being a doctor is about.
If treating people is a necessary but not sufficient condition, that is enough for my point.
But a lot of people want the status benefits of being a doctor without having to do the hard work of going throw med school or even knowing how to heal people. Come to think of it, this isn’t a bad analogy of transwomen. A man want the status and attention that women get, especially in nerd or SJW circles. Furthermore, these days by declaring himself a “transwoman” he even becomes more special then ordinary women.
The parallel for a transdoctor would be transmother, not transwoman.