I could ask the same question about the man who claims to be Jesus.
You could ask it, but I think a correct answer would look quite different in the two cases.
I should preface this by saying that I am neither a psychiatrist nor a psychologist, and will welcome corrections from those who are. So, anyway, my understanding is that if someone thinks he’s Jesus then either (1) he expects to have some super-Jesus-powers like performing miracles or offering teaching so supremely wise that following it will greatly improve anyone’s life[1], and/or (2) his thinking in this area is so seriously disordered that it’s a bit of a stretch to say that he actually “thinks” he’s Jesus as opposed to merely saying it but not really understanding what that would mean.
[1] For the avoidance of doubt, I am not claiming that the actual Jesus (assuming there was one) had those superpowers; only that those superpowers are part of what is meant by “Jesus” in the context of someone claiming to be him.
In case 1, his beliefs are falsifiable and will generally be falsified. In case 2, they are unfalsifiable but this isn’t much of a steelman; the point is just that he’s not thinking coherently.
What about the other case? Well, here my understanding is that (1) the people in question do not have falsifiable-and-will-be-falsified beliefs; they do not, e.g., think that their anatomy is different from what it actually is. And (2) their thinking in this area may differ from (e.g.) yours but it is not incoherent and they don’t in any way resemble people undergoing schizophrenic episodes.
So, first of all: Do you disagree with me about this? If so, (a) on what points and (b) how do you suggest we go about determining which of us is nearer the truth?
Now, so far what I’ve said about transgender people has been purely negative—I’ve said “no, they don’t think X and don’t have problem Y”. Perhaps you disagree not about that but about what you (rightly or not, we’ll see) expect me to say about what they do think. So let’s proceed.
The model of gender they’re working with goes something like this:
Gender is not simply a matter of anatomy or genetics or biochemistry.
What it actually is is a matter of social role-filling and self-perception.
Therefore, someone who is seen by others and themself as female is female.
This means that, e.g., there isn’t a valid inference from “female” to “able to bear children” or “interested in having sex with men” or “not very strong”—but there never was anyway; some people are infertile, some people have non-majority sexual preferences, some people are much stronger or weaker than average, etc.
It makes no difference to speak of to the perfectly valid statistical inference: if someone is female, they are much more likely to be able to bear children, much less likely to be able to lift very heavy weights, and so forth.
Do you think something in that is delusional, on a par with thinking you’re both Jesus and John Lennon? It doesn’t look that way to me. (As it happens, I think this is a better account of gender than any that makes gender a matter of anatomy or genetics or biochemistry, but at present I’m not concerned with defending that claim; the only relevant point is that it isn’t crazy.)
In terms of this model, it’s clear enough (I think) what someone means when despite having a Y chromosome they say “I am a woman”. They mean: “I am much more comfortable thinking of myself as female than as male; I wish to occupy a female role in society, to use a traditionally female name, etc.”. This would make little sense if “female” meant “possessed of a uterus” or “having two X chromosomes”, but (see above) that isn’t what it means in this context.
*
Finally: Let us suppose that all of the above is, in some way I’m failing to see, totally wrongheaded, and that in fact there is a Right Way to determine someone’s gender, and that Right Way is a matter of looking at their chromosomes or something, and that we therefore really are talking about “men claiming to be women”. There remains what seems to me a pretty clear distinction between someone in that position and someone claiming to be Jesus-the-son-of-God. Namely: in almost all contexts treating someone as a woman despite their male-typical anatomy and chromosomes is easy and harmless, and empirically it makes these people much less likely to kill themselves. (And no one has yet found anything else that does.) Whereas treating someone as the Son of God probably means, e.g., worshipping them, which is a much less reasonable thing to ask others to do.
I repeat that my primary disagreement with you on this point is about whether transgender people are really much like people who think they are Jesus; the point of the previous paragraph is just that even if I’m completely wrong about that, it doesn’t follow that we should adopt the position I think you are suggesting we should.
What it actually is is a matter of social role-filling and self-perception.
This is even more true about being a messiah or a famous rock star.
Do you think something in that is delusional, on a par with thinking you’re both Jesus and John Lennon?
Yes, your asserting a definition that fails to cut reality at the joints (or at least is worse at it then the traditional definition) and then insisting that everyone else adopt it.
In terms of this model, it’s clear enough (I think) what someone means when despite having a Y chromosome they say “I am a woman”. They mean: “I am much more comfortable thinking of myself as female than as male; I wish to occupy a female role in society, to use a traditionally female name, etc.”. This would make little sense if “female” meant “possessed of a uterus” or “having two X chromosomes”, but (see above) that isn’t what it means in this context.
I could just as easily steelman the Jesus and John Lennon guy as saying “I am much more comfortable thinking of myself as a son of God and famous rock star than as a typical human.”
Namely: in almost all contexts treating someone as a woman despite their male-typical anatomy and chromosomes is easy and harmless
Not when they insist on say playing in women’s sports and using women’s bathrooms.
and empirically it makes these people much less likely to kill themselves.
No, empirically playing along with their delusions doesn’t actually reduce their chances of killing themselves.
That is even more true about being a messiah or a famous rock star.
But not about being a specific messiah or a specific famous rock star. If everyone treats me as a messiah then I am, I suppose, a messiah in some sense. But that doesn’t make me Jesus.
a definition that fails to cut reality at the joints (or at least is worse at it than the traditional definition)
Would you like to justify that?
you’re asserting a definition [...] and then insisting that everyone else adopt it.
It appears to me that I am doing the exact opposite. I am describing a definition and saying I don’t think it’s crazy on a par with believing oneself to be the son of God. I do, as I mentioned, think it’s a reasonable definition, but I also said, in so many words, that I’m not at present trying to argue that anyone else should adopt it. Only that it’s not completely crazy.
So I guess when you say “you” you either don’t actually mean me, or aren’t troubling to distinguish between me and the people I’m describing. So let’s talk about those people; people who (let’s suppose) really are asking everyone to use their definition which (let’s suppose) doesn’t cut reality at its joints as well as some other definition (what? you haven’t said; but let’s say something to do with chromosomes and anatomy and hormones).
I repeat: Are you seriously saying that that is on a par with thinking you are simultaneously Jesus Christ and John Lennon? Really? Adopting one definition of gender rather than another is as crazy as believing yourself to be two long-dead famous people, one of them actually a demigod?[1]
[1] “Demigod” is of course not an accurate description of what Christians think the founder of their religion to have been, but it’s near enough for our purposes.
I could just as easily steelman the Jesus and John Lennon guy [...]
Except that what I said isn’t (so far as I am aware) steelmanning; it is what the people in question actually say. Whereas I betcha Mr Jesus Lennon would react pretty angrily to being told all he meant was that he wanted to think of himself, and be thought of by others, as a son of God and famous rock star.
empirically playing along with their delusions doesn’t actually reduce their chances of killing themselves.
That’s not what I’ve heard. Would you be interested in telling me where your information comes from?
I would seriously argue that “closer to” in this context can mean multiple things. For, e.g., medical purposes Jenner is much nearer the male than the female cluster. [EDITED because I’d got things the wrong way around in the previous sentence.] For some others it’s the other way around; e.g., the only pictures I’ve seen I would classify as nearer “typical female” than “typical male”. For some others it’s more complicated. For some others I simply have no idea (I have never met Jenner nor heard her[1] voice).
It seems to me that the great majority of the interactions people have with one another are ones where the impact of gender is (for those of us with the good fortune not to be hypersensitive to such things) rather small, and in those cases a definition that requires me to call a person a man even though the person in question is called Caitlyn, is wearing a dress, and plainly considers herself[1] a woman seems to me to be doing a poor job at cutting reality at its joints, and I will take the alternative even if that needs some adjustment when I am prescribing drugs for them or contemplating having sex with them.
(The real problem, of course, is that reality doesn’t exactly have joints and that so far as it does we’re quibbling over which side of the cut a piece of cartilage belongs on. Er, my apologies to any transgender or intersex folks reading this; I would not compare you to a piece of cartilage in other contexts!)
[1] I have attempted to phrase things so as to avoid question-begging via pronouns etc., but here I couldn’t find any way that wasn’t awfully clumsy. Sorry about that.
Whoops. I don’t; it was a typo, which I shall fix forthwith. [EDITED to add: well, not exactly a typo, but at any rate an error caused by lower brain functions failing to obey higher.]
(In principle you could have guessed this not only because it’s fairly obviously wrong but also because it was followed by an “it’s the other way around” that actually went the same way around.)
You could ask it, but I think a correct answer would look quite different in the two cases.
I should preface this by saying that I am neither a psychiatrist nor a psychologist, and will welcome corrections from those who are. So, anyway, my understanding is that if someone thinks he’s Jesus then either (1) he expects to have some super-Jesus-powers like performing miracles or offering teaching so supremely wise that following it will greatly improve anyone’s life[1], and/or (2) his thinking in this area is so seriously disordered that it’s a bit of a stretch to say that he actually “thinks” he’s Jesus as opposed to merely saying it but not really understanding what that would mean.
[1] For the avoidance of doubt, I am not claiming that the actual Jesus (assuming there was one) had those superpowers; only that those superpowers are part of what is meant by “Jesus” in the context of someone claiming to be him. In case 1, his beliefs are falsifiable and will generally be falsified. In case 2, they are unfalsifiable but this isn’t much of a steelman; the point is just that he’s not thinking coherently.
What about the other case? Well, here my understanding is that (1) the people in question do not have falsifiable-and-will-be-falsified beliefs; they do not, e.g., think that their anatomy is different from what it actually is. And (2) their thinking in this area may differ from (e.g.) yours but it is not incoherent and they don’t in any way resemble people undergoing schizophrenic episodes.
So, first of all: Do you disagree with me about this? If so, (a) on what points and (b) how do you suggest we go about determining which of us is nearer the truth?
Now, so far what I’ve said about transgender people has been purely negative—I’ve said “no, they don’t think X and don’t have problem Y”. Perhaps you disagree not about that but about what you (rightly or not, we’ll see) expect me to say about what they do think. So let’s proceed.
The model of gender they’re working with goes something like this:
Gender is not simply a matter of anatomy or genetics or biochemistry.
What it actually is is a matter of social role-filling and self-perception.
Therefore, someone who is seen by others and themself as female is female.
This means that, e.g., there isn’t a valid inference from “female” to “able to bear children” or “interested in having sex with men” or “not very strong”—but there never was anyway; some people are infertile, some people have non-majority sexual preferences, some people are much stronger or weaker than average, etc.
It makes no difference to speak of to the perfectly valid statistical inference: if someone is female, they are much more likely to be able to bear children, much less likely to be able to lift very heavy weights, and so forth.
Do you think something in that is delusional, on a par with thinking you’re both Jesus and John Lennon? It doesn’t look that way to me. (As it happens, I think this is a better account of gender than any that makes gender a matter of anatomy or genetics or biochemistry, but at present I’m not concerned with defending that claim; the only relevant point is that it isn’t crazy.)
In terms of this model, it’s clear enough (I think) what someone means when despite having a Y chromosome they say “I am a woman”. They mean: “I am much more comfortable thinking of myself as female than as male; I wish to occupy a female role in society, to use a traditionally female name, etc.”. This would make little sense if “female” meant “possessed of a uterus” or “having two X chromosomes”, but (see above) that isn’t what it means in this context.
*
Finally: Let us suppose that all of the above is, in some way I’m failing to see, totally wrongheaded, and that in fact there is a Right Way to determine someone’s gender, and that Right Way is a matter of looking at their chromosomes or something, and that we therefore really are talking about “men claiming to be women”. There remains what seems to me a pretty clear distinction between someone in that position and someone claiming to be Jesus-the-son-of-God. Namely: in almost all contexts treating someone as a woman despite their male-typical anatomy and chromosomes is easy and harmless, and empirically it makes these people much less likely to kill themselves. (And no one has yet found anything else that does.) Whereas treating someone as the Son of God probably means, e.g., worshipping them, which is a much less reasonable thing to ask others to do.
I repeat that my primary disagreement with you on this point is about whether transgender people are really much like people who think they are Jesus; the point of the previous paragraph is just that even if I’m completely wrong about that, it doesn’t follow that we should adopt the position I think you are suggesting we should.
This is even more true about being a messiah or a famous rock star.
Yes, your asserting a definition that fails to cut reality at the joints (or at least is worse at it then the traditional definition) and then insisting that everyone else adopt it.
I could just as easily steelman the Jesus and John Lennon guy as saying “I am much more comfortable thinking of myself as a son of God and famous rock star than as a typical human.”
Not when they insist on say playing in women’s sports and using women’s bathrooms.
No, empirically playing along with their delusions doesn’t actually reduce their chances of killing themselves.
But not about being a specific messiah or a specific famous rock star. If everyone treats me as a messiah then I am, I suppose, a messiah in some sense. But that doesn’t make me Jesus.
Would you like to justify that?
It appears to me that I am doing the exact opposite. I am describing a definition and saying I don’t think it’s crazy on a par with believing oneself to be the son of God. I do, as I mentioned, think it’s a reasonable definition, but I also said, in so many words, that I’m not at present trying to argue that anyone else should adopt it. Only that it’s not completely crazy.
So I guess when you say “you” you either don’t actually mean me, or aren’t troubling to distinguish between me and the people I’m describing. So let’s talk about those people; people who (let’s suppose) really are asking everyone to use their definition which (let’s suppose) doesn’t cut reality at its joints as well as some other definition (what? you haven’t said; but let’s say something to do with chromosomes and anatomy and hormones).
I repeat: Are you seriously saying that that is on a par with thinking you are simultaneously Jesus Christ and John Lennon? Really? Adopting one definition of gender rather than another is as crazy as believing yourself to be two long-dead famous people, one of them actually a demigod?[1]
[1] “Demigod” is of course not an accurate description of what Christians think the founder of their religion to have been, but it’s near enough for our purposes.
Except that what I said isn’t (so far as I am aware) steelmanning; it is what the people in question actually say. Whereas I betcha Mr Jesus Lennon would react pretty angrily to being told all he meant was that he wanted to think of himself, and be thought of by others, as a son of God and famous rock star.
That’s not what I’ve heard. Would you be interested in telling me where your information comes from?
So would you seriously argue that Bruce Jenner is closer to the “female” cluster then the “male” cluster?
I would seriously argue that “closer to” in this context can mean multiple things. For, e.g., medical purposes Jenner is much nearer the male than the female cluster. [EDITED because I’d got things the wrong way around in the previous sentence.] For some others it’s the other way around; e.g., the only pictures I’ve seen I would classify as nearer “typical female” than “typical male”. For some others it’s more complicated. For some others I simply have no idea (I have never met Jenner nor heard her[1] voice).
It seems to me that the great majority of the interactions people have with one another are ones where the impact of gender is (for those of us with the good fortune not to be hypersensitive to such things) rather small, and in those cases a definition that requires me to call a person a man even though the person in question is called Caitlyn, is wearing a dress, and plainly considers herself[1] a woman seems to me to be doing a poor job at cutting reality at its joints, and I will take the alternative even if that needs some adjustment when I am prescribing drugs for them or contemplating having sex with them.
(The real problem, of course, is that reality doesn’t exactly have joints and that so far as it does we’re quibbling over which side of the cut a piece of cartilage belongs on. Er, my apologies to any transgender or intersex folks reading this; I would not compare you to a piece of cartilage in other contexts!)
[1] I have attempted to phrase things so as to avoid question-begging via pronouns etc., but here I couldn’t find any way that wasn’t awfully clumsy. Sorry about that.
Why do you believe this to be so?
Whoops. I don’t; it was a typo, which I shall fix forthwith. [EDITED to add: well, not exactly a typo, but at any rate an error caused by lower brain functions failing to obey higher.]
(In principle you could have guessed this not only because it’s fairly obviously wrong but also because it was followed by an “it’s the other way around” that actually went the same way around.)