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.)
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.)