This article did a great job de-cluttering the semantic debate from what I’ll call the “fiat debate”. In other words, many people will argue with each other about how certain thing should be categorized, and in the same conversation argue for the validity of the fiat standard defining those categories, without expressing or even realizing that they’re bouncing back and forth between those two distinct debates while doing so, leading to quite a useless discussion. I completely agree that “man” and “woman” are merely categories and there’s no a priori need for Y-chromosome to be the fiat standard for categorization.
However, despite there being no a priori reason, I’d still content that on the whole, there are reasons that something close to Y-chromosome is a better standard than self-identification. Now, with respect to people who present as male or female in public, certainly the humane thing to do is to refer to them as the way they present themselves. But with respect to fields where the biology of the person actually matters—specifically medicine and sports—surly we have to maintain a more biologically rooted standard like Y-chromosome (or something a little more nuanced like biological sex; to be honest I don’t know if androgen insensitive XYs have an athletic advantage over XXs). To do otherwise would, in the former case, cause doctors to make uninformed decisions with regards to their patients, and in the latter case ruin the competitive integrity of women’s sports (and in the case of fighting sports, dramatically increase the danger for athletes involved).
I’d love to know how far the redefinition of categories goes if we’re going to use “self-identification” as fiat instead. I think the two most practical questions with respect to the fiat standard are − 1. Do doctors have a right to know their patents biological sex, and 2. Do female sports leagues have a right to exclude biological males.
On a more macro note, I worry that too much acceptance (and in that vein, encouragement) of gender dysphoria will cause more pain than necessary. I’ll explain with the hair dryer example.
To solve her anxiety, bringing the hair dryer with her is a good solution. It has a pretty low, although nonzero, cost. It would be great if she could be cured with no cost, but being cured with a small cost is certainly better than being sick. However, we would rather she not need to bring her hand dryer with her, as that would make her life easier. It’s an adequate solution, but we certainly don’t want more people using this sub-optimal solution than necessary. We must carefully avoid convincing or even implying to other people who were anxious about their own hair dryers once or twice that said anxiety is a totally normal and acceptable thing, and that they should probably just start bringing their own hair dryers everywhere they go (and this is doubly true if the person in question is a child).
I think the parallel to transgenderism is obvious. We have two goals − 1. For the people born into the hell of gender dysphoria, we want to make their lives as good as possible. 2. We don’t want any more people forced to deal with the hell of gender dysphoria than absolutely necessary. I worry that, with the current public discourse around transgenderism, we are failing at goal number 2 (although also at 1 for the most part).
This article is great and explains clearly the flaws in a lot of bad arguments “against transgenderism” (for lack of a better term). It also does a great job distinguishing the two distinct discussions—one concerning which category a person should be assigned to and the other concerning the standard for the categories themselves. And maybe that’s as far as the author wanted to go.
However, there appears to be an implicit argument that if you accept the primary thesis of the article, you also accept that “self-identification” is a superior fiat standard for “man” and “woman” than biological sex. These are two separate issues, and I don’t believe that the claim that self-identification is the superior fiat was defended. At the moment, I agree with the article’s thesis about the nature of categorization while also maintaining that biological sex is a more appropriate fiat standard in most instances.
In fact, I think that if the transgender movement was only arguing to re-categorize men and women in the instances where the self-identification standard is appropriate (aka not sports, not medicine, not bathrooms unless you present as your self-identification), I don’t think there would even be much of an argument. It is precisely the overreach into areas where biological sex is the superior fiat that causes the emotionally charged and largely irrational debate.
This article did a great job de-cluttering the semantic debate from what I’ll call the “fiat debate”. In other words, many people will argue with each other about how certain thing should be categorized, and in the same conversation argue for the validity of the fiat standard defining those categories, without expressing or even realizing that they’re bouncing back and forth between those two distinct debates while doing so, leading to quite a useless discussion. I completely agree that “man” and “woman” are merely categories and there’s no a priori need for Y-chromosome to be the fiat standard for categorization.
However, despite there being no a priori reason, I’d still content that on the whole, there are reasons that something close to Y-chromosome is a better standard than self-identification. Now, with respect to people who present as male or female in public, certainly the humane thing to do is to refer to them as the way they present themselves. But with respect to fields where the biology of the person actually matters—specifically medicine and sports—surly we have to maintain a more biologically rooted standard like Y-chromosome (or something a little more nuanced like biological sex; to be honest I don’t know if androgen insensitive XYs have an athletic advantage over XXs). To do otherwise would, in the former case, cause doctors to make uninformed decisions with regards to their patients, and in the latter case ruin the competitive integrity of women’s sports (and in the case of fighting sports, dramatically increase the danger for athletes involved).
I’d love to know how far the redefinition of categories goes if we’re going to use “self-identification” as fiat instead. I think the two most practical questions with respect to the fiat standard are − 1. Do doctors have a right to know their patents biological sex, and 2. Do female sports leagues have a right to exclude biological males.
On a more macro note, I worry that too much acceptance (and in that vein, encouragement) of gender dysphoria will cause more pain than necessary. I’ll explain with the hair dryer example.
To solve her anxiety, bringing the hair dryer with her is a good solution. It has a pretty low, although nonzero, cost. It would be great if she could be cured with no cost, but being cured with a small cost is certainly better than being sick. However, we would rather she not need to bring her hand dryer with her, as that would make her life easier. It’s an adequate solution, but we certainly don’t want more people using this sub-optimal solution than necessary. We must carefully avoid convincing or even implying to other people who were anxious about their own hair dryers once or twice that said anxiety is a totally normal and acceptable thing, and that they should probably just start bringing their own hair dryers everywhere they go (and this is doubly true if the person in question is a child).
I think the parallel to transgenderism is obvious. We have two goals − 1. For the people born into the hell of gender dysphoria, we want to make their lives as good as possible. 2. We don’t want any more people forced to deal with the hell of gender dysphoria than absolutely necessary. I worry that, with the current public discourse around transgenderism, we are failing at goal number 2 (although also at 1 for the most part).
This article is great and explains clearly the flaws in a lot of bad arguments “against transgenderism” (for lack of a better term). It also does a great job distinguishing the two distinct discussions—one concerning which category a person should be assigned to and the other concerning the standard for the categories themselves. And maybe that’s as far as the author wanted to go.
However, there appears to be an implicit argument that if you accept the primary thesis of the article, you also accept that “self-identification” is a superior fiat standard for “man” and “woman” than biological sex. These are two separate issues, and I don’t believe that the claim that self-identification is the superior fiat was defended. At the moment, I agree with the article’s thesis about the nature of categorization while also maintaining that biological sex is a more appropriate fiat standard in most instances.
In fact, I think that if the transgender movement was only arguing to re-categorize men and women in the instances where the self-identification standard is appropriate (aka not sports, not medicine, not bathrooms unless you present as your self-identification), I don’t think there would even be much of an argument. It is precisely the overreach into areas where biological sex is the superior fiat that causes the emotionally charged and largely irrational debate.