What does it mean to be female? It has to be something such that babies, animals and people in tribal cultures can be classified as female or not. Lets call this property, that baby girls, hens and women in hunter-gatherer tribes share, and baby boys etc. do not, property P. People who identify as female are presumably claiming they have property P, and presumably think this is a substantive claim.
Now, could P be something such that merely believing you had property P, made you have property P? Certainly there are some properties like this:
X has P if and only if ( X has two x chromosomes OR X believes ( X has property P ) )
but I think this is clearly unsatisfactory. For example, it would mean that an ordinary young boy who, upon being taught about gender for the first time, was momentarily mistaken and thought he was female, would instantly become female. And it would mean that transwomen were asserting a disjunction of a falsehood and a weird recursive clause.
There are social-role based alternatives, along the lines of
X has P if and only if ( X wishes to be treated in the typical manner of people with property P )
but this doesn’t work for Tomboys, who wish to be treated broadly like boys but are nonetheless definitely girls. Nor does it work for extreme feminists, who do not wish women (including themselves) to be treated in the typical way women are treated.
Now, whether believing something is sufficient to make it true is of course a separate issue from what is politically prudent of you to say. My guess is that your students would ask you this question have a few motivations:
If you say that the map is not the territory, they can safely reject you as an outdated and uncaring reactionary, and will reject what you say on other subjects.
If you say that believing things makes them true, they can say “even our ultra-conservative republican lecturer agrees”.
My advice to you is to say ‘mu’. Ask your students what they mean by female, or why they are asking. Then you can respond in the correct manner according to their definition, pointing out that if they don’t like the answer, maybe they didn’t really mean that definition.
It has to be something such that babies, animals and people in tribal cultures can be classified as female or not.
Why? We use the word “female” when referring to babies and animals, but that doesn’t mean we’re necessarily talking about the same thing as when we refer to adult humans; and if we are, it doesn’t mean that we’re talking about something they actually have. (I assume that it doesn’t make sense to talk about whether a baby is straight or gay, for example.)
but that doesn’t mean we’re necessarily talking about the same thing as when we refer to adult humans
Why not?
I assume that it doesn’t make sense to talk about whether a baby is straight or gay, for example.
Well, according to the (admittedly rather dubious) party line being gay is an intrinsic property and not a choice and most definitely not subject to environmental influence by pro-gay memes.
Heck, the official (and even more dubious) party line on trans-people is that they have always been their gender trapped in the wrong bodies.
Because the map is not the territory? You can argue that they are the same thing, but the fact that they use the same word isn’t sufficient.
Well, according to the (admittedly rather dubious) party line being gay is an intrinsic property and not a choice and most definitely not subject to environmental influence by pro-gay memes.
That doesn’t mean it’s a property that babies have. They might have the property “will be gay when they hit puberty”, but that’s a different property. A six-month old baby might have a gene that will give her a speech defect, but for now she speaks just as well as every other baby her age.
Heck, the official (and even more dubious) party line on trans-people is that they have always been their gender trapped in the wrong bodies.
I don’t think this is true, but I’m not an expert.
Heck, the official (and even more dubious) party line on trans-people is that they have always been their gender trapped in the wrong bodies.
I don’t think this is true, but I’m not an expert.
It almost certainly isn’t. Of course believing that makes you an “evil transphobe” according to the official party line, especially if you consider the implication for gender reassignment surgery of children.
The ‘line’ is that it is very complicated. There are people with strong body dysphorias who have always had them, there are people who care much more about social presentation than anatomy, and everybody in between or in combination. The social presentation can be separate from body image considerations, and for those people in particular ‘wrong body’ would be inaccurate. There are people whose experienced-from-within gender is different at different times or who do not strongly identify with masculine or feminine, or with bits of both. Knowing multiple people in various positions on these spectra, trying to collapse the experience of everyone with non-default gender situations to one party line is a recipe for confusion, unproductive arguments, and missing the point for some of them.
So was Jenner always a woman trapped in a man’s body? The answer according to his (her) transition miniseries is yes (complete with tales of sneaking into his mother’s closet to wear her clothes).
Sounds like that is the case for her, then. Can’t say I’ve been keeping up with that particular story. One of my friends has had a similarly-describable situation from a very early age as well.
Though again, using that phrase is lumping everything into one essentialist label that says everything rather than decomposing it into the potentially more useful descriptive subcategories ‘how one wants to be considered socially’, ‘the body one wishes one had’ / ‘the body one is willing to have given current medical technology and the costs and tradeoffs thereof’, ‘how one wishes to behave’, and ‘how one identifies internally’. Often these go together making that phrase more or less applicable, but sometimes they don’t, and to get at the truth can then require finer detail depending on what you want to know and who you are describing.
Two other friends of mine have had more complicated situations in their lives—one whom goes to some effort to decrease their external femininity in favor of a more androgynous presentation to match the way they feel internally and their dislike of a feminine appearance [while not going through the efforts of invasive medical transition because the effort and tradeoffs are not worth it to them, but would still choose a very different physical appearance if the tradeoffs were smaller and easier], and one whom is fine with a male body and being called ‘he’ but whom behaves in a very feminine manner because that is just the way he is and he feels being physically male doesn’t dictate his behavior, and feels wrong behaving in a masculine manner.
Sounds like that is the case for her, then. Can’t say I’ve been keeping up with that particular story.
Except, looking at his previous life, which included fathering several children, winning men’s Olympic medals, and being a media hound with corporate sponsorship, suggests that this is not in fact the case, and suggests other motivations for him to do this. Namely, the need to pull a stunt to get back in the spotlight.
That’s an argument for bringing our map closer to the territory, i.e., applying the word “gender” in humans to the same concept we use for animals. Not for completely messing up our map.
That “i.e.” is doing an awful lot of work. I don’t agree that the map is messed up, and moving a label doesn’t necessarily bring it closer to the territory.
We use the word “female” when referring to babies and animals, but that doesn’t mean we’re necessarily talking about the same thing as when we refer to adult humans
applying the word “gender” in humans to the same concept we use for animals
I’m not aware of the word “gender” being commonly applied to non-human animals for any concept, other than grammatical gender. You might be thinking of the concept usually referred to as “sex”.
If you want to follow that distinction, then I agree that “gender” doesn’t point to anything real aside from what is commonly pointed to by the word “sex”. Heck when “gender” first became used in its non-grammatical meaning, it was a euphemism for “sex” since the latter had acquired a meaning (as [Edit: an act]) that made it not necessarily SFW.
A pedantic correction: “gender” appears to have had that non-grammatical meaning since the 15th century (and has also had an NSFW meaning as a verb since even earlier) but (if the OED is to be trusted, which usually it is) it’s true that “gender” became widely used to mean males/females collectively in the 20th century because “sex” was too distracting. (It wasn’t “sex” as a verb, though, but “sex” as a noun meaning “copulation”.)
What does it mean to be female? It has to be something such that babies, animals and people in tribal cultures can be classified as female or not. Lets call this property, that baby girls, hens and women in hunter-gatherer tribes share, and baby boys etc. do not, property P. People who identify as female are presumably claiming they have property P, and presumably think this is a substantive claim.
Now, could P be something such that merely believing you had property P, made you have property P? Certainly there are some properties like this:
X has P if and only if ( X has two x chromosomes OR X believes ( X has property P ) )
but I think this is clearly unsatisfactory. For example, it would mean that an ordinary young boy who, upon being taught about gender for the first time, was momentarily mistaken and thought he was female, would instantly become female. And it would mean that transwomen were asserting a disjunction of a falsehood and a weird recursive clause.
There are social-role based alternatives, along the lines of
X has P if and only if ( X wishes to be treated in the typical manner of people with property P )
but this doesn’t work for Tomboys, who wish to be treated broadly like boys but are nonetheless definitely girls. Nor does it work for extreme feminists, who do not wish women (including themselves) to be treated in the typical way women are treated.
Now, whether believing something is sufficient to make it true is of course a separate issue from what is politically prudent of you to say. My guess is that your students would ask you this question have a few motivations:
If you say that the map is not the territory, they can safely reject you as an outdated and uncaring reactionary, and will reject what you say on other subjects.
If you say that believing things makes them true, they can say “even our ultra-conservative republican lecturer agrees”.
My advice to you is to say ‘mu’. Ask your students what they mean by female, or why they are asking. Then you can respond in the correct manner according to their definition, pointing out that if they don’t like the answer, maybe they didn’t really mean that definition.
Why? We use the word “female” when referring to babies and animals, but that doesn’t mean we’re necessarily talking about the same thing as when we refer to adult humans; and if we are, it doesn’t mean that we’re talking about something they actually have. (I assume that it doesn’t make sense to talk about whether a baby is straight or gay, for example.)
Why not?
Well, according to the (admittedly rather dubious) party line being gay is an intrinsic property and not a choice and most definitely not subject to environmental influence by pro-gay memes.
Heck, the official (and even more dubious) party line on trans-people is that they have always been their gender trapped in the wrong bodies.
Because the map is not the territory? You can argue that they are the same thing, but the fact that they use the same word isn’t sufficient.
That doesn’t mean it’s a property that babies have. They might have the property “will be gay when they hit puberty”, but that’s a different property. A six-month old baby might have a gene that will give her a speech defect, but for now she speaks just as well as every other baby her age.
I don’t think this is true, but I’m not an expert.
It almost certainly isn’t. Of course believing that makes you an “evil transphobe” according to the official party line, especially if you consider the implication for gender reassignment surgery of children.
I mean that I don’t think that’s the party line, but I’m not an expert on what the party line is.
The ‘line’ is that it is very complicated. There are people with strong body dysphorias who have always had them, there are people who care much more about social presentation than anatomy, and everybody in between or in combination. The social presentation can be separate from body image considerations, and for those people in particular ‘wrong body’ would be inaccurate. There are people whose experienced-from-within gender is different at different times or who do not strongly identify with masculine or feminine, or with bits of both. Knowing multiple people in various positions on these spectra, trying to collapse the experience of everyone with non-default gender situations to one party line is a recipe for confusion, unproductive arguments, and missing the point for some of them.
So was Jenner always a woman trapped in a man’s body? The answer according to his (her) transition miniseries is yes (complete with tales of sneaking into his mother’s closet to wear her clothes).
Sounds like that is the case for her, then. Can’t say I’ve been keeping up with that particular story. One of my friends has had a similarly-describable situation from a very early age as well.
Though again, using that phrase is lumping everything into one essentialist label that says everything rather than decomposing it into the potentially more useful descriptive subcategories ‘how one wants to be considered socially’, ‘the body one wishes one had’ / ‘the body one is willing to have given current medical technology and the costs and tradeoffs thereof’, ‘how one wishes to behave’, and ‘how one identifies internally’. Often these go together making that phrase more or less applicable, but sometimes they don’t, and to get at the truth can then require finer detail depending on what you want to know and who you are describing.
Two other friends of mine have had more complicated situations in their lives—one whom goes to some effort to decrease their external femininity in favor of a more androgynous presentation to match the way they feel internally and their dislike of a feminine appearance [while not going through the efforts of invasive medical transition because the effort and tradeoffs are not worth it to them, but would still choose a very different physical appearance if the tradeoffs were smaller and easier], and one whom is fine with a male body and being called ‘he’ but whom behaves in a very feminine manner because that is just the way he is and he feels being physically male doesn’t dictate his behavior, and feels wrong behaving in a masculine manner.
Except, looking at his previous life, which included fathering several children, winning men’s Olympic medals, and being a media hound with corporate sponsorship, suggests that this is not in fact the case, and suggests other motivations for him to do this. Namely, the need to pull a stunt to get back in the spotlight.
That’s an argument for bringing our map closer to the territory, i.e., applying the word “gender” in humans to the same concept we use for animals. Not for completely messing up our map.
That “i.e.” is doing an awful lot of work. I don’t agree that the map is messed up, and moving a label doesn’t necessarily bring it closer to the territory.
Above you said:
So what did you mean by that?
Tapping out.
I’m not aware of the word “gender” being commonly applied to non-human animals for any concept, other than grammatical gender. You might be thinking of the concept usually referred to as “sex”.
If you want to follow that distinction, then I agree that “gender” doesn’t point to anything real aside from what is commonly pointed to by the word “sex”. Heck when “gender” first became used in its non-grammatical meaning, it was a euphemism for “sex” since the latter had acquired a meaning (as [Edit: an act]) that made it not necessarily SFW.
A pedantic correction: “gender” appears to have had that non-grammatical meaning since the 15th century (and has also had an NSFW meaning as a verb since even earlier) but (if the OED is to be trusted, which usually it is) it’s true that “gender” became widely used to mean males/females collectively in the 20th century because “sex” was too distracting. (It wasn’t “sex” as a verb, though, but “sex” as a noun meaning “copulation”.)