I think I finally understand the source of the confusion. Correct me if I’m wrong but it appears to me that you use “sex” and “gender” interchangeably, where a change in the latter is (or at least should be treated as) functionally a change in the former.
I definitely use sex as “a very strong feature of navigating the world” because I can readily point to endless circumstances where knowing someone’s sex (and the likely associated secondary characteristics) provides useful information (height, violence propensity, affinity towards trains, whatever). I recognize that someone’s sex is a dense piece of information to have because it has reliable predictive qualities.
There’s plenty of other traits with similarly reliable predictive qualities and maybe it’s helpful to set aside sex/gender for a bit. If I knew nothing about a person except that they’re a Harvard graduate, it’s reasonable for me to guess that they’re more likely to be intelligent, ambitious, privileged, conceited, etc. Obviously not every Harvard grad fits those traits, and if somehow there’s a grad whom I assume is ambitious and conceited but who idles his days as a homeless beach bum, well the error is on me.
But suppose the only thing I knew about a person is they “identify” as a Harvard graduate. I would like to think that everyone’s first question would be “what does that mean??” and suppose this individual responds with “although I technically never went to Harvard, I am nevertheless intelligent, ambitious, privileged, conceited, etc. and it’s just easier/faster/simpler for me to implant that impression through a single informational payload rather than piece by piece.”
I may not endorse this tactic, but I get it! Of course, the natural follow-up question would be “but how do we know that you’re actually any of those traits you mentioned?” and also “but how do you ensure that you implant the intended impression?” These are the exact same questions I would ask of a trans individual.
There seems to be an attempt to reverse the inference flow. It brings to mind a post by Parrhesia:
To illustrate this sort of semantic ethical reasoning, imagine an ethical vegan who refuses to buy her child a stuffed animal. She argues that: a stuffed animal is an animal; it is wrong to purchase animals; therefore, it is wrong to buy a stuffed animal. If you think in words, then it makes sense. But if you start thinking about reality, you’ll notice an issue. Ethical vegans are usually vegan because they don’t want to cause animal suffering, and a stuffed animal—if you wish to call it an animal or not—does not experience suffering. Whether a stuffed animal is an animal is tangential to the ethicality of purchasing it.
We can apply this framework to any of your examples, and that’s what I was getting at in my post when I’d ask “Why does it matter?” So for example one of the concerns someone might have with undressing in public is avoiding the discomfort that might come with attracting sexualized attention from strangers. A reliable assumption is that the vast majority of people only feel sexual attraction towards the opposite sex, which is why same-sex changing rooms are such a widespread solution to this concern (obviously this is not perfectly reliable, and it also relies on the assumption that same-sex attraction did not exist).
There’s a reason I linked to the Disguised Queries post on bleggs and rubes. The fallacy here would be assuming that the “good-enough” sorting mechanism is the end goal itself, rather than merely a useful tool to get us to our real destination. Unless you keep in mind the root purpose of the sorting mechanism, you risk coming to the erroneous conclusion that vegans think stuffed animals are immoral.
Hmm, no, I don’t believe I use sex and gender interchangeably. Let’s taboo those two terms.
I think that most people don’t care about a person’s chromosomes. When I inspect the way I use the words “sex” and “gender”, I don’t feel like either of them is a disguised query for that person’s chromosomes.
I think that many people care about hormone balances. Testosterone and Estrogen change the way your body behaves, and the type of hormone a person’s body naturally produces and whether they’re suppressing that and/or augmenting with a different hormone is definitely relevant for sports and medicine.
I think that many people care about appearance. Most people’s sexual attraction is keyed to whether a person looks a certain way. Examples include: Straight men being attracted to gay men in feminine clothing, masc lesbians and gay twinks accidentally hitting on each other or even making out without realizing they’re not “technically” attracted to their gender, straight women being attracted to butch lesbians.
I think that many people care about “intent-to-fit-into-and-interact-with-the-world-as-a-specific-social-role”, which is pretty hard for me to point at without the word gender. But our society does have two primary social roles, and committing to living in one social role is important to people. I think lots of people track who is in which social role and interact with those people in different ways.
It sounds like our disagreement is that you doubt that anyone cares about the “intent to fit into and interact with the world as a specific role”, whereas in my experience lots of people care a lot about this.
I’m not really sure the Harvard thing is a good analogy? Consider the following phrases:
I identify as a woman
I identify as a person with XX chromosomes
I identify as a Harvard Graduate
I identify as a Bostonian
I identify as an academic
I identify as a Christian
I identify as a lesbian
Which of those identify phrases mean things? It’s the ones which are about primarily social roles and not about physical fact. I think all of these are meaningful except the second and third.
Now, some of these could be lies, (I could say I’m an academic but not actually care about academics!) but they’re not nonsensical.
Now, obviously, you’ll tell me that the social role is the good-enough sorting mechanism and so we should discard it for better sorting mechanisms involving physical characteristics. That’s pretty close to gender abolitionism, to be honest, and I don’t really understand where you get off the following train:
Let me analyze an example you gave while my terms are tabooed: changing rooms. Our goal is to “avoid the discomfort that might come with attracting sexualized attention from strangers”. Obviously, if we look at all four categories I proposed above, (XX/XY, testosterone/estrogen, masculine appearance/feminine appearance, male-social-role/female-social-role), all four of them have approximately the same distribution of attraction to the opposite category. However, only one of them is directly visible to strangers in the dressing room—masculine appearance/feminine appearance. (We could introduce a new category, penis vs. vagina, but then you’ll have very masculine vagina havers in the vagina room and very feminine penis havers in the penis room.)
I would guess that you don’t agree that segregating changing rooms by masculine appearance/feminine appearance is correct? If I’m right about that, what part of the above analysis do you object to?
I don’t understand your objection to the Harvard analogy exactly, especially since you included it in your list. I also don’t understand how exactly you’re distinguishing “social role” from “physical fact” (which one is ‘lesbian’?) or why identifying as a Bostonian is meaningful but Harvard grad is not?
Given that lack of clarity, I worry we have different understanding of the phrase “social role”. My definition would be something along the lines of “the set of behaviors, expectations, and responsibilities associated with a particular position or status within a group or society”. Assuming you agree with that definition, I absolutely understand why someone would care about wanting to fit into and interact with the world as a specific role.
But desire for a particular social role is not a sufficient condition for attaining it. Babies are a social role. No one complains when they sleep all day instead of going to work, and no one is surprised when other people clean them up when they shit their pants. Babies are treated this way because they’re vulnerable and they lack this capacity to take care of themselves because of they haven’t sufficiently developed at their age. And while age is a really good proxy for self-sufficiency (especially early on) it’s obviously not the only one. See for example how we treat the elderly and the severely disabled. The simplistic analysis here would be to deny a vulnerable person the pampered treatment just because they’re too old to be a baby.
Conversely, if I had the intent to be treated the same way as a baby — fed Gerber and pampered by a dedicated two-person team while I sleep all day — it would be reasonable to ask why I am warranted that role. If I’m able-bodied and self-sufficient, it’s reasonable for me to be denied that social role. You can call this a sort of “price of admission” to the social role if you’d like.
I would guess that you don’t agree that segregating changing rooms by masculine appearance/feminine appearance is correct?
I’m not sure what made you think that? I don’t have an opinion on what the “correct” segregation method for dressing rooms should be; it would all depend on the goal you’re trying to accomplish. I brought up “minimizing sexualized attention from strangers” as just one of many possible objectives.
I think I finally understand the source of the confusion. Correct me if I’m wrong but it appears to me that you use “sex” and “gender” interchangeably, where a change in the latter is (or at least should be treated as) functionally a change in the former.
I definitely use sex as “a very strong feature of navigating the world” because I can readily point to endless circumstances where knowing someone’s sex (and the likely associated secondary characteristics) provides useful information (height, violence propensity, affinity towards trains, whatever). I recognize that someone’s sex is a dense piece of information to have because it has reliable predictive qualities.
There’s plenty of other traits with similarly reliable predictive qualities and maybe it’s helpful to set aside sex/gender for a bit. If I knew nothing about a person except that they’re a Harvard graduate, it’s reasonable for me to guess that they’re more likely to be intelligent, ambitious, privileged, conceited, etc. Obviously not every Harvard grad fits those traits, and if somehow there’s a grad whom I assume is ambitious and conceited but who idles his days as a homeless beach bum, well the error is on me.
But suppose the only thing I knew about a person is they “identify” as a Harvard graduate. I would like to think that everyone’s first question would be “what does that mean??” and suppose this individual responds with “although I technically never went to Harvard, I am nevertheless intelligent, ambitious, privileged, conceited, etc. and it’s just easier/faster/simpler for me to implant that impression through a single informational payload rather than piece by piece.”
I may not endorse this tactic, but I get it! Of course, the natural follow-up question would be “but how do we know that you’re actually any of those traits you mentioned?” and also “but how do you ensure that you implant the intended impression?” These are the exact same questions I would ask of a trans individual.
There seems to be an attempt to reverse the inference flow. It brings to mind a post by Parrhesia:
We can apply this framework to any of your examples, and that’s what I was getting at in my post when I’d ask “Why does it matter?” So for example one of the concerns someone might have with undressing in public is avoiding the discomfort that might come with attracting sexualized attention from strangers. A reliable assumption is that the vast majority of people only feel sexual attraction towards the opposite sex, which is why same-sex changing rooms are such a widespread solution to this concern (obviously this is not perfectly reliable, and it also relies on the assumption that same-sex attraction did not exist).
There’s a reason I linked to the Disguised Queries post on bleggs and rubes. The fallacy here would be assuming that the “good-enough” sorting mechanism is the end goal itself, rather than merely a useful tool to get us to our real destination. Unless you keep in mind the root purpose of the sorting mechanism, you risk coming to the erroneous conclusion that vegans think stuffed animals are immoral.
Hmm, no, I don’t believe I use sex and gender interchangeably. Let’s taboo those two terms.
I think that most people don’t care about a person’s chromosomes. When I inspect the way I use the words “sex” and “gender”, I don’t feel like either of them is a disguised query for that person’s chromosomes.
I think that many people care about hormone balances. Testosterone and Estrogen change the way your body behaves, and the type of hormone a person’s body naturally produces and whether they’re suppressing that and/or augmenting with a different hormone is definitely relevant for sports and medicine.
I think that many people care about appearance. Most people’s sexual attraction is keyed to whether a person looks a certain way. Examples include: Straight men being attracted to gay men in feminine clothing, masc lesbians and gay twinks accidentally hitting on each other or even making out without realizing they’re not “technically” attracted to their gender, straight women being attracted to butch lesbians.
I think that many people care about “intent-to-fit-into-and-interact-with-the-world-as-a-specific-social-role”, which is pretty hard for me to point at without the word gender. But our society does have two primary social roles, and committing to living in one social role is important to people. I think lots of people track who is in which social role and interact with those people in different ways.
It sounds like our disagreement is that you doubt that anyone cares about the “intent to fit into and interact with the world as a specific role”, whereas in my experience lots of people care a lot about this.
I’m not really sure the Harvard thing is a good analogy? Consider the following phrases:
I identify as a woman
I identify as a person with XX chromosomes
I identify as a Harvard Graduate
I identify as a Bostonian
I identify as an academic
I identify as a Christian
I identify as a lesbian Which of those identify phrases mean things? It’s the ones which are about primarily social roles and not about physical fact. I think all of these are meaningful except the second and third.
Now, some of these could be lies, (I could say I’m an academic but not actually care about academics!) but they’re not nonsensical.
Now, obviously, you’ll tell me that the social role is the good-enough sorting mechanism and so we should discard it for better sorting mechanisms involving physical characteristics. That’s pretty close to gender abolitionism, to be honest, and I don’t really understand where you get off the following train:
Let me analyze an example you gave while my terms are tabooed: changing rooms. Our goal is to “avoid the discomfort that might come with attracting sexualized attention from strangers”. Obviously, if we look at all four categories I proposed above, (XX/XY, testosterone/estrogen, masculine appearance/feminine appearance, male-social-role/female-social-role), all four of them have approximately the same distribution of attraction to the opposite category. However, only one of them is directly visible to strangers in the dressing room—masculine appearance/feminine appearance. (We could introduce a new category, penis vs. vagina, but then you’ll have very masculine vagina havers in the vagina room and very feminine penis havers in the penis room.)
I would guess that you don’t agree that segregating changing rooms by masculine appearance/feminine appearance is correct? If I’m right about that, what part of the above analysis do you object to?
I don’t understand your objection to the Harvard analogy exactly, especially since you included it in your list. I also don’t understand how exactly you’re distinguishing “social role” from “physical fact” (which one is ‘lesbian’?) or why identifying as a Bostonian is meaningful but Harvard grad is not?
Given that lack of clarity, I worry we have different understanding of the phrase “social role”. My definition would be something along the lines of “the set of behaviors, expectations, and responsibilities associated with a particular position or status within a group or society”. Assuming you agree with that definition, I absolutely understand why someone would care about wanting to fit into and interact with the world as a specific role.
But desire for a particular social role is not a sufficient condition for attaining it. Babies are a social role. No one complains when they sleep all day instead of going to work, and no one is surprised when other people clean them up when they shit their pants. Babies are treated this way because they’re vulnerable and they lack this capacity to take care of themselves because of they haven’t sufficiently developed at their age. And while age is a really good proxy for self-sufficiency (especially early on) it’s obviously not the only one. See for example how we treat the elderly and the severely disabled. The simplistic analysis here would be to deny a vulnerable person the pampered treatment just because they’re too old to be a baby.
Conversely, if I had the intent to be treated the same way as a baby — fed Gerber and pampered by a dedicated two-person team while I sleep all day — it would be reasonable to ask why I am warranted that role. If I’m able-bodied and self-sufficient, it’s reasonable for me to be denied that social role. You can call this a sort of “price of admission” to the social role if you’d like.
I’m not sure what made you think that? I don’t have an opinion on what the “correct” segregation method for dressing rooms should be; it would all depend on the goal you’re trying to accomplish. I brought up “minimizing sexualized attention from strangers” as just one of many possible objectives.