If gender is a social construct, what about age?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Perhaps that is because men haven't been habitually persecuted throughout human history and don't have major political movements and efforts revolving around their access to equal pay and fair healthcare. So therefore they aren't bothered when some people start identifying as male because that person's issues and motivations don't effect or take away from anything involving men's advocacy. Whereas trying to come in and define women in a way that doesn't include our reproductive systems takes away from the ESSENTIAL and important efforts to fight restricted access to reproductive healthcare. No one was really team Rachel Dolezal, primarily because she tried to make black advocacy issues HER issues when they were not.

How does it do this? Could you provide some examples, please?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It is important in the context of sociology/history/biology, basically all of human history.

Unless you are a sociologist, biologist, etc it does not effect you. And I think people working in those fields can work well enough with "most" they do not, as a practical matter, need definitions that drop the modifiers.

Women are in many many ways defined by their sex organs and reproductive systems. It is what makes us vulnerable, it is the defining rights that are constantly in danger of being stripped from us. And yes some of that is societal, but societal pressures that are inextricably woven into our biology.

And transgender women share many of the vulnerabilities of women, and loss of rights.

But they don't get to change the definition of what a woman is or what a man is

Not sure what you mean by that. There is no "definition of what a woman or what a man is" that exists in the ether by itself. There are dictionaries. There is usage. Most dictionaries try to reflect usage, though a few do not. More and more people use the words man and woman that reflects how the people they are talking about define themselves. So language is changing. It seems to make you angry that language is changing, though you can still make yourself understood.

to address the plight of a small subset of the population with a medical condition.

I am not sure if its considered exactly a "medical condition".

If there was no real difference between men and women then why on earth do transgendered people feel so intensely focused on identifying as one or the other.
The very definition of the transgendered condition speaks to the real differences between the sexes. If it was all a bucket of societal changes, then no one would feel so compelled to change their bodies and appearances so drastically.

Clearly transgender people do not agree with the notion the old radical feminist idea that there is nothing else to sex and gender than our physical differences, which is why many radical feminists are uncomfortable with transgender. What is being argued is that gender as an identity is different from physical sex.

Anyway, it feels like you could do a lot more reading on this matter, rather than angry posting. Especially telling people they are stupid for pointing out to you how widespread hysterectomies are.

Transgender women do not suffer when women are stripped of lack of access to birth control and abortions. I'm not angry, I'm not angrily posting. I'm discussing my views on an anonymous message board. I know you want to paint everyone that doesn't think like you as an angry transgender hater but that simply isn't the case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Nobody said that everybody is like her. But there she is, just the same. So, is she a man or a woman?

I have no problem with her calling herself a woman, for all intents and purposes she is a woman. Except for the scientific labeling of who she is, which is important to separate as she was born with a condition that resulted in (terrible since it was not consented to) treatment. I do not know enough about androgen insensitivity to know what all the ramifications are but I do know that an anomalous genetic condition doesn't necessitate changing the way we speak about the human species. It requires specificity in talking about an individual that falls outside the normal parameters of the human condition.

I don't think you are a linguist either. You seem to think you can control how others speak, or others can control how you speak.

Did the transgender person you know, or one of their friends, yell at you for your use of language? Is that what this is about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh goodie. The TERFS are here.

I think we need to rethink our terminology. I think we should use the word transex rather than transgender. Gender is a complete social contract.

However, in spite of many deniers, a lot of emerging and legitimate research is showing that sex is not binary at all. Levels of testosterone, estrogen, and other issues are really Paving the way to a new understanding that there are different kinds of biological sex.

I think that is what people who are transgender feel. Not that they want to wear skirts or pants and makeup, but that the biological aspects of sex are wrong for them.

I'm not a radical feminist. I had to google that acronym. But apparently I see their point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Nobody said that everybody is like her. But there she is, just the same. So, is she a man or a woman?

I have no problem with her calling herself a woman, for all intents and purposes she is a woman. Except for the scientific labeling of who she is, which is important to separate as she was born with a condition that resulted in (terrible since it was not consented to) treatment. I do not know enough about androgen insensitivity to know what all the ramifications are but I do know that an anomalous genetic condition doesn't necessitate changing the way we speak about the human species. It requires specificity in talking about an individual that falls outside the normal parameters of the human condition.

I don't think you are a linguist either. You seem to think you can control how others speak, or others can control how you speak.

Did the transgender person you know, or one of their friends, yell at you for your use of language? Is that what this is about?

Nope, I have never had a negative interaction with a transgendered person. And I argue vociferously with idiots who think that transgendered women allowed in our bathrooms are out to assault our kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In humans, those are anomalies. And just like if you have a heart condition at birth and then go on to fix it you were still born with a heart, if you were born at birth XY or XX you were born male or female regardless of how long it took to confirm based on a birth defect. And if you have an extra chromosome it is the same thing, an anomoly that is not relevant to anyone other than the small subset of people effected by it.

Look up androgen insensitivity syndrome: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome

Is Hanne Gaby Odiele a man or a woman?

You keep just ignoring the use of the word anomaly.

yes, because you keep using to whenever something inconvenient to your argument comes up. All X are Y. This X is not Y. That does not count, because its an anomaly. You have made your argument virtually non-falsiable by calling any evidence against it an anomaly, which therefor does not count.

I have never used the word 'all'. Using the word 'all' would in fact be factually incorrect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Transgender women do not suffer when women are stripped of lack of access to birth control and abortions. I'm not angry, I'm not angrily posting. I'm discussing my views on an anonymous message board. I know you want to paint everyone that doesn't think like you as an angry transgender hater but that simply isn't the case.

Women who are post menopausal do not suffer when women are stripped of access (not of lack of access, I think you ARE angry) to birth control. I could come up with a dozen examples like that.

I do not understand what your problem is. You do not appear to be a scientist, yet are obsessed with how "science" defines sex and gender. It seems like you fear losing something of value to you if other people change their use of language. I am not quite sure what that is.

Calling MtFs "women" will not prevent you from marching to protect Roe V Wade - in fact I suspect you will find most MtFs will happily march at your side.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I have no problem with her calling herself a woman, for all intents and purposes she is a woman. Except for the scientific labeling of who she is, which is important to separate as she was born with a condition that resulted in (terrible since it was not consented to) treatment. I do not know enough about androgen insensitivity to know what all the ramifications are but I do know that an anomalous genetic condition doesn't necessitate changing the way we speak about the human species. It requires specificity in talking about an individual that falls outside the normal parameters of the human condition.

So you would call Hanne Gaby Odiele a woman*? Where the asterisk stands for what? Not a true women, but ok, I won't argue?

This is what happens when you try to fit everybody into two neat boxes. Biology is not that neat. So this system will only work if you hand-wave away everybody who doesn't fit into the two boxes. Everybody is either an XX woman or an XY man, except for people who aren't, but they don't count, because they're anomalies, because everybody is either an XX woman or an XY man.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In humans, those are anomalies. And just like if you have a heart condition at birth and then go on to fix it you were still born with a heart, if you were born at birth XY or XX you were born male or female regardless of how long it took to confirm based on a birth defect. And if you have an extra chromosome it is the same thing, an anomoly that is not relevant to anyone other than the small subset of people effected by it.

Look up androgen insensitivity syndrome: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome

Is Hanne Gaby Odiele a man or a woman?

You keep just ignoring the use of the word anomaly.

yes, because you keep using to whenever something inconvenient to your argument comes up. All X are Y. This X is not Y. That does not count, because its an anomaly. You have made your argument virtually non-falsiable by calling any evidence against it an anomaly, which therefor does not count.

I have never used the word 'all'. Using the word 'all' would in fact be factually incorrect.

You will note in logic we say "all X are Y" or "some X are Y"

We do not say "X are Y" without a modifier, as it is ambguous, in a way that is never scientifically useful. Its an artifact of the English language. Usually of no particular harm in ordinary speech - but here it is hurtful to some, yet you insist on it. You may not mean to be hurtful, but I think you have argued yourself into a trap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Nope, I have never had a negative interaction with a transgendered person. And I argue vociferously with idiots who think that transgendered women allowed in our bathrooms are out to assault our kids.

Then whose use of language do you have a problem with? You get to call MtF's men, and the rest of us can call them women. And french people can call them hommes or femmes, as they please (and they can call an orange feminine, and a supermarket masculine, though we do not).

Language is how it is used. As long as you can communicate what you need to, there is no problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Transgender women do not suffer when women are stripped of lack of access to birth control and abortions. I'm not angry, I'm not angrily posting. I'm discussing my views on an anonymous message board. I know you want to paint everyone that doesn't think like you as an angry transgender hater but that simply isn't the case.

Neither do infertile women, post-menopausal women, and (in most cases) women who don't have potentially-procreative intercourse. For example, lesbians. And yet lesbians have historically been in the forefront of fighting for reproductive health care and reproductive rights.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Transgender women do not suffer when women are stripped of lack of access to birth control and abortions. I'm not angry, I'm not angrily posting. I'm discussing my views on an anonymous message board. I know you want to paint everyone that doesn't think like you as an angry transgender hater but that simply isn't the case.

Women who are post menopausal do not suffer when women are stripped of access (not of lack of access, I think you ARE angry) to birth control. I could come up with a dozen examples like that.

I do not understand what your problem is. You do not appear to be a scientist, yet are obsessed with how "science" defines sex and gender. It seems like you fear losing something of value to you if other people change their use of language. I am not quite sure what that is.

Calling MtFs "women" will not prevent you from marching to protect Roe V Wade - in fact I suspect you will find most MtFs will happily march at your side.

I have referred to the transgender person I know as a she in every post I have made. She was born male and transitioned to female. I'm glad they will march at my side. I hope men march at my side too. But those issues are not their issues. I would never presume to know what transgender people would go through and say that I feel like I could understand their experience. I cannot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Nope, I have never had a negative interaction with a transgendered person. And I argue vociferously with idiots who think that transgendered women allowed in our bathrooms are out to assault our kids.

Then whose use of language do you have a problem with? You get to call MtF's men, and the rest of us can call them women. And french people can call them hommes or femmes, as they please (and they can call an orange feminine, and a supermarket masculine, though we do not).

Language is how it is used. As long as you can communicate what you need to, there is no problem.

I have no problem (as I said earlier) with calling them she or he depending on their preference. I don't agree with the idea that a transgendered woman is a 'woman' in the same way that people who were born women are. Growing up a woman in America defines you in a lot of ways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I have no problem (as I said earlier) with calling them she or he depending on their preference. I don't agree with the idea that a transgendered woman is a 'woman' in the same way that people who were born women are. Growing up a woman in America defines you in a lot of ways.

Of course, these days, there are transgender girls/women in America who do grow up as girls/women in America. How do such people fit into your schematic?

I wonder, also -- which experiences about growing up as a woman in America are shared by all people who grow up as women in America?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I have no problem (as I said earlier) with calling them she or he depending on their preference. I don't agree with the idea that a transgendered woman is a 'woman' in the same way that people who were born women are. Growing up a woman in America defines you in a lot of ways.

Of course, these days, there are transgender girls/women in America who do grow up as girls/women in America. How do such people fit into your schematic?

I wonder, also -- which experiences about growing up as a woman in America are shared by all people who grow up as women in America?

They would be, like the other person you mentioned, likely a woman for all practical purposes. But as they take rather drastic measures to conform their body and appearance to 'female' or 'male' then I think these definitions that you want to throw out the window mean quite a bit to them as well.