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Republicans:
Trans-women arent women...
Muscular women arent women...
Tomboys arent women....
@freemo I guess that's the divide between the "liberal" wing of transphobia and the conservative wing. They're down for the first but not two and three.
Im not sure i have any experience with the "liberal wing of transphobia""... Ive seen plenty of vile toxic behavior from liberals, but hating on someone for not looking feminine enough is not something I've personally witnessed from the liberal community in any proportion.
Do you have an example maybe of what you mean?
@freemo What I meant is they don't think trans women are women, but muscular and tomboy cis women are women. It comes down to how one thinks about gender and what one even thinks it is.
Ahh ok. I have not personally met a liberal type who wouldnt admit that a trans-womans **gender** is that of a woman. They might rightfully point out that sex and gender are different, if saying so is relevant to the conversation. But generally recognize them as gendered as women.
That said I dont want to minimize your experiences. If you met many liberals who treat trans-women that way that is very much ashame.
One could argue you can change your sex from whatever it is to intersex, but never to one of the actual sexes. Typically sex is defined as a combination of features include: Genetics, sexual characteristics, hormones, etc. When all your characteristics line up with one sex or the other, thats the sex you are. You can change some but not all of those properties and thus when you do have mixed characteristics and would effectively more like an intersexed person at that point, albeit through artificial means.
That said the important part here is actually about how you treat someone, not what they "are" in a semantic definition. We agree on the most important part is that GENDER and not sex is what dictates our language and how we treat someone. Typically in language we mean gender, as we should, and not sex. Sex really only applies in medical contexts.
@freemo For the liberal or even radical I'm talking about, to them gender is nothing more than societies gendered expectations of men and women, defined cisnormatively (simply treated as a brute fact by them). Will they defend the gender nonconforming cis man and cis woman? Of course. But they will treat the trans person as, at best, a victim of gendered expectations engaging in self-injury. At worst...well I need not spell that out.
Hmm, yes i can see that. There are some liberals who view the differences between sex as a pure construct. I think thats a weak argument, as I think there is some genetic/hormonal influence that defines some of our differences. But I do appreciate teh sentiment of wants to ensure everyone is treated as equal.
@freemo I never claimed that it is a social construct, though there is A SENSE in which it is. I only said sex is changeable...and that hormones largely govern how most of the behavioral and physical difference play out. Change those, you effectively change how the brain and body works. And given that all external reproductive anatomy is basically the same tissue arranged differently...
@FinalOverdrive I wasnt implying you meant that. I was saying that is how you described the anti-trans liberals. So that was my take on that.
@freemo Ah, well I was clarifying my position: I think sex is changeable like a lot of phenotypical traits are with human intervention.
@freemo As for the obvious "gotchas", I simply smirk: the biotechnology and medical fields are some of the most dynamic and ever changing. What is impossible today, may not be impossible tomorrow.
@FinalOverdrive Interesting point. I could see some future point where they can change your DNA, hormones, neural structure, genitals, the whole 9... That does worry me a bit, specifically going so far as to change your mind into one that reflects the other sex, as that is changing who you are fundementally... but that aside, yea, one day maybe.
@freemo We already do that with the mental part: that's controlled by hormones. Change the hormones, you change the brain. It's that easy. While I don't think the change is that dramatic, it does change who you fundamentally are after a number of years.
Well yes and no. There is no doubt hormones will effect the brain moving forward in many ways. But your brain establishes connections when you grow up that you cant change later in life. So hormones I might expect new connections to form in a way that reflects the opposite sex more, but hormones wont rewire your already established patterns, which would have encoded themselves according to the influence of your birth sex.
@freemo No but it will change how you regard your previous experiences, how you interpret them. Which is as dramatic a change as anything.
Yea I can see that it tracks.. Certainly the hormones radically shift your brain closer to the opposite sex over time. Im not sure that is exactly the same as having the hormone since birth, but its a huge step in that direction. Like i said medical science may be able to get you farther one day, or maybe we understand the brain better and my whole understanding is wrong, who the hell knows.
@freemo But! Ultimately these are all scientifically interesting things but irrelevant to the ethical, political, and moral facts of the case.
The fact is it doesn't matter why people are this way. What matters is that they are. It doesn't have to be an inherent trait to be worthy of legal protection as far as I am concerned. A state if it must exist should secure liberty. Surely that means choice as well.
And this is a right that we must be absolutists on, social costs be damned. We tried being reasonable on abortion; Roe v. Wade was literally the compromise position. We saw how that worked out.
Either the right is absolute without qualifications or limitations or it will not be at all.
Thats my point at the begining, everything we discussed is relevant only in a medical context (sex)... in a social context, like someone you meet on the street, their DNA or genitals or homones dont matter. What matters is how you contribute to their happiness, and that of society, rather than suffering. In that regard I'd say the **minimum** a person should do is address a person with respect. To call someone who is clearly trying to present as one sex by terminology for another is little more than an attempt to mock someone behind a veil of "biology".
@freemo I'd even argue the extent that the "assigned/birth sex" differs may not be as dramatic a change as you may think. Consider cases where they just KNOW they are boys or girls contrary to all appearances from a very early age. In a very real sense, they may already be closer than you may think. In cases where there is extreme dysphoria, I think it may well be a case where the brain is one way and the body another. The brain has a built in neural "map" of the body. It's how our physical sense of our body's presence in space works. So if there is a discrepancy between what it sees and what it expects to find...
That is also a very valid point for sure. I think there are a LOT of people who present as one sex but have a hormonal balance closer to the other from such an early age their mind will be oriented more towards that sex.
@freemo It may depend on which hormones the fetus is exposed to at which stage. Even sex differentiation isn't managed by the chromosome as such, but the presence or absence of the SRY gene.
@FinalOverdrive Yes a person can physically present aas a woman with male hormones if they have the wrong hormones or sensitivity to it. For example Androgen Insensativity Syndrome.
@freemo Of course. Then you have the SRY XX male. Perfectly like every other man in every way. Even hormone wise.
They just can't produce sperm. That's it.
@freemo Of course, there was a time when society fretted over the XYY male, remember that?
Turns out that they aren't different from baseline males in any way that matters. They are no more criminal at least.
They might be slightly more impulsive and get really bad acne. I mean really bad, they need antibiotics every time they have an break-out.
But other than that? Not different in any way that medically matters all that much. Certainly not different behaviorally.
They certainly arent criminal, as for differences, whatever may exist they are subtle.
People have a tendency to get held up on some stupid shit sometime. I dunno, frankly I dont get it.
@freemo At any rate, the shape of chromosomes should not be thought of as determinant as much as a weight put on the scale. A very heavy weight to be sure. But things do happen...both with the rest of the body, and the nervous system.
And when you have billions of human beings, the statistically rare becomes quite common in practice.
@freemo Well I would argue that sex can be changed, depending on what we mean: at the moment, genotype can't be changed. But phenotype, what we actually see and what is actually there? That is fundamentally alterable without working at the genetic levels.
Because what is sex but a collection of different traits? Traits which, given the low sexual dimorphism of the species generally, can be altered surprisingly easily. We aren't gorillas. There the males and females are extremely different physically and behaviorally.
We're more like bonobos; if you didn't pay attention to the obvious physical difference you couldn't tell which is which.