/philosophy/ - Philosophy

Go back to Southampton.

>>1116
you're right

it's all posturing

>>1117
The dankness of this memetic reference escapes me.

>>1120
epic

>>1116
You're lumping a whole lot of positions together, there. What you are describing applies to those who value social justice specifically, but can (doesn't have to) expand to other, primarily leftist, domains. Acceptance of transgenders is one of those cases where you are slowly becoming a bigot if you don't follow suit. Much like you, I have a huge problem with this.

The way someone of that camp might respond to you is by stating that premise 1 is incomplete. "Gender" is indeed learned behaviour, but the term for the biological aspect remains. This is the highly disputed sex-gender dichotomy. And with this, they claim, transgenders can be understood.

Problem is that even in this case you are almost forced to accuse transgenders of a fallacy. If they merely acknowledge their sex (the body) and associate with the opposite gender, then all would be fine. But the idea that the association with the other gender is only truly possible when the sex is taken to be of the other sex (not gender) as well, then we get one of two cases;
1; Sex and gender are inherently linked. If this were the case, any transgender person is either completely outside of this spectrum, or a counter-argument in themselves. The prior seems unreasonable, so the latter it is. It follows that sex and gender are not, in fact, linked.
2; Sex and gender are not inherently linked. In that case, the desire for a sex-change is theoretically unrelated to the gender, and derives from either accepting a false connection of gender to a sex or from making that connection oneself. Ironically, this stance requires extremely rigid understandings of gender-roles ('gender' in the more general sense of stereotyping based on sex) that are only enforced by the transgenders. Thus, transgenders would be the ones who enforce the means of their oppression.

>>1117
>>1123
I take it that you disagree with OP. I sincerely hope you can explain where my explications go wrong then. Believe me, I actually want to take transgenders seriously if I could, but I simply do not understand and most certainly do not share their perception of gender.

Their gender is different from their sex which causes discomfort and other issues, that's why they want to change their sex.

I don't really see the contradiction.

>>1166
Point me to the fallacy in >>1160s reasoning, please.

>>1168
They assume the gender-sex link can only be a two-way relationship, disregarding the possibility that gender "wants" to define sex but sex does not define gender.

>>1169
Is sex "wanting" to define gender an option too? Is that what neurologists might say when looking at hormones?
And if sex does not define gender, why should gender define sex? Since it doesn't do so naturally, why assume there's even a link?

>>1166
gender and sex are the exact same thing

First of all you are making the assumption that all
critical theory/cultural marxist/leftist/sjw philosophy share the same view on a widely divided issue

>Premise 1: "gender" is solely learned behavior that has nothing to do with biology

The miscommunication here is based in the fact the difference between gender identity and the social structure of gender has not been distinguished. The left tends to believe that the social ideas of gender are, for the most part, constructed: the idea that women should be the caregivers, that boys are supposed to be aggressive or that it is more acceptable or 'natural' for women to cry than men etc.

The left also does not believe that biology has nothing to do with Gender as a whole.
I happened to pick up a book, Alice H. Eagly's "The Psychology of Gender", which was originally titled "The Psychology of Women" as it used in Women's Studies and Feminism courses, which very openly discussed the biological differences between males and females in regards especially to masculine and feminine brains.
Physiologically we start out as females in the womb regardless of their chromosomes and during a certain timeframe in the womb *most* males trigger the flood of androgens that masculinizes the brain. Only during this time period will the brain be susceptible to being permanently altered by the flood of sex hormones. This is where most believe the biology of gender identity comes into play and also that of homosexuality.

In rats, that certain time period is postnatal and they have done experiments where biologically male rats were prevented from having the massive release of androgens and they went on to display behavior naturally associated with females/feminine brains and vice versa.

>>1116
>Premise 1: "gender" is solely learned behavior that has nothing to do with biology
I would just like to clarify for the uninformed that we ought to keep this domain of inquiry within contemporary SJW discourse.

Contrary to popular belief: Feminism and Marxism haven't always been shit. Simone de Beauvoir - whose The Second Sex was essentially the genesis of all feminist discouse - address Premise 1 with her concept of immanence. Immanence (similar to facticity for Heidegger bros) is what we are thrown into and unable to escape being thrown into, and in the case of gender identity: while we as humans are free (within reason - within our cultural/historical circumstances, according to the Existentialism de Beauvoir wrote), we nonetheless cannot escape (unless Transhumanism becomes a thing) our biological circumstances. Women are the sex that bears children, for one thing, and so women are immanently prone to conform to the feminine gender identity and society tends to structure this into women because of their biological makeup.

Hopefully that clears things up. Anyhow, I agree with OP that the contemporary SJW/leftist/Marxist/etc view on gender has amounted to little more than inane circlejerking dialectical nonsense that branches off from the decline of Continental philosophy's own descent into inane circlejerking dialectical nonsense. C'est la vie.

>>1169
>They assume the gender-sex link can only be a two-way relationship
I assume that because it's treated that way. gender is very clearly linked to sex (and this is where I see the problem), but only to a specific one. Thus the connection between gender and sex when you take yourself to be caught in the wrong body is "severed" and you want to get the connection that was "actually intended". This speaks strongly of a two-way link between them, though I agree that there isn't a link at all, at least no existentially vital one.

>>1177
Gender is mostly defined as the 'cultural association' with the sexes, mostly manifest in a list of attributes, demands and expectations. Sex is just the accidental way your body is like with regard to your sexual organs. So there is a difference, it just seems odd to give either of these significance of the level that it seems to be done.

>>1185
>the biology of gender identity
So gender identity is neurologically predetermined? And there can be a muddle-up of some kind during early development, causing people to either not identify with their gender (which is what I call sex because 'gender' is relative and meaningless) or to identify with the 'other' one? I'm I understanding you correctly?

>>1202
>Marxism
OP also mentioned marxism. I fail to see the connection to this topic.
And gender identity being linked to social practices that revolve around physical differences is true, but the only thing people are then immanently prone to do is undergo those practices that were designed around their physique. In the case of such practices involving more than just physical difference - as is likely to be the case - there might be a tendency to fatalistically accept these categorisations, but there is no actual need to do so, and social depictions can, in fact, be changed, provided there's no link between depiction and what it supposedly depicts.

Thanks for the serious replies,

My view, which comes from neurological research, is that "gender" is the psychological aspect of sexual dimorphism. The scientific base for transgenderism is that it is a missmatch between body and brain, a form of hermafroditism that can also manifest itself in a combination with infertility and other signs of hermafroditism.

SJW's have adopted transgenderism, but reject the scientific base for it because it doesn't fit into their ideology.

Not all people who claim to be transgender are transgender, this is also rejected by SJW's who, while appealing to the empirical base for transgenderism, claim that only a claim of transgenderism makes a person a transgender.

Many self-proclaimed transgenders adapt it as they would adapt a subculture, it is a form of projection for them, a need for identity, attention or belonging. The official recognition of the SJW stance is dangerous because it leads to surgical treatment of what is a projection of other psychological problems.

When children who are more feminine/masculine than usual hear about this, they might start calling themselves transgender because in a child's mind (and of a disturbing number of adults) it makes sense that this would make them transgenders.

I was feminine as a kid, I liked pink, I played with dolls, I was soft spoken. I also had a lot of crazy ideas, I thought I saw ghosts and musical instruments in the sky, I made up stories. If I had heard about the term transgender, I might have called myself that, in the current climate, that would be reinforced and the child will be put through hormone treatment and surgery.

>>1262
I mentioned marxism because I noticed that marxists are very resolute in this stance.

>>1267
Please, if someone claims to be a marxist and espouses identity politics they are by definition not marxists Identity politics are anti-materialist and the cornerstone of Marxist Philosophy is Materialism.