ASAK
Aaron Ross Powell ☸️One of the (dumb) arguments against acceptance of transgender people takes disagreement about the definition of “man” and “woman” as dangerous to a functioning society. Setting aside that this argument depends first upon confusion about the difference between gender and biological sex, the idea that we need to agree one this particular ontological fact is very odd when the people making the argument don’t say the same about other ontological (and metaphysical) disagreements.
It is not clear, for example, why a disagreement about the specific details of the definition of “man” or “woman” is the kind of unsettled claim that would “destroy society,” as anti-trans people frame it, while a disagreement about, for instance, the various characteristics of a divine being, the nature of the afterlife, etc., wouldn’t.
Yes I know that religious people have and do see these other disagreements as important, and many American Christians point to the lack of widely held belief in the truthfulness of their versions of them as signs of civilizational decline. But they don’t center them in the culture war the way they do, in this case, the rather less consequential definition of man and woman. They manage to get along fine with religious diversity, as long as the religiously diverse join them in hating trans people.
➡ @arossp This is a very edgelord take, but I think they are ok with religious diversity because we went too easy on them. If there were stricter laws around child abuse and brainwashing, the kind of laws that intruded into people's private lives the way anti-trans legislation does, the fundie Christians would not be ok with that at all. It sounds anti-diversity but it could instead be framed as 'religious justice', 'freedom of thought', or 'faith by choice'. You can have diversity that tries to address coerced belief, but the current version of 'diversity' we practice involves looking the other way when Christians abuse people, so of course they find that palatable.
fakegreekgrill
Alan Twigz@arossp I feel like the folks pushing the anti-trans narratives hardest probably *also* have very strong beliefs about definitions of, say, Sin, Virtue, and Damnation, but know that they can only get media play with less obvious bigotry
Kelly Guimont@arossp more and more and more lately I think about the interview from the 90s when someone from MTV news was trying to get Michael Stipe to come out. He replied "I don't think it's any of your business what I'm doing with my dick unless you are sitting in my lap."
I feel like this is a solid set of parameters.
Kat@arossp @kitstubbsphd hmm so one problem with this framing is that “agreeing to disagree” about the existence of a divine being doesn’t materially affect how we treat each other within society, but i can’t “agree to disagree” with transphobes because the practical effects (bathroom bills, kids being excluded from sports, and worse) do actually create a conflict. the beliefs can’t coexist in the world. there’s a difference between a belief system that affects only your own view of the world and one that causes harm to other people by denying their rights and identity, in other words.
i don’t think they’re right about it “destroying society” but i do think that it may follow from their own logic, because even the faux compassion of “love the sinner, not the sin” is toxic. they ARE being asked to accept trans folk existing in the same society as them in day-to-day life.
Pusher Of Pixels (old account)@kat @arossp @kitstubbsphd entirely agree, only caveat I'd make is the agree to disagree argument against religion does likely have overt effects...those religious' ppls trans children/family are still subjected to the bigotry and shaming.
We can't accept others willingness to discriminate at any level.
Matunos@kat @arossp @kitstubbsphd because our society has progressed to where we can (usually) agree to disagree about religious questions; but there are many examples in the past (as well as the present in certain parts of the world) where worshipping the wrong way or not at all will get someone ostracized, exiled, imprisoned, or even tortured and executed
@matunos @arossp @kitstubbsphd an important point too! it may be more the exception than the rule that in our current time and place, we generally tolerate religious differences in most practical senses (though of course discrimination still exists and affects people in very real and sometimes subtle ways)
Alex von Kitchen@arossp well, fixed definitions of woman/man are pretty vital to patriarchal systems of power
@arossp it's also not even that much more ill-defined than previously. Like, it's just a bit of movement around the margins, where the definitions were never as clear as the right is pretending.
Escarpment@arossp Well put. For uneducated people (or even highly educated but not in matters of philosophy), this is probably one of the only places where they face the jarring observation that words and concepts are more fluid than they think. I'm very influenced by Wittgenstein on this. You can play this game with any word. For example, is a cisgender man who has had his genitals surgically removed still a man? Is a man's brain in a vat still a man?
@arossp I would venture to say further (my own speculation) that humans did not create languages with rigid necessary and sufficient conditions in mind. Rather, we invented languages and words that were specific enough to "get the job done" to disambiguate two or more things in someone else's head. Then, when we go back and try to apply rigid logic to these words, we understandably find all sorts of inconsistencies.
Chad Loder
adhdcanadian@arossp And these are the same people who don't want an abortion, but doesn't want to do anything about the high poverty rate, and they don't want to change the gun law. Yet they think anyone in the LGBTQ Community (Including Transpeople) are dangerous.
@arossp well said… an insistence on firm and universal definitions for man and woman in interactions which ostensibly don't have any dependence on sexual dimorphic characteristics implies that gender is in fact more than biological sex (by whatever definition). otherwise you shouldn't care what gender someone identifies with.
Octavia con Amore@arossp Not to mention that even "biological sex" is less a binary thing, as society widely views it, and more of a 2-peak bell-curve with so many asterisks it'll make you see stars.
krn 
@OctaviaConAmore @arossp I've seen the bimodal argument before, and I push back a little. That idea still enforces a binary. Imagine the curve in your head, and what is the x-axis? "Maleness"? "Femaleness"? Who determines that?
I know it's a nice visual, but as an intersex and trans person, it's uncomfortable in its inaccuracies. The idea that sex statistically favors two categories is good, but placing those categories on a continuum is not.
PointlessSpike@arossp these are the people that use gendered pronouns with cars and boats and then proclaim, "pronouns are for queer people".
They have no arguments, no coherent ideas, just bigotry.
The vast majority of people know nothing about trans people. The only people that can be expected to be qualified to talk about them are academics and medical specialists.
They have no arguments, no coherent ideas, just bigotry.
The vast majority of people know nothing about trans people. The only people that can be expected to be qualified to talk about them are academics and medical specialists.
A Tattered Scrapbook@arossp Interesting that questions of Ontology lead back to linguistic deconstruction. “The Rights of Man” excluded non-white, non-male, non-straight, non-property-owning humans. It’s a long hard ongoing fight to include “Others” in the definition, which is why fascists, like the UK government, hate “Human Rights”. The war over the inclusivity of the term “woman” needs to be centered in the same way, through political and linguistic action.
Nicole ParsonsThe connotations and meanings of descriptive labels change all the time.
Look up how the definition of the word "nice" has evolved.
The same evolution can and will happen to words like "Republican", "man", and "woman".
PS. The connotations for "Republican" now includes "fascist".
John Minnihan@arossp the concept of cognitive dissonance wld fly a good foot over their heads