Critically examining the doctrine of gender identity
Here’s Rebecca Reilly-Cooper at Coventry Skeptics in the Pub last Monday. I’m told it was the best-attended event they’d had in ages, and very well received.
She’s doing a talk at Conway Hall in May but that sold out on the first day.
This talk was absolutely brilliant and greatly improved my mood this evening. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
You’re very welcome. RRC is terrific.
Personally, I find this propagandist more appalling than terrifying. But I suppose it is slightly alarming that some intelligent people appear to take her seriously.
Perhaps she can follow up with a lecture on the Doctrine of homosexuality. Pointing out that although we can respect people who claim to be gay, we needn’t buy into their Doctrine that there exists such a thing as a deeply held feeling of sexual attraction to one sex over the other. And we certainly should not countenance laws preventing discrimination on the basis of this so-called “sexual orientation” as if a “deeply held feeling should be taken as so sacrosanct that it is afforded special legal protections”.
Don’t forget there’s also a post with the Q&A, in which she got a lot less pushback//freakout than I’d expected:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZOiIrI2mE0
Unfortunately it’s only here that she gets to what I consider the most significant aspect of this question–the fact that there is a power imbalance between men (or people perceived to be men) and women (or people perceived to be women) in our culture, and that the former have the right to the latter’s labour.
It is actually true that there isn’t, and shouldn’t be, any legal protection for me based on my sexual orientation. And it’s true because at the moment it’s totally a moot point–I’m not dating, having sex with, or in a relationship with anyone. Whether I identify as ‘gay’ or ‘straight’, or have a deeply held feeling about my sexual orientation, doesn’t manifest in my behaviours, so no one could discriminate against me because of it.
That’s not entirely true though–I have short hair, don’t wear skirts, makeup or jewelry, and (according to some) have ‘mannish’ or ‘butch’ characteristics, I have mentioned once or twice indirectly to my colleagues that I identify as gay, or at least not solely heterosexual, I express support for sexual minorities. These are behaviours, rather than deeply held feelings, and I do expect legal protection from discrimination or other negative consequences for exercising my freedom to speak, look and act in these ways.
Another thing RRC doesn’t really address (because it wasn’t specifically relevant to what she was focusing on) is that identity may be, but isn’t necessarily, associated with expression and behaviour. It’s possible to identify as trans and not be discriminated against (‘I’m trans but have chosen not to reveal that to anyone’) and it’s possible to be not-trans and treated badly–this happens to me, which is why I find the issue personally relevant; I don’t identify as trans (though I’ve been told more than once, online and in person, that I am wrong or bad not to), but have had similar experiences and interactions to some trans people. Is a man wearing a skirt going to be viewed or treated differently if he identifies as trans, or if he identifies as straight and cis? Does he deserve legal protection in the former case but not in the latter? Another way of saying that in a just and free society expression and behaviour must be protected, but identity doesn’t need to be.
Yes. Behaviour must be protected, regardless of identity or deep inner feelings that people may or may not have. If the employee dress code gives you a choice between skirts and trousers, everyone should be able to wear either without having to identify as anything. Marriage equality should mean everyone gets to marry the (adult, not a close relative, unmarried, consenting…) person they want, not that gay people get to marry someone of the same sex and straight people get to marry someone of the opposite sex.
And of course we can’t just accept unconditionally everything others tell us about their identity, including their gender identity. We don’t have access to some sort of mystical knowledge about our own self (to the extent that the “self” is real), we learn who and what we are through experience like we learn anything else, and make up stories to make sense of the stuff we don’t know/understand/accept. I’ve had several people tell me they’re trans because they were reincarnated into the wrong body.
This is by no means a thorough critique of her video, but some of her points are not well made:
* She says that definitions of “gender identity” are circular because they contain the word “gender.” That’s far from obvious: Merriam Webster for example defines racehorse as “a horse bred, trained, and kept for racing.” This is not at all a circular definition. It is simply the case that it does not attempt also to define horse–nor, for that matter, racing.
* The definitions she criticizes are contained in legislation, and she criticizes them for not explaining things like “where these feelings come from” or “what gender is.” The anti-discrimination laws also stipulate that gay people shouldn’t be discriminated against, without weighing in on whether homosexuality is the result of nurture or nature, nor explaining what makes a gay person gay and where those feelings of homoerotic attraction come from. In short, it’s a straw man: explaining such things is not the job of legislation.
* She criticizes these laws for failing to justify the need for them, but that’s also a straw man: laws seldom or never attempt to justify their own existence (although the legislation that creates the law sometimes begins with a bunch of “whereases” that serve mostly to lionize the people who drafted it).
* Implicit in that criticism is an asinine question: why indeed? Because he/shes are regularly subject to assault and murder, maybe? Could that be a reasonable reason? Why are any such laws created?
* She then clarifies her point by saying, “it’s not clear how anyone can suffer violence or discrimination solely on the basis of a deeply felt internal sensation, rather than on the outward expression and presentation of that sensation.” Um, that’s also true of gay people. Being attracted to dudes can’t make a man the target of discrimination or violence, as long as he refrains from wearing sequins, or mincing, or speaking with a lisp. Oh, or kissing his boyfriend, of course. So her point is that trans people can’t be discriminated against if they’d just “man up,” if you pardon the expression, and refrain from wearing dresses or carrying purses? Um…
* Later she says, “How can I possibly have an internal sense of myself as [a man or a woman], if I don’t actually know what those words mean?” This point is actually asinine. It’s on par with saying, “How can I possibly have a sense of myself as a black person, if I can’t even define race?” NOTE: If you’ve never read Pudd’nhead Wilson, this is a good time: in the US, “one drop” of “black blood” makes you black. Many “white” people today have ancestors who were considered “black” by virtue of the “one-drop rule,” despite no ancestor having been black for the previous several generations. Race is as meaningless as gender, and you can’t actually negate that by pointing out that “black” people are usually recognizable by their complexion.
* She repeats multiple times that we can’t really acknowledge “this feeling” if we don’t know where it comes from. Why is this not equally true of homosexuals? Nobody has a clue why some dudes want to make it with dudes, and likewise some women with women. How can we acknowledge this feeling without knowing where it comes from? Some people are sexually attracted to dirty boots; why is homosexuality not relegated to the same category as paraphilias like that?
* Shortly after this she says, “I think we’re owed some account why these ‘deeply held feelings’ are so important.” Uh, why is one owed such an account? But more to the point, she seems utterly oblivious that most people other than her give zero fucks where ‘these feelings’ come from; what they give one or more fucks about is the fact that certain people are disproportionately likely to be murdered, if they don’t off themselves first. Things like the legislation she quotes are an effort to mitigate that problem–they’re not in the least driven by theoretical considerations.
One thing she conspicuously omits is the question: if we can’t even define gender, then why are we passing special laws for their protection? Murder is already illegal, as is rape or assault, so what merits these special protections for a category of persons we can’t even define?
I haven’t finished watching, but I intend to because I think there are actually interesting questions that can be asked and I think it’s possible she gets around to asking them, but few if any of the points made in the first 28 minutes are well made.
Silentbob @ 3 –
What a silly analogy. Sexual attraction is a feeling. Sex (in the sense of female/male) is not.
“Gender identity” is not “gender” or “sex.” RRC appears to exhibit this same confusion.
It’s not “confusion.”
“Gender identity” is something completely distinct from “gender.” RRC equates the two terms at various points in her talk. That’s pretty much the definition of confusion: equating two things that are not the same thing, as if they were the same thing.
There’s a reason everyone consistently refers to it as “gender identity,” and the reason isn’t that they like using redundant words. If that were the same thing as “gender,” they could save their tongues some effort by dropping the word “identity,” instead of articulating that word every single time.
“Everyone” does no such thing.
And I don’t know what you think you mean by “every single time” – as if you know when “everyone” might have forgotten to say it but didn’t, when “everyone” meant it and said it, when “everyone” avoided saying it when it wasn’t what they meant.
I don’t think Rebecca needs help from you in disambiguating words.
Also – “completely distinct”? Hardly. It’s not as if they have no relationship to each other.
Wait, are you actually quibbling whether my superlative can accurately be interpreted as a universal quantifier? Aw, that’s so cool. My sister and I used to do that when we were 8, and now I’m feeling all nostalgic. “You always leave your stuff on my side!” “Always? I always do? Every day, including Christmas and Easter? Even on days when the car has been cleaned out and is in the shop?”
Nostalgia aside, I will cheerfully grant that “everyone” should not be interpreted here as the universal quantifier, and “everyone refers…” should not be regarded as a mathematical postulate.
Does “completely distinct” entail “no relationship of any kind” in your world? There is a relationship between women and women’s hygiene, but I would assert that they are completely distinct in the sense that women are women and tampons are tampons. Two completely different things.
Similarly, “sexual orientation” and “sex” are two completely distinct things, although there is a relationship between the two. One is the act of boinking, and the other is a tendency that affects your personal preference as to whom you would prefer to boink.
I seem to recall a well-known blogger arguing that “woman” and “trans-woman” are completely distinct things, even though there is clearly a relationship between the two. At the time, this blogger was of the opinion that the use of the modifier constituted evidence that the two things were not identical.
Stop being such an asshole. You’re being aggressively pedantic about what you take to be the meaning of particular words, so you don’t get to sneer when I point out what a sloppy job you’re doing of it.
And what the fuck is that about “women’s hygiene” for? You are a man, right? Why does “women’s hygiene” strike you as the right simile here?
Very fucking thin ice.
RRC quoted more than a half-dozen definitions of “gender identity.” Not a single one of them defined it to mean “gender.” Indeed, every single last one of them defined it to be a belief, or a feeling, or a cluster of ideas, or a conviction. RRC did not fail to notice that, because she then used “deeply felt internal sensation,” and other similar phrases, as a synonym for “gender identity.”
Unless RRC believes that gender is itself a “deeply felt internal sensation,” then she is abundantly fucking aware that “gender identity” and “gender” are not the same thing. She therefore has no excuse for equating the two, as she does at multiple points.
Gender is… whatever the fuck it is, since it is never defined at any point in any material she cites. Gender identity is a personal opinion about gender. The distinction should be extremely clear. They are not the same thing.
I don’t know how anyone can listen to what Reilly-Cooper says and come back with the confused, inaccurate accusations about her statements or intellectual pursuit. Unless they’re unwilling or unable to even question silently in their own mind if they’re making some unwarranted assumptions and that it’s actually RC’s unpacking them that’s at issue.
Will every thread on this from now on be the A Masked Avenger and SilentBob pedantry and virtue-signaling show? I hope not. This is one of the only public places on the Internet where we can discuss this honestly. These two have demonstrated that they will not, absolutely will not, do this honestly. It’s tiresome.
I notice that nobody addresses a single point in comment #8.
That is true. And it does not contradict her point.
She’s clearly criticizing a particular incoherent doctrine of gender identity, one that is not held by all trans people. She is certainly not saying that any man (or trans woman, or genderqueer person, or…) should be beaten up for wearing a dress.
No, that is not her point.
#21, Lady Mondegreen
It’s precisely her point. Trans people can’t be discriminated against based on their internal mental state; they can only be discriminated against after some external observation marks them as trans. This is a true but completely useless point precisely equivalent to the observation that gay people can’t be discriminated against until someone notices that they’re gay.
The mischief in making this useless point is that the solution is obvious: if you won’t want to be discriminated against, don’t act like a faggot.
Josh @ 21 –
No, that won’t happen.
#24 What I got from this is that the law should attempt to ensure that no one is discriminated against for appearance, speech or behaviour, whether they identify as trans/faggot/whatever or not; in other words, gender (or any other kind of) identity is irrelevant.
That seems reasonable. In that case why do we have laws explicitly protecting women, gays, and black people? Shouldn’t it be enough to declare that #AllLivesMatter?
A Masked Avenger – I asked you a question @ 19. It wasn’t rhetorical. I want to know why you talked about “women’s hygiene” and tampons out of nowhere @ 16.
Being female or nonwhite is generally pretty obvious from appearance (in some cases where you are/identify as nonwhite it isn’t, and consequently those people don’t face the kind of treatment the law would need to protect them/us from), and (depending on the person) to some extent from speech or behaviour. As I described in my earlier comments to this post, I don’t think I need any legal protection for being gay, and don’t think I get it–I hope to get, and hopefully do get, legal protection for anything in my appearance, speech or behaviour that might lead people to think I’m gay, whether I actually am/identify as gay or not.
The question under discussion was whether “Gender Identity” was something different from “Gender.” In this case “Gender” is a noun when it appears by itself, and an adjective in the phrase “Gender Identity”–it modifies “identity” to answer the question “what kind of identity”?
It is NEVER the case that “X(noun)” means the same thing as “X(adjective) Y(noun)”, because one is an X, and the other is a Y. They are connected, because the Y is being described as having something to do with X–the Y in question is an X-ish sort of Y.
I could illustrate this point using any possible values of X and Y. I could select them completely at random, such as:
* A “horse” is not the same as a “horse trailer.” They’re completely distinct, albeit related.
* A “storm” is not the same as a “storm fence.”
* A “dog” is not the same as a “dog house.”
I was concerned, though, that these examples would fail to illustrate the point well. I would expect a reply of the form, “Of course a horse isn’t a trailer; stop making asinine observations in an assholish manner!” The problem here is that unlike “gender” and “gender identity,” the term “gender” is sufficiently charged that the word “identity” is all but ignored. In a phrase like “horse trailer,” you will not get all hung up on “horse” and forget to notice “trailer.” Quite the opposite: you will practically ignore “horse” and focus on “trailer.”
So to come up with a better illustration, I needed an X that can serve as both a noun and an adjective, and which is sufficiently charged that when used as an adjective it would tend to upstage the noun it modifies. It’s not easy to come up with an example, and “women’s hygiene” is not a shining example; for one thing I had to add the possessive, and for another it’s a less common phrase than “feminine hygiene,” and for another I just have a nagging suspicion I could do better. However since nobody is paying me by the hour to write this stuff, I decided not to spend 30 more minutes coming up with the perfect bon mot.
I settled for this comparison partly because I was won over by the absurdism of the blindingly obvious observation that a woman is a person, while a tampon comes in a box of 4. It SHOULD be just as blindingly obvious that a gender IDENTITY is different from a GENDER, of course.
I’m one of those who actually like the diversity of views introduced by SilentBob and MA. Sorry, but a thread in which all the commenters repeated only how awesome Reilly-Cooper is would be boring to tears. (Obviously, it’s nothing more than just one reader’s perspective. Not my blog, not my rules.)
MA #8:
Full disclosure: I hate videos (not my medium) and I don’t watch them, so I will not talk directly about Reilly-Cooper. Assuming that you quote and interpret correctly, I think there is something to your criticism. Hmm … sometimes I have an “internal sense of myself” as old, but I would be hard pressed to provide a good definition of “old”. Still, I do need some understanding of “old” in order to make sense of the feeling. But the emphasis is on “some”. Indeed, the requirement of being able to provide a definition seems unreasonably high. Perhaps the general ability to recognize a handful of conspicuous cases in enough in such contexts?
From my point of view, the problem with “an internal sense of myself as a man or a woman” lies elsewhere: not in the concept as such, but in its applications. In particular, I part company when people are saying that it is this internal sense that makes someone a man or a woman. Part of my difficulty is that I can’t really identify this “internal sense” in myself. What is this feeling, I ask? Do I have it or not? Do others have it and if so, how can I tell? Or maybe only trans people have it – maybe it’s something that arises in troublesome situations *only*? All in all, it seems to me that after adopting this option, the expressions like “man” or “woman” would become very hard to apply … perhaps to anyone except trans people – or at least those of them who explicitly claim to have such feelings.
Apologies, this probably goes beyond what Reilly-Cooper said.
“Sufficiently charged” eh? And why would that be, I wonder? And you went for it because it’s charged? And you didn’t pause to worry about the way it’s charged and the reason it’s charged but just went ahead? And, as I said – you’re a man, right?
And then there’s your grotesque misrepresentation about me @ 18.
You’re really hell bent on being an asshole today. That of course is why I’m holding your comments for approval.
But that assumes there are only two possibilities – boring praise of RRC or that combined with the views of Silentbob and Masked Avenger. There are far more possibilities than that.
You’re doing philosophy, not law. Can you point to any examples, anywhere, of laws that do not protect you from discrimination as a gay person per se, but that rather protect you from discrimination caused by “any outward manifestations, behaviors, or statements, whether your own or someone else’s in relation to you, that tend to lead others to conclude that you might be gay, such that they then discriminate against you”?
I suspect that a philosophy professor would agree that being gay is something distinct from any or all phenomena tending to cause others to conclude (rightly or wrongly) that you are gay, and I suspect a lively discussion would follow as to whether it is reasonable to equivocate those two things–and perhaps whether a person can properly be called gay in the first place if there should be no phonomena of any kind associated with the person that would cause any other person to identify them as such, and to what extent “self-identification” is or is not such a phenomenon in and of itself.
A lawyer would quickly set you straight, however, on the role of mens rea in the commission of a crime, and why it is sufficient to outlaw “discrimination against gay people.” Specifically, the lawyer would explain to you that discriminating against a straight person in the mistaken belief that they were gay would make them guilty of this crime, because intent (while not magic) determines the legal import of one’s actions, in the same way that one can commit (attempted) murder by shooting a corpse. From a legal standpoint, “discriminating against gay people,” and “discriminating against people that one believes (rightly or wrongly) to be gay based upon actions or words tending to produce such belief in the perpetrator” are legally identical[*].
[*] Note that some lawyer is liable to pipe up and say they are NOT identical, and would doubtless be right, but their point would involve yet more complexity–such as how the exact wording can determine whether you’re guilty of “gay-bashing” or only “attempted gay-bashing.” Depending on the wording (and the other laws of the jurisdiction) it might or might not matter whether the victim was actually gay, or whether you only thought they were. In my jurisdiction, intent to commit said crime always constitutes “criminal attempt,” and for some specific crimes you can also be guilty of the crime itself even when the facts preclude actually committing the crime–e.g., because the victim was not in fact gay.
[**] Also note that IANAL. I have worked in law enforcement, and to that extent am trained in the laws of my jurisdiction.
I’m not sure why you’re pointing out the obvious. References to women are “charged” in a feminist context, in the same way that references to black, gay, or Jewish people can be charged in the appropriate contexts. In the same way that your references to trans women are pretty fucking charged when they’re read by people who have been assaulted, sexually and otherwise, for using the bathroom. In many cases assaulted both for using the men’s room (“A tranny! Get him!”) and for using the women’s room (“A man! Get him!”)
We all have our asshole moments.
Well that’s fine, they can be legally identical; as you say, it’s all the same to me. But it’s not something internal that’s being legally protected, but something external. If you watched the video, you’ll have noted that Reilly-Cooper identifies herself a couple of times as a philosopher.
I have been assaulted for using the ‘wrong’ bathroom, and I am not trans.
Point missed. Question again not answered. You’re a man (right?) talking about women as being dirty.
And now you’ve gotten to the point of hinting that I’m encouraging violence against trans women.
You’ve acknowledged having an asshole moment in the past, but without apologizing – just as you did here. As for the fact that we all have them – we don’t all have them on other people’s blogs, plus this isn’t a moment, it’s the whole fucking morning.
I AM IN NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM SUGGESTING, INSINUATING, OR OTHERWISE PUTTING FORTH ANY INDICATION THAT WOMEN ARE “DIRTY.”
Oh my fucking god.
As for my gender (or gender identity, as the case may be), why do you keep asking that? How is it any of your business?
Thinking more about the bathroom thing. I was once pushed out of a women’s bathroom by women who didn’t think I was presenting femininely enough. I doubt that kind of thing would happen to me now–both because my body shape is different and because the world has moved on since then. My first reaction to having or hearing about these experiences is ‘it’s not ‘trans identities should be respected’ but rather ‘anyone should be able to use whatever damn bathroom they go into’–as amrie mentioned above, it’s about abolition of categories, not forcing people into one or the other–and I would think that would make sense…but since that time I’ve learned that, although this has never happened to me, women have had to retreat to women’s bathrooms to attempt to escape men who are molesting them. Without the social sanction of men not going into, or not wanting to be seen going into, women’s bathrooms, what kind of protection (even as little protection as this is) is available to women in these kinds of situations? If we lived in a culture where more men (and possibly women, but the kind of men who won’t leave one woman alone are unlikely to be persuaded to by other women) stepped up to censure this kind of behaviour maybe that protection would be less necessary, but we don’t. I’m wondering now whether the move toward unisex single stalls, which up to now I thought was nothing but good, may have a down side.
A Masked Avenger @ 39 – oh really? Yet you used the phrase “feminine hygiene” and then talked about tampons. So it’s never crossed your mind that the phrase “feminine hygiene” is at all loaded? Especially since there’s no such phrase as “masculine hygiene”?
And that’s why I “keep” asking. Sometimes it does make a difference. When people are bullying women on this subject I sometimes want to know if they’re men or not.
My hesitation about this is that we’re not really set up for this as a society. Public bathrooms aren’t especially safe, as everyone knows well enough, but what little safety there is is maintained by segregation. Bathrooms are poorly designed to prevent men from exposing themselves (think rows of urinals, sometimes with no partitions between), or to keep people from pushing into flimsy stalls, or looking over or under the stall walls, or hiding in a stall and accosting a lone potty-goer, etc.
We can probably come up with sensible ways to eliminate segregated bathrooms, but very little of our infrastructure supports this today. That’s what I’d like to see, frankly: this concern about who is in whose bathroom is driven by feelings of lack of safety, and the real problem is a shitty setup (no pun) rather than who is sitting on which pot.
I don’t know what that looks like. Parts of the US are rich enough to have all private bathrooms, but that’s very expensive. Maybe the answer is simply to beef up the stalls, so the locks actually work and it’s hard to peek. (While they’re doing that, they probably should revamp the ventilation and maybe add a little sound-proofing.) Defining the space outside the stalls as “public,” and possibly adding security cameras, might be a good idea. Maybe we should bring back bathroom attendants–perhaps a man and a woman in each facility.
Or something else, It’s clear that some redesign is called for, but it’s much less clear what the solution will look like.
Not loaded in the way you’re saying. It never crossed my mind for a microsecond that there’s anything in any way “dirty” about women, tampons, or the fact that women sometimes make use of tampons. Not once.
I didn’t invent English, so the fact that this phrase doesn’t exist certainly doesn’t imply that I think women are dirty. You may be right that it reflects a societal double-standard; I don’t think there’s a word for the fact that the first half-second of urination is wildly uncontrolled, and men who pee standing up tend to get some on their legs, the floors, and every other surface in the vicinity. I don’t know why there’s no word for that. Probably because pissing all over the place like an excited puppy is considered the norm, somehow.
But no. Not only had it not crossed my mind, but until you actually came out and accused me of it I had no idea that’s what you were thinking.
Sure, stipulated, whatever. But, what is gender? If gender is a purely social construct, then how can gender IDENTITY be an innate, required attribute of an individual person?
It seems (for this bear of little brain) as though if we are required to accept that gender IDENTITY is innate (ie. not learned) then gender must also be an essential aspect of being human. Are you claiming gender is essential or am I being thick?
Aside, reading the above this comes across as far more acrimonious than I intend. Please don’t take it that way due to my shortage of time and concentration to redraft it.
Who the fuck knows? Nobody, as far as I know. Including the fundies who try to enforce it, the feminists who try to deconstruct it, and the hoi polloi who go about their business as if they know when they really don’t.
Wait, you didn’t define “innate.” Apart from shitting, crying, nursing, and an inborn ability to acquire language, I’m not sure what “innate” even means.
But skipping over that, you seem to be asking how there can be an “identity” as X, when we don’t even know what X is… that’s pretty much the norm. What’s an American? A black person? A gay person? A parent? We have all sorts of identities which depend on concepts that nobody can define. As evidenced by the fact that we constantly try to convert our own fuzzy concepts into norms, and declare others to be not American, black, gay, a parent, etc.
I don’t claim to know what gender means, nor what essential means.
#42 Banichi,
Yes, and I haven’t seen anyone make this point yet. Gender is a pile of stereotypes and nothing more. Having a “deeply held feeling” about a pile of stereotypes is, well, ridiculous.
A Masked Avenger @ 43 – well then that’s not very thoughtful of you, is it. I mean that in the literal sense: it shows you haven’t thought about it. It’s a feminist sort of thing to think, so perhaps you’re not very thoughtful in that way.
So maybe, just maybe, you should back off on the angry lecturing just a little.
Cressida @ 45 – well except Rebecca made the point! In her writing if not in the video, which I haven’t finished watching yet. That’s one of her core arguments (and not just hers of course): that gender is just a pile of stereotypes and nothing more, not some spooky essence.
You’re suggesting I apologize for not thinking women are dirty? How… odd.
Or do you mean I should apologize for not realizing that that’s the first thing you’d think? Hrm…
Wait, I get it. You think I should apologize for not realizing that’s the first thing that you’d think that I’D think. Well, OK, if I realized that you were going under the default assumption that I was (a) male, and (b) a fucking misogynist, then I might have realized that you’d attribute vile misogyny to my remarks by default. But I didn’t realize that. Why was that your default assumption? What reason–what single, solitary reason–do you have for assuming that I’m a misogynist?
I’m still unclear whether you have a visceral reaction to tampons as being unclean, or whether you have a visceral reaction to anyone who mentions tampons as somehow insinuating uncleanness, or what the hell is going on here.
My flavorless phlogiston tastes different than your flavorless phlogiston.
Oh, for sure. I meant “anyone in this thread.” I don’t think she quite “went there” in the video, or at least that’s my memory.
I wouldn’t necessarily say “stereotypes,” in that gender includes ideas that aren’t stereotypes. Most people associate gender with the likelihood of potentially either fathering or bearing a child, for example. That’s not a stereotype; that’s a statistical observation about biology.
But yeah, gender is in the end a constellation of ideas conditioned to a large degree by culture and to a slightly less large degree by personal experience. For most people the concept of gender is inseparable from the fact that a particular gender is “mine,” by virtue of having been told that since first learning to talk. For some people the same concepts exist, along with the unusual experience of being told that one cluster of ideas describes them, while feeling convinced that the other cluster of ideas is the one that actually describes them. They feel this strongly enough that in many cases they decide to kill themselves.
I don’t see what’s ridiculous about it, though.
I DO see that it raises all sorts of interesting questions. AFAICT, neither trans activists nor feminists are willing to confront those questions squarely. Possibly because the questions raise the possibility of contradicting some core doctrine. I started watching the video in the OP, because I got the impression that the presenter was going to grapple with some of those interesting questions. I’ve gotten about 2/3 of the way through the video, though, and so far been disappointed.
Here in the UK we’ve mostly gone to unisex single stalls. But now that I’ve thought about it I’m wondering how much less safe I’d feel hiding in one from a man who’s demonstrated he’s a threat to my safety, compared to surrounded by sympathetic women in a space socially denied to that man. On the other hand, people nowadays have their phones (I don’t use one, so again it’s not part of my own experience) so I guess they could ring for help or support from inside…unless there’s no signal…. The other thing about the single unisex stall is that you can’t hide in one forever–other people are likely to be outside waiting.
Banichi, I don’t think it matters if gender identity is learned or not, what matters is that it can come into being early in life, and it can be different than the gender others ascribe to an individual. (Some people are confident that their identity is different than the perceived one early, some are conflicted about their identity in some way and realize much later what it is, yet others seem to be OK with their ascribed gender yet determine at a later time that their identity is different. I have no idea what causes such variability.)
Maybe some people learn their gender identity from the language people use to describe them, or when they try to understand why one group of people is associated with certain roles and behavioral expectations and another group with other roles and expectations. (I knew a boy who knew I was a girl but had no idea this meant I had a vagina rather than a penis, and therefore would sit on the toilet to pee – we were around 3-4 years old at the time. There seems to be a lot of knowledge to sort out with these things.) But some people do end up with identities that are contradictory to what everyone around them has implicitly and explicitly taught them, even at young ages. Where would such an identity come from other than the people themselves?
A Masked Avenger, #45
In the present context of RRC’s talk about “The Doctrine of Gender Identity”, the meaning of “innate” as “inborn” seems trivially relevant. I’m not quibbling about whether we can call X identity innate when we don’t know what X is. I’m questioning whether it’s consistent to consider X identity innate if we pre-suppose that X is not innate.
I’m implying that considering gender innate is equivalent to either gender-essentialism or equating gender with sex, and assuming that you probably aren’t comfortable with either of those implications.
I’m not suggesting that we can’t identify with social constructs, but that such identifications are inevitably a consequence of our socialization rather than being inborn.
guest @51
This is at best anecdata, but my experience (in the UK) doesn’t match yours. Toilet facilities are provided separately for men, women and (sometimes) as separate stalls for the disabled. That applies for my workplace and the majority of public facilities (train stations, etc.) that I’ve encountered.
I think you’re right about big public places; I was thinking more about smaller privately-owned places like restaurants, pubs, clubs and other entertainment venues where women would be more likely to be threatened by men and not be able to do much about it.
My current workplace has multiple-stall bathrooms, but I’ve been in several that have rows of single unisex stalls and I think that’s more common now in newer buildings (I’m also seeing these more and more in new-build libraries, schools and health facilities).
That’s not the point I was making. The point I was making is that you’re drawing a straight line from my comments to gender essentialism, and in this case both concepts are dubious: gender and essentialism.
If we pretend that we know exactly what gender is, we’re no closer to discussing whether it’s “innate.” Indeed we’re no closer to knowing whether “innate” is itself a meaningful concept: exactly as I said, it’s not clear to me that anything is innate other than nursing, crying, and acquiring language (and basic biological functions like breathing and shitting).
It appears that acquiring language involves a constellation of innate behaviors, starting with the baby’s affinity for staring at human faces (the absence of which can be one indication of autism). They may be able to discern basic emotions, to the extent that lullabies soothe them and crying babies upset them. These behaviors come together to drive them toward figuring out how to get their needs met (by means other than crying), and ultimately to articulate their needs and respond to others’ articulations.
So at what point in this process to they start learning things like “I am a girl; you are a boy”? Or that mommy is a girl and daddy is a boy (assuming a monogamous heterosexual couple are the parents, of course). Are the seeds sown before the acquisition of language, by the different way the parents interact with them? As Anat observed, one learns this before learning that we go pee-pee differently (in some cases, at least). Would they learn this in the same way if they spoke a gender-neutral language (not that any such exists, to my knowledge)?
Children aged 2-3 define “fairness” as “equal outcomes.” They consider it “unfair” to be punished by receiving less dessert than the other kids. Around ages 4-5, they develop a concept of “deserving,” and they begin to consider it unfair if they don’t receive more than the kid who misbehaved. Is this “innate” to neurological development? Around the same age, children are obsessed with rule-following. Boys must do this. Girls must do that. Daddies must to this, and mommies must do that. Teachers can’t be mommies too, because they’re teachers. Around that age they seem to internalize gender norms to such an enormous degree that it seems no amount of effort can dispel it. For most people the notions of gender acquired at that time will persist throughout their lives.
So… is it innate in human neurophysiology to demand, “who am i?” and to arrive at the answer via categories (“I’m a girl!”) rather than individuation (“I’m me!”)? AFAIK, developmental psychologists consider this innate, but I have no idea whether they’ve made a suitable effort to confirm whether there isn’t at least one culture where children aged 3-5 don’t organize their worlds by learning “rules.” And if it is innate, to what extent is it a random side-effect of language acquisition? I.e., that searching for “rules” enables them to learn grammar efficiently, and it’s only incidental that they bring the same approach to learning about other things?
And in light of the above considerations, what DOES it mean when a 3-5 year old child is told, “You’re a boy,” and they respond, “NO! I’M A GIRL!” (Yes, I realize that not all trans people have this experience. Some do, though. This question is about those people.) If their innate neurological wiring is to ask, “What am I?”, to accept whatever answer they’re given (“You’re a plimpet!”) and then internalize the corresponding rules (“Plimpets LOVE broccoli, and only wear mauve!”), then what does it mean when a person rejects the answers their given (“I’m definitely not a plimpet! I want hot dogs and will only wear orange!”)? Is their neurology different in that it prompts them to reject the rules they’re given? Or is their neurology just wired with an overpowering love of orange and hatred of mauve? And if one of those is the case, then would this quality of theirs be deemed “innate”? (Yes, I realize that we’re dangerously close to positing that it’s “defective,” but let’s not strain this hypothetical that far please.)
Of course in the bigger picture we can also ask whether “innate” includes only qualities with a purely genetic cause, or also qualities acquired prenatally as a result of epigenetics or environment, or acquired as infants, or toddlers. If I suddenly decide tomorrow at age 53 that I’m gay (which is rare, but has happened) then have I suddenly discovered an “innate” quality, or have I developed a new quality that isn’t innate? What if I realize this at age 2? Age 12?
In short, I don’t know what innate means. I don’t know how gays get to be gay, or how boys get to be boys, or how some boys turn out to be girls after all. Neither does anyone else. We know that socialization is what makes boys refuse to wear dresses today, unlike FDR who wore one until he was about 7. But if we could raise a bunch of kids in a purely gender-neutral environment, would they self-sort into two groups and decide, “I’m one of these, and I’m not one of those?” And would 0.3% of them self-select the other way? Nobody actually knows.
I certainly don’t know. I’m not entirely sure I give a fuck, either. But I definitely don’t know.
Fuck.
A Masked Avenger – you’ve taken over this thread, you don’t seem to understand a word I say, you misrepresent what I’ve said in the past, and you’ve made 20 out of 58 comments. You’re not contributing to an interesting discussion here. Please stop now.
Masked Avenger #52,
Indeed it is (apart from the “statistical” part, which I find odd). But it’s not an aspect of gender. It’s an aspect of sex.
Correction. 21 out of 58 comments.
All this, from someone who still doesn’t get the distinction between gender and sex. Urgh.
You’re the boss.
Comment #8 was intended to be a meaningful engagement of the video, but nobody seems interested in that.
I think it’s a little pointless to try to engage closely with a video when there are written essays available. The vid is an hour long and there’s no transcript, so it’s far more unwieldy to discuss than something written.
Um, no. I fully understand that sex is biological, while gender is a cluster of ideas. One of the most prominent of those ideas being that female (gender) people are also female (sex) people. That’s why female (gender) includes ideas like “is the mother” and “nurses the babies.”
Some of the ideas used to define femaleness as a gender are nothing but assertions about femaleness as a sex.
No. It’s ridiculous and entirely uncalled for to say that R R-C criticizing bad definitions and confused thinking amounts to her suggesting everyone should just avoid trouble by staying in their boxes. It’s a misreading (mislistening?) so spectacular and ungenerous I’m really tempted to agree with Josh that you’re just arguing in bad faith.
She clearly doesn’t think anyone stepping outside their gender box should be harmed; her objection is to definitions that ultimately reinforce gender essentialism.
She’s arguing for the incoherence of the following: “Being (for instance) a woman has nothing to do with biology. A woman is somebody who feels like she’s a woman (unless she’s a cis woman who claims she doesn’t feel ‘like a woman,’ in which case she’s mistaken, or hasn’t discovered her true category.)”
A is A, and one’s gender identity is one’s gender identity.
@Ariel #31
Not at all; she discusses exactly what you’re talking about in the video (I dislike videos too, but made an exception for this one. I’m glad I did.)
@ 67 Lady Mondegreen
One of the frustrating things, for me, about this ongoing debate is that many people, in the 21st century (ferchristsakes), seem to subscribe to a sort of Medieval dualism. We understand, do we not, that the brain in a biological organ? We understand, do we not, that all feelings are biological? There is no dichotomy between biology and “feelings”. Feelings are (a component of) biology. If one feels “like a woman”, that is a neurological state, not a disembodied thought floating around in the aether.
OK, I’ll rephrase: Being (for instance) a woman has nothing to do with reproductive biology. A woman is somebody who feels like she’s a woman…
Anyway. In addition to understanding that feelings are biological, we also understand that having the subjective feeling of being a thing doesn’t necessarily make one that thing. The fact that feelings are biologically based does not make them epistemically reliable. They’re sort of notorious for not being that.
One may experience body dismorphia; one’s cortical humunculus may read “female” when one’s body is male, or vice versa. (That doesn’t help you defend the proposition that if your penis is a female penis, but, whatever.) On the other hand, you may think that because your personality and interests match those conventionally ascribed to women, you are a woman, despite your male reproductive organs. In the latter case, feminists are going to argue with your gender essentialism. That doesn’t mean they think you shouldn’t wear dresses if you feel like it, or express yourself however you want. It certainly doesn’t mean they want you to get beat up.
“one’s cortical humunculus may read “female” when one’s body is male, or vice versa”
Extend this a tad further – human infants can discern (adult) male and female faces/voices from a very young age; differences in reaction to male & female faces are observed and can be measured in infants as young as 5 or 6 months old.
If one grants the existence of an innate female-reading cortical homunculus to explain body dysphoria; is it such a stretch to think that, coupled with an innate ability to discern “there are female faces/voices and male face/voices”, this might translate into a sense of “I’m one of the former, not one of the latter”?
If this were the case, if such a sense could take root – perhaps weakly in some but quite powerfully in others – what effects would you expect it to have? Imagine a child
1) solidly roots as “I’m one of these [female faced/voice individuals], not one of those [male faced/voice people]”,
2) is reared in an environment with sharply divergent names, language elements, and expressions between males and females
What types of reactions/behavior would you expect from such a child as they become aware that have been ascribed a name and language elements and are limited to those gendered expressions that are exclusively relegated to male faced/voice people?
Looking back at the hypothetical child – would you have predicted that such a child, through to adulthood, might experience a deep yearning for the forms of gendered expressions relegated to “female voiced/face people”, and forbidden from them, for reasons other than a personal preference for those expressions? Mightn’t the stereotype, “This person, with male genitalia, probably wants everyone to call him a woman just because he likes wearing dresses ” be – at least in some cases – putting the carriage before the horse?
Kevin, absolutely. I agree that everything you’ve said is plausible and likely.
I hope and think that Rebecca Reilly-Cooper would, too. She’s objecting to a popular doctrine held by some trans activists. The doctrine she’s objecting to does logically lead to faux trans people claiming trans status just because they like the accoutrements of the other sex. (There’s nothing at all wrong with liking the accoutrements of the other sex, but it’s more revolutionary to display them without automatically proclaiming a “gender identity.”)*
Again, what’s being objected to isn’t trans people. it’s some muddy and retrogressive thinking that SOME political activists promote AND will attack you for arguing with.
* It’s cool to be a trans woman; it’s also cool to be a man who just wants to wear a dress.