Guest post: Gender ideology seems to be all about Doublethink
Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on That turning of the tide has been slow.
To me the most memorable and useful concept from 1984 was Doublethink (I believe the closest You get to a synonym in Oldspeak is “compartmetalization”):
DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of DOUBLETHINK he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. DOUBLETHINK lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word DOUBLETHINK it is necessary to exercise DOUBLETHINK. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of DOUBLETHINK one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.
Gender ideology seems to be all about Doublethink (covered up by the wordmagic of Genderspeak):
• On the one hand we’re obliged to accept that being a “woman” is all about thoughts and feelings and has nothing what so ever to do with physical traits. On the other hand we’re also supposed to accept that trans “women” automatically belong in all the same groups and spaces as the people with innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers, many (most? all?) of whom might not think or feel the required ways (and hence qualify as “women” in the Genderspeak sense) at all.
• On the one hand gender ideologues themselves are the ones who insist that there are distinct, identifiable “male” and “female” ways of thinking and feeling, thus establishing a “gender binary” that applies to pretty much anyone other than themselves (hence their special snowflake-status). Yet those who think this makes everyone non-binary, thus basically negating that the “gender binary” is even a thing, are the ones accused of reinforcing it.
• On the same note gender ideologues themselves are the ones who insist some perfectly real and vitally important* difference in ways of thinking and feeling makes certain people “female” to the very core of their being, regardless of any physical traits, thus justifying dividing people into separate groups requiring separate vocabularies, separate dress-codes, separate toilets, separate sporting events etc. Yet those who don’t think being “female” says anything about You other than the most superficial, irrelevant and unimportant physical traits are the ones accused of “gender essentialism”.
• Etc. etc.
* So important, in fact, that being called by the wrong word or placed in the wrong box is comparable to actual violence and even murder.
That’s not what I keep running into. I’m regularly told that “gender identity” is a neurological component of the brain which forms in the womb. And just as intersex people experienced disorders in their sexual development, so that their hormones or gonads fail to align with other aspects of their sex, transgender people develop a mismatch between part of their brain and the rest of their body. In other words, they’re claiming it’s physical … and they’re intersex.
Evidence? A lot of work has been done by scientists feverishly looking for signs of fetal sex identity and/or unexpected similarities between the transgender and those in the identified sex. And they’ve found them! I know, because pages of links get thrown at me. I don’t have the capacity to sift through and judge them. I’ve read gender critical sources, however, which claim the studies are poor or contradict each other. None of them are definitive, obviously, or we’d all know of it. They’d be diagnosing transgenderism with MRIs.
If a TRA is coming from this perspective, then, they don’t bother invoking feminine or masculine essences — at least, not right away. They’ll talk about a manly he-man who’s a trans woman, or a shy, feminine type in dresses who’s a trans man. Gender Nonconforming Transgender Folk! They exist! So, see — it’s all biology and science and nothing to do with sex stereotypes.
I have my doubts. But it’s one of the better arguments.
Sastra, that’s one of the arguments. But the others are there, as well. There are dozens of arguments they use to explain why transgenderism is scientific.
The problem with that argument is that it requires there be significant differences neurologically between men and women, and that is, at best, iffy. The brain studies fail to support gender ideology, because most women have a brain more consistent with a so-called ‘male’ brain.
Of course, if there are no significant neurological differences between the sexes, then looking for similarities between trans people and the brains of the opposite sex would find those similarities. They would also find them in non-trans people. Because, well, we all have human brains, and what differences they do find between men and women brains aren’t the sort that you can point to definitively and say “see? that’s a man” or “that’s a woman”. They are using bad studies that are built on the basis of bad studies; double whammy. Or…do two bad studies make a good study? Nope. Not in science.
@iknklast;
So I’ve heard. There’s not a very good history regarding scientists looking for sex-based brain differences in order to explain behavior.
Several other problems: some of the better studies don’t seem to have made a distinction between trans women and gnc gay men ( the latter group does show some similarities with female brains); and two, I’m not sure if they’re targeting specific areas of the brain for study or going with a shotgun approach, where you gather a whole bunch of data and find what supports your conclusion.
Also, the “ transgender” category includes a lot of disparate people. A 13 year old female rape victim and a 62 year old man who’s lived as a man for 61 of those years may both qualify as transgender, but I’d be surprised to find many other similarities. The number of transsexuals who do fit into the “physical gender identity” theory could be very small.
One thing I did see was a correlation between the brain scans of people with body dysphoria, and the brain scans of anorexics and ‘cutters.’ The TRAs aren’t waving that one around, though.
Sastra, much like religious apologists, TRAs will use any and every argument they can, including contradictory ones, purely as a means of getting around the objections of the current audience. If an argument is shown to be weak, they might abandon that argument, if they are being somewhat intellectually honest, but they will simply take up the same debunked argument with the next person they need to win over.
@Holms;
I suspect it’s more likely that different trans rights advocates are using different arguments— though there’s probably a fair number who may use contradictory arguments because they don’t see the contradictions.
As for picking up an argument they no longer agree with just to ‘get around objections,’ I’d have to see that. The religious might do it to save souls from hellfire, but I would guess most people interested in social justice are self-consistent enough not to deliberately lie. They’re the good guys, and know they don’t have to.
Sastra, to say that trans people are «intersex» seems to imply that there is indeed such a thing as biological sex, that there are two «sexes», and that trans people are somewhere between these two. I have seen women demonized as TERFs for far less, since this allows us to talk about the two «sexes» that trans people are «between» as groups in their own right and distinct from people who think or feel or «identify» in any particular way. The «scientific» defense of gender ideology that I see most often is some version of «Not every person on the planet fits neatly into either the «male» or the «female» box (true), therfore biological sexes don’t exist/exist only as social constructs (doesn’t follow)». And since there is no such thing as biological sex words like «man» and (especially) «woman» can’t refer to such a non-existent categoty, therefore the «woman as inner sense of self» definition wins by default.
@Bjarte Foshaug #6;
From what I can tell they don’t deny the existence of the “spectrum of sex,” only that people are either completely male, or completely female. The most important thing which determines where someone is on the spectrum is the brain-based gender module. The social construct aspect of sex comes in when other people make guesses about others, or guesses about the two sexes being discrete. But only the individual themselves has access to what their brain is telling them about where they are. Your gender identity could be any percentage of male or female — including none, or 100% both.
Biological sex, then, is real, but the biological body parts are less significant and informative than the biological brain. My understanding is that it’s not that they believe feelings are more important than biology, but that feelings reveal the biology. It’s brain over body. They accuse ‘Terfs’ of forgetting about brain science, and either gloat about how it’s all been proven, or gloat about how it will all be proven.
Brain studies: where do they get the “control group”? The one with brains that haven’t been affected by gendered socialization?
Control group? What control group?
Sastra, a lot of those studies purporting to show similarities in gay men’s brains and women’s brains were not particularly robust, and rely on the same assumption: that there is a substantive difference between men’s brains and women’s brains. Since this itself is questionable, all of those studies are in doubt, anyway. I have no doubt TRAs use this argument; in fact, I’ve seen it. That doesn’t mean I have to buy that there are somehow any similarities between transwomen’s or gay men’s brains that aren’t present between men and women’s brains to begin with. At this point, there simply isn’t any evidence to support that, so if a TRA tries to throw that argument at me, I shrug and move on. They will not accept anything other than belief in their dogma, and I have better things to do than bang my head against walls.
Also, as maddog1129 so cogently pointed out, any differences they might find in brains are just as likely to be the result of socialization as anything inherent, so it still doesn’t give us innate gender, but rather someone who is drawn to the dynamics of female stereotypical behavior.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. That we need to be nice to trans people because they have brains that really do make them think they’re women? If so, I don’t buy that, because I have seen too many of the brain studies to be impressed.
Sastra, unless one is a mind body dualist, of course every human trait, physical as well as mental, ultimately comes down to something biological. I still don’t see how this changes anything. If having a certain kind of brain (causing people to think or feel in certain ways) may or may not go along with having a certain kind of body, that still doesn’t make the case for why people with certain brain types belong in all the same groups, spaces etc. as people with certain body types (including things like sporting events specifically meant to compensate for people with certain body types having an unfair advantage), who – once again -may or may not have the same kind of brain. They cannot have it both ways, yet insist on having it both ways, hence the Doublethink.
This is starting to look suspiciously circular. Why do people who think or feel a certain way automatically belong in all the same groups and spaces as the people with innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers? Because (on some level) they’re biologically the same. How do we know they’re biologically the same? Because they think or feel a certain way.
Sorry about the blockquote error. Typing on smart devices covfefe.
@iknklast #9;
No, nothing like that. I’m trying to lay out the main argument I’ve encountered on the atheist blogs I frequent (i.e. Pharyngula and Friendly Atheist) It seems different than the popular position Bjarte’s nicely skewering here because these advocates struggle mightily to avoid both anything which smacks of a spooky essence, and anything which endorses sexual stereotypes ( such as men and women having different ways of thinking and behaving.) I need to get it clear in my own mind, and I wanted to see what weaknesses others might see that I missed ( or strengths.) So I’m appreciating the responses.
It’s a bit of a dog’s breakfast. Neurology is a dangerous place to lay down a case for innate gender identity because we don’t understand much about how the brain works on that level. And the “so what?” Argument is a reasonable one. Bottom line, they’re trying to make a case that a transgender individual has a Disorder in Sexual Development similar to Turner’s Syndrome or Androgen Insensitivity. Their gender identity module in the brain did not develop in congruence with their body. Brain trumps sex organs so they should be counted as the sex they know they are, as opposed to what outsiders see. We do it with the “other” intersex — let them choose because their preference ought to be respected, since biology doesn’t make it obvious.
Thanks for clarifying, Sastra. That’s one of the things that pisses me off about places like Pharyngula. PZ spent years…years…skewering the idea of the male/female brain dichotomy, but is willing to use something he knows is dubious at best to score points against TERFs (his identified acronym for people like us, not mine – I do not identify as a TERF).
At best, he’s being disingenuous; at worst, dishonest. I suspect him of the worst here. I am being uncharitable, but who cares?
I don’t think this particular view necessarily endorses a male/female brain dichotomy in terms of stereotypes (men brave; women sweet) but in terms of self-awareness (I’m a man; I’m a woman.) It’s analogous to homosexuality (I’m attracted to men; I’m attracted to women.) How do you know you’re attracted to men? You just do. Being ‘attracted to men’ would be physically grounded somewhere in the brain, a brain characteristic usually found in women, sometimes found in men. In theory, it would be possible to discover the neurology for sexual attraction in reproduction and see how it occasionally jumps sex.
In the same way, ‘I’m a man’ is also supposed to be physically grounded in the brain, and might have developed in a brain which is in the body of a woman. The neurology again can jump sex. The male brain/ female brain distinction only comes into play in the most general terms. A transgender man doesn’t realize they’re not a girl because they dislike girly things; they realize they’re not a girl because their brain informs them they’re not a girl — and “we” identify ourselves with the brain/mind.
If I’m characterizing the argument more or less correctly, PZ isn’t being dishonest, nor is he rejecting his former views on sexist views of the brain. I think he’s mistaken, but for other reasons, notably the problem postulating the brain-based gender identity based primarily on self-reports.
Basically, I’m trying to steel- man the trans argument.
As I found myself saying to three of PZ’s horde just the other day, current transgender ideology is very, very clear that gender dysphoria is NOT required in order to claim transgender identity.
And they fight tooth and nail against applying any sort of diagnostic criteria to such claims.
So even if we COULD pinpoint some actual brain difference–AND show that it is innate, and not a result of brain plasticity–it would likely not show up in all trans people. Autogynephiles are not people who’ve experienced severe gender dysphoria since early childhood, who are not adolescent girls struggling with puberty, who are not trendy blue haired heterosexuals who “identify as” nonbinary.
And of course the question would remain: does having gender dysphoria mean you “are” a female/male woman/man?
if I ever use a sentence like «I’m a man», it’s only ever as a convenient short-hand for something like «I have innate physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers». Either that or I’m not a «man». There is no way to define «man» that makes the sentence true of a person with innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers and me at the same time while making it untrue of «women». So if the brain of a person with a strong preponderance of physical traits from the «mother» set tells «them» they’re a «man», what exacly is it telling them about themselves?
I believe – because it was the way I thought – that the reasons those of us with dysphoria think isn’t so much “I’m a man” but “I can’t be a woman, because this body feels all wrong and for my whole life people have been telling me that girls and women like things which I don’t like, and behave the way I don’t want to; and since they also have been telling me that only boys and men like the things and behave the way I do, I must be a man.”
It is not so much that we know what being a man feels like, but that we know we don’t fit the description of what being a woman is like.