Tag: Confusion

  • Gender identity: woman

    This is making the rounds:

    Whether trans or cisgender, intersex or not, many people identify as
    women. However, what this means varies a great deal depending on their other intersecting attributes. It is important not to assume, for example, that being a woman necessarily involves being able to bear children, or having XX sex chromosomes, or breasts. Being a woman in a British cultural context often means adhering to social norms of femininity, such as being nurturing, caring, social, emotional, vulnerable, and concerned with appearance.

    However, of course, not all women adhere to all these things. For example some neurodiverse women (on the autistic/aspergic/ADHD spectrums) may struggle to express emotions, or with social situations. In some northern working-class contexts femininity is associated with strength and aggression. As always an intersectional understanding is vital and we need to be mindful that what is culturally regarded as the epitome of femininity is white, middle class, youthful, non-disabled, heterosexual, cisgender, and thin. This strongly shapes all women’s experiences of womanhood.

    It’s from the Good Practice Guide of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. You may notice a certain incoherence, along with a certain wildness of assertion. For instance, in the wild assertion category, there is “many people identify as women.” Wut? One, really? Two, never mind “identify as”, what happened to “are”? Many people, in fact a little over half of all people, are women. “Identify as” is, frankly, irrelevant. One “identifies as” something that is chosen; one doesn’t “identify as” a given.

    Then the “what this means” bit is incoherent (as well as laced with wild assertions). Then all the rest of it is both too. And people are doing counselling and psychotherapy on the basis of this confused heap of shite? That’s tragic if so. According to Wikipedia, “BACP is now the largest and broadest professional association for members of the counselling professions in the UK with over 44,000 members.”

    The full guide, written by Meg-John Barker (is that an enby name?), is here. You’ll be relieved to learn that the explanation of “man” is the mirror-image of the one of “woman”: only the choice of stereotypes is altered.

    Pause to Google M-J B.

    Yes.

    Meg–John Barker (born 23 June 1974) is an author, speaker, consultant, and activist-academic. They have written a number of anti self-help books on the topics …

    They is on Twitter, but I find I am blocked from following they. Of course I is.

  • In philosophy ‘certainty’ has a specific meaning

    Jim at Apple Eaters sees Pessin’s ‘paradox’ the way I do.

    Man, there is so much sloppiness here that I want to bite something. First, in philosophy “certainty” has a specific meaning, and it means that there is no doubt. If that’s not what Pessin has in mind, he should define the term. The point there is that, even if I recognize that I am fallible and capable of mistakes, I likely am not certain that I have made some mistake in my reasoning. Were that the case, I would be going over that reasoning carefully to find the error. Rather, I just see that it is possible that I made a mistake, but that is nothing like having certainty about it.

    Just what I say. If he doesn’t really mean ‘certain’ then he should say so – he shouldn’t pretend he means ‘certain’ in order to pretend there’s a paradox but then treat the certainty as actually just a possibility. That’s [Jon Stewartian high-pitched squeal] cheating.

    Accepting contradictions is not a way to accomplish anything except confusion. Being sloppy in your definitions only spreads confusion. Confusion is not peace. In fact, confusion is often the origin of conflict. Pessin is the kind of philosopher who gives the rest of us a bad name.

    Just what I say.