Not the end
Another oh so confident man telling a woman how stupid she is for not believing that sex is all in the mind.
The end? Hardly.
What does it mean to “feel they are one sex”? Nothing, really. Do we “feel we are” humans? Primates? Mammals? Do we feel we are alive now at the end of 2021 as opposed to 1921? Do we feel we live on planet earth as opposed to Mars?
It’s not about what we “feel,” it’s about some basic facts that don’t depend on our thoughts and feelings. We’re free to feel or imagine or pretend we’re all kinds of things – an infinite array of things – but that doesn’t translate to an obligation for everyone else to agree with what we imagine.
And when it’s men trying to usurp the state of being female from people who are female, we really are not obliged to agree.
The beginning.
It’s bizarre. Welford agreed with the point about body not matching sense of self, expanded on it a little, and spoke of consequences when society caters to this sense of self. Campling totally ignored the whole aspect of catering, only to say “nuh uh, feeling a different sex is totally different and more specialer than any other way of body not matching sense of self”, as if everything else simply follows intuitively. If Welford is “misinterpreting”, Campling has not shown it.
“I have zero problem imagining a condition where someone ‘feels’ they are one sex while their body displays another.”
I too fully believe some people think that about themselves. So what? A person’s sex is determined by their body rather than their self image; the feeling of being the other sex doesn’t change a thing.
I have zero problem imagining a condition where someone “feels” they are Jesus while their body displays they are John Doe (or Jane Roe.)
I am defnitely not going to give that person a sponge of vinegar if they are thirsty.
Right on cue, Silentbob opines similarly over on Mano’s blog:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2021/12/28/monarch-butterflies/#comment-4905963“Sorry to go hopelessly off topic, but everytime I come across stuff like this [migratory butterflies having the ability to navigate back to where they hatched] I’m reminded that TERFs think it’s an extraordinary claim that humans simply have an innate sense of being male or female. Like that’s some unfathomable inexplicable psychic ability that couldn’t possibly exist. X-D”
Some humans may indeed have what they feel is an innate maleness or femaleness. So what? They remain their birth sex, because sex has always been and continues to be a matter of bodies, not feelings.
No, we think it’s an extraordinary claim that having that ‘innate sense’ actually makes you other than you are.
And they really are stretching for analogies from the animal kingdom. Monarch butterfly migration is a matter of navigation. A number of species, including bird and fish species, can do it. That is not the same as believing they are not a monarch butterfly or believing they are a male monarch when they are a female. It’s as lousy an analogy as PZ’s horses.
Quite honestly an “innate” sense of being male or female *as evidence* is an extraordinary claim. We can see how this plays out when children are shepherded towards transition when they see the stereotypes assigned to each sex, realize that they don’t fit the stereotypes of their own sex and tell their parents they are “really a girl” or “really a boy,” because they don’t feel like sugar and spice and all that’s nice.
If a trusted adult such as a parent, or a Salinas Valley teacher confirms that, well then it’s time to follow the Yellow Brick Road of Transition.
I don’t think it’s an extraordinary claim exactly, but I think it’s wrong, or at least partly wrong. I think it forgets how much we are told. We’re told that we’re one or the other long before we can form memories, so apparently a lot of people go from “I don’t remember being told I was a girl/boy” to “I’ve always known I was a girl/boy” to “I’ve always known I was a girl/boy in the wrong body.”
It’s not so much an extraordinary claim as it is a practically untestable claim. I see it exactly as Ophelia describes: not knowing when one learned a thing is taken as equivalent to always having known it. The task, then, is to devise a means of distinguishing between the two explanations. Or rather, a means of moving from the null hypothesis (you learned something) to one that posits an additional source of knowledge (you always knew it, God told you, etc.). Honestly, if you think intrinsic/innate knowledge is a useful default explanation, then you have no business rejecting religion. Any religion.
Of course if you really know something, it’s hardly relevant when you first found out. Indeed if your main reason for holding something to be true something today is that you held it to be true yesterday (and the day before that etc. etc.), that should make the claim look instantly suspect. The justification for holding a belief does grow stronger for every day since you arrived at said belief, but is only ever as good as it would be if you heard it for the first time today. There’s a reason why philosophers are so fond of thought experiments asking us to imagine that the whole world wakes up one morning with collective amnesia and have to rediscover all their knowledge etc. It would be a formidable task, but with enough effort it should be possible to rediscover the same laws of physics by repeating the same experiments. What discovery in the present would convince us that, say, one of our many competing holy books is true while all the others are myths when we take away the “homefield advantage” granted pre-held beliefs?
I love that Julia Sweeney’s apostacy from Catholicism and theism in general (as recounted in her monologue Letting Go of God) began with being exposed to Mormon beliefs for the first time as an adult and finding them ridiculous, but then coming to the realization that Catholic dogma would probably have seemed equally preposterous if she heard it for the first time today. As she would later put it “I was just so used to that story”.
Most of my family are lapsed Catholics. At my father’s funeral the priest talked about the Catholic belief that at the end of all things, all of the bodies will be joined with their heavenly souls. Even those cremated. It’s standard Catholic teaching. My brother, who had at once been an altar boy, said that he thinks that the priest had garbled the teaching. It sounded ridiculous to anyone who hadn’t been to mass for 30 years.
But no, that’s it. The Reunification of the Souls.
See #997
https://www.calvarycatholic.com/catholic-teaching/#:~:text=In%20death%2C%20the%20separation%20of,the%20power%20of%20Jesus'%20Resurrection.
The Outsider Test for Faith is a fairly effective tool for showing people that their own beliefs can be ridiculous. Look at it like an outsider would and ask yourself if you can stick with that. Catholics need faith and teach Mystery because otherwise their doctrines make no sense. No more sense than Mormons and their Kolob thingy.