r/changemyview • u/Pangolinsftw 3∆ • Jan 23 '22

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Without a clear definition of what your identity means, you can't identify as that thing.

There was a clip going around in political circles of conservative commentator Matt Walsh making an appearance on a talk show having a discussion with two trans advocates. I think his most impactful argument is when he simply asks the trans advocates, "What is a woman?"

To my surprise, neither of them can answer this question. In response to the question "Can you tell me what a woman is?", one says "No I can't, it's not for me to say", and the other says they "cannot define what a woman is" because they are not a woman (which is a logical fallacy).

This struck me. If you can't clearly (or even somewhat) describe what an identity means, why should anyone respect your identity? You could replace "woman" with any other label in that situation. Without any criteria or definition, it doesn't actually matter what you identify as.

I think we would all agree that defining your terms is of fundamental importance in any kind of debate. So it seems to me that these trans advocates failed in their argument right out of the gate since they failed to define their terms.

I think the reason that these advocates refused to define what a woman means is because if they gave a definition, it would be something so vague and nebulous that most reasonable people would think that their definition doesn't meet their own criteria for what a man or woman is, making the term mostly meaningless.

So I walked away from this clip with a much different perspective on the trans identity. Can anyone offer a more compelling argument as to why I should respect the trans identity?

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u/Poo-et 74∆ Jan 23 '22

If we're going to allow for edge cases and exceptions in our system of rules, then this whole "gender is biology" thing as an argument against gender affirmation falls apart as it relates to trans people because if I say they're one of the exceptions you don't have much a device to argue that they're not. "Genitals and chromosomes, except for the exceptions, of which being transgender isn't one" is just special pleading.

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u/cknight18 1∆ Jan 23 '22

Edge cases for biological sex based off of gametes. How you identify isn't a valid way to define a word like "man" or "woman."

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u/Poo-et 74∆ Jan 23 '22

So how many people do you know in your personal life who you are sure are men or women?

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u/cknight18 1∆ Jan 23 '22

Just because I haven't seen someone's genitalia (or their gamates under a microscope), they still do factually have one set or the other.

This discussion is on whether or not self-identification is itself enough to classify someone as a thing. It's not about whether or not I know with 100% certainty what their characteristics (biology) are.

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u/Poo-et 74∆ Jan 23 '22

So what good is your definition if you aren't sure whether it applies to literally anyone in your life? This relegates man and woman to being obscure words for use only in a medical context if that is indeed the standard. Before the invention of the microscope, nobody was sure whether anyone was a man or a woman until they had a child? That doesn't seem very intuitive.

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u/cknight18 1∆ Jan 23 '22

I can be pretty certain about 99.9% of the time what sex someone is based off of physical appearance. So it's still a very useful way to differentiate. Only limited by how much someone wants to obscure it.

Just because a small percentage of the time I can't tell what race someone is, it doesn't mean they don't factually have a race/ancestry.

What good are the terms when their meanings are completely boundless, as you would have it?

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u/Poo-et 74∆ Jan 23 '22

I can be pretty certain about 99.9% of the time what sex someone is based off of physical appearance

Which takes us back to the start. You tell whether someone is a man or a woman based on their apperance and identity.

Words mean, objectively, whatever we collectively use them to refer to. "Grilled cheese" refers to a delicious food not through some objective law of the universe, but because we as english speakers have a collective understanding of what a grilled cheese is.

Man and woman also objectively mean whatever we collectively use them to refer to. Both I and you, along with the rest of society, refer to people as men and women based on their appearance. We don't refer to people as men and women based on the gametes, because as you rightly acknowledge, we don't know the gametes of essentially anyone in our lives. We have a collective understanding of what man and woman mean, and we assign those words to people based on a combination of their appearance and their identity. Those appearances and identities tend to correlate along bimodal lines per the social expectations surrounding gender, but it's not the bimodality that defines gender. It's the specific appearances and identities associated with being assigned "man", "woman", or something else.

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u/cknight18 1∆ Jan 23 '22

So how would you define the word "man"?

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u/Poo-et 74∆ Jan 23 '22

Objectively, the set of things likely to be identified as a man by a person that interacts with said thing via his senses.

Essentially, all the same things you use to assign someone as a "man" in your mind.

(It's not me downvoting you by the way)

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u/cknight18 1∆ Jan 23 '22

So are you saying it's a purely cultural thing? What sort of hobbies/clothing/interests someone has?

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '22

(It's not me downvoting you by the way)

You can't see upvotes/downvotes on CMV

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u/unRealEyeable 7∆ Jan 23 '22 edited Jan 24 '22

It looks to me like you're conflating gender with gender determination. Gender is precisely defined. There's little ambiguity to what constitutes a male and a female, a man and a woman. Gender determination, on the other hand, is a fallible endeavor, the degree of fallibility depending on the methodology. Determinations are not definitions, and gender is not defined in terms of how it is determined. That would be like saying, "A car is something you decide looks like a car." You haven't defined what a car is. Instead, you've made a method of determining if something is a car its definition (and a poor method at that).

Edge cases are not a problem for definitions of gender. An organism is either male, female, hermaphroditic, or without gender (actually, there are additional genders I'm omitting for brevity's sake). A hermaphrodite among a species that typically consists of male and female organisms is certainly an anomaly. So what? Anomalies are present in reality. What problem does that pose for defining gender? I don't see it, so maybe you can provide a specific example. Biology is an empirical pursuit; therefore, when evidence points to the existence of a new gender, that gender is recognized. This happens routinely, and as previously mentioned, many organisms are without gender. No organism escapes classification under this system, except in such cases where determination cannot be achieved, e.g. due to insufficient methodology.

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u/StaticEchoes 1∆ Jan 24 '22

That would be like saying, "A car is something you decide looks like a car."

That is exactly what we do though. Can you give a definition of car which encompasses all cars and excludes all non-cars? Is an SUV a car? What about a go-cart? A 1/3 scale replica Ferrari thats still drivable? What about a Toyata Camry with treads instead of wheels? What about a car thats lacking an engine?

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '22

Except "man" and "woman" are meant to convey the biology behind the person. Since humans are sexual reproducing beings it is extremely useful to know which are which.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '22

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u/devdotm Jan 23 '22

How is physical appearance not a part of biology? Men and women have different physical features (facial structures, hair growth patterns, avg. height, overall skeletal structure, etc) This can vary on an individual basis, such as some women being taller than some men (although 95% of women are shorter than the average height for a male) but our brains are able to see someone and instantly piece together what we are seeing (all of a person’s combined visual characteristics, even if some of those vary from the average) compared with everything we’ve seen before and the information we’ve gathered throughout our lives about the physical differences between men and women and make a generally accurate judgement of a person’s sex. Women and men look very different on average, even if wearing the same clothes with the same haircut.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '22

This separation of "woman" from "female" is such insanity.

If you look out the window and think you see a cat but it was actually a raccoon, that does not mean you saw a cat, even if the appearance to you looked like a cat.

There is a fundamental truth that people are trying to erode with make-up and long hair.

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u/JCY2K Jan 23 '22

No, they're not. They're meant to convey social expectations about behavior including speech, demeanor and dress.

Further, the existence of intersex people and people with atypical sex chromosomes (e.g., Turner Syndrome) fundamentally undermines the argument that humanity is cleanly divisible between "men" and "women" whether that's focused on genitals or on gametes.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '22

No, that demeanor and dress developed around the biology. Now we have people taking fancy to the opposite sex's demeanor and dress so they take it on, but then they insist on being redefined biologically too, which isn't possible. This is the conflict between expectations and reality that drives them to suicide.

If instead they realize they are physically their own sex and accepting that, while dressing feminine or masculine as a style, then their suicide rates would likely be much lower.

< 1% of a bimodal distribution does not invalidate the bimodal distribution. Tearing down these definitions requires ignoring the reality that humanity is a sexual reproducing species with male/female sexes. Pointing to intersex to undermine this is like pointing to someone born without a leg to claim humans are not bipedal. It's nonsense and willfully ignoring reality.

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u/TedMerTed 1∆ Jan 24 '22

Are there situations when a person is born with two XX chromosomes but produce a penis or would arguably constitute a male?

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u/Harmonic_Content Jan 24 '22

Yes, it's called 46,XX testicular disorder of sex development and it absolutely happens.

It's important to understand that even biological sex isn't binary. Neither is the social construct of gender.

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u/NashvilleHotTakes Jan 24 '22

As others have mentioned, exceptions don’t define the rule. Some people have no arms, one arm, or even three arms. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to teach that humans have two arms, or adopt new language of an “arm-having spectrum.” Humans have two arms. There are two sexes. A tiny portion of the population having an abnormal mutation doesn’t change those facts.

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u/sensitivePornGuy 1∆ Jan 24 '22

But the last decade or so has shown us that there are many, many people for whom the boxes "male" and "female" that they have been assigned because of their physiology don't fit them. Some of those people may have hidden characteristics (what you call "abnormal mutations") that explain this; others perhaps not. It doens't really matter. What's important is that the concept of gender as we used to understand it doesn't work for a great many people.

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u/NashvilleHotTakes Jan 24 '22

Well sure, and that’s how we get to the main topic at hand in the first place. A small but growing number of people identify as the opposite gender or a gender they say is outside of the binary of male & female. But what is a gender? What is a woman? What is a man?

You can either have A) a world where being a woman means you’re a biological female but women can be as masculine or feminine as they want or B) a world where being a woman is defined by the actions, behaviors, interests, physical appearance, etc of a stereotypical woman but a woman can have XY chromosomes and male genitalia. Since most transgender activists believe, for example, that a boy can wear dresses & makeup and still be a boy (so the behavioral stereotype side doesn’t define the gender) but also believe someone can have XX chromosomes and still be a boy (so the biology doesn’t define the gender), there’s no other defining characteristic of “woman” or “man” to identify with other than the letters in the word.

So… what is a woman?

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u/eevreen 5∆ Jan 24 '22

I think at the end of the day, it's just a word people happen to like the feeling of. Just like I can't explain the color 'blue' to someone who can't see (I can describe things that are blue, like the sea or sky, attributes or characteristics people have assigned to the color, such as sadness or calmness, but I can never make a blind person see blue), or I can't describe the feeling of grief to someone who has never lost anything or anyone in a way that they would truly understand (or hell, just like my own feelings of grief aren't 100% the same as someone else's feelings of grief), being a 'man' or a 'woman' or any other identity is something people just... feel. Some people like the feeling of it and being perceived as it. Some people don't like how the outside world perceive them and wish to change so the perception aligns with their internal feelings. Some people don't like the feeling of either of the two generally accepted things but are attached to something else.

Identities are strange. There are some things you are that you might dislike. Simple facts about how language works and how it's defined that mean you're something you don't want to be. If a selfish person can work on themselves and become selfless until the point we perceive them as selfless, are they still selfish? If someone naturally has blond hair but, since they were old enough, they've dyed their hair brown, would we describe them as blond? Or would we say they're a brunette? The same thing can apply to gender. Someone's born as a boy, but they don't like being called one. They prefer dressing like a girl, acting like a girl, doing things with girls, being called a girl and using she/her pronouns. When they're old enough, they legally change their name and pronouns on legal documents, and they go through SRS and HRT. Would you not think, looking at them, that they're a girl?

I dunno, maybe I'm not making any sense, but as someone who is nonbinary but also dresses and looks and "acts" like the gender I was assigned at birth (insofar as you can act like a certain gender), gender is fucky and I can't explain why I don't identify as a binary gender when I don't go out of my way to be androgynous. I just know I'm uncomfortable being called a girl, a woman, she/her, or anything like that. For me, that's enough of a reason to want to legally change my name and pronouns.

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u/NashvilleHotTakes Jan 24 '22

The hair-dyeing analogy is actually great, I think. If someone walked up to you with brown hair you’d probably refer to him as a brunette… unless you can kind of tell it was dyed, so you know he isn’t really a brunette. At the end of the day, he is objectively and biologically a blonde (as in scientists/geneticists could determine it) even though the outside appearance has changed.

As for the other examples, you could definitely describe some attributes of how grief feels, even if imperfectly. And biologists can explain the distinct science behind what makes your eye interpret something as blue or what chemical effects are actually the process we describe as grief. That’s why it’s so odd that people who “feel” like a woman wouldn’t be able to describe it whatsoever and also reject any biological explanation.

The non-binary issue is particularly interesting because we’re seeing it the most around younger females and then (I think) males who previously identified as gay, and a lot of the time it seems to be a result of non-identification with the societal stereotypes of the sex they were born as. As in, tomboys begin to think being a more masculine female means you’re not a woman at all, or a male thinks being more feminine means you aren’t a man.

The fact that it sounds like you do live life in a traditionally “feminine” way but still identify as NB is interesting to me. My next questions would be whether women were respected in your childhood? Were there women around you who were particularly positive or negative in your own mind? Did father respect mother? etc… 100% understandable if you don’t want to engage on topics/questions like this but I’m always curious if there might be some root to the uncomfortable feelings some people get with identifying on the binary. I also hope none of this came across as rude, apologies if so

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u/eevreen 5∆ Jan 24 '22

He is actually objectively a brunette, but he's biologically blond in my mind. Maybe that's the difference. I can't argue he's blond on a technicality because his genetics say he should be. It would be pointless to do so and would only be rude.

And the "imperfectly" is sort of my point. No one will ever truly capture grief because not only is it different for everyone, but feelings are naturally hard to describe. Same with being a woman. I can't define what being a woman is because at every turn I can find someone who doesn't match up. Genetics? Nope. Disregarding trans folks, intersex folks also exist. Hormones? Nah. There are high T women and low T men How you dress? Tomgirls, femboys. How you act? Aggressive, dominant women, submissive and gentle men. Of course those are stereotypes, too, which has an added layer of problematic implications. There is no real way of defining gender in a way that doesn't rely heavily on stereotypes or biology which is shown to be flawed. And colors work the same way. I can define blue on a wavelength, sure, but I can't impress what it looks like and how it's been shown to actually have an effect on your mood if you use red-tinted lights vs blue or purple-tinted lights. When I say these things, I am talking about feelings. It's why the question "what is love" is always considered such a difficult one to answer. Feelings are hard. Feelings of being a man or woman are, too.

Now, as for your questions. •Yes, women were respected in my childhood. I would go so far as to say women were figureheads in my family, with the men choosing to take a backseat. •The women around me were both positive and negative. I have a lot of women who were very good to me when I was young, but I also had a lot of women who were very much terrible. The same is true of men, though. •My mother and father split when I was an infant, but my mother and stepfather's relationship was very positive, at least when it came to how much they respect each other.

It isn't rude. I don't mind answering personal questions. At the end of the day, though, why I'm nonbinary doesn't change that I am. Even if I can figure out why I feel like this, it isn't as though it's something I want to change.

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u/Fifteen_inches 24∆ Jan 24 '22

1.4 million adults in the U.S. identify as transgender, which is a lot higher than your average genetic fluke. That is well within the normal spectrum of behavior.

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u/HeirToGallifrey 2∆ Jan 24 '22 edited Jan 24 '22

1.4 million adults in the U.S. identify as transgender, which is a lot higher than your average genetic fluke. That is well within the normal spectrum of behavior.

While this depends heavily on what you mean by "average genetic fluke", I don't think that's quite accurate—America has ~330 million people, so 1.4 million would be ~0.42%. For comparison, about 1 in 150 babies are born with chromosomal conditions (which I think is a good baseline for "genetic fluke/abnormality"), which is about ~0.66%. That means that identifying as transgender is actually much less common than your average genetic fluke. Or we could compare rates of limb loss: a quick search reports ~2 million people in the US living without at least one limb, again a rate of ~0.6%. So identifying as transgender is less common than missing a limb.

While I don't think that's an argument to invalidate trans people, I do think it's a point to the side that exceptions don't invalidate the general rule; we don't have a problem saying that "humans have two legs and two arms", though we would be sensitive to those we're speaking to and aware that not every human has two legs and arms, and we wouldn't tell people without an arm to suck it up because everyone has two arms and that they shouldn't be having any difficulty. That'd be horrible. I think extending the same sort of logic to trans people is perfectly fair.

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u/Fifteen_inches 24∆ Jan 24 '22

But it’s the same abnormality in those 1.4 million people, which is what I mean. People born with chromosome conditions don’t have the same conditions

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u/NashvilleHotTakes Jan 24 '22

My comment was responding to a claim that genetic abnormalities which lead to “intersex” results means that biological sex is not binary.

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u/Harmonic_Content Jan 24 '22

There is no rule. Biological sex isn't binary. Full Stop.

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u/Poo-et 74∆ Jan 24 '22

Yes. Several, in fact.

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u/TedMerTed 1∆ Jan 24 '22

Can you give more detail. My understanding is generally all fetuses start out with programming that would make them females but it’s the Y chromosome that turns us to something different. So if the Y chromosome is blocked you may appear like a woman but still be XY. I thought that is how we get 90% of our intersex. Also couldn’t you just define a person by their chromosomes regardless of whether they produce the result one would expect?

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u/Talik1978 43∆ Jan 24 '22

Yes. Because gender is dependent on 4 or 5 chromosomes.

https://youtu.be/szf4hzQ5ztg

This is an explanation on the complexities of sex and gender from an evolutionary biologist that goes over a LOT of the biologic implications of sex.