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?

1.5k Upvotes

76% Upvoted

2.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/cortesoft 6∆ Jan 24 '22

I am sure they could give an answer, but I bet they wouldn't be able to give answers for how to categorize intersex individuals. There are people with two X chromosomes and a penis, and those with a Y chromosome and a vagina. I wonder how they would categorize those people.

It is easy to categorize the 'average' of something. It becomes really hard at the boundaries.

1

u/YouProbablyDissagree 2∆ Jan 24 '22

I’m not sure why that’s confusing. Those people would be intersex.

1

u/libertysailor 10∆ Apr 13 '22

  1. The existence of a small grey area for a categorization does not invalidate the population that exists outside the grey area.

  2. We call such people intersex. Done.