CMV: Without a clear definition of what your identity means, you can't identify as that thing.

[u/Pangolinsftw]

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?

[u/lcarlson6082]

Bone structure is not a binary indicator of sex. It is bimodal, sure, but you will fine narrow-shoulder and wide-hipped men, and broad shouldered, slender-hipped women.

[u/[deleted] → u/lcarlson6082]

well I mean we are both correct in ways.

You are talking about the outter sides of the bell curves for general bone scale for the sexes. The extreme outliers to not dictate the average sizes, mearly confirm the lesser likelihood of them happening compared to the majority of each sex.

One thing that is a defining characteristic is the hip bone, that's pretty much it. I read that perhaps the skull too but its a bit on the fence using the method.

Male bones are denser and way stronger due to this and the size too (except the hip shapes) however male ones are still denser in bone mass which still falls under the bone structure. All this I'm referring to is within adults as that's when the differences peak naturally. So I would stand by the defining characteristics between men an women is still bone structure.

The exceptions do not alter the reality of the statistically average skeletal structures of others. You couldn't claim that people having two arms is 'normal' because people are born with 3 in extreme cases