To me you did.
See how that works?
I can see how bad of a job you’re doing in this discussion right now.
Oh sorry, I forgot only you get to be subjective…
You are picking up what I’m laying down, bro.
It only took me about 15 seconds on Google to find out that despite his experiences (which include a horribly botched surgically transition) and his strong opinion against medical transitioning - Scott Newgent considers himself a to be a man and articles about him use male pronouns.
Any reason you’re referring to him as a female?
It really is the same, isn’t it? This reminds me so much of all the rhetoric about how if we let gay people get married, the word “marriage” along with the underlying concept will have lost all meaning and no one will ever get married anymore, leading to the destruction of society.
Then, in the next breath, they’d willfully fail to understand why gays weren’t happy with “civil unions”, because it’s the exact same thing and it doesn’t matter what you call it -why do the gays insist on getting the word “marriage” when words are so meaningless.
Right wing logic at its finest.
The longer this thread goes on, the more it seems that the root conflict is that some people believe gender identity to be a subjective feeling while others see it as an objective (if internal) reality.
Powers &8^]
Because he’s a trans man.
Again, this is the kind of semantic absurdity that is only going to alienate and aggravate people. If he wasn’t a female, then he wouldn’t be trans. Transgender becomes an incoherent concept when we can’t acknowledge that the body’s sex differs from the person’s gender identity.
I wouldn’t necessarily put it in terms of “degrees” of stigmatization, but it should be recognized that sexual minorities face a different kind of hurdle than racial minorities in that we’re often ostracized by our families and existing social circles for our identities. Pretty much nobody was ever disowned by their momma for coming out as black, but that’s a distressingly common situation for queer people, and that absolutely plays a roll in suicide rates.
I asked you a question earlier but I don’t think you answered it. No worries if you don’t want to. But it surprising to see you suggest gender isn’t subjective, given the definition you use for it.
This is what I asked you earlier.
If your concept of gender entails a certain set of behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits, how can this be anything except subjective? If you can’t even describe to me what these traits look like exactly, then how is anyone supposed to treat this as an objective thing?
There is nothing wrong with subjectivity, by the way. Lots of concepts that are valid are subjective. Like beauty and charm. So yes, many people believe gender is wholly subjective, but that doesn’t mean they disbelieve in it.
It’s possible you’re conflating gender expression and gender identity here.
Gender identity is an objective internal sense of what one’s own gender is. I say “objective” not because there are a well known set of criteria or anything, but rather because it’s a) apparently inborn or at least formed early on in most people and rarely changes and b) not open to interpretation by other people.
Gender expression is the external presentation, and that is almost certainly subjective.
If the idea of an objective internal gender identity is foreign to some people, that could be the source of some of the conflict here.
Powers &8^]
I don’t know that no one’s saying we can’t acknowledge that. The problem is that I don’t think everyone treats the primary meaning of “female” as “possessing female anatomy”. If you simply prefixed “anatomically” to “female” when referring to transmen (for example), it might grease some of the friction some of us feel in trying to reconcile the seeming oxymoron.
For example, “Joe Transgender is female” is jarring, othering, and feels like trans erasure, because his gender is male, not female. “Joe Transgender is anatomically female”, on the other hand, is a simple statement of fact (whether true or not). You could also use “genetically female” for someone with XX chromosomes.
Powers &8^]
I’m going by the definition of gender that you gave me earlier. “the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex”. So when you claim someone has a male gender identity, is it not fair to assume you mean they identify with certain traits?
It’s not an oxymoron at all, since you can’t be a trans man and not also be female. What would be oxymoronic is saying a trans man is actually male. Having a male gender identity doesn’t make someone a male. It means they have a male gender identity.
Some are likely concerned. Some just want to shut down debate and scare people into silence, and that’s what was happening here. Emotional blackmail is not an argument, and disagreeing with Banquet Bear is not abusing trans people or acting in contempt. Stating that an adult male is a man is not “rhetorically erasing” anyone. That statement is actually true. You haven’t succeeded in getting rid of that meaning of the word yet.
The need is, one presumes, that they are trans women. A trans woman is a man who identifies as a woman. (Or transwoman; arguing over whether there should be a space or not is a waste of time.) Don’t we want to have a term for that?
‘Stating that a relationship between two men is not a marriage is actually true’.
Somehow I remain unconvinced by your certainty that the meanings of these words hasn’t changed and expanded.
I would agree that the meaning of that word has expanded. It doesn’t change the fact that a committed relationship between a man and a woman is a marriage, and calling that a marriage is not “Rhetorical erasure” of same sex marriages.
This is still subjective, though. If there is no way to know whether someone’s internal sense of self accurately reflects their gender as oppose to their personality or some other thing, it’s a purely subjective determination.
Insisting that gay marriage is not actually marriage would indeed be rhetorical erasure of gay marriage, right?
Of course, but your analogy is really starting to fall apart.
Let’s get into that discussion; if the words “man” and “woman” don’t mean male and female adult, what word do you want to use for those concepts? I assume “cisman” and “ciswoman” are unacceptable, since that is not precisely what they mean. Do we have words we can use?