The problem is the idea of “standards”. Standard, as a word, implies objectivity. That’s not what the things you talk about have. Standards can be measured in some independent way. That doesn’t mean they are totally inflexible, because they can have other influences, but your mindset is that “social facts” (gender roles, criminal justice) are the same as other categories: physical fitness, or educational achievement.
What bothers you is variation in social norms. Social norms develop and change – and always have. They exist but their existence does not imply necessity or factuality.
You do realize Nietzsche considered the dominant Western Judeo-Christian culture of his era (that’s the one that holds those quaint gender stereotypes you prize) to be precisely one of those morally inferior subcultures, only one which somehow managed to infect the mainstream with its “slave morality”, right? You can’t use Nietzsche to put down modern subcultures without acknowledging the hypocrisy that Genealogy was basically a book-length putdown of the very culture you’re trying to defend.
It’s true of course that what standards are valuable depends on society’s needs and attributes at any time. What I’m saying is that it’s useful to ask that question, since there are other reasons such standards can exist that are less useful e.g. “It’s how we’ve always done it”.
With regards to your warfare example, I’m not sure I follow. Being able to shoot a gun, and acting macho, are two different things. On my recent trip to Montana, the most highly-regarded hunter in the town I visited was a soft-spoken, elderly woman.
And if there is some correlation between strength of a country’s army and how effeminate it’s culture becomes, the US is against that trend. It’s still an overwhelmingly macho culture compared to many developed nations. Russia too.
This is something many people have problems with. We’re used to the notion that when a baby comes out, you can look at its groin and determine if it’s a boy or a girl - it will always be perfectly clear, and it will always match their chromosomes. If the chromosomes are XY there will be a penis and two testicles, if the chromosomes are XX there will be a slit. Easy and nicely binary.
Turns out, this is yet another way in which Mother Nature is a bitch. You may want to look up “sex chromosome trisomy” and “androgen insensitivity”, but I suggest not having any liquids close to the keyboard. They’re not the only ways in which the nice little binary exam is broken, just two of the most spectacular ones. Both are things we’ve only known about for a few decades; other issues such as the existence of micropenises or undescended testicles are old news.
A few years ago there was a big ruckus when a person who tried to join the Spanish Army as a male (recognized as such in his ID) failed the medical due to “lack of a penis”. I remember an interview with a military doctor who explained that it wasn’t a matter of the doctors involved having an opinion, it was the regulations. When asked what could be done, he stated that “the regulations are in sore need of review, this isn’t the only item that needs to be updated”. Regs got updated; we’ve had several soldiers transition during service, in both directions.
A couple of disorders for XY folks have been mentioned, but it’s not well know that there are XX men, too. That is, people with with the chromosome configuration XX who, nonetheless, look like men including normal-looking fully functional penis. Typically discovered when the man gets a fertility work-up due to failure of a couple to conceive a child but most of them are probably never discovered by medical science.
Yes, mother nature is a trickster. Or maybe we could go with one of those myths that the creator god that makes people on a potter’s wheel or bakes them like bread in an oven or what have you got drunk off his ass, and that’s why people who aren’t quite normal happen, to cook was inebriated at the time and got the recipe slightly wrong. Like one god is saying to another “Dude! You use pink icing on the gingerbread man instead of white! And what’s with this? You got the icing on the bottom of the cake instead of the top! Did you get into the fermented ambrosia again or was it the mead and magic mushrooms over in Valhalla this time?”
I think that the core issue is that the OP doesn’t really know enough about transgendered people to have an informed opinion on the topic. And I’m saying that to be critical of the OP – I don’t have an informed opinion, either. I have also had similar prejudices to those of the OP with regard to transgendered or transsexual individuals. I probably had similarly unfounded biases against gays and lesbians when I was younger and more sheltered. Your post is a reminder that transgendered people live and work alongside us, and sit down at a beer beside us and have a beer or two at 5 p.m. on a sunny Friday afternoon. Nobody seems to give a shit, provided they go on about their business as any other person, straight or otherwise, would.
I’m reminded of an old quote that has been attributed to Barry Goldwater: You don’t have to be straight to fight and die for your country; you just have to shoot straight. The transgendered, like gays, straights, or anyone else, just need to go out and do their jobs and their civic duties. What they were born with or without…who cares?
I suppose the short answer is that people are different. And the more different people you have in a society, the harder it is to create some universal standard of acceptable customs and behaviors. And America is a society that has a long tradition of accepting and integrating people of different cultures and nationalities (more or less), so what we consider “normal” tends to change over time.
This is not necessarily a bad thing as not everyone can meet certain standards. What do you do with those people? They don’t just go away. You need to figure out a way to integrate them so they can participate in society, or they will get angry and resentful and lash out at the society that rejected them.
Let’s take your particular standard of “manliness” - Men are expected to be strong and athletic, demonstrate integrity and courage, enjoy manly pursuits (most of which revolved around sports and beer) and, above all, display emotional control and stoicism.
If everyone held to that standard, you wouldn’t have a Silicon Valley tech industry. You’d just have a bunch of nerds scattered all over America unable to find much success because they would have a hard time getting hired by “manly” hiring managers at traditional companies. And society would lose out on those innovations.
This OP reminds me of the language threads where posters insist that a fixed point in time and geography (usually the poster’s primary or secondary school) is “correct”, without any regard to reality.
And that may change. Want the best employees? Then maybe you want the fat nerd who can hack ISIS servers or fly drones from New Mexico. If being a stoic meathead doesn’t get the job done, then don’t require the guy or gal doing the job to be a stoic meathead.
Once upon a time, an athlete named Jenner put in grueling hours building up the stamina of a distance runner and the upper-body strength to hurl spear good. This wasn’t the OP’s situation, with Nietzsche railing against folks who (a) couldn’t meet a standard and so (b) rejected ideas of ‘working hard’ and ‘achieving stuff’; this was earning Olympic gold by breaking the world record, which had been set by Jenner, when breaking the previous world record, also set by Jenner.
If that person wants to then say “Call me Caitlyn,” it’s not a sour-grapes reaction after failing to meet some standard of manliness; it’s exceeding that standard before simply declaring that “This is who I am.”
Picture a man who doesn’t build up the strength and stamina to become a champion athlete; does it take hard work and courage to wear pants instead of a dress? Well, not really, no; you can meet that standard with ease; with laziness; with cowardice. Does it take courage to go beyond that and do what Jenner did? Absolutely.
With regards to transgender people – imagine that you are transported into a world that is otherwise identical to this one, except that most people look at you and think you are a woman. They think to themselves that you should be dressing like a woman, acting like a woman, going to the woman’s restroom, etc.
Would you be able to acquiesce to their expectations/standards? Would you be content going through the rest of your life acting according to their wishes – in which you act in all ways as a woman?
I doubt you would be. From my understanding, that’s pretty close to the experience of transgender people – the only way they can have a chance have a decent and happy life is to live as their identity tells them to. It can’t be fixed. Furthermore, it doesn’t need to be. They’re not hurting anyone by not living up to your standard. If the way they live bothers you, that’s your problem, not theirs.
Standards can be okay, sometimes, I think. But when they get to the point that you’re bothered by something that has nothing to do with you and doesn’t hurt anyone, then I think it’s pretty clearly a useless and even bad standard.
You’re not understanding why we can’t have a single world standard value system?
What colour is the sky in your world? Not since the dawn of time have the peoples of the earth agreed on anything!
You’ve been in the military so long you’re starting to believe in the black and white of ‘our way or the highway!’. You should stay in the military, I think it’s the best place for someone like you. You needn’t consider if anything is right or wrong or due for change, just obey.
It almost seems like maybe you’ve been in that environment so long you feel others in society should just obey and meet your/self evident standards. Without question.
LOL. Yeah, I kind of look at it as if Jenner basically went as far as possible in the “manliness” department. So what if he wants to try a different career path?
From my experience, people who join the military tend to take a very myopic view of the world. Mostly because their world IS the military. And because the military is relatively important, they tend to view the “military way” as applicable (if not superior) in all aspects of life.
In fact, for the rest of the “real world”, many of the practices of the military such as hierarchical organizations are becoming increasingly outdated, simply because they are not as effective as other styles.
My experience as a veteran is very different. Plenty of the guys (I was in submarines so it was all guys) I worked with in the military didn’t have myopic views – certainly no more than folks I’ve known outside the military.
And while hierarchical structures may not be perfect for everything, they are (IMO) the most effective at accomplishing certain things, and well-run hierarchical organizations can be extremely effective and efficient and even flexible, in general.
This blogpostI found (mostly about the NC law) sums up sex, gender, and gender identity.
Sex (which still isn’t binary, see Klinefelter Syndrome) is not the same as gender or gender identity. Which do you want make standards based on?
Do you see any issues with the “standard” that my daughter should focus on brushing her hair and dressing like a princess when she wants to play soccer and win footraces against the boys in her class?
What does commerce look like if everyone gets to choose what a kilogram is?
What do courtrooms look like if children are allowed to run free in them?
What if everyone spelted and grammerated how ever they feeled like too it?
These are all reasonable standards, there’s a very very good reason to have these. However, some standards are unreasonable or have very poor reasons. I actually learned my current governor was openly bisexual from the national media, we here don’t care as long as she’s doing a good job and her bed-partners are over the age of 18. If we had the standard of “The governor must be heterosexual”, then we’d have lost out on a fine State leader, one of the best in recent years.
I’ll vote for her again, in a second … her bisexuality is a problem for the rest of you, not us.