Testing Chat IV: A New Hope

[Losonti Tokash]

well look you're dealing with stuff people feel really passionate about, even if they know almost nothing about the actual topic and are, in fact, fucking crazy

but you also meet lots of really smart, really driven people out to make a difference in the world so it evens out

[adr]

i'd rather have a world of activists than a world of ppl who just defend the status quo anyway, even if the activists aren't ideal

[adr]

In modern terms, I mean. Like, the local IWW hall is chill with the local marxists

i kinda want to find some local communist party stuff or something just to sit in on it, i'm sure it'd be interesting just to see what it is like irl cuz i've never been

a friend of mine is running for city council right now and meeting all kinds of local characters in the process, from mainstream folks like the republican party (where she already had a bunch of friends) to the tea party (not what you'd expect btw; the national tea party and the locals don't seem to agree on much. then again the local repubulican party could say the same thing) to anti-fluridation and a small occupy chapter. no anarchists yet tho.

alas tho most the time she goes to these things i'm watching her children so can't tag along lol

but the tenor of the thread was "anarchists are stupid babies and we should have wiped them all out in catalonia so they wouldn't be whining today"

damn son

[adr]

I must not post in the TEO's race threads

wat iz the topic this time? i've actually been hitting teo daily for the last week to follow saxonite's posts, i find them interesting

[Infinity Biscuit]

do you really want to get into the sex vs gender thing

sex = biological
gender = social

I didn't address these at the time since I was busy being pissed at Ryan, but I did want to do it since that stuff bothers me. An excerpt from a recent quote of a friend of mine fits here:

"There is nothing inherently male about a penis or female about a vaginas. Sex itself is constructed. Like look at intersex people. And chromosomes have more variation than scientists once thought. The whole “sex and gender" difference thing is inaccurate. Sex doesn’t really exist in any meaningful capacity. Sex has no cultural or logical root in anything. It’s an oppressive construction meant to argue for biology. All there is are different bodies, that vary more than a binary. And many people who tend to have a majority of attributes clustered around what we’ve arbitrary designated male tend to identify as boys, and arbitrarily designated female tend to identify as girls. But no one identifies as ALL the traits we consider “female" or all the traits we consider “male" and plenty of cis men have traits, even biological ones, considered female, and vice versa, and that INCLUDES intersex people AND dyadic people (people who are not intersex)."

I'm not trying to attack you for this since years ago I used those same kind of words but know better now. Just felt I should address it since it did come up.

[Jung]

I don't know, I think that logic is trying so hard to deny oppressive cultural constructs that it goes into denying ways of thinking of the world that are actually pretty reasonable.

It seems to me that if you're going to deny the usefulness of categories because they break down at edge cases you're not going to be able to categorize much of anything. And being able to categorize things is actually pretty useful and necessary; humans simply don't have the cognitive capacity to keep track of the real complexity of the world, we need those kinds of short-cuts.

[Infinity Biscuit]

What benefit does the separation of "sex" and "gender" give besides giving fodder for people who are going to go "well SCIENTIFICALLY trans people are ACTUALLY blah blah"?

[Jung]

Because sex is actually biologically kind of a real thing?

You can point to the edge cases all you like but "male" and "female" do represent categories that work for most of humanity and outline meaningful differences between them (like being able to get pregnant).

[Infinity Biscuit]

Do you think it honestly helps anyone to tell a trans man "sure, your gender is male, but your SEX is female, see since you have a vagina and a uterus and could carry a baby to term".

Again, what does any of this bring to the table besides reinforcing cissexism?

[Jung]

I dunno, it seems like information that might be medically relevant.

The quote seemed to be talking about it in a lot broader terms than just trans issues. Like, imagine trying to study evolutionary dynamics of sexual selection without having a concept of sex. I guess you could come up with clunkier workarounds, or just avoid the magic words if that makes things better ("sperm producers", "offspring gestators"), but why should we have to do that? It seems like a dreadful admission of social immaturity if we can't handle a concept like biological sexes being a thing you can talk about.

[RyanThunder]

Do you think it honestly helps anyone to tell a trans man "sure, your gender is male, but your SEX is female, see since you have a vagina and a uterus and could carry a baby to term".

Does it do him any good to ignore it?

[adr]

In my fanfiction, on the alien world, the whole sex/gender thing is pretty irrelevant. Their language does have words that mean male and female, but under most circumstances it would be really bizarre to say it. So if you are doing a literal translation from English 'girl', you might piece together words to get 'young female person', and that's technically correct; it is a well-formed word, but no native speaker would actually say it outside of science or medicine (or some random exceptions in certain regions).


It'd be like going up to someone and saying "hello, bipedal, endothermic omnivore". All technically true, those are real words and useful concepts to biologists and maybe doctors, but not something you'd hear in everyday conversation, not something that influences people's day to day lives.

[Infinity Biscuit]

I dunno, it seems like information that might be medically relevant.

The quote seemed to be talking about it in a lot broader terms than just trans issues. Like, imagine trying to study evolutionary dynamics of sexual selection without having a concept of sex. I guess you could come up with clunkier workarounds, or just avoid the magic words if that makes things better ("sperm producers", "offspring gestators"), but why should we have to do that? It seems like a dreadful admission of social immaturity if we can't handle a concept like biological sexes being a thing you can talk about.

Have you ever had to experience gender dysphoria or been close to someone who has? How is it "social immaturity" to try to actively change language to better the condition for trans people?

Sure, we could try to redefine "sex" purely to mean something like "has [x] genitals" or "has [x] chromosomes", but that's not going to happen. There's way too much baggage put up by using the same words for gender and sex when used this way. It's clunky as hell, too: ok so you're talking about women. The gender or the sex? Separating it into "women" vs "XX chromosome" or "women" vs "people with uteruses" depending on the context makes it immediately clear what you're talking about, and doesn't set up a false equivalency between chromosomes or genitals and gender.

Do you think it honestly helps anyone to tell a trans man "sure, your gender is male, but your SEX is female, see since you have a vagina and a uterus and could carry a baby to term".

Does it do him any good to ignore it?

"Ignoring" a bullshit social construct that would say he's not a real man, he's biologically a woman for reasons xyz does a lot of good, yes, since it gives less excuse and backing for people who aren't going to treat him like he's actually a man.

No, he's not ignoring that he has a uterus or a vagina or anything like that, nor should anyone else.

[Jung]

In my fanfiction, on the alien world, the whole sex/gender thing is pretty irrelevant. Their language does have words that mean male and female, but under most circumstances it would be really bizarre to say it.

I imagine that's pretty much how things would work in my ideal world.

[Jung]

How is it "social immaturity" to try to actively change language to better the condition for trans people?

I was more thinking "holy shit what does it say about a society if we can't even be trusted with this extremely basic concept without somehow turning it into something used to be shitty to people?"

It's clunky as hell, too: ok so you're talking about women. The gender or the sex?

I've always understood "women" as referring to the gender and try to use it as much as possible in preference to "female" when talking in social contexts.

Separating it into "women" vs "XX chromosome" or "women" vs "people with uteruses" depending on the context

Sounds unnecessarily clunky. I think "ova carrying individual with XX chromosomes and uterus" is a useful concept.

Also, OK, I know a white cis man talking about how to go about this is problematic as hell, but it seems to me that whether a society has a concept of sex doesn't really have a whole lot to do with how transphobic it is. The problem is conformist gender essentialist ideology not recognition of "male" and "female" as concepts. It kind of seems to me a little like trying to fight racism by trying to convince people not to acknowledge physical differences between different ethnic groups; that's not where the problem is.

[Infinity Biscuit]

Well, there's already terms for what regressive society calls "man" and "woman": "amab" and "afab" (assigned (fe)male at birth). Those terms are important not just for divorcing a person's gender from the one society assigned to them, but also recognising that even the division into two sexes is a construct, as shown by the existence of intersex people. So it helps out at least two groups of people.

In the future (or maybe already but I don't know about it) there'll probably be snappier terminology for things like "person with a penis" or "XX genotype". But tying it in with the construction of "sex" as a "biological reality" as opposed to the "mental" state of gender is massively cissexist and gives us nothing but fodder for confusion, discrimination, and pain.

[Infinity Biscuit]

Also, I apologise for rushing in with "have you felt dysphoria" like that. That's a way more personal question than I intended to ask. I'm just a little antsy today since it's day three of horrifying skin rash oh god why won't the itching stop

[F.J. Prefect, Esq]

Have you ever had to experience gender dysphoria or been close to someone who has?

My best and oldest friend.

And I'm just going to throw this out there but 'recognising that even the division into two sexes is a construct, as shown by the existence of intersex people' would be a more convincing argument if it didn't have to rely on a term like 'intersex' which is just as constructed as all the thing you're complaining about. Not in the sense that it would become a more valid argument if you used a different term, but rather it would be a lot harder for people to go 'so why is it if you're using social constructions to argue against social constructions????'

You are still left with the people who will say things like 'so does this mean that society is bad? Because that's a social construction too' but you know.

[Jung]

Infinity Biscuit, what would you advocate calling a male and female animal?

Also, I apologise for rushing in with "have you felt dysphoria" like that. That's a way more personal question than I intended to ask. I'm just a little antsy today since it's day three of horrifying skin rash oh god why won't the itching stop

No problem.

[Infinity Biscuit]

And I'm just going to throw this out there but 'recognising that even the division into two sexes is a construct, as shown by the existence of intersex people' would be a more convincing argument if it didn't have to rely on a term like 'intersex' which is just as constructed as all the thing you're complaining about. Not in the sense that it would become a more valid argument if you used a different term, but rather it would be a lot harder for people to go 'so why is it if you're using social constructions to argue against social constructions????'

You are still left with the people who will say things like 'so does this mean that society is bad? Because that's a social construction too' but you know.

Well I'm not saying that "sex" as opposed to gender is bad because it's a social construct. Just that it is a social construct (as opposed to people who try to pass it off as BIOLOGICAL TRUTH), and so if it causes more harm than it helps it should be amended or discarded.

Infinity Biscuit, what would you advocate calling a male and female animal?

I honestly have no idea how gender identity would work in non-humans, though I wouldn't be surprised if we could somehow in the future find evidence of it. For now, "male" and "female" should work without issue?

[RyanThunder]

Do you think it honestly helps anyone to tell a trans man "sure, your gender is male, but your SEX is female, see since you have a vagina and a uterus and could carry a baby to term".

Does it do him any good to ignore it?

"Ignoring" a bullshit social construct that would say he's not a real man, he's biologically a woman for reasons xyz does a lot of good, yes, since it gives less excuse and backing for people who aren't going to treat him like he's actually a man.

No, he's not ignoring that he has a uterus or a vagina or anything like that, nor should anyone else.

Ah ok.

[Gands]

Can the next testing chat be Testing Chat 5: Assignment Miami?

We need more Police Academy references.

[RogueIce]

Can the next testing chat be Testing Chat 5: Assignment Miami Beach?

We need more Police Academy references.

I approve of this message.

Also fixed the title for you.

[RogueIce]

Speaking of which:


http://youtube.com/watch?v=AvUjM1uVW48

Greatest rap song OF ALL TIME.

[Jung]

For now, "male" and "female" should work without issue?

So you acknowledge the terms are useful descriptions of the natural world, but you think we should not apply them to humans for social reasons?

This seems rather different from "Sex doesn’t really exist in any meaningful capacity. Sex has no cultural or logical root in anything."