Hot from the dying embers of an argument (with the eloquently argumentative ?ex-nonbinary? teen in our home, which ended loudly: 'Well I completely refuse to discuss this with you. You're clearly a racist, ignorant bigot. Just shut up'), I've fallen on this.
This wonderful article would have been perfect to study, before I boldly opened the doorway between us to this forbidden topic. Needless to say, I was slaughtered! Scratching my forehead, confused and feeling bereft, left gasping on the pile of unnavigable and substance-less verbal gymnastics that this topic dishes up.
Boy- I wish I'd read this beforehand!
I'm going to study it, and see if I can memorise and replicate some of it under pressure.
There's hope for us all yet!
This is understandable, sensible, and irrefutable!
Excellent. "Should a transperson who is objectively male wish to be addressed by feminine pronouns, that person is entirely free to request their preferred linguistic designations of their friends, family, work colleagues, and strangers. But whether such a preference is accepted or not by anyone is up to each person."
Instead of letting the request be accepted or rejected, it is usually shoved down the throats of others with a fist. When "preferential" is mandated, is there any wonder that some resist or are offended by this mandate?
And when parents are told they are at risk of having their kids removed from their homes and placed with foster families if they don't comply with using opposite-sex pronouns and new names, "preferences" have become threats with serious consequences. Something is seriously wrong with the way things have evolved in this movement.
The notion of gender as a subjective "feeling" is simply a another specialized expression of a philosophical school that has been around for millennia, namely, solipsism, that there is no external reality, only 𝘮𝘺 "feelings". It's just another version of the hypothetical situation much beloved of college sophomores, the "brains in vats" or , more plausibly, programs in a computer that "think" they are brains in vats.
It's unfortunate, but it's utterly useless and a waste of time and effort to elaborate the logical absurdities of gender ideology. As the great logician Bertram Russell showed with his "proof" that he was the Pope, 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 (and its opposite) can be proved if a false premise is accepted.
Fortunately, or not, depending on your viewpoint, material reality does have a way of turning around and biting when it is ignored too long or in the wrong circumstances. That gives me hope we will eventually see the end of postmodernist wokery. I just don't know how long it will take.
The more I think about philosophy, or at least the philosophy that informs queer theory and gender identity ideology, the more convinced I am that queer and gender identity philosophy are antithetical to our liberal constitutional democracy. That's because gender identity ideology managed to capture our institutions without meaningful public debate or the consent of a majority of the voters and because gender identity ideology and its capture of our institutions cannot be defeated by the voters at the ballot box the way politicians are.
Where I appreciate that Paul Tyson is creating an argument based on logic to handle the sex vs gender social perspectives and therefore policies, it misses that for many of us, gender doesn't exist outside of personality and our sex is not something to "identify as."
"Cis" in relation to sex is a problem beyond a person's "self-identification." "Cis" is a problem because I cannot be "on this side" or "on the other side" of my sex - sex is not a location in space to be positioned in relation to. It is also is a problem because it implies that some women are male, which forwards the erasure of female language, sex-based boundaries, and sex based accommodations. Accepting "cis" is to accept queer theory as truth.
Re: social pronoun use
Though I reject compelled speech, and reject teaching preferred pronouns being taught to children in schools and enforced in businesses, I also support voluntarily using opposite sex pronouns for those who have transitioned.
I also appreciate Steersman's gamete production (or organization to produce) based definition of sex.
This essay has helped me better conceptualize a similar sociolinguistic problem I have been thinking about recently. The following passage from the essay states the ideal resolution to predicament I find myself in:
"[I]f queer advocates are to respect the liberal pluralism within which they have certain rights and privileges, then they should stop seeking to force people who do not believe in queer theory to play queer language games."
You see, queer advocates in the health care industry are forcing me, a sex realist who rejects queer theory and gender identity ideology, to play their queer language games. I discovered this when I had occasion to look at my personal information on two health care organizations' patient interfaces.
I was shocked to discover that the organizations store, display and presumably report my "sex assigned at birth" and my "gender identity" as part of my medical record.
I immediately informed both organizations in writing that my medical records are incorrect. First, it is factually incorrect to say that my sex was assigned at birth. When I was born almost 70 years ago, the queer view that sex is assigned at birth had not yet emerged. That 21st century concept was alien to the highly educated and well trained Venezuelan doctor who delivered me in a Caracas hospital. Hence, my sex (male) was determined biologically at conception and observed by that physician because my anatomy was not at all ambiguous. Those are the undisputed facts.
As for gender identity, I said that I did not "identify as" male. I AM a male. What's more, I do not believe in the existence of gender identity. I added that both categories have their roots in philosophy and activism, not science, and they do not belong in medicine. I asked that the organizations correct the errors I had pointed out.
Both health care organizations - The Portland Clinic and Providence Health & Services, Oregon & S.W. Washington (“Providence”) - refused to make any changes to the records. Providence suggested that I ask the enterprise that owns the patient interface (MyChart) to make the changes. I know from experience in a different field that business-to-business arrangements of this kind generally do not work that way, so the only question is whether Providence made the suggestion in bad faith, out of ignorance or simply to wear me down and make me go away.
The response from The Portland Clinic was far more disturbing because it reflected how deeply gender ideology has penetrated the institution:
"Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention. The sex assigned at birth and gender identity fields are fixed fields in the medical record. Thus, the information cannot be removed. However, you are welcome to select the "Choose not to disclose" option if you do not wish to select an answer. Sex assigned at birth is the recognized nomenclature in health care. This is also the nomenclature used by the CDC. As you mentioned, the sex that is assigned by a medical provider is based on the genitalia (and in certain cases other factors) observed at birth."
"We appreciate your feedback regarding gender identity, but as an organization that is proud to serve a diverse population of patients, we believe that it is important to give all patients the opportunity to express their identity and have that identity acknowledged. Please feel free to select the 'Choose not to disclose' option if you do not wish to provide an answer for the gender identity field."
Neither of these suggested solutions is satisfactory.
The last thing I want to do is create potentially dangerous uncertainty in my medical record about something as basic and vital as my biological sex by opting for "Choose not to Disclose."
With respect to the “Gender Identity” box, selecting "Choose not to Disclose" would be no improvement. I would still be conceding that I have a gender identity. The whole point is that I do not. The only satisfactory option is to let me answer “none.” Otherwise it would be like asking for a patient’s religion and not giving patients the ability to select “none.” (The Clinic does in fact give patients the option of choosing "None" in the religion category.) Since gender ideology is more like a religion than a science, the very least The Portland Clinic could do is give me the choice with respect to gender identity that they offer religious believers.
I have been wrestling with how to characterize The Portland Clinic's transparently partisan rhetoric. British author and cultural writer Helen Pluckrose hit on it in a recent essay when she said that queer Critical Social Justice activists are "conflating sexuality with gender and gender with sex, 'educating' everybody in their own theories, policing language, making people affirm things they don’t believe and trying to shoehorn issues of sexuality and gender into absolutely everything even when it has no relevance at all." [1]
Because The Portland Clinic and Providence use the same patient interface (“MyChart”) for all their patients, the errors I’ve described here probably affect every patient who holds the same sex realist views that I do about gender ideology.
The solution to the gender identity problem is quite simple. First, the health care organizations need to correct an egregious oversight by defining what they mean by “gender identity.” The definition must state something to the effect that "gender [is] a matter of personal and subjective belief." It is likely that many patients are not at all familiar with the term as it is used by genderists and the health care organizations. That is one way queer activists get people to "affirm things they do not believe."
Finally, they must acknowledge that sex is "a matter of objective and scientifically determinable fact" and allow sex realist patients to select "none" from the menu for the gender identity box. It would turn queer activists’ narrative on its head were the health care organizations’ statistics to show a drop in the percentage of patients claiming a gender identity related to the reforms in data collection.
It remains to be seen whether this clear and unwanted manipulation of patients’ medical records in service of gender ideology will motivate sex realist activists to oppose it as part of a well-planned, well-coordinated and well-financed campaign. Genspect, what do you think?
Ollie, this is so disturbing- yet another example of the capture of the medical profession. When at a mammogram clinic last year, I seem to recall the intake form also asking for “sex assigned at birth” and gender identity as two separate questions. I crossed out both and wrote Sex: female. I would love to see how that record was input. I also commented to the intake admin person that medical institutions shouldn’t be caving to this absurdity (while also acknowledging that it wasn’t her fault the form was worded this way). She just gave me a kind of knowing/sad smile in return.
We should be able to laugh away the ludicrous logic of gender ideology. Unfortunately the extremely deep pockets of the Trans Lobby that pushes the Yogyakarta Principles +10 has forced ludicrous logic into our laws and policies. We are all prey to the cult of transgenderism.
What a headache.
I hope the Supreme Court stops the substitution of gender for sex.
But! If someone is driven by an inner psychological force....whether influenced by external forces or an overpowering sexual drive....then they are not going to play ball because they are absolutely certain they are the sex they believe they need to be/actually are. Therefore they are unable to be rational because this belief/desire has overwhelmed them and the way they view themselves.
The unkind view is that they behave like toddlers who will not accept the word no.
I think a big problem is that decent and rational trans people are being lumped together with extreme activists who have a variety of motives.
We must never forget we are talking about individual human beings - some of whom are very troubled.
Oddly, I made this point to an acquaintance a couple days ago: If one accepts gender identity ideology to affirm another's transgender feelings, one necessarily accepts the cisgender label. Hence, I am no longer a male because of "an accident of birth" and the consequential normative sexual development driven by my gene complement, but because I happen to feel intensely male, or masculine and that feeling happens to align with my physiology. The underlying point here is that gender identity ideology is not a mere gloss on sex but categorically supplants sex. "Sex assigned at birth" becomes the last vestige of sex in that ideology, but is treated as a mere proxy for a neonate's gender identity, until that magical moment when that child forms their immutable (albeit variable, nonbinary, and utterly subjective) "gender identity." "Cisgender" is no innocuous courtesy to facilitate conversation with gender advocates, but a coercive term that denies my material reality.
> "... I believe this to be the case because I am a person of the female sex ..."
And, pray tell, EXACTLY what does it take to qualify as a "person of the female sex"? Citations required ...
But there is NO intrinsic meaning to the words "male" and "female". Moses didn't bring the "First Dictionary" down from Mt. Sinai on tablets A through Z, so no definitions qualify as gospel truth. They're all "socially constructed" but some are better than others.
Part of the problem, a big part in fact, is that the colloquial definitions -- basically "boys have penises and girls have vaginas" -- lead to any number of problems. Witness Tickle vs Giggle, and Khelif and the IOC -- they "won" their cases because of those colloquial definitions.
But many people balk at the standard biological definitions because they don't comport with women's vanity and transwomen's envy -- pretty much everyone, not just the dysphoric, are turning the sexes into matters of "immutable identity 🙄" instead of recognizing them as labels for transitory reproductive abilities.
Y'all might pick up a dictionary or two and learn how to use them. And consider the standard definitions from various biological journals, encyclopedias, and dictionaries:
A profession that, maybe arguably, goes back to Biblical times, probably before Adam took a ribbing from Jehovah and Eve showed up on the scene -- so to speak. 🙂
But categorization is what we, as humans, DO -- part of our bedrock and of our civilizations, such as they are. However, that process can easily go off the rails and into the weeds. The tale, the parable of The Tower of Babel being something of an object lesson on that score.
Not that many people are listening to those lessons of history. But you might also have some interest in my further elaborations on that theme 🙂:
Hot from the dying embers of an argument (with the eloquently argumentative ?ex-nonbinary? teen in our home, which ended loudly: 'Well I completely refuse to discuss this with you. You're clearly a racist, ignorant bigot. Just shut up'), I've fallen on this.
This wonderful article would have been perfect to study, before I boldly opened the doorway between us to this forbidden topic. Needless to say, I was slaughtered! Scratching my forehead, confused and feeling bereft, left gasping on the pile of unnavigable and substance-less verbal gymnastics that this topic dishes up.
Boy- I wish I'd read this beforehand!
I'm going to study it, and see if I can memorise and replicate some of it under pressure.
There's hope for us all yet!
This is understandable, sensible, and irrefutable!
Excellent. "Should a transperson who is objectively male wish to be addressed by feminine pronouns, that person is entirely free to request their preferred linguistic designations of their friends, family, work colleagues, and strangers. But whether such a preference is accepted or not by anyone is up to each person."
Instead of letting the request be accepted or rejected, it is usually shoved down the throats of others with a fist. When "preferential" is mandated, is there any wonder that some resist or are offended by this mandate?
And when parents are told they are at risk of having their kids removed from their homes and placed with foster families if they don't comply with using opposite-sex pronouns and new names, "preferences" have become threats with serious consequences. Something is seriously wrong with the way things have evolved in this movement.
The notion of gender as a subjective "feeling" is simply a another specialized expression of a philosophical school that has been around for millennia, namely, solipsism, that there is no external reality, only 𝘮𝘺 "feelings". It's just another version of the hypothetical situation much beloved of college sophomores, the "brains in vats" or , more plausibly, programs in a computer that "think" they are brains in vats.
It's unfortunate, but it's utterly useless and a waste of time and effort to elaborate the logical absurdities of gender ideology. As the great logician Bertram Russell showed with his "proof" that he was the Pope, 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 (and its opposite) can be proved if a false premise is accepted.
Fortunately, or not, depending on your viewpoint, material reality does have a way of turning around and biting when it is ignored too long or in the wrong circumstances. That gives me hope we will eventually see the end of postmodernist wokery. I just don't know how long it will take.
The more I think about philosophy, or at least the philosophy that informs queer theory and gender identity ideology, the more convinced I am that queer and gender identity philosophy are antithetical to our liberal constitutional democracy. That's because gender identity ideology managed to capture our institutions without meaningful public debate or the consent of a majority of the voters and because gender identity ideology and its capture of our institutions cannot be defeated by the voters at the ballot box the way politicians are.
Where I appreciate that Paul Tyson is creating an argument based on logic to handle the sex vs gender social perspectives and therefore policies, it misses that for many of us, gender doesn't exist outside of personality and our sex is not something to "identify as."
"Cis" in relation to sex is a problem beyond a person's "self-identification." "Cis" is a problem because I cannot be "on this side" or "on the other side" of my sex - sex is not a location in space to be positioned in relation to. It is also is a problem because it implies that some women are male, which forwards the erasure of female language, sex-based boundaries, and sex based accommodations. Accepting "cis" is to accept queer theory as truth.
Re: social pronoun use
Though I reject compelled speech, and reject teaching preferred pronouns being taught to children in schools and enforced in businesses, I also support voluntarily using opposite sex pronouns for those who have transitioned.
I also appreciate Steersman's gamete production (or organization to produce) based definition of sex.
This essay has helped me better conceptualize a similar sociolinguistic problem I have been thinking about recently. The following passage from the essay states the ideal resolution to predicament I find myself in:
"[I]f queer advocates are to respect the liberal pluralism within which they have certain rights and privileges, then they should stop seeking to force people who do not believe in queer theory to play queer language games."
You see, queer advocates in the health care industry are forcing me, a sex realist who rejects queer theory and gender identity ideology, to play their queer language games. I discovered this when I had occasion to look at my personal information on two health care organizations' patient interfaces.
I was shocked to discover that the organizations store, display and presumably report my "sex assigned at birth" and my "gender identity" as part of my medical record.
I immediately informed both organizations in writing that my medical records are incorrect. First, it is factually incorrect to say that my sex was assigned at birth. When I was born almost 70 years ago, the queer view that sex is assigned at birth had not yet emerged. That 21st century concept was alien to the highly educated and well trained Venezuelan doctor who delivered me in a Caracas hospital. Hence, my sex (male) was determined biologically at conception and observed by that physician because my anatomy was not at all ambiguous. Those are the undisputed facts.
As for gender identity, I said that I did not "identify as" male. I AM a male. What's more, I do not believe in the existence of gender identity. I added that both categories have their roots in philosophy and activism, not science, and they do not belong in medicine. I asked that the organizations correct the errors I had pointed out.
Both health care organizations - The Portland Clinic and Providence Health & Services, Oregon & S.W. Washington (“Providence”) - refused to make any changes to the records. Providence suggested that I ask the enterprise that owns the patient interface (MyChart) to make the changes. I know from experience in a different field that business-to-business arrangements of this kind generally do not work that way, so the only question is whether Providence made the suggestion in bad faith, out of ignorance or simply to wear me down and make me go away.
The response from The Portland Clinic was far more disturbing because it reflected how deeply gender ideology has penetrated the institution:
"Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention. The sex assigned at birth and gender identity fields are fixed fields in the medical record. Thus, the information cannot be removed. However, you are welcome to select the "Choose not to disclose" option if you do not wish to select an answer. Sex assigned at birth is the recognized nomenclature in health care. This is also the nomenclature used by the CDC. As you mentioned, the sex that is assigned by a medical provider is based on the genitalia (and in certain cases other factors) observed at birth."
"We appreciate your feedback regarding gender identity, but as an organization that is proud to serve a diverse population of patients, we believe that it is important to give all patients the opportunity to express their identity and have that identity acknowledged. Please feel free to select the 'Choose not to disclose' option if you do not wish to provide an answer for the gender identity field."
Neither of these suggested solutions is satisfactory.
The last thing I want to do is create potentially dangerous uncertainty in my medical record about something as basic and vital as my biological sex by opting for "Choose not to Disclose."
With respect to the “Gender Identity” box, selecting "Choose not to Disclose" would be no improvement. I would still be conceding that I have a gender identity. The whole point is that I do not. The only satisfactory option is to let me answer “none.” Otherwise it would be like asking for a patient’s religion and not giving patients the ability to select “none.” (The Clinic does in fact give patients the option of choosing "None" in the religion category.) Since gender ideology is more like a religion than a science, the very least The Portland Clinic could do is give me the choice with respect to gender identity that they offer religious believers.
I have been wrestling with how to characterize The Portland Clinic's transparently partisan rhetoric. British author and cultural writer Helen Pluckrose hit on it in a recent essay when she said that queer Critical Social Justice activists are "conflating sexuality with gender and gender with sex, 'educating' everybody in their own theories, policing language, making people affirm things they don’t believe and trying to shoehorn issues of sexuality and gender into absolutely everything even when it has no relevance at all." [1]
Because The Portland Clinic and Providence use the same patient interface (“MyChart”) for all their patients, the errors I’ve described here probably affect every patient who holds the same sex realist views that I do about gender ideology.
The solution to the gender identity problem is quite simple. First, the health care organizations need to correct an egregious oversight by defining what they mean by “gender identity.” The definition must state something to the effect that "gender [is] a matter of personal and subjective belief." It is likely that many patients are not at all familiar with the term as it is used by genderists and the health care organizations. That is one way queer activists get people to "affirm things they do not believe."
Finally, they must acknowledge that sex is "a matter of objective and scientifically determinable fact" and allow sex realist patients to select "none" from the menu for the gender identity box. It would turn queer activists’ narrative on its head were the health care organizations’ statistics to show a drop in the percentage of patients claiming a gender identity related to the reforms in data collection.
It remains to be seen whether this clear and unwanted manipulation of patients’ medical records in service of gender ideology will motivate sex realist activists to oppose it as part of a well-planned, well-coordinated and well-financed campaign. Genspect, what do you think?
[1] Pluckrose, Helen. “Why Do You Need to Talk About Sexuality at All?” The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain. 8 September 2024. https://substack.com/@helenpluckrose/p-148622634
Ollie, this is so disturbing- yet another example of the capture of the medical profession. When at a mammogram clinic last year, I seem to recall the intake form also asking for “sex assigned at birth” and gender identity as two separate questions. I crossed out both and wrote Sex: female. I would love to see how that record was input. I also commented to the intake admin person that medical institutions shouldn’t be caving to this absurdity (while also acknowledging that it wasn’t her fault the form was worded this way). She just gave me a kind of knowing/sad smile in return.
My head spun just 1/3 of the way into this essay.
We should be able to laugh away the ludicrous logic of gender ideology. Unfortunately the extremely deep pockets of the Trans Lobby that pushes the Yogyakarta Principles +10 has forced ludicrous logic into our laws and policies. We are all prey to the cult of transgenderism.
What a headache.
I hope the Supreme Court stops the substitution of gender for sex.
Absolutely right of course.
But! If someone is driven by an inner psychological force....whether influenced by external forces or an overpowering sexual drive....then they are not going to play ball because they are absolutely certain they are the sex they believe they need to be/actually are. Therefore they are unable to be rational because this belief/desire has overwhelmed them and the way they view themselves.
The unkind view is that they behave like toddlers who will not accept the word no.
I think a big problem is that decent and rational trans people are being lumped together with extreme activists who have a variety of motives.
We must never forget we are talking about individual human beings - some of whom are very troubled.
Oddly, I made this point to an acquaintance a couple days ago: If one accepts gender identity ideology to affirm another's transgender feelings, one necessarily accepts the cisgender label. Hence, I am no longer a male because of "an accident of birth" and the consequential normative sexual development driven by my gene complement, but because I happen to feel intensely male, or masculine and that feeling happens to align with my physiology. The underlying point here is that gender identity ideology is not a mere gloss on sex but categorically supplants sex. "Sex assigned at birth" becomes the last vestige of sex in that ideology, but is treated as a mere proxy for a neonate's gender identity, until that magical moment when that child forms their immutable (albeit variable, nonbinary, and utterly subjective) "gender identity." "Cisgender" is no innocuous courtesy to facilitate conversation with gender advocates, but a coercive term that denies my material reality.
As to dictionaries you want to go back to Moses. Why not go back just a few decades and use the Oxford or Websters dictionaries definition.
Worship of the "written word" is racist, don't you know. :)
> "... I believe this to be the case because I am a person of the female sex ..."
And, pray tell, EXACTLY what does it take to qualify as a "person of the female sex"? Citations required ...
But there is NO intrinsic meaning to the words "male" and "female". Moses didn't bring the "First Dictionary" down from Mt. Sinai on tablets A through Z, so no definitions qualify as gospel truth. They're all "socially constructed" but some are better than others.
Part of the problem, a big part in fact, is that the colloquial definitions -- basically "boys have penises and girls have vaginas" -- lead to any number of problems. Witness Tickle vs Giggle, and Khelif and the IOC -- they "won" their cases because of those colloquial definitions.
But many people balk at the standard biological definitions because they don't comport with women's vanity and transwomen's envy -- pretty much everyone, not just the dysphoric, are turning the sexes into matters of "immutable identity 🙄" instead of recognizing them as labels for transitory reproductive abilities.
Y'all might pick up a dictionary or two and learn how to use them. And consider the standard definitions from various biological journals, encyclopedias, and dictionaries:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990 (see the Glossary)
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3063-1
https://twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039879009407037441 (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)
We are going to have a very small language if we limit ourselves to the words in the Ten Commandments.
Indeed. Though you in particular might like this rather scholarly article which asks, quite reasonably, "Is Taxonomy the Oldest Profession?" 😉🙂
https://taxodiary.com/2013/07/is-taxonomy-the-oldest-profession/
A profession that, maybe arguably, goes back to Biblical times, probably before Adam took a ribbing from Jehovah and Eve showed up on the scene -- so to speak. 🙂
But categorization is what we, as humans, DO -- part of our bedrock and of our civilizations, such as they are. However, that process can easily go off the rails and into the weeds. The tale, the parable of The Tower of Babel being something of an object lesson on that score.
Not that many people are listening to those lessons of history. But you might also have some interest in my further elaborations on that theme 🙂:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/the-imperative-of-categories