Transgender

[dingformung]

 

 

 

But there IS a difference between women and transwomen?

In a purely reproductive sense I suppose, but kissing a trans woman won't make you gay dw ;)

 

There's this idea that trans women are being deceitful if they don't immediately divulge their trans status before any sort of physical contact, like they have HIV or something.

Should a man with a micropenis divulge that information on a first date? Should a lady with extra long dangly fanny flaps warn a man about it before they've shared their first kiss?

Men and women are different in more than a reproductive sense. Come on. Look at most species on the planet and things like sexual dimorphism or whatever, the idea that the only differences are in sex organs is completely ludicrous

We're not talking about the differences between men and women though are we? The subject is transgenderism, and depending on the stage of their transition a trans person can to all intents and purposes be identical to their cis counterpart, except for the reproductive system. Especially if they started their transition before puberty.

My comment was more about it being unusual for anyone to discuss their genitals when first meeting someone, or in the earliest stages of a relationship, yet it's expected of trans people lest they be murdered. Completely fucked

But the biological difference between men and women isn't only genitals and the things that can be changed via a transition operation. The brains of men and women are different. E.g. men's brains are larger.

[Amen Warrior]

Interesting you should mention brains. Here is an article on the subject of brains of trans people sharing structure and activity with cis people of the gender they associate with

 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.htm

[dingformung]

Interesting! Hormones can on the long run indeed change brain activity and brain chemistry but they can't fix strucrural differences.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/hope-relationships/201402/brain-differences-between-genders

[YangYing]

Welp, guess you guys arrived at the point I wanted to make by yourselves so here goes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

and so im curious as to how much of what is commonly known as male privilege has to do exclusively with being male and/or having more disagreeable/assertive personality traits..

 

It's a combination of

• employing stereotypical masculinity, such as walking in a straight line and assuming everyone else will get out of your way, and
• other people, perceiving you as male, employing stereotypical femininity, such as walking around you so that you can do so

Which is, interestingly, formalised in old fashioned dancing, with its leader/follower dichotomy, those roles given to men and women respectively. Only there's these rules for everything, and much like learning a language, people learn to intuit and internalise them while young rather than sitting down and reading them. Which is another way the whole aspie thing comes into play, as such people often don't pick up on these cues.

 

This is why some newly-transitioned trans men (who were mistakenly raised as girls) will still walk around others even though they don't need to, and some newly-transitioned trans women (who were mistakenly raised as boys) will walk into people. Only it applies to absolutely everything. (Such as having the audacity to actually speak up at meetings, and other people having the politeness to actually hear you, two separate and very much related issues.) Trans people often have pretty good insights into how bad sexism is because they have firsthand experience of seeing it from two different angles. For instance, when Ben Barres gave a seminar after transitioning, a faculty member famously remarked how his work was "much better than his sister's". He gave the exact same man's work more credibility when he wasn't mistaking him for a woman.

 

This is why we're trying a multi-pronged approach in feminism, to encourage women to be more assertive, and also to promote the idea that being less assertive isn't a bad thing. Though these two messages can lead to infighting, I think it's important to decouple them, to realise both that women aren't inherently feminine and men aren't inherently masculine, and also that femininity is as equally valid as masculinity.

 

Of course, this is all a gross oversimplification.

 

Here Zoeb asserted that men aren't inherently masculine and women aren't inherently feminine. The science currently challenges that viewpoint.. which is in part why I linked that documentary.

 

The idea here is that the differences in interest and temperament between men and women are socially constructed, this however would predict that as societies become more egalitarian (everyone has more equal opportunity) men and women would become more the same, THIS IS NOT THE CASE (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0153857)

 

See, you're trying to deconstruct the binary category of gender the crucial issue is this: if there is a biological reason for differences between men and women in interest and temperament when you have abolished the idea of gender and let people have equal opportunity the gender categories will set themselves up again of their own accord (and this is exactly what is happening in the scandinaviancountries.. the more equal opportunity the more men and women become different, not the same)

[eugene]

Interesting! Hormones can on the long run indeed change brain activity and brain chemistry but they can't fix strucrural differences.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/hope-relationships/201402/brain-differences-between-genders

that's a good example of shit science that psychology is generally full of. the main issue is that they go on alluding causal effects of genders on brain working of different kinds before considering the pretty well accepted notion that genders themselves are constructed.

[hello spiral]

How do I get some of that people-getting-the-fuck-out-of-my-way male privilege? Would be handy as fuck in London.

[dingformung]

 

Interesting! Hormones can on the long run indeed change brain activity and brain chemistry but they can't fix strucrural differences.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/hope-relationships/201402/brain-differences-between-genders

that's a good example of shit science that psychology is generally full of. the main issue is that they go on alluding causal effects of genders on brain working of different kinds before considering the pretty well accepted notion that genders themselves are constructed.

 

 

The ascriptions that are assigned to genders are socially constructed, e.g. roles and stereotypes. But sexes aren't a social construction, they are a biological reality. If you uncouple sex and gender completely then the term gender can simply be replaced with the term identity. There must be a connection between gender and sex. Which doesn't mean that the number of genders has to equal the number of sexes. Often there is a confusion of terms when talking about men and women. I believe "gender"in this article means "sex" (which is what it meant before gender studies existed). A slightly imprecise terminology doesn't mean that the neurobiological facts about men and women brains are just made up

[goDel]

How do I get some of that people-getting-the-fuck-out-of-my-way male privilege? Would be handy as fuck in London.

 

Yeah, completely agree. I guess I'm not man enough, because I personally tend to zigzag through the crowds. Evading people as much as possible. Guess the man-test is to see whether or not people will go out of their way for you. Game-of-chicken through life, if you will. I should make more use of my genetically and biologically acquired privileges. I'm a failed specimen. An exception to the rule. :(

 

Also, genders are constructed is a pretty well accepted notion? In what context!?

[YangYing]

well accepted notion that genders themselves are constructed.

a notion whose predictions have tuned out wrong as stated above end therefore not a "well accepted one" in fact, most likely a wrong notion.

 

edit: note it doesn't refute the notion that gender is partially a social construction but it definetly means that gender differences in interest and temperament are not only due to social construction

[auxien]

Interesting! Hormones can on the long run indeed change brain activity and brain chemistry but they can't fix strucrural differences.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/hope-relationships/201402/brain-differences-between-genders

 

That article is trash, he cites nothing. Further, the writer is trash, he's just trying to sell books. Would honestly be surprised if his doctorate is in anything vaguely related or legitimate. 

[eugene]

 

 

Interesting! Hormones can on the long run indeed change brain activity and brain chemistry but they can't fix strucrural differences.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/hope-relationships/201402/brain-differences-between-genders

that's a good example of shit science that psychology is generally full of. the main issue is that they go on alluding causal effects of genders on brain working of different kinds before considering the pretty well accepted notion that genders themselves are constructed.

 

 

The ascriptions that are assigned to genders are socially constructed, e.g. roles and stereotypes. But sexes aren't a social construction, they are a biological reality. If you uncouple sex and gender completely then the term gender can simply be replaced with the term identity. There must be a connection between gender and sex. Which doesn't mean that the number of genders has to equal the number of sexes. Often there is a confusion of terms when talking about men and women. I believe "gender"in this article means "sex" (which is what it meant before gender studies existed). A slightly imprecise terminology doesn't mean that the neurobiological facts about men and women brains are just made up

 

that's a shallow view of what genders are, they're not just roles and stereotype magnets, they are an internalized mode of existing as a person of certain biological sex, and it's simply unthinkable that they wont affect how the brain will actually work (that by itself is a very much malleable organ). in order to fix the methodology behind that article one needs to control for that social gender, and it's pretty much impossible unless you indulge in some ethically insane experiment where you put a female and male toddler in some separate lab compartments and expose them to identical  social content for decades. but if you're not doing it you can't seriously claim that you successfully separated the social and the biological in such studies and assign some essentialist qualities to biological sex.

[dingformung]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_sex_differences

 

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/study-finds-some-significant-differences-brains-men-and-women

 

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/1688/20150115

 

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/1688/20150109

 

etc.

countless sources...

 

 

Interesting! Hormones can on the long run indeed change brain activity and brain chemistry but they can't fix strucrural differences.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/hope-relationships/201402/brain-differences-between-genders

That article is trash, he cites nothing. Further, the writer is trash, he's just trying to sell books. Would honestly be surprised if his doctorate is in anything vaguely related or legitimate.

[dingformung]

 

 

 

Interesting! Hormones can on the long run indeed change brain activity and brain chemistry but they can't fix strucrural differences.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/hope-relationships/201402/brain-differences-between-genders

that's a good example of shit science that psychology is generally full of. the main issue is that they go on alluding causal effects of genders on brain working of different kinds before considering the pretty well accepted notion that genders themselves are constructed.

The ascriptions that are assigned to genders are socially constructed, e.g. roles and stereotypes. But sexes aren't a social construction, they are a biological reality. If you uncouple sex and gender completely then the term gender can simply be replaced with the term identity. There must be a connection between gender and sex. Which doesn't mean that the number of genders has to equal the number of sexes. Often there is a confusion of terms when talking about men and women. I believe "gender"in this article means "sex" (which is what it meant before gender studies existed). A slightly imprecise terminology doesn't mean that the neurobiological facts about men and women brains are just made up

that's a shallow view of what genders are, they're are not just roles and stereotype magnets, they are an internalized mode of existing as a person of certain biological sex, and it's simply unthinkable that they wont affect how the brain will actually work (that by itself is a very much malleable organ). in order to fix the methodology behind that article one needs to control for that social gender, and it's pretty much impossible unless you indulge in some ethically insane experiment where you put a female and male toddler in some separate lab compartments and expose them to identical social content for decades. but if you're not doing it you can't seriously claim that you successfully separated the social and the biological in such studies and assign some essentialist qualities to biological sex.

That's my point. Gender and sex are inseparable but not the same. And there are differences in the human brain of females and males that are observable, e.g. mass of grey and white brain matter.

 

You can't really change sex, even with surgeries (yet). Of course you can fake the other sex more or less well if that matches how you feel like more, but you cannot become the other sex.

[dingformung]

Also, I didn't say gender is just a magnet of roles and stereotypes

[eugene]

 

That's my point. Gender and sex are inseparable but not the same. And there are differences in the human brain of females and males that are observable, e.g. mass of grey and white brain matter.

so with that being the case how do you know what causes those differences, the environmental/social or the biological? my point is that you can't know unless, as i mentioned, you control for social gender which is pretty much impossible.

[drome]

Can we all agree that gender identity is a moot point?

[goDel]

 

 

 

Interesting! Hormones can on the long run indeed change brain activity and brain chemistry but they can't fix strucrural differences.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/hope-relationships/201402/brain-differences-between-genders

that's a good example of shit science that psychology is generally full of. the main issue is that they go on alluding causal effects of genders on brain working of different kinds before considering the pretty well accepted notion that genders themselves are constructed.

 

 

....

 

that's a shallow view of what genders are, they're not just roles and stereotype magnets, they are an internalized mode of existing as a person of certain biological sex, and it's simply unthinkable that they wont affect how the brain will actually work (that by itself is a very much malleable organ). in order to fix the methodology behind that article one needs to control for that social gender, and it's pretty much impossible unless you indulge in some ethically insane experiment where you put a female and male toddler in some separate lab compartments and expose them to identical  social content for decades. but if you're not doing it you can't seriously claim that you successfully separated the social and the biological in such studies and assign some essentialist qualities to biological sex.

 

 

Eugene, couple of points:

When you say darr's argument is shallow, couldn't you also argue that your argument, the genders themselves are constructed, is equally shallow? (I completely agree with your point on causality, btw)

 

And another point about controlling for social gender: to what extent would you have to control for social gender? Or rather, how big of an impact would social gender have to be in order to have any statistical significance with respect to biological/genetic gender? Because it may very well be that the amount of X-chromosomes of a person highly correlates with the activity of either white or gray matter. So high that this social gender has become irrelevant.

 

Coming back to the point on shallowness: obviously I'm not an expert and knowledgable of research in this field. And more obvious is that we can't expect everyone to be one. So why even bother saying something is shallow when it comes to a subject like this? 9 out of 10 comments will be shallow. How about embracing our shallowness? You're a sociology major, right? You should know! ;D

[goDel]

 

 

That's my point. Gender and sex are inseparable but not the same. And there are differences in the human brain of females and males that are observable, e.g. mass of grey and white brain matter.

so with that being the case how do you know what causes those differences, the environmental/social or the biological? my point is that you can't know unless, as i mentioned, you control for social gender which is pretty much impossible.

 

 

no no. push the brakes. not impossible. unless there is no correlation to be found big/strong enough within a given cohort. if it's "impossible", it could also mean there's simply not anything meaningful happening which could relate social gender to the way white/gray matter is activated with individuals.

[eugene]

When you say darr's argument is shallow, couldn't you also argue that your argument, the genders themselves are constructed, is equally shallow? (I completely agree with your point on causality, btw)

my point in that reply was that gender is a much encompassing and deeper thing than just roles and stuff. its construction wasn't an issue there.

 

And another point about controlling for social gender: to what extent would you have to control for social gender?

for example having a pimple in a particular area of your face in high school and being bullied for it can have a pretty devastating effect on your whole life. you can logically extend this to having a female and male body and its interaction with the social environment. so i can just as easily claim that the social can have a huge effect as well. that doesn't get us closer to separating the biological and the social effect.

[dingformung]

 

When you say darr's argument is shallow, couldn't you also argue that your argument, the genders themselves are constructed, is equally shallow? (I completely agree with your point on causality, btw)

my point in that reply was that gender is a much encompassing and deeper thing than just roles and stuff. its construction wasn't an issue there.

And another point about controlling for social gender: to what extent would you have to control for social gender?

for example having a pimple in a particular area of your face in high school and being bullied for it can have a pretty devastating effect on your whole life. you can logically extend this to having a female and male body and its interaction with the social environment. so i can just as easily claim that the social can have a huge effect as well. that doesn't get us closer to separating the biological and the social effect.

But it doesn't get us closer to denying the biological one by saying it's all constructed, either.

[goDel]

 

When you say darr's argument is shallow, couldn't you also argue that your argument, the genders themselves are constructed, is equally shallow? (I completely agree with your point on causality, btw)

my point in that reply was that gender is a much encompassing and deeper thing than just roles and stuff. its construction wasn't an issue there.

 

And another point about controlling for social gender: to what extent would you have to control for social gender?

for example having a pimple in a particular area of your face in high school and being bullied for it can have a pretty devastating effect on your whole life. you can logically extend this to having a female and male body and its interaction with the social environment. so i can just as easily claim that the social can have a huge effect as well. that doesn't get us closer to separating the biological and the social effect.

 

 

Depends on what you're trying to prove. Or investigate. In the case of white/gray mass activity, you might see that biological sex is such a strong predictor that controlling for social predictors doesn't add anything useful. If you want to do research on peoples experience of gender it's going to be an entirely different beast of course. But then, I'd argue you should start with the question what you're trying to find and whether or not that will have any use. Especially when the biological side can be so strong. As it's basically easily measurable in terms of gray/white matter (the outcome) and chromosomes or testosterone (the predictors). 

 

Again, if you can explain >95% of the variation you see in practice with the biological markers, the social markers are bound to be statistical noise. And if this is the case, I really don't know, it has become close to implausible that social factors are even worth researching.

[eugene]

 

 

When you say darr's argument is shallow, couldn't you also argue that your argument, the genders themselves are constructed, is equally shallow? (I completely agree with your point on causality, btw)

my point in that reply was that gender is a much encompassing and deeper thing than just roles and stuff. its construction wasn't an issue there.

And another point about controlling for social gender: to what extent would you have to control for social gender?

for example having a pimple in a particular area of your face in high school and being bullied for it can have a pretty devastating effect on your whole life. you can logically extend this to having a female and male body and its interaction with the social environment. so i can just as easily claim that the social can have a huge effect as well. that doesn't get us closer to separating the biological and the social effect.

But it doesn't get us closer to denying the biological one by saying it's all constructed, either.

 

it puts a serious burden of proof on the people claiming the existence of direct biological effects. social scientists do have it easy in a sense, they can simply take two identical twins, throw them into different social environments and see what happens. and you get a relatively clean (there's a whole complication in the form of environmental epigenetics) social effect, the reverse is obviously much more difficult.

[goDel]

hahaha

if that's how sociology works, i can simply stop believing any statement sociology is trying to make. two identical twins can't have any statistical significant results which could be generalised to the entire population. you're researching incidents. come on.

[eugene]

check your `tism bro, it was just a general example of controlling for the biological factors. the degree of generalization is irrelevant here, you can still know that biology had zero effect because it was completely controlled for.

[ZoeB]

Interesting posts, but want to push you back a bit on this. As it attempts to explain something as some malign conscious effort, which is, imo, mostly born from ignorance instead of a conscious effort. As most things people say or do are in a way self-beneficial in the sense that things we say tend to confirm our own realities. This is not a thing uniquely to cis straight men. And, imo, it really doesnt help anyone to give it a stamp like that.

Fact of the matter remains that the way transgender can be portrayed in culture can be ignorant and hold little relation to reality. But there's also a sense of irony. Especially when it comes to fiction. As fiction is essentially what it says it is: fiction. At which point we could enter a discussion where we might argue about what a world would look like with fiction respecting all kinds of perspectives people might have. And what that fiction would look like. But ultimately we have to accept that mainstream culture is a thing of the masses. And a reflection thereof. Whether we like it or not. Would I want a new and improved culture? Most definitely! Could we please get rid of this superhero culture? Yes please!

Addressing cis male dominance can be useful. And is def a thing to address. But saying "all these depictions are for the benefit of..." really destorts the issue we're trying to improve, imo. Or in others words, being a cis straight man, I don't see any benefit for me and my "compatriots" to begin with. Could be my prevelidged ignorance. But it's equally likely there's a more benign explanation. To say the least. And from where I'm standing, that looks like a better explanation, tbh.

 

That's the thing about the kyriarchy, though, I don't think it is a conscious effort, it's just what happens.  For the most part, no-one says things like "films should only be about straight white cis men", but they do say things like "oh, this film's about a lesbian couple?  Then probably only other lesbians will watch it, so that's a really small market to go after, so I'll pass.  Instead, let's remake this familiar franchise."  The effect is that instead of the first mainstream film with a lesbian protagonist coming out that year, the fiftieth one with a straight male protagonist comes out instead.  Literally no-one worries that a film about a straight white cis man won't appeal to black people, or women, or gay people, or trans people.  Straight white cis men's stories are called "universal" while everyone else's is called "niche".  And the people doing this aren't being actively malicious, they're trying to make rational decisions about the marketplace (and failing due to their own unacknowledged biases; we'll get to that).  This is depicted very well in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode Far Beyond the Stars.  Benny Russell's white male boss isn't trying to be evil.  He's employing a black man and a woman, after all.  But he's a realist, a pragmatist, and he's convinced the world isn't ready to accept stories written by and for women and minorities, so he insists his writers use pseudonyms, stay out of the publicity photographs, and write stories about white men.  It's a more insidious form of oppression to the obvious ones like Klansmen.  The people involved may well have good intentions, but the effect of their actions is still to oppress others.

 

The belief that only white men read and write sci-fi is re-enforced via lies, the other writers aren't acknowledged, the other readers aren't acknowledged, and as most of the general public believes this lie, everyone else, being subtly signalled to their whole lifetime that sci-fi "isn't for them", doesn't become a reader of the genre, let alone a writer.  It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, a vicious circle, a positive feedback loop with very negative consequences.  The same goes for women using computers until about 1984.  The same goes for electronic music, and music engineering, for instance, given the name of its other forums.

 

It's worth noting, of course, that managers' assumption that straight white cis men are the only people who buy movie tickets is false, and that films like Wonderwoman and Black Panther did well, so we're hopefully finally starting to see changes in this area.  With a huge backlash from certain white guys who are upset that a tiny percentage of superhero films suddenly aren't catering to them.  Because the thing about everyone pandering to you is, when they stop doing that for even a fraction of the time, in your biased viewpoint, it looks like they're now pandering to someone else when it's just a tiny step closer to equalisation.  It's bizarre watching the people who insisted that the marketplace decide whose stories get told (that just happened to be exclusively theirs), and that everyone else should accept that those stories are universal and their race and sex didn't matter, are now complaining that a handful of stories aren't about them.  Because they see themselves as default and universal and relatable, and everyone else as Other and different and unrelatable.

 

Here's an interesting fact: on average, only 17% of people in crowd scenes in films are women, yet the audience perceives it as 50%.  Did you notice?  I didn't.  That's how insidious it is.

 

I think that it's important to have fictional characters to relate to and look up to, role models, who look like you, who aren't serial killers or punchlines or victims.  Especially when you're a child figuring out your place in the world, and who you can grow up to be.

 

What I'm getting at here, is that if Idris Elba played James Bond, I might actually watch a James Bond film.  The new Star Wars films are the best yet.  Their characters are actually relatable.  (Whether that's "objectively true" or my personal bias, I'll let you work out for yourself; I'm sure you'll have no trouble detecting bias in other people.)

 

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that your viewpoint is unbiased because you see yourself as the default without even realising it.  "I don't even have a sexuality, I'm straight!"  Or that other classic, "I don't have an accent."

 

Anyway, I'd best get back to writing this module's firmware, or perhaps this track I'm working on...  It's a real good 'un this month...