8 Bit Philosophy: Is Gender Real?

[Terminal Blue]

If biology has nothing to do with it, then it would reason all intersex children would experience the same feelings.

No, it wouldn't. That's a total non-sequitur unless the experience of intersex children is somehow identical.

Are you feeling alright today? I normally enjoy your posts and have a lot of time for them, and this seems a little out of character.

Yet what about the intersex kids who do accept socialization as a boy or as a girl? Half don't reject it.

And half do, I still don't see what you think you're saying.

In that way what Money did was hardly unique.

Every instance of abuse is unique.

Again, what's up?

A difference is a difference. Same and similar do not mean the same thing.

Right. But noone is, strictly speaking, the same.

Cut open a hundred heterosexual cisgendered men and you will find their brains are different. Similar, but different.

Why is difference suddenly important here? Why does it matter more than any of the other differences? Why is this categorization more meaningful than any of the potentially infinate number of categorizations which could be made on the basis of insignificantly tiny similarities and differences between bodies or brains, because those are confusing and messy things.

Which actually came first, the biological difference or the social difference? Which actually constitutes the condition for the emergence of gender?[footnote]This is actually kind of not a rhetorical question, but it also kind of is..[/footnote]

Newsflash: People with gender dysphoria still generally have a gender identity.

Yeah, you aren't listening..

As I said, not having identity is impossible, because the process of signifying a lack of identity would be the the same as the process of signifying an identity. They are the same thing.

If it is real, its in the brain.

Why?

We didn't need to examine and understand the brain 100% to find the answer because we came across the evidence beforehand.

And how did the studies which produced that "evidence" select their samples, given that there was no gender before they defined it..

Oh wait, there was!

Anyway, I love a good debate on the internet, but this is still not relevant to the question of whether gender is real, because you aren't asking that question, you are asking what causes it on the assumption that it is real. This is the whole thing which queer theory is trying to get away from, because it's fucking circular. Gender isn't bodies. Bodies are bodies. Gender is gender. Explain the connection between these things in terms of what they actually are,[footnote]Or rather, the conditions under which they emerge, or become intelligible[/footnote] not some assumed site of convergence which must exist. There is no "must" about it. We don't need some hitherto undiscovered brain magic to explain the apparent existence of gender.

 

[Vanilla_Knight]

My head hurts...

Yours isn't the only one that's hurting.

The more this postmodern bullshit keeps going on the more I await it's massive crash down, despite all the devastation it'll unleash on society.

Hahaha. Yeah, post-modernists are always a pain. I come back and people are writing essay responses, so they've probably handled it better - like Smilomaniac. The main problem that this video has and the topic it's trying to address, is that 99.999..% of the world has no such problems when it comes to "gender identity" and "fluidity" and that it either ignorantly or purposely misaddresses the ideals that people actually have. It's also making an extremely small percentage of the population the center-point for a 'discussion', yet it isn't any 'discussion' it's a dictation from people who believe they have it all figured out based on a slim portion of society. The narration concludes that people have set ideals of what a man is and what a woman is. "When you think of a woman, you think ---" What? No I don't. But because I don't have that ideal and that others don't have that ideal, it concludes that gender is fluid. It takes it to the extreme opposite of "traditionalist" values.

Does it even occur to people like this that the social norms that SOME people have when it comes to the ideals of man and woman are not inherently wrong or misplaced? Are people so entrenched that they deny even the possibility that sex (biological) and gender (social) are not entirely discrete? That because FACT: Men are on average physically stronger than women, that the social aspect would reflect upon the biological? Are they that deluded?

If people are openly throwing out biology on the matter then it isn't a discussion worth having.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Its almost identical for the overwhelming majority of intersex people.

Right. But almost identical is not identical, or as you put it.. similar is not the same.

Because some differences are consistent among people of a gender identity.

Okay. At this point we aren't going to get any further unless you have a list of citations. I can't respond to an appeal to a scientific consensus that doesn't exist, or which I've certainly never heard of despite being in a position to be highly aware of it.

A trend existing on the basis of gender identity.

Which is it? Are there consistent differences between people of different gender identities, or is there a trend? Those are different things.

This is what you said.

This is also what I said:

"They're fictions which we nonetheless can't live without."

I don't know what your problem is today, but please don't quote me out of context so you can accuse me of an argument I never made.

Because thats where we exist as human beings. Our brains are us, period.

Until we become corpses, at which point our brains are no longer us.

I'm sorry for pointing out the absolutely bleeding obvious here, but if you're cutting people's skulls open and removing their brains, then the brains you're looking at are not people any more. They are corpses. They do not have gender identities. They don't understand the concept of gender, because they don't understand anything, because they're dead.

Being able to look at a brain and measure the relative dimensions of its parts or crudely map the broad distribution of tissue does not imply the ability to understand the cognition of the person to whom that brain belonged. That isn't science, that's magic. You may as well claim you can divine the future by looking for patterns in the cortical folds.

Which was defined by the individuals, not the people performing the research.

Firstly, that's not how sampling works. If you choose to use people's self definition as a sampling tool, then that is a decision of the researcher, not the participants. The researcher is always responsible for their choice of sampling methods..

Secondly, what is this entirely unrelated variable doing in supposedly biological research? If gender identity is biological, why the hell does it matter how people think about themselves? Why can't we just look into their biology and say "you're male" "you're female", "you're third gender", "you're non-binary", "you're male, but at age 30 you will experience a sudden shift in your gender identity and become female". If gender is biological then it should be observable purely in terms of biology..

..But it isn't, because our only consistent, reliable point of contact with gender is social. The condition for the emergence of gender is in social context. The social existence of gender precedes any of the questions you are trying to ask of it with biology.

There really is no escape from that, because if you were correct and if gender could be separated from its social context then it would be meaningless, just like all the other meaningless "differences" between people.

 

[Terminal Blue]

:| hm....

Well you see when people are born...

..a doctor looks at their genitals and makes a decision about whether what he or she is looking at looks more like an arbitrary ideal type of male or female genitals.

The decision is what establishes gender. Not the genitals. The criteria for the decision are dictated by a set of medical priorities decided by whatever is considered to be culturally important at the time.

Are those criteria the same as the bodies to which they apply? Obviously not, otherwise it would never be necessary to whip out a scalpel and cut bits off people to make their bodies fit the judgement.

 

[FalloutJack]

Snip

Okay, I need to ask something for my own personal clarification, because this is going nowhere fast. You and Mars have been splitting hairs over all of this. It's essentially an argument over labeling. Well, I'm sorry to say, but they're not labels of convenience. They're our labels for stuff that is observed in the universe. Just because you teach Kryten from Red Dwarf to lie about a banana doesn't mean the banana has changed. It's a banana. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB-NnVpvQ78] If this genetalia means nothing and this banana is a female aardvark, then there is no point to language, logic, science, observable nature, or anything else. I'd rather not have to clean up after that mess, thank you.

 

[mike1921]

:| hm....

Well you see when people are born...

..a doctor looks at their genitals and makes a decision about whether what he or she is looking at looks more like an arbitrary ideal type of male or female genitals.

The decision is what establishes gender. Not the genitals. The criteria for the decision are dictated by a set of medical priorities decided by whatever is considered to be culturally important at the time.

Are those criteria the same as the bodies to which they apply? Obviously not, otherwise it would never be necessary to whip out a scalpel and cut bits off people to make their bodies fit the judgement.

I hope I'm missing some context that makes it clear you're talking about people with deformed genitals or something, not that the decision is arbitrary in the average birth and that fringe cases where someone doesn't fit into a certain sex make sex not exist.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Just because you teach Kryten from Red Dwarf to lie about a banana doesn't mean the banana has changed.

True, now think about what that actually means..

I.e. it is possible for Kryten calls the banana an orange, and yet the object itself is unaffected.

That's because the word "banana" is not in and of itself the object, it is an arbitrary sign which signifies an object. In fact, depending on whether we use a two or three part semiotics, the word "banana" may not even directly signify the object banana at all, but rather the signified concept of a banana (hence why "cats are fluffy" is a true statement despite the fact that not all cats are fluffy).

The nature of the object does not bend in accordance with language.. you've correctly noticed this yourself, and yet you haven't followed it through the logical implication that there is nothing inherently "banana-like" about the banana. The universe does not care if you call it an orange, or a aeroplane, or whatever made up word you want. Jesus Christ is not going to teleport in to slap you for trying to change the immutable laws of the universe by doing so. What this means is that language is not in and of itself reality, it is a tool for describing reality which is created by and only of use to human beings.

We don't have to dismantle the entire history of Western philosophy to see that language can be an imperfect tool. It's actually incredibly obvious that language and the categorizations it imposes are often fairly arbitrary.

This raises a lot of questions which it becomes necessary to answer if we're going to try and talk about the world. It creates an epistemological responsibility to justify the language we use, not simply to assume it's okay because hey, people use these words and people have never been wrong about anything!

I hope I'm missing some context that makes it clear you're talking about people with deformed genitals or something, not that the decision is arbitrary in the average birth and that fringe cases where someone doesn't fit into a certain sex make sex not exist.

No. The decision is always arbitrary

Some people have lobed ears. Some people have unlobed ears. That's a real physical difference which exists. But if someone started dividing babies into social categories and expecting them to function and behave differently based on whether or not they had lobed or unlobed ears, you'd presumably say.. "what the fuck, dude, that is arbitrary" because it is.

Bodies exist. They have a substantive physical reality which is not something I'm seeking to question. The meaning which is assigned to them, however, does not.

If you want to try another thought excercise, imagine a universe in which there is and has only ever been one human being, drifting alone in space.

This human being has a penis.

Is it male?

 

[FalloutJack]

Snip

Yes, but Kryten is lying. He's being taught how to speak misinformation. The labels are labels, but they're our labels, and we put them there because you need words to represent facts in our language. It's not arbitrary. A man is not a woman just because he puts on a dress. That's a transvestite. A man is not a woman if he prefers men. That's a homosexual. Equally, a woman does not become a man by wearing pants and preferring women. That's just wearing pants and being a lesbian. You can't just cross over mentally. 'Tis not by word, but by deed. There is male and there is female and they are two different beings even if you call them radishes and bean sprouts, for all the good it does, because they're separated by more than concept, but by physical nature. Only by mental AND physical change do you truly cross the boundary, and that is why gender is real.

EDIT: I want to add a bit, to ask about your question to the other guy. Ummm...about this one singular human in existence... Is his name ADAM, perchance? Because if so, there are some theologens that want a word with you.

 

[Terminal Blue]

The labels are labels, but they're our labels, and we put them there because you need words to represent facts in our language.

Exactly. They are our labels and we put them there. They are part of our social reality, but this does not mean they have existence beyond that.

I'm anticipating the standard anti-postmodern response here, which is "lol, you can't just decide what words mean!" No, I agree that you can't. But that's not because of truth, that's not because everything we say which isn't deliberate deception has to be "true". It's because of power. Power secures the meaning of language, not truth. The ability to decide when someone is telling the truth and when someone is lying, the ability to tell other people what words mean and have them agree, that is the actual process through which language is generated.

It's not arbitrary.

What you've said actually suggests the opposite.

A man is not a woman just because he puts on a dress.

A woman is also not a woman because she puts on a dress.

A woman is a woman because people look at her, or touch her, or talk to her and say "that's a woman".

Of course, that judgement is always contingent, which is actually the point Butler is making with performativity. A woman walks down the street in a dress and people might think "that's a woman", but if she took the dress off people might think "that's a man". Is this the revelation of an authentic truth that the woman is actually a man? Only for those who think it is. The woman can put the same dress on the next day and go out and have people think "that's a woman" again.

To say that gender is performative is to realize, correctly, that it is only real in the sense that it is constantly enacted and performed through the momentary, temporary success or failure to meet the arbitrary standard of being a woman, whatever that means in any given context. Gender is never just there, it has to be repeated and maintained constantly.. that's not to imply that we can control the outcome of the performance or that the basic shapes and attributes of our bodies are irrelevant, but any importance or meaning placed on our bodies is placed there by us. It's never "just there." It only matters in the sense that we decided to factor it into that judgement of "that's a man" or "that's a woman".

As you say, our labels.

EDIT: I want to add a bit, to ask about your question to the other guy. Ummm...about this one singular human in existence... Is his name ADAM, perchance? Because if so, there are some theologens that want a word with you.

"His" name can be whatever you want it to be, it's functionally irrelevant. If you want to phrase it in terms of whether Adam was male before Eve, then fine. The purpose is to explore the question of whether gender can "exist" outside of semiotics (or more broadly, outside of language). I'm not really interested in regurgitating established theological doctrine.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Not a single sentence here makes sense.

Okay.. what specifically doesn't make sense?

Because actually, what we're talking about here isn't terribly difficult. It's a process you can observe happening if you feel so inclined, although you don't necessarily need to because how it works is incredibly common knowledge.

Imagine you're in a labour ward, and a baby has just been delivered. What happens now?

 

[cleric of the order]

Is GENder real? Yes. it is predicated upon your GENitals.

And how do we know what genitals someone has?

Sexual dimorphism, neotony, basic physical telldales.
While there are exceptions to which SEX has different Sexual characteristics, using good sense is a good rules of thumb

 

[FalloutJack]

Zoop

I'm seeing alot of handwaving and ignoring established facts of life, but I'm not seeing any reason to believe your point of view. It complicates a very uncomplicated thing for no actual reason. It's all very interesting to talk about, but it isn't how things are. And when you get into a Monty Python Argument Sketch over it, it becomes clear that's spent itself up.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I'm seeing alot of handwaving and ignoring established facts of life, but I'm not seeing any reason to believe your point of view.

While I'm disappointed, I don't find that surprising. It's not an easy argument.. I've been reading queer theory full-time for about five years now, and I'd say it's only really in the past year or so that it's come together for me.

And yes, I am asking you to ignore "established facts of life", or at least to develop a certain detatchment from the "esatablished facts of life" which allows for critical examination of where they come from and what they actually are. This requires a degree of skepticism which most people aren't taught, and even those who are don't tend to use outside of an academic context.

I don't need you to "believe" anything, what I would have liked is for you to stop assuming that certain things are true simply because "that's the way things are", because how exactly do you know how things are? There's an epistemological question which you're waving away when you talk about "the facts of life" or say "this is how things are!"

Basically, it would have been interesting if you could have restrained your idea of "how things are" purely to what it is possible to know about how things are, to stop making second order assumptions about reality and assuming that things need to be a certain way in order to explain the world you live in and to focus purely on the actual nuts and bolts of how categories like gender come to exist in the first place, not as "facts of life" which must be true because they are facts of life, but as statements of truth, because statements of truth are visible, I'm making some right now.. "facts of life" are not.

It complicates a very uncomplicated thing for no actual reason.

And how do you know that?

 

[FalloutJack]

Zoop

Well, if you don't need me to believe anything, then we don't need to discuss anything either. If we're going to ignore facts and evidence and information on the whole, then I can declare myself as God on my say-so alone and that'll be the end of it. I DID say the consequences of your line of thinking was to basically deny all things scientific, religious, historical, linguistic, and logical. The argument requires us to be living in a world that is not this one, which means a thought experiment that does not apply to real life. If you want to argue that it's like this in real life while ignoring all input to the contrary, then I can be God on that same ticket, and deny your claim.

 

[scw55]

Sex is biological level denoted by chromosomes.
Gender is a choice and doesn't have to reflect sex.

Humans seem to be the only organisms on this planet with free will. We have choice.

 

[MrFalconfly]

Sex is biological level denoted by chromosomes.
Gender is a choice and doesn't have to reflect sex.

Then why not just say "gender doesn't exist", because "gender" has officially become useless as an identifier (and it's becoming ever more useless as an identifier as fringe element lunatics invent more and more "genders").

Sex on the other hand is VERY useful as an identifier, since it can be confirmed empirically, without any subjective components.

EDIT:

As for social roles. Can't we all just agree that we've entered the 21st century, and there is only one social role, and that is "human".

 

[Terminal Blue]

Its a poke at quantum physics, might I be as bold as to suggest you look up

I wasn't sure if you were being serious or not. There are a lot of extremely non-sequitur arguments on this thread.

And your entire argument is based on the assumption that "gender"(as you define it) does not exist.

That's really not true.

I've devoted a significant chunk of my life now to studying gender because I think it is real, I've experienced it as indeed we all have. I have no problem with the idea that something can be arbitrary or subjective or even linguistic and still exist. But that doesn't change the fact that it isn't "real" in the same sense as physical objects, such as human bodies, are real.

And that is your opinion.

Okay, do you want to pretend that the word "essential" means something different to what it actually means?

We can do that if you want, but it's not going to make one tiny shred of difference. If you don't have the capacity to make a judgement which applies in every case, then the judgement you're making is not "essential" (or whatever term you want to use instead) in the sense that it very clearly doesn't constitute a purely self-evident natural category.

Or are you just using "that's your opinion" as a way of saying "nothing you say can possibly be true or false because it is the product of a subject position with limited perspective of reality". In which case.. yeah, round of fucking applause. Now follow the implications of that.

Addressing your point, I do believe you are defining "gender" as "gender identity".

Not really.. Although I will define gender as a word which can be defined as gender identity if one so chooses.

Or else I am just going to assume you are arguing in bad faith.

Assume what you like. I proof read and edit posts after posting them all the time. I don't do it to make other people look bad, but if it's a problem for you I'll try not to do it with your posts from now on. I'm also not sure you can really take the moral high ground when it comes to arguing in good faith, since you don't seem to be responding to any points I've actually made.

Well, if you don't need me to believe anything, then we don't need to discuss anything either.

You're right. It can be interesting to try though.

If we're going to ignore facts and evidence and information on the whole, then I can declare myself as God on my say-so alone and that'll be the end of it.

Saying "I am God" is a fact. We're ignoring facts, remember..

This is literally the point. Stop unilaterally declaring what the truth is. Stop just saying what the facts are without actually justifying them. Stop pretending that because you say something is a fact then it automatically has to be true. Be skeptical.

I DID say the consequences of your line of thinking was to basically deny all things scientific, religious, historical, linguistic, and logical.

Why would you think so?

I don't deny any of these things, but I will happily point out that things are not magically more meaningful or truthful for being scientific, religious, historical, linguistic or logical. To know how truthful things are, we need to go beyond simply saying that they're scientific or historical, and we need to look at what they actually do to help us arrive at the truth.

You're beyond help.

Prove it.

 

[mike1921]

I hope I'm missing some context that makes it clear you're talking about people with deformed genitals or something, not that the decision is arbitrary in the average birth and that fringe cases where someone doesn't fit into a certain sex make sex not exist.

No. The decision is always arbitrary

Some people have lobed ears. Some people have unlobed ears. That's a real physical difference which exists. But if someone started dividing babies into social categories and expecting them to function and behave differently based on whether or not they had lobed or unlobed ears, you'd presumably say.. "what the fuck, dude, that is arbitrary" because it is.

Bodies exist. They have a substantive physical reality which is not something I'm seeking to question. The meaning which is assigned to them, however, does not.

If you want to try another thought excercise, imagine a universe in which there is and has only ever been one human being, drifting alone in space.

This human being has a penis.

Is it male?

The decision of whether or not they have lobed or unlobed ears is not arbitrary though. The doctor's decision is by no means arbitrary, the importance placed on it may be but penises and vaginas are functionally different, it's not some nonexistent difference. If you look at someone with hair that most people would call blonde you don't go "Oh my god that's so arbitrary someone decided that for you".

But yea, because people with lobed and un-lobed ears are the same mentally, it would be entirely arbitrary; it would also be a poor analogy to sex and gender roles. Males and females have different hormonal and brain structures, so yes they're going to have different social tendencies and generally we're fairly accepting of people who don't fall into them; there's still a pretty big package of things that come with being biologically male or female.

A penis similar to a normal human's? Attached to testicles that make semen? I think it's a fair assumption to make with our definitions. Of course biologically I would think males are based on their ability to interact with females reproductively so it would be pointless to have that definition in that universe.

 

[FalloutJack]

Snip

You're missing the point entirely. You can't have this discussion both ways, and me being god transcends all necessities for logic because I doth declare. Now, you can keep on going, but your statement is unproven, and it will remain so unless you can give me a better angle that makes sense.

 

[scw55]

Sex is biological level denoted by chromosomes.
Gender is a choice and doesn't have to reflect sex.

Then why not just say "gender doesn't exist", because "gender" has officially become useless as an identifier (and it's becoming ever more useless as an identifier as fringe element lunatics invent more and more "genders").

Sex on the other hand is VERY useful as an identifier, since it can be confirmed empirically, without any subjective components.

EDIT:

As for social roles. Can't we all just agree that we've entered the 21st century, and there is only one social role, and that is "human".

Because I choose to.