'Extremely online' isn't just using the internet a lot. It's about whether a person's identity and views are constructed by the internet more than they are informed by the real world. It's about personally seeing the internet as more real than reality.
I love the dichotomy of your online persona. having club penguin as your profile picture but engaging in philosophical conversation on the internet. It just makes me chuckle 😅😆
I liked Irvine Welshes formulation "in a thousand years there won't be any men or women, only wankers" which has always seemed to me a realistic perspective.
I don't think this discussion is complete without including the influence that commercialism has on our gender roles. The question is "am I trying to perform what I believe or what I am being sold?" How much of my identity is just a commercial? Do I like having long hair or am I being told in commercials and movies that long hair is what I should want if I want to exhibit a certain profile? And is this commercialism killing us? Separating us? Helping us? Am I this way because commercialism made me want to be?
this is very interesting as a thought, although in the context of trans ppl more complicated. Commercials aren't selling a kind of identity profile to trans women (for example) - they are selling it to cisgender women. There is an understanding that a certain gender role is not for certain people, and many trans people would prefer to conform if they could comfortably. But they cannot.
@@GourdClae this i've never understood. There's nothing innately female about women's fashion, so how could this be a dysphoric object for an mtf. Maybe then the object cause of desire is the being of a woman, and women's fashion is seen as an expression of being a woman, but many trans women are happy in not being feminine so there's still a partial exclusion.
@@bellumthirio139 It would depend on the mtf! some do think of it as innate, others think of is a role to play, some just have certain feelings one way or another without intellectualizing it. Some feel dysphoric abt women's fashion and some don't! It's more of a vibes based thing than a coherent thought process for many. I suspect it's mostly socially instilled. As a cisgender man, I know that i would feel weird wearing a skirt. I suspect that (some) mtf ppl feel the same abt Not wearing a skirt
I'm glad you state this as a question, because my first thought is: "is this even bad?" Is it bad that people with more power than you influence how you perceive something that is fake after all? It is a common myth that women crave chocolate when they are on their period, but it turns out that that is only the case for women in the U.S. because there this myth has been propagated to sell more chocolate. But is it even a myth at that point (within the scope of the U.S.)? It's true; propaganda made it true. There is no deeper truth to uncover - that would be a authentistic/essentialistic way of looking at things. If women do that, then that's the truth; the reason shouldn't matter. But does this matter? Whether women crave chocolate on their period or not is entirely a neutral concept. You could say that it is undesirable that people with more power can influence you. Well, that's just a fact by definition of the word "power", so let me rephrase that: it is undesirable that people with more power than you exist without it being deserved (like a doctor). But why fight the symptom then? Why fight the entirely neutral concept of women having long hair and men short hair, simply because it is a result of centuries of aristocracy and after that bourgeoisie influencing us like we're livestock? Is it not this inefficient method of fighting for freedom that divides us? And I'm not saying you shouldn't have short hair as a woman just for the sake of not creating dividedness. I'm saying you should realize that it is not inherently political, and acting as if it is creates dividedness (which both liberals and conservatives do). It is also easily co-opted. Just find one short-haired woman with tattoos and piercings who is conservative, and just subsidize her platform. Perfect propaganda. It is a useless fight that only liberals are concerned with, because they still believe in authenticity. (you can of course replace "women" in the above discussion about chocolate with "people who experience periods")
This was a pretty interesting response to the points Natalie has made about gender identity, but Im not too keen on the prescriptions at the end in regards to rejecting medical treatment to align oneself with their gender identity. I don’t think there’s any real evidence that trans people could simply logic their way out of gender dysphoria with the understanding that perhaps we care too much about gender. What we do know is that these treatments do in fact make trans people feel more comfortable in their own bodies. The idea that the risks might be too great isn’t really born out by the evidence with transition having such a remarkably low regret rate (something like 2%, with much of that likely attributable to living in a transphobic society). It sounds a little too much like the tired refrain that trans people often hear that they should learn to be happy being a feminine man or a masculine woman.
Genuine pretending is at the core of his ideas. His argument is exactly that the pursue of authenticity is paradoxical in itself and that we should embrace language more appropriated to the identity technology that we use today, profilicity. He proposes genuine pretending as a way of navigating our social reality, for all people, all identity issues, not just gender. His point is exactly that there is no way to live authentically as a man or a woman, doesnt matter your sex.
On the other hand, I think we should fully embrace medical technology that allow us to better generate our identity profiles, I do think that that conclusion came out as naive by him.
The evidence for everything you say is very weak tbh, the amount of studies is tiny and the conclusions that many trans advocates draw from them faaaaaar too strong.
@@chaosmonkey1595 that’s just factually incorrect. I’m guessing you pulled this information from Sabine’s terribly framed video where she misrepresents the facts. The benefits of transition are well documented and have been studied for almost a century.
@@popmushee to live "authentically" would be to live as you were born, to do as you want and act as you feel, without changing your body to look as something else
As a biologist, i sometimes feel a bit irritated that a fundamental aspect of this debate is often ingored. It is the fact that gender only exist because of sex. Sex is a evolutionary product to facilitate genetic diversity, and as far as we know, the only purpose of having more than one "type" of individuals (sexes) is to procreate. Homo sapiens would have never developed any idea of gender if there would be no sexes (but its doubtful if homo sapiens could have been developed by means of non-sexual procreation, as any higher lifeform on earth reproduces sexually). There simply would be no need for it, except for a tumblr-like stereotyping of often co-occuring traits. That said, what i think, what gender is really about is, that it is basically stereotyping individuals by true and known/learned population-level biological differences, which are transmitted from generation to generation, to a point, where gender often becomes overblown, inflated, socially amplified, fixed, inflexible, and basically a nuisance. Stereotyping often happens as a short cut, a heuristic based on what has been learned before. Think of whom you would approach when you are looking for empathy or for protection or for simply someone who is carrying stuff for you. So, there is some advantage to stereotyping, of course. Learned Experience, i guess. I think this is the fundamental base of gender: Social assignment, sometimes disruptive, so to speak, of biologically "true" sex differences onto individuals as they are growing up. "XY-carriers are on average more aggressive and risk-taking than XX-carriers" is then translated to "Its unwomanly to be aggressive" or "Men are the better firefighters" by tradition, overgeneralization and stubbornness. This is obviously bad for the individual (but it might have even some advantages on the population level, idk, think of the "eggs are valuable, sperm is not"-world. If you look at kindergarden kids, for which the shared sex is the foremost and first tribe to gather around (kids do really not care about racial differences, but they do absolutely care about their genitals), maybe there is. but this is for the sociologists :)
Thanks for this comment. I found this comment to be more helpful in explaining aspects of "gender" than this video tbh. Now, I have no training in either biology or the humanities/social sciences. But as a layman, I've often noticed that educators of the hard sciences (or social sciences more grounded in empirical studies) try their best to _clarify_ and _simplify_ complex topics in a manner that can be understood by the Average Joe. The result might be an oversimplification and dumbing down of the actual concepts, but at least the average layman can often _understand_ some aspects of the fundamental concepts. By contrast, I've often noticed educators in the social sciences, especially of philosophy and of the more abstract sociological/psychological disciplines, often use language and expressions that is more muddled and "confused" when they could perhaps do with words and explanations that are more common and clear. t's almost as if they're so entranced with jargons and making things vague and ambiguous that they don't put as much effort as they could in clarifying their language. Now, I'm not saying they don't make any effort at all; all I'm saying is they could easily afford to put in more effort, but it _seems_ (to me) that they don't. Maybe this is because of the abstract nature of some of the concepts. Or maybe it's my lack of training in the discipline. But then again, a lot of concepts in the hard sciences are even more abstract and counter-intuitive, yet I've found educators who've done a good job of explaining them to a layman like me. So maybe it's because I'm less interested in meandering philosophical explanations than I am with more concrete explanations of scientific concepts. Or maybe it's a combination of all. But whatever the case may be, it is my general observation that philosophical and sociological educators often sound more "muddled" and "vague" when compared to thos in the hard sciences.
Some good points. I might add that some species are more social then others, and that social behavior (especially about sex) can have a radical impact on selection, to the point that the idea of "sexual selection" is used to explain much of the very weird behavior (not to mention actual physiological differences) that various organisms use their valuable energy on. The whole mess is tangled together, and I'm not sure how useful it is to imagine sex without gender in any social species. Are there any social species that are also hermaphrodites? I'll also challenge the idea that sex evolved to *facilitate* genetic diversity. I am instead convinced that sex evolved as a *brake* on genetic diversity - to ensure that the next generation were *similar enough to the previous one* that the basic proposition of a "viable gene pool" could be established in the first place. Sex facilitates *speciation* not diversity, it ensures that individuals can still collaborate to reproduce even (or rather, especially) if they have different ancestry, and *blocks* viable reproduction if the ancestry of the parents is too divergent. Sex thus permits only a *constrained* amount of diversity to be introduced at each generation. If the gene-passing mechanism permits too much variation (e.g. profligate mutations during parthenogenesis) then the viable population will be compromised. Diversity is driven not by sex, but by environmental constraints. From an information-theory point of view, sex is primarily about "type checking".
@@KhukuriGod I've seen this comment, and I just want to say, also as a layman in social studies, but some formation in hard sciences, that the reason for it is that social studies often involve the creation of a frame to study and interpret society and individuals. Because of it, they depend heavily in being able to express themselves precisely, so that the words they use, even common use words, are much more well defined (or they should, at least), than our layman language. In opposition, we, from hard sciences, have the advantage to very often able to show what is being represented, when the language to do so would be too hard to understand, either as simulations or experiments. Despite of it, when we come to calculations, almost no layman would be able to understand even the basics of most hard sciences, not because they're dumb, but because it takes a lot of time to learn to communicate the concepts we work with.
And tied to biology in so far as pants will always have two legs, underwear will always account for the presence of genitals and various sizes will be taken into account. As Gourd said.. super fun comparison.
The way I imagine it is kinda like how language works. Our brain is hard wired for language in general, it has a biological dimension to it. However, no specific language is hard wired, they are purely different ways to express this more fundamental idea of language. Each one influenced by millennia of societal and cultural drifts. So obviously gender in the more general and abstract sense are baked into our biology (via sexual dimorphism) but any expression of a specific gender is hard-wired, they are all based on our shared cultural understanding and are therefore subject to change, just like languages change over time.
One confusion (which seems really inexcusable) is not using clear language to distinguish sex from gender. When someone says "there's no essential maleness", do they mean no essential male sex, or no essential male gender? (I try to use male/female for sex, man/woman for gender). He *seems* to use all these terms to mean gender, and not have any words for sex. So, when he says that babies are not born "essentially male or female", I assume he's referring to gender. Another problem is the term "chromosomal sex" vs just "sex". Sex is defined by "what type of gametes do you produce" (or "what gamete-producing organs do you have", etc...). So, bodies have "sex". If you have a Y chromosome, you cannot have organs that produce female gametes. Your body cannot be female. Similarly, if you don't have a Y chromosome, you cannot have organs that produce male gametes. Your body cannot be male. (Note I did not say, e.g., "this makes you a male". My statements include intersex people as well.) Finally, he talks about gender related characteristics without any reference to reproduction. This just silly. That would be like comparing hammers and screwdrivers without discussing their ability to drive nails or screws. Sex is the hardware of reproduction. Gender is the software of reproduction (with thanks to the Dark Horse Podcast for these definitions). This whole discussion is interesting, but seems to be in denial of reality by ignoring biology and reproduction. He comes close with his analogy of aging -- you might feel young, you might identify as young, but biological reality is you're not 18 any more. But he doesn't follow that analogy to the logical conclusion: that the biological underpinning is as important as how you feel: You might feel 18, but in reality you're 55. Similarly, you might feel like a woman (gender), but in reality you're a male (sex). Ultimately, it comes down to this: which distinction is more important to society: sex or gender? I just heard a recommendation for increased screening for breast cancer for "women over 40". Pretty clearly, that's "woman [sex]", not "woman [gender]". And, for that matter "40 [actual age]" not "40 [feel like age]". Do we really wanna go full on "birthing persons" and pretend we don't have a word for that category of person?
Great point. He deliberately stepped into the medical and physiological spheres several times to muddy the distinctions you clarified. It felt like his philosophical take here had an agenda, not seeking truth. I tend to be skeptical about philosophers trying to sell me something (eg. There is no metaphysical gender!) When they don't actually present an argument but rather make a speech.
Yeah, I find that discussing gender and sex without discussing how important it is to distinguish both terms is just... well, pointless? Because gender is performance tied to the cultural social expectations of given sex in a given society. Then unchanging part is sex. Sure, we can start using the term "women" to describe people who like wearing dresses and speaking in falsetto, but eventually we are still going to need facilities for "birthing people" and to separate "women" from the "birthers" because one group is comitting violence againt the another. I'm tired of playing musical chairs with terms. Call it by whatever you want, sex matters, gender ultimately only matters by people completely lost on their own navel gazing.
The bit at 8:20 on aging hits close to home. I'm convinced I stopped growing up in my mid teenage years, I've just been faking it and getting wrinklier ever since.
I've had this conversation with a slightly younger friend. I have pretty much all the things that make me an "adult"; a white collar job, house, wife, kids etc and I still don't feel like an adult. I genuinely believe Dr Moeller's profile based identity theory.
@@samwild6630 You confuse personality and temperament with being an adult, not understanding that the concept of being an adult is a biological. You are supposed to have a fully developed brain and gained enough guided experience to be able to make decisions on your own.
@@k4yser Calm down mate. I'm not being dishonest or am clueless. I'm also not confusing personality or temperament. I'm talking about examining what it means to be an adult and how that operates as an identity, then how that relates to lived experience and expectations as an "adult". This is not an essentialist statement.
That is a side effect of modern life. I however am certain that there actually can be significant and deep enjoyable development beyond vanity or how professor calls it “profilicty”. It his concept describes our reality accurately life indeed is too sad and depressing.
@@opinion4755 "profilicty" seems to me to be the saddest and most sinister aspect of social media. People trying to be a brand instead of being themselves, people traveling the world so that they can take a picture to post on instagram. The "influencer" who is always hyping themselves up and trying to figure out how to sell themselves and not actually thinking about what they believe or think but about how others will think of them if they are seen to think something. Addicts for the next hit of "likes" rather than actually trying to form real relationships with others or be honest to even themselves.
I think it's important to also outline the difference in how the very process of transitioning is portrayed, politically: conservatives often portray trans people as though their fantasy (in the case of a trans woman) is: "I wish I was a girl", as a betrayal of sincerity, trying to escape the inner/social role, etc. The more liberal view, aims at a different structure of desire: "I wish I could stop pretending to be a boy", as a call for authenticity, trying to be true to one's "true" self, and so on. To me, the moment of transition proper was not in hormones or in surgery, but precisely in the passage from when I thought, "I wish I was a girl" to "I wish I could stop pretending to be a boy." To exemplify and paraphrase another trans youtuber, PhilosophyTube in her video on Transhumanism, if a person decides to take antidepressants, it is because they recognize that the insecurities and problems that would be there without it are not a core part of themselves, but precisely an obstacle to their true expression - and just as with antidepressants or medicine in general, would be hormonal treatment. This claim of identity is an unconscious assumption of what in us stands for our "true selves" and what are merely "obstacles", which is what transitioning reverses. It's a minor shift in perspective, but it stands for the moment when you retroactively recognize, looking back, symptoms (obstacles) of an issue you now have a name for. For a while, I thought this passage from "wishing I was a girl" to "wishing I could stop pretending to be a boy" - in other words, the change in perspective of this unconscious "identity" assumption - was not just mine but an essential, universal trait of all trans people. The more time I spend on online communities, however, the more I think the truly radical position would be to think of both trans women who say they were always women and trans women who say they only became so, as both valid. It's a strange difference to reconcile, but I think it's possible.
It's a fascinating debate and I admit I have a few ideas about it that may be a bit disorganized but well, here we go. I believe that one fundamental aspect that has changed, and we continuously forget, about how we talk about social issues like trans matters, is that there's a big difference between how we talk about it on twitter, in which there's an audience, and how we used to "fix the world" when we talked about it in a bar with a few friends. We have really become a society of spectacle. And it's not a minor factor. Now, I believe most people in social media are (hyper-)aware of this and the reason why many trans activists demand social recognition is not so much to be personally validated, I don't think a singular trans individual does feel particularly attacked because Matt Walsh or JK Rowling on a personal level don't want to recognize them (maybe just a little bit, as Contra exposes/jokes) but because they understand this problem as a cultural battle that, unless fought and won, may result in very real and negative consequences, not just on the cultural, but the institutional, legal, medical, etc... levels.
It is very important to note that all this stuff as a phenomenon is absolutely linked to the internet new media technology in the wired society with relevance only in the Western hemisphere. Brasil
I'm not trans, but I am queer, and the 10s of 10000s of likes Matt Walsh gets on some of his most horrific statements on Twitter make my blood run cold and make me fear for my trans friends, and myself. Commenters on Walsh, JKR or other conservative pundit posts, as well as Walsh himself, have called for men to possibly defend women:s bathrooms. I wonder if one day some woman will decide my large nose is masculine, that I'm trans, and she'll drag me out by the hair for her husband or boyfriend to beat me to hell (or to death) because they believe I'm trans and in their queerphobic ideology - trans equals pedophile/rapist/male interloper in women's spaces. I could suffer based on an incorrect assumption of identity very easily. I don't think I'm being hyperbolic here, it's all a very fascinating debate until you're in a life or death situation. All women and some men will be in danger if this rhetoric keeps ramping up and has credibility via The Daily Wire and other major media figures.
29:16 Small point here, but what she calls 'extremely online' is not normal. It's less a function of how long the person uses the Internet for than a function of what kinds of corners they frequent online. E.g.: Using UA-cam for 3 hours a day is *NOT* extremely online, but using 4chan for even half an hour a day is.
I have to disagree as by your own implied definition, UA-cam can be 'extremely online' depending on what content you consume (there is a lot of deeply reactionary content on YT that is informed thoroughly by some of the worst parts of 4chan).
@@alexlindstrom9971 You're removing the phrase 'extremely online' out of its full context, which is why both the professor and you misinterpret it. It's closer to whether a person's identity is more fully expressed on the internet than in real life. A person can watch 5 hours of UA-cam a day, but if they're just watching the Office funny moments while they drive a truck, they're not 'extremely-online'. But an active user on an internet forum board that discusses their personal problems, their views and internet culture that they are themselves part of, who is losing touch with reality because other people on the board have a more significant influence on them than a person they interact with in real life, is extremely online. And this same pattern applies to, in this case, highly fragile and insecure trans people who live on Twitter more than they do in reality. They are the people who think of online interactions as more significant than their real life personal struggles, perhaps because they are unable to deal with them in real life.
@@rockugotcha No. It's like saying that just because I have faucet in my home that I can always access therefore I am infact drinking water 24/7. That's simply not how it works...
When does something become part of one's identity? Since very young age I have been aware that I can be knocked down and physically hurt by men to a degree that is not so with girls and women. I would call this sex awareness, but I don't know if this physical vulnerability is part of my identity as a woman. Part of my sex awareness has been also the knowledge that I can get pregnant. I chose not to, but was it ever part of my identity? I don't understand why there is so much noise about identity. Yes, I identify as a woman and as a citizen of my country and as a speaker of my language. But these are not things I have created or constructed myself, they are a given and therefore require almost no validation from my part. It feels to me that identity is a construction and I haven't done much constructing.
A bit flippant, perhaps, but if other people perceive you as an idiot, that may not mean that you think you are an idiot. We try to reconciliate the external validation and our internal sense of self, and sometimes at least I feel like I want to scream to the world "but I'm not *that*". If you have no such moments, I think you are very lucky
@@AppoloniaK I don't care much about what people think about me. I think that this or that person is an idiot all the time and I believe that they do the same. So, we are pretty even I would say.
I would like to offer my own term, "gender consciousness" in response to your "sex awareness." I developed some sex awareness as a man. It's kind of hard to explain beyond the thought "this is what it means to be a man" in response to certain situations, but it is similar to your own in that some men also can be harmed by other men, and in order to be a man you need to have at least some idea of being able to defend both you and yours, women will be afraid of you so you should treat them with chivalry, etc. But at some point I realized that I would be infinitely happier if I was instead a woman. Now, having transitioned and continuing to, a lot more men can hurt me than before. Is that what makes me a woman? No, it is the knowledge of that truth of my happiness which drives me to transition that defines my womanhood. It is only a problem because we are not all fully free to transition and live our lives as we wish to, and there are constant threats to both that freedom and our lives. I would also point out that your sex awareness reflects a physical reality, but it also entails a social reality. The fact that you can get pregnant is an important consideration, but so is whether or not you have material access to contraception and abortion. Societal changes can be made to bring about a sort of sex/gender parity, at least in some senses (hopefully in more). Then again, so does what I have described as my own sex awareness. It is based on an assumed physio-biological reality, but then I use that to determine what that "means", and hence arrive at a conception of gender (essentialism). A man *should* be strong. Women are a means to produce offspring. And so on. But I really don't like that line of thinking, because it pretty much directly leads to fascism in some form. (see above mention of "constant threats") To identify oneself as a gender ultimately has less to do with the material reality of the body and much more to do with the ideological reality of society. Or at least the weight of societal ideas of gender is much more pressing. What kind of society needs such strict definitions of a woman/man (as proposed by reactionaries and TERFs) and is that one we want to live in?
@@tangolettuce3538 No. It is much more a physical reality than you think. Not just periods, but all things concerning bodily functions and health. To you "womanhood" is happiness, to biological women womanhood just IS.
This was a really good video. As a trans person, personally i see an "ideal" version of gender, to be no idea of gender at all. Where people can be who they want to be, and present how they want to present. But at the same time living in this society where gender is seen as ridged or specific, almost real even. As a person who doesn't align with my socially predefined gender. it can be useful to use traits attributed to the other gender, as a way to separate my current presentation from my last. basically i use "gender" to my advantage, well hoping to stab it in the back.
@@paveantelic7876 Lilly means that they present as themselves. They wear what they feel comfortable wearing, do what they feel comfortable doing, and shape their body through medicine and lifestyle to be whatever they feel comfortable having - it's just that all this would have no association with any sex or gender. At least that's how I interpret what they're saying.
As a trans woman (I prefer the term transfeminine person) I endorse this video until its last few minutes. The bit about not submitting one's body to "invasive medical regimes", as others have pointed out, seems overly simplistic, given that such regimes have been shown to increase trans people's mental and emotional well-being. I haven't had surgeries, but I have gritted my teeth through over 100 hours of hair removal and I can say without doubt that I am consequently more at home in my body. But worse still is the final directive: "Reject gender metaphysics and theology." Personally, I agree with Natalie Wynn on this topic, but as she herself says, she is a somewhat unorthodox trans person. A large percentage of trans people DO seem to embrace gender metaphysics, and I am not confident that, based on a few Contrapoints videos, we can disregard them entirely. I think we'd do well to remember that humanity's understanding of these topics is in flux, and developing more rapidly than at possibly any other time in history. I don't think it's the time for blunt prescriptions like this one, especially if they are put forth by cisgender people. Aside from that, I enjoyed the video. Thank you. I will count you as an ally. EDIT: I don't know if you include hormone therapy among invasive medical regimes, but if so I think it's also worth pointing out that, contrary to widespread belief, cross-sex hormones do not just affect physical attributes and appearance, and therefore are not just concerned with gender profilicity. Feminising hormones, I can say from experience, affect emotional state, personality, sexuality, the nature of sexual ideation. They are not merely conerned with appearances and many if not most trans people understand that fact.
tell that to the axe wounds, stink ditches and rotdogs LOL. woman and feminine arent the same. you dont need to be trans to be feminine and you will never be a woman
@@estefaniaboujon6830couldnt agree more. Theyre framed as reversible and therefore harmless when really some stuff doesnt quite go away and the effect they have on health is horrible.
I’ve consulted Dr Google for a definition of “invasive” in a medical context: “An invasive procedure is one in which the body is 'invaded', or entered by a needle, tube, device, or scope.” Other definitions are similar. So no, from a medical standpoint I guess HRT is not invasive. Then again there is no definition at all for an “invasive medical regime”. As to HRT being reversible, I am not aware that any medical practitioner has ever said that. Maybe some misinformed parents or trans people have said it, but no, HRT is not “framed” as reversible. Some effects are reversible, others not. You can’t un-grow breasts or un-break your voice. Puberty blockers, on the other hand, are generally framed as reversible. Aren’t facts useful?
I really enjoyed this video, Prof. Moeller. Would you consider speaking on the topic of non-bindary identity in the context of profilicity as a follow-up? Thank you!
I enjoyed this video greatly; the terms "sincerety", "authenticity", and "profilicity" in the sense you use them are a great enrichment to my toolbox of concepts. Also it seems like you're becoming more confident in front the camera which is nice to see. I appreciate your videos independently of production value but it's a beautiful extra
Why do we feel so strongly about our identities if there is no true self? It might sound idiotic, but I have always wanted long hair. I have very weak hair and it thin and looks like a cobweb... but in my mind I had long beautiful hair. I used to pull pants on my head to pretend its my hair. And I thought growing up I can find a hairdo and get over myself, but at 30 started to wear wigs. I discovered hair extension a year ago and never go back!! its me. How am I to udnerstand this?
Probably not as much through philosophy as through psychology or eventually neurology. Maybe within our lifetime we will have machines that can peel the layers of your mind and extract the interactions that make your personality, interests and identity.
@@olympiaelda1121 Partly because a lot of "authenticity" is actually just orienting one's "self" in alignment with some "higher true self" like you were getting at with the hair; you see yourself as having this glorious hair, and so you pushed your reality to match the pre-conceived image of yourself. (I'm not well studied on this, but this came to mind)
You describe a "cosmetic" want; fortunately achieved without pharmaceuticals/invasive surgery which may have great risk of adverse metabolic effects. Are you otherwise in good health? Did you look into nutrition?
having a strong sense of your role feels good, maybe we just have exp early in childhood that pushes toward one or another and the culture pushes us toward an assigned one at birth?
The assertion that there is no true gender essence aligns with Buddhist thought, which teaches that there is no unchanging self/ego separate from the flow of consciousness. Thanks for this fascinating deeper dive into this important topic.
@@hans-georgmoeller7027 i can see that influence in your work. the tao and many theravada texts formed my philosophical view as well. what do you make of the taoist belief to “cleave to the feminine” in relation to this?
Not sure that this is accurate. Buddhism teaches there is no true essence period. "There is no true gender essence" is typically claimed by people who do believe there are essences, just not gender.
This is line of thought is a bit lacking though because this ignores the fact we do in fact have bodies that are male or female. Your physiology and your psychology are not separate from eachother they are one whole system. The self may be an illusion but it's an illusion in the same way that a river is an illusion created by the constant flow of water. The superficial social behaviours of men and women may change over time but the core elements of masculinity and femininity remain constant
@@GayTier1Operator Briefly put, I think the distinction feminine/masculine in early Chinese thought (most famous in the form of the Yin/Yang distinction) is not really about today's questions of identity or human gender. It's a more general classification of "natural forces" as well as a basic vocabulary of strategic thinking--as in the line you quote.
To me, "human adult female" is still the only definition that makes sense, is not circular (women are all people who identify as women), or behaviourally essentialist (women are people who like to wear makeup, paint their nails and watch sex and the city).
“behaviourally essentialist (women are people who like to wear makeup, paint their nails and watch sex and the city)” - God, from your comment it’s immediately clear what kind of information bubble you are in🤡 let me guess, you also think that trans people want to make all children trans and they are pedophiles, groomers
@@dobby2270 nah what he says is pretty consistent with how men who transition see women and portray them later on. I've rarely seen as much offensive all-pink legally blonde-type stereotyping as I see from MtF's bruv
There's a whole bunch of stuff I don't like about this post, but I want to point out real quick that 'women are all people who identify as women' is not circular. Like, it just isn't. It is just reflexive. It means that woman is a social construct. That which it has been socially determined to be determines who will identify as it, and that identification affirms this social determination. Rather than circular, it's a reifying relationship. And sorry, that's just how a bunch of cultural things work. I know it's not the straight line of 'this thing has an essential, unchanging definition and that which fits that definition is necessarily that thing' but it's just the way it be.
@ sure. It’s not circular… it’s just circular. Got ya. And no, womanhood is not just a cultural concept. It goes much deeper than that. If anything, it is a biological reality that also has cultural extensions.
Great and "overdue" video. The overlap between your profilicity theory and performative gender theory is pretty clear. I kind of like how you conveyed a good chunk of Contrapoint's work on gender in your own style. It's like a secondary source for people who don't feel her own style of making videos 🤣
Regarding the "gendered body" idea, I imagine it could be useful to mention that, as most would probably agree, XX people and XY people (chromosomal Females and Males) can not only change their gender associated bodily features medically and through fashion, makeup etc., but also that these features vary naturally already. Meaning, there can be women most would agree look somewhat "unfeminine" and even "manly" and vice versa. So, to someone who would attempt to discredit this differentiation between chromosomal gender and the "gendered body", this could be an example to show that they themselves already dont think about and experience it as "essential" as they might believe and/or argue for. Like, how could one argue there is only males and females in an essential and binary way, while at the same time they already commonly differentiate grades of femininity and masculinity regarding actual bodies of people.
Actually with medical intervention during puberty with blockers and then cross sex hormones you can prevent a number of unwanted characteristics and push more wanted characteristics. Think breasts or Adam's apples. Also voice. This is part of why preventing access to this care to minors can be so harmful. And when you talk about athletics, if a trans girl goes through an endocrinologist female puberty she doesn't develop those "male advantages" of puberty.
How can your differentiate in between day and night if there is dawn and dusk and we always talk about how late the day is aka different grades of day and nightness? Your point is not as deep or smart as you think it is. Nearly nothing in the physical world is truly binary, but we still differentiate it that way because it is extremely useful and the edges of the spectrum are still a very relevant thing very often. Also biological sex is actually very binary in humans. There is no single individual who produces both functional large and small gametes. Not even one.
@@chaosmonkey1595 I think youre missing the first point, namely the distinction made in the video between chromosomal sex and the "gendered body" (which is at least partly constructed, profilacted, a performance, but also, and that is the main point against non-gradual binarism views, already naturally variant in how congruent it is with the chromosomal sex)
@@chaosmonkey1595 "we still differentiate it that way because it is extremely useful" - in other words, the vulgar social construction is more at hand than the messy truth that is to be found down in the weeds, just as we might conceive New Year as part of our "Christmas" holidays, even though it is a secular date.
5:01 I am afraid that this is factually wrong. Many supporters of gender theory will precisely start a discussion about how biological sex is not clear, intersex, blah. So Contrapoints is retreating here to the proverbial motte, only to go to bailey again, when she talks about sex "assigned" at birth. Why use this phrase if Contra agrees that biological sex is binary? Or does she not? This is the core of the problem with the discussion.
There may not be a true gendered self, but my body feels horrible to be in if it's running on testosterone and far less horrible to be in if it's running on estrogen. I didn't publicly change my gender expression even among family for months after starting HRT, and it hadn't changed my body enough to impact how I viewed myself, but it still radically improved my daily conditions to the point where I had stopped self harming for the first time since my early teens. I've detransitioned since (primarily due to social pressure, being visibly trans is miserable and isolating at it's best) and it's only reinforced my views on it. Some people really just operate better and are far happier if they take hrt, just like any other medical treatment. I think it's easy for conversations about trans people (which will always be nearly entirely held by cis people, just by the numbers) to over-fixate on social aspects of gender because everyone experiences social pressures around their gender, but only certain trans people have experienced what actually changing the hormone you run on feels like and how monumental of a difference it makes in your daily life.
Exactly. This is one of the biggest lapses in cis (and even some trans) discussions of transitioning. Hormones change a lot more than your body. But I’m disturbed to hear you’ve detransitioned despite that you believe estrogen was working for you. I dispute that being openly trans is always such a bad and isolating experience. Granted I’ve only been out for six months, but so far I feel more outgoing, and make friends more easily, than ever before.
@@Bette_B123 You're right, I definitely shouldn't generalize like that, it was just a particularly isolating experience for me. As for detransitioning, even before transition I had severe social anxiety and in the rapidly worsening climate (especially in the south where I live where now there's dozens of laws targeting us) it just made it impossible for me to function. Granted I still pretty much can't, but I can leave my house without feeling afraid for my life or getting stared down by countless people and right now that's more important to me than living authentically or being happy in my body. Hopefully that can change someday, but I sort of doubt it.
@@Aaaa-gs7ww I'm so sorry to hear all that. I can totally imagine how living where you do could make you feel that way. There is a way life could change for you though: maybe one day you could move and live elsewhere. I realise if you suffer severe social anxiety this may be difficult, but maybe not impossible? Of course it's not fair that you have to leave your home in order to feel safe being yourself, but moving can also be a joyous experience. But don't mind me, obviously I don't know you at all, and in many ways I have been blessed. I hope you find a way to improve your life whether or not you are able to present as you would like to.
As an XY-chromosomal person who indentifies as a man, I cannot express how much I agree with the last statement about genuine pretending. I have increasingly felt more gender fluidity in me as I aged, but never dared to act on it for being afraid that that was not who I actually was (authentically and essentially, which I then still believed in). I would actually admit that your videos helped me to eventually decide to go crossdress to a party (in that community and for that party that was acceptable and even normal). Not as a joke, I really wanted to try to be seen as somewhat of a woman (even though I didn't shave my beard). The strangest thing happened. In my daily life it became much easier for me to act genuinely masculine. Before, there would always be a part of me that felt betrayed if I acted too masculine. I didn't like masculine behavior, and didn't want to be identified with it. But now, after stepping into the role of woman, it was easier too to step into the role of man. It felt like it wasn't part of my identity; just something I did. This all ties together with my personal philosophy. I often find that people are too much invested in finding the truth or whether they deserve something, while all that matters is the question: "do you want it?" Similar with gender. Don't ask "am I truly a (wo)man?", ask "do I want to be?" Do you want to be seen as a (wo)man? And can you reach that goal? Then go for it. This also goes for my leftist goals. Don't get trapped in hour-long discussions with your liberal uncle about whether the workers deserve more rights or are just spoiled. Ask "do I want more rights?", and "is it within my power to achieve that?" It is an unspoken rule among many people across cultures or genders or any social denominations that it's taboo to say you want something. That should be abolished. That's my philosophy. I guess that's simply a hedonistic or even Machiavellian philosophy; but I didn't study philosophy, I'm just interested.
I’ll try to illustrate the problem as I see it symbolically. As to what constitutes being a man or a woman and how such can be ascertained we seem to have…as far as I can tell…the following cluster of properties put forward in these discussions. 1. Identity, or inner sense, In these specific cases I think this can be distilled down to (desire). 2. Physical presentation (fashion). 3. Action or behavior (performance). 4. Biological makeup (sex). So let’s try the following… Desire identity =x Presentation=y Action=z Biology=n Currently, the discourse surrounding the trans discussion seems to assert that what makes someone a man/woman is some combination of x y and z but not n. As man/woman are described as distinctly different from male/female. Man/woman being categories of gender (made up of components xyz) whereas male/female are categories of sex that is described in terms of biology (n). The move here is to posit a categorical difference between the concepts of gender and sex so that it then becomes valid to have a case where a male can be referred to as a “woman” without committing category error. This is taken as a sort of axiom but never to my knowledge justified or explained. More specifically, of x y and z, only x is sufficient on its own to establish one’s gender. So fundamentally what it is to establish that one is a man/woman is simply to establish the existence of x. Of all possible properties x,y,z and n….x is the only essential property to the category of man/woman while y,z and n are accidental properties…or so the gender identitarian assertion goes. Interestingly x can only be articukated in terms of yzn. As in identity in question or “identify as” can only be articulated in terms of the particulars of an identified object or the particular things that make up the identity in question. The particulars of an object one desires to embody. These take the form of yzn. Without particulars of an object of identification there is no ability to articulate an object thus there is nothing to identify “as”. X(yzn) Y is articulated in terms of zn. To present is to present as some material thing, it is itself an action(verb) in relation to an object(noun). One’s presentation is an ongoing action that is only articulable in terms of behavior and adornment of the physical body. How one looks(n) and behaves(z). Y(zn) Z is only described in terms of n. Action, potential action, bahavior, movement, these are all functions of the material body. What is the action of the body? The behavior of the body? The movement of the body? Function of the body? Etc. Z(n) N is described with reference to material reality. The biological body is made of matter, described in terms of function and form of that matter, the behavior of that matter and subsystems of that matter. N(matter) So X(yzn) Y(zn) Z(n) N(matter) The only necessary and common component of any of these descriptions is n. Biology. Material reality. Because this category (man/woman) is not an abstract virtual one but a category that rests upon physical matter and potential. Rather than x, as asserted by gender identitarians. This is my position, what constitutes a man or a woman can be described fundamentally as a function of n as every other component is ultimately only articulatable in terms of n. To posit any one of the other variables as THE necessary variable is to still tacitly make reference to n. So not only is (n)the essential property to the category of man/woman. The property without which the category itself cannot be articulated/does not obtain…but the assertion that gender and sex are separate categories dissolves as the particulars that one needs to describe gender (X y and z) themselves necessarily contain a description of (n). The category of gender requires a description of the category of sex that it claims to be separate from. Additionally the very implication within “identifying as a man” or desire to be a man suggests that there is an externally observed thing (the external thing with which one identifies or sympathizes/identifies with) that is identified as token of a type that is not of the type of which the observer is a token. Else the statement need only be I am a token of the same type ergo I embody that type. I might argue One can feel no desire [to be] a thing which one already is, one can only acknowledge that they are the thing that they are. Desire, as a concept implies a discord between a subject and object. A desire-er and the thing desired. The duality implies that the subject IS NOT the object in and of itself but not a token of a type of which the object is a token. So yes…There is an essence of gender. That essence is biological sex.
This episode should be called Contradictory Points. Identity and gender are not important, yet OK to pursue via drugs and surgery? I will also point out that being extremely online doesn't mean one isn't extremely in the real world as well. The consequences of the latter is what the uproar is about in our so-called culture war over trans.
The moment one says that one is trapped in a body and would like to have the opposite gender, isn't automatically admittance of gender essentialism? When a man says he actually belongs to a female gender, doesn't it reinforce the gender binary? Therefore, it maybe right to say that there is no gender apriori however, it would be self contradictory when you use this premise to "become" the *opposite* gender.
Nah, not necessarily. Because you can acknowledge that a thing isn't "real" in the universal sense while acknowledging that it's "real" within the context of your society. When I say I'm black and would like to be recognized as such, it is not an admission that race is real.
@@yessum15 My point was not about whether something is "real" or not. It was about something being a binary or not. When you say you are black, you define a concept which can't exist without the existence of its opposite- a white color. If you begin with the premise that gender doesn't exist and then you take two reference points (male, female) to define where you currently are and where you actually belong, you contradict yourself.
yeah, probably! not all transgender ppl explain their genders in this way, and many of them do believe in gender essentialism! in contra's case she has assigned herself woman bc it alleviates emotional distress. it's moreso that playing the role of woman gives her peace whereas playing any other role does not. That doesn't infer gender essentialism - but something closer to "my society and natural state have left me in a position where woman works for me." the natural state could be gender, if it is essential, or it could be some other quality, learned or not, that makes being a woman easier.
@@nobody983 I'll repeat myself. Again, no. Because I can believe that a Black/White binary doesn't exist in the universal sense while acknowledging that it exists within my society. Thus I self identify as Black while rejecting the objective existence of Black people. In America I am Black. On Neptune it is unclear what I am. Similarly, in America there is a concept of what a woman is. I don't believe that concept to be fundamentally true, but to the extent that this society treats it as such and I identify more strongly with the characteristics that this society associates with that made up category I insist on being included in it. This is the case for most socially constructed identities. I don't believe in the existence of VIPs, but to the extent that this nightclub treats certain guests as VIPs I believe I more closely fit your description of that. When you step aside to allow the bouncer to let the VIPs cut in line are you truly convinced that these people are actually more important than you in an cosmic sense?
Small nitpick, sex is defined through gametes, not chromosomes. Crocodiles for example don't have their sex instantiated through chromosomes, but they still have males and females. Also, I'm skeptical that "gender identity" exists at all. Rather it seems that people have traits, which in turn are gendered, which is not the same thing as "being" a gender. The genders are masculine and feminime, not male and female, those are the sexes.
"Gender identity" exists in the same way that "body integrity identity" exists. The vast majority of us never really think about whether we fit in the "right" body. Our body is our body. But, some people with mental distortions (like believing their hand is alien, their body is "wrong" due to not being as skinny as it should be) have a strong sense of the opposite. Instead of admitting that these people have this issue and treating THEM all of us are lumped in as having a gender identity so this distortion is "natural" and not a problem
This second paragraph is exactly what contrapoints believes! I think societally we tend to use more than just gametes, but if you like the definition of gametes better we can use it! Sex is just whatever humans define it as anyway as far as i can tell!
@@Tseltel This is interesting but doesnt make much sense to me. I feel like, the fact that some people feel ill at ease with their body must mean that others feel at ease to a greater degree than that person does. So everybody would be on a sliding scale of more or less body integrity identity. It's also strange bc gender has existed for a very long time afaik? unless you're defining gender differently it tends to refer to a sense of a persons social role in society related to their pronouns, how they physically present anyway. I feel like everyone has those?
@Gourd Clae Sex is something we discovered, not something we invented. Dinosaurs had males and females, despite there being no humans around. I don't know anything about the contrapoints person, but I'm skeptical she wouldn't say she's a woman on the inside. And I don't think that makes sense, we're not men or women on the inside, we're (among other things) masculine and feminine on the inside.
The only way I can make sense of the word "gender" (when it is not a synonym for "sex") is that it is empirical observations and culural beliefs about how behaviours and subjective experiences comparatively trend in the sexes. Either way, the words boy/girl/man/woman refer to the sexes, whether they are or are not having experiences or engaging in behaviours that are more typical of their sex. It's as correct to say Natalie was born a boy as it is to say Natalie was born a baby.
Right. “Gender”, to the extent it has any robust meaning, is derivative of sex, and so cannot supplant sex. Attempts to do so are just pulling the rug out from under oneself. Only sex is real. And it cannot change. Nobody has a “gender”.
The words you are referring to do not necessarily refer to sex. When someone tells you to, for example, "please, give that woman there her tea", you are not going to run genetical tests, assess her gametes and genitals. You are going to rely on the social construct of gender to guide you. Words have different meanings and usages in different contexts. Moreover, as such as gender and sex are intertwined, there are and have been societies with more than two genders and with radically different conceptions of gender.
I think this is a fair handling of ContraPoints, well done. I've got a lot of affection for ContraPoints, I have been following Natalie's channel since the beginning (I.e. the "before times") and the performativity has definitely changed a lot since then. In the beginning the videos were mostly just a discussion of ideas without really situating herself within the discussion. (Hence the channel title) As an aside - personally I can't quite give up on the idea of an ontological true self that one could (and should) try to be authentic to - I just think it's the sort of true self that escapes naming and definition, that is quite a bit more vast than the small world we have conscious awareness of, and which (rather flippantly) produces our story telling (rather than being produced by it.) Authenticity to me is best embodied when you stop trying to name everything.
Good point. I think that living authentically just means not caring so much about what others think of you. This seems to be an outdated view. I understand that I am full of contradictions and so is the society I live in. I try to play nice and respectfully disagree with the majority opinion even if that means risking people's good opinion of me. This does not feel very good and drives me to understand my own contradictions and make changes were necessary and leave things that I believe are correct. Then I live those ideas and beliefs out. With Contrapoints I think the problem arises when there is a political and moral demand made society.
I don't want to provoke a nasty UA-cam argument thread... and I think what both you and Garrett above describe definitely seeks a hopeful and positive result to pursuing authentic living. But I have to say I don't get the reasoning or "substance" behind these claims whatsoever. Firstly, "not caring what others think of you" is meaningless without being attached to some context. Standing up to (and "not caring about") the overwhelming peer pressure of a racist rally surrounding you and intervening in whatever way possible to act against it due to your own disagreement... is clearly a good sense of "self" that should be admired. But equally, standing up against to those who fight for equality and anti-racism and saying that I "don't care about your woke opinions, I have my own 'authentic' beliefs about the vital importance of race, culture and segregation" ...may just as equally be an expression of some "authentic self" and beliefs... even if not a positive one is many other (right-thinking!) people's eyes. But far more importantly, neither has anything (so far as I can see) to do with "authenticity" in any straight-forward sense. You don't become a racist or become an anti-racist by "looking deep within" for answers... You do it by listening, reading and thinking about others opinions and experiences. In other words by "looking outwards" and seeking better answers. The feeling that seems to be described here as "authenticity" has little to do with finding an inner true self... and/or behaving authentically... and much more to do with finding some way of attaching one's accumulated life beliefs/experiences to larger revelatory explanatory concepts (that one can only ever find outside oneself). The sublime moment of the "authentic," in this sense, more likely comes from a moment of catharsis at being able to seize upon often conflicting, traumatic, puzzling or otherwise pressing events in the outside world... and reducing them to a comprehensible situation via accumulated social concepts and words ... and then bringing those words together into a coherent counter-statement. In other words... there is no "authentic" inner self to look for that is not a series of attachment words/names... being used as a counter-force to other words/names that are demanding something from you that you either accept or reject and seek to do something about. In other words it is the pursuit of an authentic outward belief/discourse to bind your life to. And not the pursuit of an authentic inner being. I hope my answer has not been disrespectful. It has certainly been too long by far... so apologies for that!
@@Hic_Rhodus Hi. You have not been disrespectful at all. I also respectfully disagree. To sum it up poorly I believe in virtue ethics and am a ethical anti realist. That is to say that I don't believe ethics can be quantified. I think that if a person is trying to the best person they can be than they should adopt virtues such as honesty, integrity, kindness, humility ect. ect.. Sometimes living this way puts you on the outside of a social group and sometimes it puts you inside. Social groups themselves can neither be moral or immoral. Only people, and that is a stretch. I avoid moralizing because in general I believe moralizing is a human invented mind toxin. My point is that people should try their best to live with virtue and try to ignore others if they demand that you betray those virtues. That, s what I think it means to live authentically.
@@garrettbryan2717 Yeah, but the try to best to live with virtue tend to lead to reading philosophy and metamorality. Even if one knows a particular moral system (like utilitarianism), knowing one option is not enough. Though knowing them and internalizing them is different. But that is secondary to what I wanted to say. All I wanted to write is to better have some people with similar moral system to check up on you, since we tend to out rationalize all norm.
What's always been curious to me is how in the social world: gendered language doesn't seem to function as a noun. We (i.e. the general peer) don't refer to a person's gender as a separate identity in the social world; instead, we seem to use gender as a kind of social adjective. What seems to be the disconnect for me, is the lack of coherent descriptors (and tangible organisation) within social life. It would explain why people feel so underrepresented and others so unaccepting/dismissive: no one knows how to understand, or how to describe a some-gendered person, outside of the normal processing. For example in dating, for a heterosexual man, the descriptive meaning of 'woman' has changed. Or in the medical profession, professional sports or in public situations like toilets or changing rooms (all ongoing debates). We don't seem to 'use' gender to refer to identity, identity (at least this curated type) feels like it has no functional meaning outside of the first person. We seem only to use it as a descriptor, in a third-person arena, to understand each other and our relationships with the social human world.
but not men...just women. anyone else notice how no one is questioning what a man is? we talk about gender a lot, but it only ends with the definition of women, not men.
Yes xx are females and xy are male biologically- so yes, babies are born for the most part, essentially male or female by definition of the chromosomes. Just because we use male and female for social construction and biological life doesn’t make them interchangeable and every circumstance. So you’re saying just Cozumel is born with an xy chromosome they are not biologically male- yes, yes they are by your own definition. Of course, I understand. The problem comes when we expect male and females to perform certain roles. Or even the ability for a society to accept people who are not part of the gender social binary.
There is something missing in this. We cant choose our gender! Just like we cant choose our sexuality. We cant choose what we are attracted to just as we cant choose as what we want to be attractive. So obviously there is something essential to it. A gay man remains gay, even if he chooses to marry a woman. A trans woman is a woman even if she chooses to perform manlyness. Our chimpanzee reletives have culture techniques that are shared only by the female individuals. That does not happen because the litte chimpanzee girl is told to behave like a girl. It happens because in social animals there is an inborn instikt that tells the individual who they should immitate... Or who they should identify with... In a gendered way. Because, in the end, sex is important. One could say gender is the sex of the brain. Sometimes a litte chimpanzee immitates "wrong" and continued to do so as an adult... It happens, just like with humans. Some of us social animals are gay, trans, gender non conforming, non binary... And as we cant choose it, it is an essential part of us. I think therefor I am. My brain/consciousness is much more important for my identity than my genitals or chromosomes. Deal with it. P.S.: If you count all the different condition of intersexuality together and include mild cases, they are not that rare.
Here's my two cents: sex, gender identity and identity in general belong to the domain of the non-rational. Ask 1000 people "what is a human?" Would they answer the same thing? Would they state something coherent? I feel both pro-trans and anti-trans influencers use arguments that have little importance in day to day living: chromosomes etc are invisible and private understandings of identity aren't visible either. Genital surgeries are as natural or unnatural as rhinoplasty or hip replacements. Besides, most of us live in artificially urban environments and navigate life using all kinds of artificial devices. There's nothing much socalled natural about us humans ...
I'd say validation for one's identity always comes, to some extent, from how others perceive us. No need to involve profilicity in this very basic feature of human behavior. However, the sense of identity was built on different bases in other time periods.
@@otto_jk perhaps. I'm afraid it could end up proving too much. I mean, is profilicity when "your sense of identity depends in some measure on external validation"? In which case, yes, but I don't see many alternatives.
Hey, very good and clear reasoning there. I really liked it. Two thoughts have arised in my mind, though. First: If profilicity is wanting to be "seen as", and therefore engaging in an tecnological performance that produces correct gender social recognition, isn't profilicity a immanent version of sincerity? Aren't we nurturing the traditional gender roles by craving for what's socially expected of a man or a woman? Second: In my experience, I really can confirm these philosophical positions being supported. But I don't think that they are that solid and defined. I think that we spontaneously "transition" from one position to another, and even mix them together.
Transgender can't exist without a very rigid profiling of the two gender roles. And trans ideology often wants to dictate its views of the two gender roles on everybody. Quite a few tra*women claim to be more women than biological women.
My guess it's about where the identity is coming from. Either society tells you your gender/identity or you tell others what it's is through a curated profile. I like the part "as if I am a women" the truth comes from what we choose to tell people and not from the belief itself.
Yes, we do mix these technologies al the time. Both sincerity and profilicity are oriented to how one is being seen by others. But in sincerity, your actually present peers (e.g. family members) count more whereas in profilicity it's the "general peer" (hence the importance of pronouns). Importantly, in sincerity role expectations are stable (usually over a lifetime). in profilicity, profile expectations are unpredictable and highly dynamic.
Very interesting thought! It does seem like we've indeed returned to the idea that there does exist a concept of femininity, but that concept is a social construct. For sincerity it was just about what's in your pants. Quite the difference. But this is a common point of contention by TERFs who still abide by authenticity. They see transgenders claiming to act feminine and are appalled by the notion that there would exist something like "the feminine" beyond biological sex. Their goal is to achieve a world in which people are defined by their sex in a biological setting, and as their own person in any other setting (which would be fine if they didn't believe that the male anatomy makes us innately prone to become sexual predators). They perceive it as going back to sincerity, which it isn't.
around 13:00 Hans describes how many roles within society have been, and may be gendered. 2 genders that seemed to have existed in it's beginning phase of human development had been for example "hunter and gatherer" -- fast forward to the modern era and you will see 10's of thousands of roles within society, and the old paradigm has become fractured again and again and again, to include a wide spectrum of roles. Sex will always have to do with reproduction, but gender has been proven to be a function of how one integrates socially.
I don’t believe that all aspects of what we call masculinity and femininity are merely socially constructed, and I don’t think this is gender metaphysics, which implies that it is not in this reality. I think we actually do have innate patterns of behavior. We have much deeper psychology than who we believe ourselves to be. So what I am saying is that even accounting for socialized gender, or if someone identifies with a different gender other than how they were assign at birth, or how one chooses to perform gender. I think there are spontaneous patterns and unconscious aspects of behavior that are innate to their biological sex. This is partly informed by Jung’s analytic psychology but a great deal from experience. I think there is an unconscious and that we can repress things in the unconscious. I met a Syrian refugee an artist and he suffered from war trauma. He asked me a question. He said, you studied psychology, I want to know why is it when an adult man cries women run away. But when a woman cries women runs to comfort them? This struck me because, I, having suffered from Trauma experienced something similar. I said I don’t know. But I noticed this too. I think men ought to be there for each other when we go through grief. So what would be the innate pattern her? I think women may have a spontaneous harmonization with one another. And the may recoil from the tone of may grief. Maybe they fear the grief may turn violent. But the recoil from male grief seems like a real pattern. Obviously people believing in rigid gender stereotypes is silly and destructive and not very fun, it’s shallow. But not considering that there might be dimensions which are spontaneous and unconscious I think we might be missing dimensions of ourselves. and this is not to say that these deeper reflexes are “authentic”. I don’t believe in an authentic self because the self exists in consciousness. I am talking about spontaneous aspect or unconscious dimensions that we may or may not identify as an aspect of ourselves.
One thing that mystifies me is that Abigail Thorn (of Philosophy Tube) now claims that gender dysphoria doesn't actually exist - I think a video on that and contrasting w ContraPoints would be very interesting with your insight!
her argument was that gender dysphoria is misclassified. that kind of dysphoria isn’t a distinct feeling, and isn’t exclusive to trans people. there are cis women with PCOS who are insecure about the way their condition has masculinized their body. there are cis men who are suicidal because their dick is small. both of those are examples of people experience dysphoria because their body does not align with their gender.
My understanding of her argument is that it doesn't exist as a pathology that medicine can define and therefore use as a weapon against trans people. Similar to how some in the neurodiverse community are trying to remove the medical pathology focus from how it is viewed.
@@firemermaid1980 I have autism and have problems with the neurodivergence movement doing that tactic. Neurodevelopmental disorders have medical consequences and comorbidities that need more medical support and research. There’s nothing wrong with being someone needing, benefitting, or even relying on medical support when it is appropriate to do so. Taking it off the table that medical care might be appropriate and necessary is misguided and unhelpful to the very people that are supposed to benefit. It’s more of a morality claim, as if being ill or disabled in ways that require medical attention and care was morally inferior to not requiring medical attention and care. I would like to see efforts to destigmatize shift from that tactic to one of just being nonchalant about the concept of pathology. Pathology doesn’t mean inferiority. It means there is disease or disorder present that it would probably be most ethical and practical to take into account. I would prefer we work on thinking about it that way.
@@JaneTheMessage it is true that there can be medical needs attached to autism and adhd, same as with trans people. The problem as you say is the stigma. I don't want to take the medical support needed for either removed, but some are using the medical language to infantilize and be paternalistic to both trans and neurodivise. And that isn't even getting into the outsized portion of trans people who are also autistic.
@@firemermaid1980 In a sense, I sort of understand in laymen's terms, that the use of pronouns and awareness, and acceptance of trans people is just so that we all can have some compassion. My only objection to this dialectic dialogue is that is too freaking hard to understand with this type of language. Regular people are confuse right thinking and fearing that everybody is going to turn gay or transgender... the old existential fear
I think it is important to use scientific research as a foundation for the gender/sex contretemps. There are two sexes but there is a tiny percentage that do not conform to this dichotomy; broken X, etc. MRI examination of female/male brains show vast differences in processing and areas of activity, especially in temporal and linguistic tasks; even here there is a continuum ( normative curve) with the 75% under the curve but a significant percentage of outliers. Autism dominates in the trans community - it is 3 times more likely ( 400%) for a transgender to be on the autism spectrum - understandable when autism expresses as a inability to relate to social constructs. Gender dysphoria have always been around - 1 in 20, 000 on average for most cultures.
1:42 Questioner: Why is the male and the female nature different? _Ra: I am Ra. When the veiling process was accomplished, to the male polarity was attracted the Matrix of the Mind and to the female, the Potentiator of the Mind; to the male the Potentiator of the Body, to the female the Matrix of the Body. May we ask if there are any brief queries before we close this working?_ Ra Material
"and in that clip too she adds that she too cares about social validation.... by JK rowling." FUCKING CLOCKED this really is the eternal trans struggle: even if you absolutely despise someone as a person, you will still care about if they see you as your gender, probably even moreso than with the people who are your allies. its just so hard to divorce yourself from the feeling of "oh i'll show them, if they just see me as [gender here] i've done it." gender really isn't just what's on the inside, it's a continuous societal conversation and trans people won't go away as long as gender is as deeply rooted in our society as it is. we're here to stay.
Sex(the noun), male and female are used below in reference to biology i.e. as gamete based. The video segment where Contrapoints argues against essentialism comes from her video about autogynephilia. Contrapoints looks for an alternative explanation to autogynephilia only to find 'essential essence theory' lacking. And at that point Contrapoints seems to give up on the whole project of explaining 'transgender identity'. However, what of autogynephilia? It is argued that this is a condition that only males can exhibit. Therefore, it could be argued that Contrapoint's personal presentation using stereotypical / traditional female clothes/ makeup etc is an expression of a biologically male sexuality which seems to me to be an argument for an essential etiology: Contrapoints is 'transgender' because of a gynaphilic male biology. For more context, the hijra are androphilic biological males. To my knowledge, they are similar to the fa'afafine of Samoa who present themselves in female stereotypical/ traditional ways in order to attract males i.e. they are androphilic as opposed to gynephilic. Again, this seems to be a biological basis for presenting as the opposite sex. What I am seeing here (in autogynephilia and the hijra), is a point at which sex and gender interface. This seems to make the two inseparable. Contrapoint's presentation is predicated on sex. Likewise, the hijra's presentation is predicated on sex. otherwise, why attempt to change one's appearance? As a footnote, whether this is correct or not, it still seems that gender profilicity requires some sort sex/gender interface. Otherwise, do you not have some sort of mind/body Elisabeth of Bohemia problem?
No she’s spoken about this before, she wears makeup and feminine clothing because it helps her pass, not because of some male sexual view of womanhood.
This is really interesting. Without wishing to be reductive, it makes me think about the difficulty I had as a cis straight woman when I was trying to work out why marriage was so important to me - despite understanding in a feminist way the constructed and fraught nature of the history of marriage, I still wanted to do it because of a deep psychological and social desire that made my relationship feel incomplete without it. I desperately wanted to sign up to the legal and social position of being married to my spouse. I would have found it heartbreaking and difficult to have not been allowed to square this circle of my own identity. I think we all construct our identities in the confines of our society, but that doesn't mean we can control what we want our identity to be and the freedom to self define and to fulfil the roles that we crave should be an absolute right in a free society.
As a feminist that defines her feminism by opposing marriage I really appreciate your comment. I always had the exact opposite desire to you, I do not want to be marry. But not because I am a strong feminist (as I thought) but because being married does not mean a lot in my country and social circle.
Thanks. You put it well when you write "squaring the circle." Inevitably today, we're caught in between sincerity and authenticity and profilicity. Somehow marriage is inauthentic--or turns out to be inauthentic after a while. But not being married is insincere. And now, with profilicity added to mix, it gets eve more complicated. You'll never square a circle, and the futility of the attempt becomes increasingly obvious the more you try. But it can be somewhat of a relief to accept that whatever we do, we're "genuinely pretending."
Speaking as a male heavily indoctrinated into feminism in adolescence, it always seemed incongruent to me that I was raised to believe that marriage was an institution created by men to subjugate women and therefore I should oppose it as a kind of institutionalised prostitution and then finding that every women I met was obsessed with it, whilst men weren't really that kean for which they were denounced as "commitmentphobes"! I began to suspect that somewhere along the line I had been lied to! 😂
What's missing from gender ideology, and also from Carefree Wandering and Contrapoints, is the importance of evolution by natural selection in human gender. Gender is merely a polite synonym for biological sex. Humans are animals, males and females. There seems to be a conflation by philosophers like Judith Butler that gender is different from bio-gender and instead are gender roles rooted in human emotion and cultural construction. Butler specifically shies away from biology and reduces gender to gestures of performativity that become habituated over time and frequently mandated by society. For some odd reason human beings are so fearful of being animals that they are constantly finding ways to do the impossible: separate psychology from physiology. Mind-Body dualism. They have for millennia done this through theology, now through postmodern gender ideology. Carefree Wandering and Contrapoints do not go this far, but they do seem to struggle with it thinking that gender is "something different" and based in how one "feels" about their gender.
I believe Gender is largely imposed by society. When I talk to people about their own feelings about gender I often find that a sizeable portion of them don't really ever question how they feel about their own gender. With our society removing most of the limits of how one can act within his own gender, we see the very concept of gender losing it's substance. When we picture a man or a woman, we have certain expectations about them in terms of their behaviour and their role. With these expectations removed, we lose the meaning of gender. I find it interesting that binary transgender people exist and I am fascinated by them. Some of them don't reject gender entirely, some even defend it. Listening to multiple transgender people reveals how different their beliefs can be, they vary wildly. It suggests that there is something more to this phenomenon, something we have not figured out yet.
Exactly! I have known some male to female transgenders that act more feminine than I do. I have always had this feeling of being a male, I have acted selfishly dominating, wanting to have sex with lots of women because I get bored fast with a commited relationship, I know, it's disgusting, I can feel the pain on both sides. But I do feel like I am this hot, wonderful "guy". Lol, and at the same when I have fallen in love everything clicks, mentally, physically and spiritually.
Trans people are varied and complicated and many pursue transition socially or physically out of comfort, some do it out of desire, some do it for fun, some do it because they have no choice. Transgender people have been a round a long time, and had many reasons for being the way they do. Conceptualizing it as a recent phenomenon with a coherent goal is new, and honestly I think a fool's errand. For many trans people, the fact they have changed their gender is a very tenuous connector for them to other trans people.
The weight of evidence is that gender is imposed by biology, and gender's existence is universal throughout human history. But it is mediated by society, and this affects the roles, and strikingly affects the symbols (famously pink and blue, long short hair). But it doesn't affect that there are roles. What people can do, hopefully, is make them less restrictive, but we haven't exactly seen that happen. Instead they are both more and less restrictive now. Maybe if people can make them less restrictive , they can get rid of them totally later, but it seems like that would be a techno-biological project as much as anything and people may not ever want it.
I don't understand what is so fascinating about them. Neither Contrapoints nor Muller advocate for the complete abolishment of gender. Just gender as a metaphysical entity. It is a common mistake to think gender is "fake" because it is a social construct. Money is a social construct and very real. And yeah, of course transgenders aren't a monolith, are you really surprised by that?
I feel as though the point re. over-investment and surgery isn't quite fully fleshed out. Just because a medical procedure can be risky does not necessarily mean that those that pursue it have 'over-committed'. After all, particularly for trans people, not looking in certain ways can be very dangerous, both in every day life, but particularly in countries where being 'clocked' can even mean going to jail. Of course, it's also worth re-emphasizing the psychological pain felt by many trans people due to profound incongruities between mind and body and the fact that many surgeries such as facial feminisation and top surgery have a very well established track record of providing lasting relief. The point still stands - there is a point at which one can become lost in 'identity', but it also true that what constitutes over-commitment is something that must be explored, at least to some extent, on an individual basis, and without clear or cookie cutter coordinates.
to be taken seriously as one's gender is different than being taken seriously as a "woman" because as De Beauvoir points out to be a woman is situated as an experience of being a woman that is more than just a cultural construction, more than just biological chromosomes, more than just historical circumstance. It is the relational field between these axioms that gives the concept woman its material and psycho-social reality. As Nathalie has an anti metaphysics of gender to her own admission he can never be a woman. While she may live in the social world and communicate online as a woman, this is different than saying Nathalie can be a women, because being IS BEING - its metaphysical. existence precedes essence as Heidegger would say. Gender theology is real, and Hans has done a good job not becoming a heretic.
Yup, being is BEING; well said. You never get to the core of being by explaining and deconstructing and intellectualizing. It would be honest to admit that woman (and man) is a mystery - despite all scientific research and all efforts to turn the inside out for everybody to see.
You took a sharp left turn in the last minute that warrants more discussion and support. What constitutes over-identifying with one's gender? What does it mean to be a gender fundamentalist? I agree that over-committing to gender congruity is a way to over-identify with one's gender. But you are unclear about whether to "submit one's body to invasive medical regimes to better fit a gender profile" constitutes overcommitting to gender congruity! Do any medical processes which increase gender congruence constitute as being a "gender fundamentalist" in your terms? I am a trans woman. I give myself an estrogen injection once a week - less invasive than taking a daily vitamin - which helps enormously in curating my gender profile and makes my life easier. There are physiological and psychological benefits that are obvious to me. Is this medical intervention over-committing to my gender or congruence? Is it psychologically dangerous despite its obvious subjective psychological benefits. It is a pharmacologically safe intervention. So what are you saying here? Being trans is fine as long as you don't alter your body? If this is not what you are saying, your viewers are going to misunderstand you as being (quite comprehensively) against any medical interventions for trans folks, and this is the absolute worst thing we need right now when governments are actively outlawing our access to vital medicine. Please clarify or reconsider your viewpoint.
Over-commitment to one's identity, in my terminology, basically means not acknowledging that identity is always "genuinely pretended." This is to say two things: 1) A genuine sense of identity results (paradoxically) from "playing" (pretending) an identity. We should understand genuineness and pretending as two equal components of identity building. Over-commitment means to deny the "pretending" element in identity. 2) Human existence is incongruent and dissonant. Identity "covers up" this dissonance--and we need to cover it up to some extent in order to be able to function. However, a perfect match of the dissonant aspects of human life is unachievable. To fanatically desire complete coherence of the different aspects of identity (e.g. social persona, body, personal thoughts and feelings) is identity fundamentalism. I am not in medicine and cannot judge the concrete evasiveness of medical procedures, but I would consider it over-commitment to gender identity if one would want to try to change their body so that it "exactly matches" how one feels, or how one wishes "to be seen as." in terms of gender. I reject advertising for cosmetic surgery that suggests it can fulfill peoples wishes to look "authentic" or be their "real selves" by gendering them in specific ways. This is exploitation of gender fundamentalism.
@@hans-georgmoeller7027 I completely agree with your assessment of identity then, but I highly suggest you look into the empirical difference between treatment of gender dysphoria with bodily intervention vs people with body dysmorphia altering their bodies. In the former case, bodily interventions tend to achieve satisfaction whereas the latter do not. Perhaps you are conflating the two. A trans person tends to be satisfied with their body post HRT, whereas a cosmetic surgery addict or compulsive bodybuilder tend to never achieve an end state that brings completion or fulfillment. I think you are also overstating how much transgender people attempt to "exactly match" the opposite sexed body. My not quite but mostly feminine biology at this point is enough for me to "genuinely pretend" my desired gender. There are very practical reasons that you might not be entertaining, Consider how much easier it is to inhabit a womanly air so to speak when one doesn't have to contend with far heavier and more apparent body hair, or male pattern baldness, or chest acne, or developed upper body musculature, or faster facial hair growth. These are all practical reasons why one would desire to alter their body with HRT, because a simple estrogen shot can compeltely alter all of them whereas trying to "genuinely pretend" womanhood without estrogen is a constant uphill battle against secondary sexual characteristics. Regardless, I certainly appreciate your general philosophical lens here, I just think you misunderstand the transgender phenomenon and are far too restrictive in terms of damning bodily intervention entirely to a kind of bad faith, when certain interventions can be completely aligned with a profile-based identity understanding.
@@AnnularFrisson Thanks a lot for your detailed response. I get your point, and it seems we're in basic agreement. I am not arguing against any of the interventions you describe. My point is, that in media discourse, and perhaps also in law and medicine, a problematic language of "authenticity" is currently being promoted--and marketed. And this problematic language/ideology may, in some cases, lead to medical interventions that people may later regret.As Contrapoints says in one of her videos, "passing as" a gender is a healthier approach (it seems to me) than chasing a "true self." Since you asked about "over-identification" with gender roles, I will give you one concrete example. Over centuries, and under conditions of "sincerity" (identification in orientation to gender roles), many Chinese women were thought of as really female only if they had bound feet. There is evidence that many Chinese women personally embraced this kind of thinking and strongly desired/identified with bound feet. They didn't want to simply "pass as" women and rather show their "sincere commitment" to the female role with their bound feet. That's over-identification with a gender role under conditions of sincerity. I hope similar over-identification can be avoided under conditions of profilicity..
@@AnnularFrisson i think you’re right in what you say, but this is a tangential but ultimately different issue than what he’s talking about. no one would say getting an tumor removed or appendix removed or stint placed is about aligning oneself to an authentic self. it’s a necessary procedure to ensure the survival of the individual, which is exactly how i see hrt and other affirming surgeries. not about an authentic self as much as positive health outcomes. but many people have lingering body issues even after hrt, too. contra is an example. and at some point, a trans person can stop having trans body dysmorphia and just have regular, to which his theory would then apply. that’s how i see it at least. but good point
6:38 Must gender be different from sex? It seems to me we had two avenues in modernity. One avenue would remove any societal restrictions on people of the female sex, and would dispense with ideas as to how males or females should act or present themselves. The second avenue, the one we're taking, separates gender from sex, but despite despensing with ideas of how males and females act or present themselves, it retains notions how men/boys and women/girls should act and present themselves.
RE 5:31 - super funny to me that this ostensibly red-haired guy is saying intersex folks are "rare exceptions" when they're statistically just as common as... people with red hair
4:29 U and contrapoints r wrong here Sex is not binary it's bimodal Gender is a social construct. So the concept of cis(binary) is made up, Gender abolition is the future(if u r against that ,u r a gender essentialist , patriarchal) Also masculinity and femininity r archaic and reductive,binary, regressive category to categorize the people who r complex ,just call people by their name ,u r not a kid that needs a kids guide book to put people into binary boxes. Just to make sure i am talking to people who understand that sex is bimodal and gender is a social construct Not to a lib or reactionary or leftist who is not aware of the concept ,so they would throw away the argument that I made.
I have a theory that the mechanisms of Profilicity ergo the validation feedback loops may exhasperate mental health conditions related to self, i.e. dyshorias and that rising mental health issues in young and always online people are in part at least a product of this.
The problem in my opinion with many feminist of gender theorists is, that they often seem to aspire to come up with universally true ideas. But people aren't universally all the same. If you want to overcome gender roles to become an authentic individual, good on you. But if you are a trans (or cis) person and are psychologically fulfilled by embracing a very traditional version of gender roles, then also, good on you. There just is a lot, that has to be answered by each individual themselves.
"If you want to overcome gender roles to become an authentic individual, good on you. But if you are a trans (or cis) person and are psychologically fulfilled by embracing a very traditional version of gender roles, then also, good on you" - THIS. As long as each *genuinely* respects other views and doesn't feel threatened by them - not just says 'i respect you' and means 'im secretly judging you/threatened by you passive aggressively' - then it all works! there are beautiful things about the traditional categories of gender as well as about ppl using neopronouns or being agender or gnc in general
I don't even want to be BOTHERED by people insisting, that their specific model for their life is THE model to base your life on. I hate people who make their life choices to feel superior, because I don't even care. And that swings all the ways there are. I have my views, on how I want to live, but that is nobody's business. I might tell somebody about it, but then I#m really only telling about myself. There would be nothing that tells anybody how they should live their lives. My life also isn't one, that should dictate how other people should live. If you're making an ideology out of what people's private lives should look like, something has gone wrong@@2b-coeur
The argument seems to be that there either is no true self or it's unknowable. We as humans like to fulfill roles, performing gender can make you happy bc you're filling a role. Different ppl lean toward different gender identities bc playing whatever roles makes them happy.
@@GourdClae That's a pretty banal philosophy of life, especially when you add drugs and cosmetic surgery to the equation. I understand we are living through this capitalist hedonism and the host describes it well, but do we just shrug our shoulders and leave it at that? I find online life personally depressing and socially destructive.
@@noktilux4052 it's definitely hedonistic for sure, i just think hedonism is neat. life is short if drugs and surgery make you happy then i say do it. Also, it may seem that gender affirming surgery is kind of, like, giving in to performing a gender rather than being authentic, and might seem hedonistic but in that case it's more about healing than hedonism, specifically. Realistically, our brains sometimes malfunction and you need to be pragmatic about doing the best thing you can to help it along.
Are you, maybe, incorrectly equating Natalie's personal views with one of the characters' she acts out as for the purpose of presenting a diversity of views on a topic?
Great video, I hope Natalie finds it socially validating :) I wonder if you have any thoughts about non-binary identity? Contrapoints was "cancelled" on Twitter a few years ago when talking about an incongruity between trans- and non-binary gender identity. Her reasoning was that in everyday places, she would be called "miss" or "ma'am" without hesitation, but within leftist "safe spaces", she was required to confirm her gender identity and preferred pronouns (ostensibly to avoid assumptions and potentially misgendering people.) So basically, because they were rejecting the social signifiers in favour of an "authentic" self, she did not receive the social validation she needed to feel like she genuinely was a woman. Non-binary people seem to crave the same social validation (by using "they/them" pronouns), even though they reject the social perception of their identity.
good point, but I think it would be the extreme right who would mess everything up; in my opinion the left requiring to use the pronouns is not a bad thing. it is the alt- extreme rightists who refuse to show some freaking compassion to use them. I know only one Person who has asked me to use the them/they pronouns.... one fucking person! why would I be an asshole, not do it and shame them?
Nonbinary identity as a notion is nonsense. It only "defines" itself in relation to what it's not. That does not an identity or definition make. Moreover, as a negative "identity", it reproduces at a remove the binary it seeks to escape: binary people versus nonbinary people. The people claiming this "identity" aren't the brightest crayons in the box, evidently, but more likely seek special status and (self-)perception as the cutting edge of gender radicalism. But what do nonbinary people have to do enact this radicalism? It's as simple as declaring it.
@@umamicashflow1809 Nah I disagree. I am someone who has a lot of inner turmoil around how I see myself. This is due to a combination of factors such as growing up in two different cultures with conflicting gender roles, and having had gender envy towards the opposite sex since I was a child that flares up occasionally but isn't strong enough for me to want to fully commit to something my family wouldn't approve of. I choose nonbinary identity to avoid having to think about any it. I know people will perceive me as the gender I was born as despite my continued efforts to appear androgynous, but my friends use they/them pronouns for me because they know it makes me feel comfortable and I appreciate them for it. It has nothing to do with seeking a special status, it's about feeling anxious about who I am and wanting to resolve it by stepping away from traditional gender roles and giving myself space to breathe. Furthermore, many binary trans people use nonbinary identities on their way to transition as it's a good way to try out new pronouns without going all the way, and your comment invalidates that. I think you need to step back from your kneejerk reaction of derision and understand that nonbinary is a useful gender category for many people for a variety of reasons, possibly some I haven't even considered. I don't think it's helpful to gatekeep what is and isn't valid when it comes to gender. Also, since the original comment in this thread is about the Contrapoints cancelling stuff, I want to give my take from the perspective of a nonbinary person: I can empathize with Contra's complaint and I think it's silly that she was cancelled for it. I unfortunately don't have a really good idea of how to fix that issue because on the one hand not making assumptions about someone's gender is probably for the best, but wanting validation is completely understandable as well. Cheers.
@@ag8454 What you call gatekeeping I call safeguarding and protecting. Gender nonconformity is a well-established predictor of future same-sex orientation, but young lesbians and gay men are increasingly misrecognizing themselves as trans, which conceptualizes gender identity according to regressively sexist stereotypes. Cheers.
Not a philosophically geared answer at all, but Contra's complaint about this was very silly tbh - and the response to it was also overdone. I understand here we are thinking about pronouns as mechanism for social acceptance but tbh im skeptical. For some nonbinary and binary trans ppl - sure. For others, I think it is a statement of authenticity.
Something I think you might be implying with the closing argument is a more universal understanding of gender dysphoria. Say I'm a cis man, but I'm not particularly big and strong. Maybe I don't get treated like I think men should be treated, but I strongly identify as a man and I find the dissonance painful. So we could ask the question, is this hypothetical version of myself experiencing gender dysphoria, or something like it? Are a series of medical treatments (i.e. steroids) appropriate to align me with my gender? I mean, obviously you wouldn't, because you would say don't identify so much with your gender, but it would be a similar situation. Of course, there is at least one critical difference. The politics of these treatments is not under serious contention. If I chose to go through with the procedures I wouldn't have conservatives scrambling to stop me and to keep me out bathrooms.
If the feeling and identity of gender is transient, changing and/or socially induced, on what exactly do you base the need for serious medical intervention?
One thing that I'm struggling with lately, are women that I know who insist on gender neutral pronouns, and yet make no effort to disassociate from their gender. They still only date guys, they still wear women's clothing, display female sexuality, and yet insist on being referred to as genderless. Meanwhile I have family who have gone through transition, and who have partners who I would identify as actually genderless. To me, insisting on genderless pronouns means a commitment to that lifestyle, but I really have a hard time attributing that same meaning to women who simply insist on arbitrarily being called they/them. And it's not some subversive act to try and undermine the discussion, these are individuals that consider themselves "allies" to gay/queer & minority groups.
There's a contrast between the video essay styles of Contrapoints and this channel - Natalie is an entertainer, focused on costuming, lighting, and background to add to what she says, and what she says is part of the performance. This channel is less about theatrics and performance. I wonder what it would look like for Carefree Wandering as a channel to put on such a performance lol
de Beauvoir: "One is not born, but becomes a woman." This helps me sort out one aspect of the trans thing that...annoys me. Like Natalie Wynn, many trans women strive to become ultra-feminine, as if to be a woman is to be ultra-feminine. (I myself am annoyed by the ultra-feminine as much as I am annoyed by the ultra-masculine.) This fixation on the ultra-feminine "ideal" slavishly kow-tows to the capitalist beauty industry; it reinforces an insecurity that as, she ages, will inevitably require more and more expensive fixes provided by that industry. This issue brings to mind the image of Georgia O'Keefe, out there in dry, wind-swept New Mexico. No make-up. Unconcerned about aging. Centered. A different ideal. (One cannot imagine Georgia O'Keefe deliberately altering her voice so as to sound feminine. The altered-voice thing strikes me as a significant red flag. Like taking on a phony accent to sound more posh.)
but even the non-trans voice ultimately takes form through socialisation. Masculine and feminine intonation, rate, prosody etc. differ, and are all socially constructed. Have you never chatted to a pre-pubescent boy who is trying his darnest to sound like his voice has already broken? A lot of men never escape this little performance, and speak in a low monotone for the rest of their life. Is this behavior "natural" or "learned"?
@@BrennanYoung You make strong points, my friend, but you have not persuaded me. To be ultra-feminine is to reveal a regrettable insecurity. Ditto, to be ultra-masculine. This is well-illustrated by the example of the pre-pubescent boy deliberately, consciously pretending that his voice has already changed; as it is deliberate and conscious, it could not be considered natural (though, of course, the continuation could become unconscious habit...a habit that is fed by insecurity). Natalie suddenly (that is, deliberately) changed her voice. I don't see this deliberate change being different than deliberately adopting an upper-class voice. An upper-class voice is, indeed, a social construct. To deliberately adopt an upper-class voice, likewise, reveals a regrettable insecurity. It is the deliberate, conscious change that is off-putting. If Natalie had been at ease (i.e., not insecure), she would not have needed to change her voice deliberately. (I assume that the hormone treatment might well have organically changed her voice, which would, of course, be perfectly legitimate.) The non-trans voice does arise from socialization in childhood, though a child does not consciously adopt its "appropriate" voice; therefore, it is not a false voice. Socialization would also cause the child (to some degree, consciously) to adopt a hyper-feminine or hyper-masculine voice, alas. This also takes other forms. I can remember myself as a child deliberately dumbing-down my voice, adopting a cutie-pie treacly voice with the purpose of pleasing adults (i.e., manipulating them). This memory discomforts me. To consciously alter your voice is to be false in a fundamental way. I have no problem with the trans phenomenon in itself. The eminent neurologist at Stanford, Robert Sapolsky (my favorite scientist), has convincingly lectured on the neurology of the trans brain (and, of course, there is an ample body of anecdotal evidence to back him up). It is the conscious adoption of ultra-feminine or ultra-masculine affect that displeases me. The ultra-thing is a toxic social construct. It has throughout history done great harm. It arises from insecurity. It is exploited by those people and entities who profit from the insecurity of others. When a woman believes that her face is not "good enough", the make-up industry exploits her insecurity. Her face is, in fact, good enough. It is also good enough as she ages. It is in the interest of the make-up industry that she believe her face to be not "good enough". It is in the interest of the make-up industry, as well as the plastic surgery industry, that she become increasingly insecure as she ages. The make-up industry and the plastic surgery industry have succeeded in extracting a great deal of money from Natalie. You know, it occurs to me that before her transition, Natalie also wore make-up, but one did not get a sense that she did so out of insecurity. It was more an expression of artistic fun. I would say that it was better when it was merely fun. I know full well that to address these issues is an exercise in futility. Capitalism has brainwashed people. Oh, well.
@@BrennanYoung You know, Brennan, I have been further mulling over your reply. You said, "Masculine and feminine intonation, rate, prosody etc. differ, and are all socially constructed." Social construct or not, you are talking about stereotypes. I am a cis-woman. I do not, and have not ever, spoken in a manner remotely similar to that adopted by Natalie Wynn. Ditto her mannerisms. She is complying with a stereotype. She did not have to do so, as my own example demonstrates. I don'y like sexism, even when an individual chooses to comply with with their own "appropriate" sexual stereotype, without at least questioning their choice. I again cite Georgia O"Keefe as a woman who was not subservient to stereotype. I admire O'Keefe, a confident personality. Not insecure.
I don't disagree with anything you've said here, but I think it's actually important to further clarify that sex is in fact mutable. Just like gender, sex has multiple facets, and only one of these facets (chromosomes) is immutable. Hormones cause physiological changes that can be simplified as changing one's sex, such that medically speaking trans people who have been on hormones for a long time are (except for reproduction) largely the same as cis people with the same hormones.
That "except for reproduction" aside is doing quite a lot of work. Reproduction being the reason biological sex differences evolved haha. Maybe one day it will be different, but current transition technology doesn't change sex.
Male and female are used univocally across the plant and animal kingdoms to refer to the sex organized toward the production of sperm or eggs respectively. Therefore, hormones and chromosomes do not figure essentially into a definition of sex (crocodiles are male or female despite not having sex chromosomes, your sex doesn't change during puberty even though your hormones change, etc). You may find this helpful ua-cam.com/video/s9kNwAHThA8/v-deo.html
@@thanderhop1489 You are right - if we [decide to] define male/female as only [the possibility to or past history where they] produce sperm or eggs. I'd like to note, the part in brackets, which you implied but didn't say are important though. I say you imply them because 1. We inherently make decisions about what would be a most useful when we define and 2. If we don’t add not about potential/historywhen talking about producing gametes then sex absolutely does change. For example, small babies or elderly women or woman who have had a hysterectomy etc. Of course, this is a decision we’re making - we are defining it in a way so it doesn’t change - not because the actual biology is exactly the same in the same state. That’s fine! But, the definition brings other problems. Inadvertenly we are creating a scenario that is helpful for understanding how reproduction happens in general but we are failing to get any information at all about the ACTUAL potential to produce gametes in an individual. If you say a creature is female, what are we learning with this definition? Do they ONLY produce female gametes or do they also produce male gametes? Did they produce eggs before? Will they produce them in the future? If so, how do you know they will? If they never do produces eggs, does that mean they are not female? You could say that this doesn’t matter: they are sick, old or broken. I think there are plenty of times where this is not the case - but fine! Even still, it still leaves open the question of sex. Your model doesn’t describe ALL of reality (of course none can but we know not to say they are indisputable in most cases). If we include other things in the definition such as chromosome hormones etc we avoid this problem about knowing sex but we introduce the idea that sex can change. This isn’t to says that there is a perfect definition of sex that doesn’t run into problems like this. In fact, one that includes multiple factors also obscures facts when used a binary m/f - where it is useful is we can specify CHROMOSOMAL SEX, HORMONAL SEX, etc giving us clear information instead about what an individual has or does not have. Instead, this is to say, we decided what sex is - it’s not essential. And if we decide what it is, then it must be possible for somebody to fall out of the category of male or female based on our changing definition. And if that’s possible then sex can’t be “immutable”. I don’t even agree with OP on saying chromosomal sex is immutable. In the animal kingdom that is definitely not true ( see bearded dragons) and for humans it’s not true now - but that doesn’t mean it will always be that way. Even putting that aside, like you said, including chromosomes in the definition at all is up to us - making it mutable on that basis alone. ?
I would define gender as follows: to be male or female is to labor according to a sexual division of labor in a given mode of production. The categories of gender-authenticity, gender-sincerity and gender-profilicity have to be located within economic modes of production. They can not be seen as free floating (ahistorical, idealist) categories. These categories answer to different forms of class power and to historically differing modes of production. For example, gender-sincerity makes most sense in a feudal/agricultural mode of production, gender-authenticity in a modern liberal industrialized capitalist society, and gender-profilicity in a post-industrial, globalized finance-capitalist mode of production. One could say, then, that gender indeed has an essentialist component and is not entirely malleable insofar as societies have a need to reproduce labor through gendered and sexual divisions of labor, whether one likes it or not- see the current fertility crisis as evidence of what happens when a post-industrial concept expands beyond its material base.
I feel like "gender technology changes based on what the society needs" doesn't show an essential gender, but the opposite? I enjoy the economic link thought that is so overlooked !!
To take it a step further, economics is only a manifestation of the underlying principle of survival. Animals across the board have divisions of labour based on the strengths and weaknesses of males and females. Trying to divorce physiology from psychology is a mistake. Many people treat the mind as though it is seperate from the body. It is not
What's the difference between curating a gender profile and conforming to gender roles, though? When contrapoints talks about presenting in a meticulously feminine way, is that not conforming to a gender role?
One can conform themselves to a gender role while not reinforcing or requiring gender roles from others, one can conform to aesthetic gender roles while challenging them in other fronts, etc.
i don't think bringing up traditional third genders is done to "idealise them" as much as it is done to show that what we call "trans gender" now is a normal part of the human experience globally, and different cultures have recognised them (even if their theory of gender culturally is different to ours) showing that in fact our own binarism of gender in the west is particular and socially constructed. So while Contrapoints will have a different view on gender, she will also see this as an example of how other communities do not deny the existence of so called "trans" identities, i.e. those that do not conform to a gender binary.
I think many of us would love to hear this explored and broke down in to more digestible terms. I’ve sent this to Benjamin Boyce, would be great to hear you discuss this with him.
I have to disagree with both you and Natalie on the idea of being oneself without gender norms as utopian. Social constructs are not eternal, nor sempiternal. Different societies have different constructs. Her caricature of what it would imply to live in a genderless world completely misses the point. It's not about getting rid of everything that has historically been construed as gendered, actually the opposite: to open up the barriers and stop imposing on others arbitrary rules of appearance and behaviour based on gender. A good example of this that I think she'd agree with is gendered toys. Nobody is saying "get rid of cars and Barbies", what we say is "stop tagging them as toys for girls or boys, they're just toys".
As I watch more and more of these videos, the notions of sincerity and profilicity appear to became one and the same. A genuine commitment to a role largely created and validated by the societal context. Men and women sincerely commiting to their roles 200 years ago did so no less in expectation of a reaction from a crowd. The general peer was not as large, and the profile was not digizited but I see many similarities. Perhaps this is why neo-sincerity is appealing as a response to profilicity - because it is so similar. Secondly, I think I can imagine your apprehensions, but I do wish you would talk more about the political side as well. Specifically Contrapoints dismisses some ideas on the grounds that they are not helping "achieve equality". I personally don't think equality can or even should be an achievable state in society and would love to hear your thoughts.
Fascinating video! I'm a big fan of Contrapoints and I found this analysis extremely illuminating. On the one hand, I do fundamentally agree with Prof. Moeller and Contrapoints that we should reject gender metaphysics. On the other hand, if a person from an early age, develops their gender identity incongruently with their biological sex, and it's a reliable fraction of the population in whom this occurs regardless of social conditions, then this calls for a scientific - neurological - explanation. Indeed, exactly analogously with sexual orientation, brain differences correlating to differences in gender identity have been reliably identified (see for example research by Dick Swaab). So, while we should reject all notions of "gendered souls" or indeed whole "gendered brains", the neurobiological evidence gives us important clues as to just *how* contingent and socially malleable gender identity might be in general. Personally, I identify as a man, as gay and as a rock climber. I've been rock climbing very frequently for 20 years, so my brain must have changed physically to encode the learning I've done over this time: there'll be - in principle - a neuroanatomical signature that marks me out as a climber. This is obviously totally socially contingent, and yet also woven into my biology. There are also brain features that correlate to my sexual orientation (somewhere in the hypothalamus for starters), but this aspect of my identity isn't socially contingent: it's not changeable, it developed early (the signs were there before I ever experienced sexual desire), it goes against all my social conditioning and is certainly not under my conscious control. Similarly, my gender identity as a man is socially contingent in how it manifests, but there's northing I could do, or no social conditions I could be subjected to that could make me identify as a woman. I could change my identity as a climber by stopping climbing and taking up a different hobby, but there's nothing I can do to change my sexual orientation or gender identity. It's too deep in the brain, those systems developed too early on. This is why conversion therapy (both gay and trans) doesn't work. I think that there is a risk that in rejecting gender metaphysics and gender identity under authenticity, we may throw away too much. This is where I'm uncomfortable with Prof. Moeller's apparent scepticism of gender-affirming treatment (e.g. surgery) as "over-identifying" with one's gender. If incongruent gender identity occurs due to early brain development, it's very deeply laid down and can't be changed; and in our highly gendered society life's going to be much easier to live if a trans person "passes". So scepticism towards surgery simply isn't warranted in those cases (but this is clearly not the case for everyone who identifies as trans). It should go without saying that anyone having any irreversible medical intervention should have all the required support to make absolutely certain it is the right thing for them; but I think I would rather trust trans people's perspectives on their healthcare than even the most insightful academic philosophers.
Does this disagreement between Contra and Abigail Thorn have much to do with their stances regarding authenticity versus profilicity as it pertains to their understanding of their own trans identities?
I heard someone comment on that it could be that Abigail is in the UK and Contrapoints is in the US. How you treat these things very much affects the type of medical care you receive in the US, unfortunately. Having a medical "illness" (scare quotes intentional) can impact whether or not insurance will pay for procedures.
@@James_ER Yeah, this was my understanding as well. The mental “illness” classification can make things harder in the U.K. from what Abigail says (for instance, breast reduction surgery isn’t gate-kept for cis-women who need it). Meanwhile, with the expensive costs for healthcare in the U.S., having the dysphoria diagnosis is the thing health insurance companies require to even consider taking on part of the financial burden of transitioning.
If gender isn't an unalienable aspect of some one's being, does that make gender based discrimination less morally repugnant? After all, the strongest point against bigotry is that it often targets something that the victim themselves cannot change about their self. Something they're just 'born with' through no fault of their own.
Probably the best video I've seen on the topic. Really well articulated. There's one bit in the conclusion I'm not so sure about though. Giving the example of "surgery to make your body fit a gender profile" - this is actually one thing which I think while it may seem as the most extreme example, is actually more do with biology or sex, rather than gender itself. As far as I'm aware there's an emerging literature on "gender" dysphoria and "brain sex" - where our brains have an inbuilt sense of what our body should be like, and gender dysphoria - or the type where you don't feel your body is the right sex (so, im really not sure why its called gender dysphoria, shouldnt this be sex dysphoria?). There is a medical aspect to the act of gender surgery, and I don't think it's always to do with aligning appearance to preferred gender expectations. Without knowing this I found it really hard to square the circle of trans peoples' experiences of gender dysphoria and I think without it, it can easily lead to a "gender essentialist" perspective. That trans people are proof that we "really are" wo/men (if you believe their testimonies anyway), because from a very young age they "knew" and "felt" like they were the other gender... So, surgery I see not as an act of performativity (though of course it really is as well for many, as contrapoints' statements show i think), but a medical procedure because of a mismatch of brain sex and body sex.
The fact that a kid "feels" something doesnt make it real, you cant explain the existence of god with the fact that some people "feel" and "know" that there is a god
@@estefaniaboujon6830by that reasoning we shouldn’t listen when a child says they feel anxious or depressed all the time, because mood disorders are just “feelings” Feelings are real.
To me, "authentic" in this sense just means not socially conditioned or coerced to behave in a specific way specifically tied one's sex. It doesn't means "somewhere inside me buried under my conditioning is the r.e.a.l. me." I.e. it's not something material or spiritual. It's just the state one would theoretically inhabit if one had developed sans gender expectations.
30:10 if I remember correctly, she was talking about being taken seriously in order to develop relationships that would someone happy, not that just being taken seriously would make her happy. Try having friendships, relationships if no one takes you seriously
How to take seriously a person who plays "silly girl" year after year after year? I'm not referring to Contrapoints as such, but some other characters in the tra* movement. And yes, there are biological women too who adopt some kind of girly character and stick to it up into advanced age. Eternal boys exist as well.
@@Liisa3139 Someone "playing" the sill boy/girl is quite a different situation than a general fear that being seen by society as a category 'trans', or 'black', or 'gay', etc. is going to mean, with no ability to affect how people see you, that they will consider you to be e.g. a joke, inferior, etc. There is a distinction to be made there. I appreciate the idea you're getting at, but given you reference 'characters' in the trans movement, makes me think you're mostly referring to online influencers. Is that correct? That would be quite the over-generalisation and quite the unfair comparison.
@@cameronmclennan942 You can't win fear by hiding behind false identity constructions. Supporting false identities is not sound for societies either. Biology is biology. It is important to bear this in mind, also for tra*s. Say, when a tra* falls sick, the proper treatment may have a hell of a lot to do with the person's real sex.
@@Liisa3139 You clearly didn't understand, or don't agree with this video or Carefree Wandering then. He clearly states multiple times that he agrees with Contrapoints about practically all of her framing and evaluations of the philosophical positions of identity - i.e. that basically ALL of our identities are unfounded (or "false"). Your "biology is biology" sentance speaks volumes as to how little understanding of behavioural biology and psychology you have or are willing to allow in this discussion. Have a good one.
@@cameronmclennan942 What I'm after is questioning the importance of having much of an identity. I don't find it important, not very interesting even. It is like some kind of game that people who are very invested in branding themselves and creating a specific image and keeping their appearance do, but I see it as a useless waste of time and effort. Therefore I don't even understand the whole concept of identity. As I see it, it is rather meaningless. For a person who does not work in any performative profession and who does not produce even UA-cam videos or have a profile in Facebook - the whole identity fuss is inconceivable, total nonsense.
I would really like to see you two do a collaboration in the future. I realise you are a professor and Nat is more a philosophy themed video essayist but if you two could come together I would be amazed.
Some criticisms: -A lot of these claims are only forward looking, ignoring the implication of the statement. If you claim that there is no metaphysics of gender or theology of gender, you are building an argument on something that cannot be proved either way. -A subtext that must be addressed is the death spiral of the European perspective toward reproduction, ancestor reverence, and their refusal to replace the word “role” with the word “responsibility”. -An addendum to that is the refusal to acknowledge and investigate environmental factors that may play a huge role in the proliferation of the population.
I have to admit, I am a bit confused, so if I got something wrong, please correct me: so, we distinguish between biological sex and gender which is a societal/sociological/psychological component. Most people would say there are only 2 sexes. But are there only 2 genders? If there are, I assume they are what has in a given time in a given culture been perceived as masculine or feminine, correct? And here is where I don't get it: we then start talking about gender identity, which i must assume is not exactly the same as gender, and I have to wonder, isn't an assertion of being transgender just an affirmation of traditional gender roles and simply finding out I'm the "wrong" role, rather than rejecting or altering those roles? in other words, isn't it the case that those who transition because they feel they are the wrong gender, a case of buying into old- and often overhauled - tropes? as for the gender sex distinction, even if we say gender is not the same as sex, don't we have to acknowledge that biological sex influences gender? For example, we know that in every culture throughout history, women have assumed the roles of those who give birth and take care of children, not because someone decided so (unless we say that someone is a god), but because biology prevents men from assuming this role. now, im sure we can debate about to what extend culture shapes those roles, but I don't think we can deny that sex does shape gender roles based on what we know from history.
Contrapoints ultimately argued for Judith Butler's more imclusive performance lens, its a common misunderstanding that that video was punching down at non-binary ppl as "trenders"
omg, i feel the same way you do; I'm 59 but i swear to God i feel 36, a huge libido, hyperactivity, overthinking, hyperfocusing, so yeah, we keep adding layers of identities, and we could even "feel" so many different perspectives, experiences, but I guess a lot of people deny themselves this. I also think that the reason for the culture wars, especially when it comes to have a little f....ng compassion towards other humans, it's our internal animal instinct of violence, rage will fix everything.
Sounds like ADHD. Source: I also feel like that and I was diagnosed with it 2 years ago. It's not defect, but medication give me more control on what I want to do etc.
@@prkp7248 yeah, I suspected it in recent years, and someone who’s a therapist told me this was classic adhd. But since I moved to Seattle last year I have been having a hard time because of my expectations that come from a space that feels I’m above that, all the stuff that goes wrong, all The stressors make it difficult to accept them. That’s the thing with adhd, hypersensitivity and trauma, we know what we have to do, but either procrastinating, anxiety or depression are getting in the way. I’m trying to get a diagnosis to start medicines but it’s hard. Very frustrating for us
This is really interesting to me. Doesn't Amia Srinivasan say our sexuality isn't who we are, it is what we want. And then now I'm on Simone Beauvoir on gender authenticity. Your host says she was the authority on it: "Gender as gender roles imposes a social conformity and the point is to find ones own individual authenticity by rejecting this conformity." That's really well said. To the people who are really passionate about these issues I want to say "Relax." Not my example but if you are passionate about the rights of transgender prisoners where do you come down on the rights of prisoners? Wouldn't it be more helpful to work on that? I think the gender (trans) stuff is so interesting because it deals with what's given to us, our bodies and our lives, and how we create the world we live in, ascribing meaning and identification to things we don;t even know we are choosing. And it gets fuzzy fast. One example, it seems like we have a societal understanding or the male identified lesbian, words like butch dyke, and I think we understand how that could be an attractive sexual and relationship option for various women and for various reasons. It sort of makes sense that a masculine lesbian would date a more feminine lesbian. But what happens once that person goes through all the body transformation (sex change) and becomes a certified male. Then who do they date. Is that more attractive to some women than a butch female or a traditional birth-man (I just made that up)..Some males are attracted to females with penises. Where I live the story is that lots of men do gay sorts of things, the spectrum, but a lot of them don't have any gay identification, meaning how they want to present to the world. There's a real distinction about our private lives and what goes on with the people we know most closely and what we present to the world. I feel like a lot of this stuff should just be private, not criticized of forbidden, it's just some weird private, personal thing that people do. If you are a well behaved person in public and in general you can usually do whatever you want in private and people are fine. Is wearing your S&M adjacent clothes to work in the office an indication of your authenticity. Really cool topic. I'm just getting started.
the idea that activists should relax is a bit silly and im not sure what you mean!! in your example, the answer is obviously to help both and that trans prisoners have unique needs that somebody must advocate for. There are many ppl advocating for prisoners in general but very few advocating for the specific needs of imprisoned trans people. "I feel like a lot of this stuff should just be private," Why? Attraction is interesting in rerence to gender. The answer mostly is that most ppl don't think about it that much. There are some ppl who fetishize trans ppl, so to some yeas it is more attractive to many others it's just kind of a quirky thing that this man used to be a woman.
The problem with keeping your sexual tastes private is that by doing so you can hurt both yourself and the people you are attracted to. As a trans woman, I know many straight-identifying men are attracted to me but virtually none of those men are courageous enough to be seen in public with me. The end result is that I feel hopeless w/r/t ever finding a serious relationship and they - or many of them - feel ashamed of both their attraction and their cowardice.
This was really, really good. Question: do we have a chance of rejecting/not accepting profilicity in the future? I guess my approach to identity is authenticity (though I agree there is no true self), at least I tend not to participate in the acts of profilicity (which I guess in itself could be considered profilicity), and I don’t think I want my children to, would it be possible to raise them with accordance of authenticity? Sincerity lived on in the age of authenticity, will authenticity survive profilicity?
Rewatch his video on getting identity right. These are merely technologies used to navigate complex interactions. This profilic environment may seem hostile to the authentic, but we must both survive and exploit it. Survival is the essential context needed here. We’re all pretending.
In order to function in today's society, profilicity is unavoidable, I suppose (you need it for your bank account, for instance). But we can use the other technologies as well. It's like with actual technologies--new technologies do not completely erase the previous ones.
Nothing in Daoust seems to me not to mean « nothing » in the sense of absence, but ineffability, the real in the eminent way beyond the grasp of a finite concept.
I tend to think of gender as a job description and, like many jobs, sex plays a fundamental role in one's execution of the tasks necessary to complete the job effectively. Men, biologically, tend to skew towards a physical competence that lends itself well to combat, protection, sport, physical labor, etc. Men that aren't maximizing on these strengths (and thus maximally contributing to the community by focusing on core competencies) are socially derided as not being "manly enough" due to the perceived lack of "job performance" in the same way that a medical doctor spending much of their time on their dog-walking side-gig would be perceived as lacking in dedication to medicine and thus must not be "a real doctor." The real push from the trans community, near as I can tell, is to change or opt out of these job listings without contempt. "There's no such thing as doctors and carpenters," says the doctor tinkering with cabinets to the detriment of their health practice. Society doesn't care what you want; It cares about whether or not you're contributing to the best of your ability and dog-walking is not the best use of a doctor's time, no matter what the doctor feels. The doctor is free to walk dogs. The doctor is not free to walk dogs without judgement.
this is very interesting but kind of fails for me At the end? I was nodding along like, "yeah sex is like a inclination toward a certain job" at the end you make some claim that's basically "of course ppl don't condone you taking on a role that is inefficient for you". First im not sure what that means in this metaphor and also doesn't work for job metaphor bc,,, ppl can have multiple jobs, nobody judges a doctor for walking dogs, and even if they did that person isn't morally required to be optimally efficient to the community. ofc she should do what makes her happy. makes me think the metaphor is actually not that helpful! especially when you consider there are plenty of women who do "manly" things better and men who do "feminine" things better. in the metaphor, if we wanted to let them do the thing they're efficient at, there would be no reason for society to scorn them since it apparently loves efficiency
@@GourdClae Thanks for the thoughtful response, Gourd. I need to work on my analogy game, I guess. What I'm trying to get at, I guess, is that if a doctor (high-skill) takes on dog-walking (low-skill), they're robbing society of a higher value contribution... which isn't likely to be taken well even if it's within that individual's rights to do whatever they want. Also, while there are folks that excel at things that don't suit their traditional gender roles, it gets messy when we try to chase that down as an ideal or try to ignore that the inclinations ever existed in the first place or that they're rooted in biology rather than wholly socially constructed. While it's tempting to tell a child they can be anything they want, it really obviously is not true and biology plays an almost exclusive role in determining what is and isn't possible.
@@virtualalias Children of a certain age tend to be very insisting on the validation of their sex. This happens when they realize that the two sexes are different. Raising children by a sex neutral principle robs them from the opportunity of finding joy in the recovery of ones own sex. Small children in general tend to be conservative in their views and clear definitions make a secure environment for growth. By this I don't mean a rigid stereotypical gender role scene (pink clothing for girls etc), but giving the necessary facts of biology and some facts about the society (most people who hunt are men etc). As kids grow they will start questioning things and some friction with their parent's views is only good. No need for the parents to go and validate everything.
@@virtualalias of course! : D I really think most ppl don't think abt if a doctor is being optimally helpful. At least where I'm from we tend to value freedom- not really as a begrudging "yes, technically u can do whatever but you shouldn't" but as inherently good. Maybe we just have very different values on this? Or maybe you are just describing society as a whole without bringing your values in - I am not sure! I think it gender is a mix of biology and social conditioning. In what way sdoes somebody pursuing a gender role that fits them become messy - and is that inherently bad or is that part of their personal journey in life? If it is good to pursue a gender role that works well for you, surely it should be good no matter where you start? Maybe I'm wrong? again, Im more concerned with ppls happiness than their function in society, personally though. Just give science time it will change! In the meantime, I think allowing ppl to express themselves honestly and pursue the gender roles that makes them happy - doing everything we can to get them as close as possible is the kindest we can do. I think it would be more accurate to tell a child they have a right to pursue becoming whoever or whatever they want and that we will work to get them as close as possible! Of course these are just my thoughts!
@@Liisa3139 When children are very young it is true they are more concerned with conforming than thinking critically yes! In what ways does raising a child as sex neutral rob them? the only kinds of ppl i know to do this, would love if the child asserted they were male or female regardless of how they were born. If anything, giving them their sex rather than allowing them to reach out and take it seems like it would rob them the opportunity of finding themself. The idea that conflict is good between child-parent is obviously true, generally. However, validation is an important part of a parents role, on certain things and that includes their identity and potential.
Gender profile is a means to an end of being perceived in a way that matches what one sees as their authentic relationship with gender. Gender profile is a complicated thing for people who identify as non-binary/genderqueer because there is no set third gender role in our world. I lean more feminine, so I strive to be defaulted as a woman because being seen as a man feels more incongruent but I identify mostly gender less/gender neutral. So this is very complicated. I wonder how you’d fit non-binary identity into this concept of gender proclivity
It seems self-explanatory. Identity built around gender. Mutilating yourself if you have anything that doesn't conform to the manufactured stereotypes of the gender you "identify" as.
Your videos are always excellent. What about someone like me who doesn’t believe we should care about genders. I am in the medical field, and I see people as male or female sexes, except for a tiny percentage. Gender is a word or category that doesn’t need to exist.
this has always been a pet thought of mine, but i think that the way we express ourselves, such as through gender is so fascinating i am conflicted D : Besides that, while bio sex can tell us something about bodies they sometimes hide more info than they give. u would expect a female to have a certain hormone level, gametes, etc but in reality, having the information about their hormone levels or windpipe diameter or bone density would be more enlightening than ticking off m or f! the categories of m or f are often more obfuscatory than informative!
Given that your patients are people and not animals, you will have to take it into account to some degree regardless, if you want to actually be an adequate medical professional at an interpersonal level. If you only view your patients as male or female, you aren't just diminishing gender as self expression, you are diminishing ALL self expression (in my eyes that includes things such as the ability to consent). But I highly doubt that's how you operate in reality, you still see your patients as people. So I'd say recognising them as individuals but not recognising their gender is a bit hypocritical. However, obviously, if a patient is just getting treated for a broken bone, their gender is irrelevant. Does that make any sense
It is quite disrespectful to misgender someone, and you will not have a good relationship with a patient if that is how you treat them. Whenever I am presented with an intake form that has a section where I can identify myself as a trans woman, I breathe a massive sigh of relief that the provider is at least somewhat aware that trans people exist and that probably I won't have to worry about how our interaction will go regarding that. Otherwise I have to explain and I just don't know how that will go. Most people are accepting, doctors probably moreso, but it's very hard to tell otherwise if someone is going to be transphobic or not unless they are visibly an ally.
The "tiny percentage" is very important. From the most heated corners of the trans debate it's easy to get the impression that trans is poised to take over the world. (A narrative for alarm or rejoicing, depending on position). Quite false, of course. I continue to be astonished how much heat and how little light is caused directly by this very basic misconception. Trans people remain a tiny fraction of the population, but seem to be the subject of a disproportionate amount of hand-wringing. Another problem is the vulgar idea that sex and gender are synonyms. I suspect that this happens because (especially anglo-saxons) are too shy to utter the word "sex", whereas "gender" sounds more scientific, less pornographic. So they pick the word "gender" instead, and usually get it wrong. Should you care? Should the concept of "gender" (distinct from "sex") even exist? Gender is originally a linguistic term, meaning "type" (same etymology as the word "genre"). In linguistics, the genders are *not* always sex-related. Some languages have the two genders "animate" and "inanimate", rather than "masculine" and "feminine". All language is socially constructed, of course. Many languages have a "neuter" gender, and what is "masculine" in one language may be "feminine" in another, and vice versa. You might not care about this. That's fine. Pidgin dialects often "flatten" the gender distinction (e.g. the pidgin French dialects of Africa), but this does not make the distinction meaningless. And since many languages *have* no word for "gender" as distinct from "sex", confusion is inevitable. The term "gender" (meaning the social *connotation* of sex) was imported from linguistics into anthropology (and later, sociology) precisely because it is useful in those fields, and therefore needs to exist in those fields at least. Anthropologists have to discuss the different ways the sex is connoted differently in *different* cultures. For example, Kayan women elongate their necks with brass rings not because they are female (sex) but because they are Kayan women (gender). If a tribal ritual features -say- cross-gender behavior (see "Naven" by Gregory Bateson) then it is important for the anthropologist to identify which of the studied behaviors is actually "crossing", and what this might mean for the ritual. The word "sex" is ill-suited for this purpose. So the term "gender" as distinct from "sex" has genuine and valuable use cases. The problem comes when people try to shoehorn the useful notion of gender (i.e. how a given culture connotes sex) into the idea of "gender identity" which individuals somehow "have" (like a piece of personal property, as in "what are *your* pronouns?") - and interestingly it is the pronouns that *other people* use which both "Wokeism" and its detractors get so angry about. I work in a medical field too, (and btw I am a trans person). I work with medical simulation. We have been talking this issue through quite a bit in relation to the roster of "virtual patients" that we use to train with. We certainly want to prepare nurses for encounters with trans people, just as we want to prepare them for encounters with vegans or children or elderly people, or their families and loved ones. I don't think there is anything harmful about that, on the contrary, it is fully aligned with the idea of "care" more generally. Rapport is good for effective healthcare, ergo, gender is something that medical professionals should care *at least a little* about, to the extent that it can help build rapport. But how about this: What we have noticed is that if we include trans people amongst our "virtual patients", with a view to representing a diverse range of individuals, then there will be some learners who assume that the *entire case* is somehow about being trans (and why did we not make more of it), even though the simulated patient presents a symptom that has *absolutely nothing* to do with transition. There is also the related phenomenon, *very commonly reported* by trans people, that any and every symptom presented to medical professionals is immediately suspected to be caused by or related to transition. "Headaches? Tsk tsk, that's probably because you're taking estrogen." "Sore elbow? Well it says here you're taking testosterone every day, maybe that's why?" Certainly endo-medication can have side-effects, but this knee-jerk blaming of symptoms on transition technologies is unhelpful, tiresome, destructive to rapport, and even if the endo-medication may indeed be involved, medical professionals should take care to entertain other hypotheses too. Persons with disabilities make similar complaints - that their disability (or the technologies used to manage it) is far too often considered the most likely cause of any symptom that they may present. Now, even though I am a trans person, I think "Gender Identity" is a bogus idea, and I am dismayed that so many trans people and their allies have adopted it, because it simply invites the pertinent argument "But what does it actually mean to feel like a man/woman?". Another way to pose this question is "can you be transgender if you live alone on a desert island?" I would argue that this is impossible because there is no gender without a social context (and I believe that no social context can be entirely free of gender). Gender is a useful term and concept, but "gender identity" is heavily flawed. But here's another angle: Basic courtesy. In UK at least, a surgeon has the honorific "Mister" rather than "Doctor". (Because surgeons were traditionally "Barber Surgeons" rather than "Physicians"). Presumably the maintenance of this honorific difference is important. It seems a bit weird, but it costs nothing to follow along, just as it is considered disrespectful or rude to refer to military persons except by their correct rank. If you are on board with calling a surgeon "Mister", or using the prefix "Sir" for someone with an OBE, then I find it perverse (and openly ideological) not to extend a comparably small courtesy -by respecting preferred pronouns- to the tiny handful of trans people in your life.
Gender profilicity (and profilicity in general ) seems to be dialectical especially with regards to interpersonal relationship of the general peer. If this is what you have in mind, You might also be interested in Frantz Fanon’s, work especially chapter in Black Skin, White Masks. particularly the chapter titled The Black Man Recognition and the part on Hegel. In that part of the book, Fanon is working through the security and the pitfalls of a what you might call a “racial profile,” with some attention to the social, historical, political and material conditions that produce race
'Extremely online' isn't just using the internet a lot. It's about whether a person's identity and views are constructed by the internet more than they are informed by the real world. It's about personally seeing the internet as more real than reality.
I love the dichotomy of your online persona. having club penguin as your profile picture but engaging in philosophical conversation on the internet. It just makes me chuckle 😅😆
I agree, but I think he’s correct that this is an increasing number of people's way of being online.
The internet is more real than reality
I’m not sure if real world opinions are often informed by the real world
@@evergold1250 So lets run with that!
I liked Irvine Welshes formulation "in a thousand years there won't be any men or women, only wankers" which has always seemed to me a realistic perspective.
🤣🤣🤣A good one!!!
That was taken from Gregory’s Girl
@@fcawley2042 ah, thanks, I didn't realise he borrowed it, I should have known, the Renton character was well read.
@@merocaine No worries I was surprised myself
Who will have the babies ?
I don't think this discussion is complete without including the influence that commercialism has on our gender roles. The question is "am I trying to perform what I believe or what I am being sold?"
How much of my identity is just a commercial? Do I like having long hair or am I being told in commercials and movies that long hair is what I should want if I want to exhibit a certain profile? And is this commercialism killing us? Separating us? Helping us?
Am I this way because commercialism made me want to be?
I think this is something important to consider when curating a profile, but it's more of a parable than the philosophy that Dr. Muller is doing
this is very interesting as a thought, although in the context of trans ppl more complicated. Commercials aren't selling a kind of identity profile to trans women (for example) - they are selling it to cisgender women. There is an understanding that a certain gender role is not for certain people, and many trans people would prefer to conform if they could comfortably. But they cannot.
@@GourdClae this i've never understood. There's nothing innately female about women's fashion, so how could this be a dysphoric object for an mtf. Maybe then the object cause of desire is the being of a woman, and women's fashion is seen as an expression of being a woman, but many trans women are happy in not being feminine so there's still a partial exclusion.
@@bellumthirio139 It would depend on the mtf! some do think of it as innate, others think of is a role to play, some just have certain feelings one way or another without intellectualizing it. Some feel dysphoric abt women's fashion and some don't! It's more of a vibes based thing than a coherent thought process for many. I suspect it's mostly socially instilled.
As a cisgender man, I know that i would feel weird wearing a skirt. I suspect that (some) mtf ppl feel the same abt Not wearing a skirt
I'm glad you state this as a question, because my first thought is: "is this even bad?" Is it bad that people with more power than you influence how you perceive something that is fake after all? It is a common myth that women crave chocolate when they are on their period, but it turns out that that is only the case for women in the U.S. because there this myth has been propagated to sell more chocolate. But is it even a myth at that point (within the scope of the U.S.)? It's true; propaganda made it true. There is no deeper truth to uncover - that would be a authentistic/essentialistic way of looking at things. If women do that, then that's the truth; the reason shouldn't matter.
But does this matter? Whether women crave chocolate on their period or not is entirely a neutral concept. You could say that it is undesirable that people with more power can influence you. Well, that's just a fact by definition of the word "power", so let me rephrase that: it is undesirable that people with more power than you exist without it being deserved (like a doctor). But why fight the symptom then? Why fight the entirely neutral concept of women having long hair and men short hair, simply because it is a result of centuries of aristocracy and after that bourgeoisie influencing us like we're livestock? Is it not this inefficient method of fighting for freedom that divides us? And I'm not saying you shouldn't have short hair as a woman just for the sake of not creating dividedness. I'm saying you should realize that it is not inherently political, and acting as if it is creates dividedness (which both liberals and conservatives do). It is also easily co-opted. Just find one short-haired woman with tattoos and piercings who is conservative, and just subsidize her platform. Perfect propaganda. It is a useless fight that only liberals are concerned with, because they still believe in authenticity.
(you can of course replace "women" in the above discussion about chocolate with "people who experience periods")
This was a pretty interesting response to the points Natalie has made about gender identity, but Im not too keen on the prescriptions at the end in regards to rejecting medical treatment to align oneself with their gender identity. I don’t think there’s any real evidence that trans people could simply logic their way out of gender dysphoria with the understanding that perhaps we care too much about gender. What we do know is that these treatments do in fact make trans people feel more comfortable in their own bodies. The idea that the risks might be too great isn’t really born out by the evidence with transition having such a remarkably low regret rate (something like 2%, with much of that likely attributable to living in a transphobic society). It sounds a little too much like the tired refrain that trans people often hear that they should learn to be happy being a feminine man or a masculine woman.
Genuine pretending is at the core of his ideas. His argument is exactly that the pursue of authenticity is paradoxical in itself and that we should embrace language more appropriated to the identity technology that we use today, profilicity. He proposes genuine pretending as a way of navigating our social reality, for all people, all identity issues, not just gender. His point is exactly that there is no way to live authentically as a man or a woman, doesnt matter your sex.
On the other hand, I think we should fully embrace medical technology that allow us to better generate our identity profiles, I do think that that conclusion came out as naive by him.
The evidence for everything you say is very weak tbh, the amount of studies is tiny and the conclusions that many trans advocates draw from them faaaaaar too strong.
@@chaosmonkey1595 that’s just factually incorrect. I’m guessing you pulled this information from Sabine’s terribly framed video where she misrepresents the facts. The benefits of transition are well documented and have been studied for almost a century.
@@popmushee to live "authentically" would be to live as you were born, to do as you want and act as you feel, without changing your body to look as something else
I love seeing good faith engagement with the body of Contrapoints' work!
“Body of []work” 😒
@@seannamei Hehe
Thank You
for expressing my very thought
"body of work" 😐😐😐😐
Charitable engagement
As a biologist, i sometimes feel a bit irritated that a fundamental aspect of this debate is often ingored. It is the fact that gender only exist because of sex. Sex is a evolutionary product to facilitate genetic diversity, and as far as we know, the only purpose of having more than one "type" of individuals (sexes) is to procreate. Homo sapiens would have never developed any idea of gender if there would be no sexes (but its doubtful if homo sapiens could have been developed by means of non-sexual procreation, as any higher lifeform on earth reproduces sexually). There simply would be no need for it, except for a tumblr-like stereotyping of often co-occuring traits. That said, what i think, what gender is really about is, that it is basically stereotyping individuals by true and known/learned population-level biological differences, which are transmitted from generation to generation, to a point, where gender often becomes overblown, inflated, socially amplified, fixed, inflexible, and basically a nuisance. Stereotyping often happens as a short cut, a heuristic based on what has been learned before. Think of whom you would approach when you are looking for empathy or for protection or for simply someone who is carrying stuff for you. So, there is some advantage to stereotyping, of course. Learned Experience, i guess.
I think this is the fundamental base of gender: Social assignment, sometimes disruptive, so to speak, of biologically "true" sex differences onto individuals as they are growing up. "XY-carriers are on average more aggressive and risk-taking than XX-carriers" is then translated to "Its unwomanly to be aggressive" or "Men are the better firefighters" by tradition, overgeneralization and stubbornness. This is obviously bad for the individual (but it might have even some advantages on the population level, idk, think of the "eggs are valuable, sperm is not"-world. If you look at kindergarden kids, for which the shared sex is the foremost and first tribe to gather around (kids do really not care about racial differences, but they do absolutely care about their genitals), maybe there is. but this is for the sociologists :)
Thanks for this comment. I found this comment to be more helpful in explaining aspects of "gender" than this video tbh.
Now, I have no training in either biology or the humanities/social sciences. But as a layman, I've often noticed that educators of the hard sciences (or social sciences more grounded in empirical studies) try their best to _clarify_ and _simplify_ complex topics in a manner that can be understood by the Average Joe. The result might be an oversimplification and dumbing down of the actual concepts, but at least the average layman can often _understand_ some aspects of the fundamental concepts.
By contrast, I've often noticed educators in the social sciences, especially of philosophy and of the more abstract sociological/psychological disciplines, often use language and expressions that is more muddled and "confused" when they could perhaps do with words and explanations that are more common and clear.
t's almost as if they're so entranced with jargons and making things vague and ambiguous that they don't put as much effort as they could in clarifying their language. Now, I'm not saying they don't make any effort at all; all I'm saying is they could easily afford to put in more effort, but it _seems_ (to me) that they don't.
Maybe this is because of the abstract nature of some of the concepts. Or maybe it's my lack of training in the discipline. But then again, a lot of concepts in the hard sciences are even more abstract and counter-intuitive, yet I've found educators who've done a good job of explaining them to a layman like me. So maybe it's because I'm less interested in meandering philosophical explanations than I am with more concrete explanations of scientific concepts. Or maybe it's a combination of all.
But whatever the case may be, it is my general observation that philosophical and sociological educators often sound more "muddled" and "vague" when compared to thos in the hard sciences.
Some good points. I might add that some species are more social then others, and that social behavior (especially about sex) can have a radical impact on selection, to the point that the idea of "sexual selection" is used to explain much of the very weird behavior (not to mention actual physiological differences) that various organisms use their valuable energy on. The whole mess is tangled together, and I'm not sure how useful it is to imagine sex without gender in any social species. Are there any social species that are also hermaphrodites?
I'll also challenge the idea that sex evolved to *facilitate* genetic diversity. I am instead convinced that sex evolved as a *brake* on genetic diversity - to ensure that the next generation were *similar enough to the previous one* that the basic proposition of a "viable gene pool" could be established in the first place.
Sex facilitates *speciation* not diversity, it ensures that individuals can still collaborate to reproduce even (or rather, especially) if they have different ancestry, and *blocks* viable reproduction if the ancestry of the parents is too divergent. Sex thus permits only a *constrained* amount of diversity to be introduced at each generation. If the gene-passing mechanism permits too much variation (e.g. profligate mutations during parthenogenesis) then the viable population will be compromised. Diversity is driven not by sex, but by environmental constraints.
From an information-theory point of view, sex is primarily about "type checking".
this comment should be read instead of whatever word salad this video was spouting.
@@KhukuriGod I've seen this comment, and I just want to say, also as a layman in social studies, but some formation in hard sciences, that the reason for it is that social studies often involve the creation of a frame to study and interpret society and individuals. Because of it, they depend heavily in being able to express themselves precisely, so that the words they use, even common use words, are much more well defined (or they should, at least), than our layman language.
In opposition, we, from hard sciences, have the advantage to very often able to show what is being represented, when the language to do so would be too hard to understand, either as simulations or experiments. Despite of it, when we come to calculations, almost no layman would be able to understand even the basics of most hard sciences, not because they're dumb, but because it takes a lot of time to learn to communicate the concepts we work with.
Thank you for this great comment ❤
"Gender" is comparable to sex-role-based fashion. Tethered to biological reality in a lot of ways but also highly arbitrary and constantly changing.
This is a fun comparison!
Well put! Thats how I think of it at least. Definitely tied to biological sex but a social construct that goes far beyond.
And tied to biology in so far as pants will always have two legs, underwear will always account for the presence of genitals and various sizes will be taken into account. As Gourd said.. super fun comparison.
The way I imagine it is kinda like how language works. Our brain is hard wired for language in general, it has a biological dimension to it.
However, no specific language is hard wired, they are purely different ways to express this more fundamental idea of language. Each one influenced by millennia of societal and cultural drifts.
So obviously gender in the more general and abstract sense are baked into our biology (via sexual dimorphism) but any expression of a specific gender is hard-wired, they are all based on our shared cultural understanding and are therefore subject to change, just like languages change over time.
@@PhilfreezeCH This is also a really cool way of thinking about it!!!
One confusion (which seems really inexcusable) is not using clear language to distinguish sex from gender. When someone says "there's no essential maleness", do they mean no essential male sex, or no essential male gender? (I try to use male/female for sex, man/woman for gender). He *seems* to use all these terms to mean gender, and not have any words for sex. So, when he says that babies are not born "essentially male or female", I assume he's referring to gender.
Another problem is the term "chromosomal sex" vs just "sex". Sex is defined by "what type of gametes do you produce" (or "what gamete-producing organs do you have", etc...). So, bodies have "sex". If you have a Y chromosome, you cannot have organs that produce female gametes. Your body cannot be female. Similarly, if you don't have a Y chromosome, you cannot have organs that produce male gametes. Your body cannot be male. (Note I did not say, e.g., "this makes you a male". My statements include intersex people as well.)
Finally, he talks about gender related characteristics without any reference to reproduction. This just silly. That would be like comparing hammers and screwdrivers without discussing their ability to drive nails or screws. Sex is the hardware of reproduction. Gender is the software of reproduction (with thanks to the Dark Horse Podcast for these definitions).
This whole discussion is interesting, but seems to be in denial of reality by ignoring biology and reproduction. He comes close with his analogy of aging -- you might feel young, you might identify as young, but biological reality is you're not 18 any more. But he doesn't follow that analogy to the logical conclusion: that the biological underpinning is as important as how you feel: You might feel 18, but in reality you're 55. Similarly, you might feel like a woman (gender), but in reality you're a male (sex).
Ultimately, it comes down to this: which distinction is more important to society: sex or gender?
I just heard a recommendation for increased screening for breast cancer for "women over 40". Pretty clearly, that's "woman [sex]", not "woman [gender]". And, for that matter "40 [actual age]" not "40 [feel like age]". Do we really wanna go full on "birthing persons" and pretend we don't have a word for that category of person?
Great point. He deliberately stepped into the medical and physiological spheres several times to muddy the distinctions you clarified. It felt like his philosophical take here had an agenda, not seeking truth. I tend to be skeptical about philosophers trying to sell me something (eg. There is no metaphysical gender!) When they don't actually present an argument but rather make a speech.
Yeah, I find that discussing gender and sex without discussing how important it is to distinguish both terms is just... well, pointless?
Because gender is performance tied to the cultural social expectations of given sex in a given society. Then unchanging part is sex.
Sure, we can start using the term "women" to describe people who like wearing dresses and speaking in falsetto, but eventually we are still going to need facilities for "birthing people" and to separate "women" from the "birthers" because one group is comitting violence againt the another.
I'm tired of playing musical chairs with terms.
Call it by whatever you want, sex matters, gender ultimately only matters by people completely lost on their own navel gazing.
The bit at 8:20 on aging hits close to home. I'm convinced I stopped growing up in my mid teenage years, I've just been faking it and getting wrinklier ever since.
I've had this conversation with a slightly younger friend.
I have pretty much all the things that make me an "adult"; a white collar job, house, wife, kids etc and I still don't feel like an adult.
I genuinely believe Dr Moeller's profile based identity theory.
@@samwild6630 You confuse personality and temperament with being an adult, not understanding that the concept of being an adult is a biological. You are supposed to have a fully developed brain and gained enough guided experience to be able to make decisions on your own.
@@k4yser Calm down mate.
I'm not being dishonest or am clueless. I'm also not confusing personality or temperament.
I'm talking about examining what it means to be an adult and how that operates as an identity, then how that relates to lived experience and expectations as an "adult".
This is not an essentialist statement.
That is a side effect of modern life. I however am certain that there actually can be significant and deep enjoyable development beyond vanity or how professor calls it “profilicty”. It his concept describes our reality accurately life indeed is too sad and depressing.
@@opinion4755 "profilicty" seems to me to be the saddest and most sinister aspect of social media. People trying to be a brand instead of being themselves, people traveling the world so that they can take a picture to post on instagram. The "influencer" who is always hyping themselves up and trying to figure out how to sell themselves and not actually thinking about what they believe or think but about how others will think of them if they are seen to think something. Addicts for the next hit of "likes" rather than actually trying to form real relationships with others or be honest to even themselves.
I think it's important to also outline the difference in how the very process of transitioning is portrayed, politically: conservatives often portray trans people as though their fantasy (in the case of a trans woman) is: "I wish I was a girl", as a betrayal of sincerity, trying to escape the inner/social role, etc. The more liberal view, aims at a different structure of desire: "I wish I could stop pretending to be a boy", as a call for authenticity, trying to be true to one's "true" self, and so on.
To me, the moment of transition proper was not in hormones or in surgery, but precisely in the passage from when I thought, "I wish I was a girl" to "I wish I could stop pretending to be a boy." To exemplify and paraphrase another trans youtuber, PhilosophyTube in her video on Transhumanism, if a person decides to take antidepressants, it is because they recognize that the insecurities and problems that would be there without it are not a core part of themselves, but precisely an obstacle to their true expression - and just as with antidepressants or medicine in general, would be hormonal treatment. This claim of identity is an unconscious assumption of what in us stands for our "true selves" and what are merely "obstacles", which is what transitioning reverses.
It's a minor shift in perspective, but it stands for the moment when you retroactively recognize, looking back, symptoms (obstacles) of an issue you now have a name for. For a while, I thought this passage from "wishing I was a girl" to "wishing I could stop pretending to be a boy" - in other words, the change in perspective of this unconscious "identity" assumption - was not just mine but an essential, universal trait of all trans people. The more time I spend on online communities, however, the more I think the truly radical position would be to think of both trans women who say they were always women and trans women who say they only became so, as both valid. It's a strange difference to reconcile, but I think it's possible.
This is such an intelligent and enlightening reply!
But they're still men . LGB DROP THE T
@@OohTarquinhow bout no
@@fangsabre how bout yes LGB DROP THE T
@@OohTarquin cute, the moron literally has NOTHING to add
It's a fascinating debate and I admit I have a few ideas about it that may be a bit disorganized but well, here we go.
I believe that one fundamental aspect that has changed, and we continuously forget, about how we talk about social issues like trans matters, is that there's a big difference between how we talk about it on twitter, in which there's an audience, and how we used to "fix the world" when we talked about it in a bar with a few friends. We have really become a society of spectacle. And it's not a minor factor.
Now, I believe most people in social media are (hyper-)aware of this and the reason why many trans activists demand social recognition is not so much to be personally validated, I don't think a singular trans individual does feel particularly attacked because Matt Walsh or JK Rowling on a personal level don't want to recognize them (maybe just a little bit, as Contra exposes/jokes) but because they understand this problem as a cultural battle that, unless fought and won, may result in very real and negative consequences, not just on the cultural, but the institutional, legal, medical, etc... levels.
We think genocide is coming and it sucks. Matt Waslsh is an overtly evil man. Like Ateven Crowder or Tucker.
Given the beauvoir quote, clearly what's at stake is molesting little girls and passing them on to sartre.
It is very important to note that all this stuff as a phenomenon is absolutely linked to the internet new media technology in the wired society with relevance only in the Western hemisphere.
Brasil
@@KRYPTOS_K5 Good point.
I'm not trans, but I am queer, and the 10s of 10000s of likes Matt Walsh gets on some of his most horrific statements on Twitter make my blood run cold and make me fear for my trans friends, and myself. Commenters on Walsh, JKR or other conservative pundit posts, as well as Walsh himself, have called for men to possibly defend women:s bathrooms. I wonder if one day some woman will decide my large nose is masculine, that I'm trans, and she'll drag me out by the hair for her husband or boyfriend to beat me to hell (or to death) because they believe I'm trans and in their queerphobic ideology - trans equals pedophile/rapist/male interloper in women's spaces.
I could suffer based on an incorrect assumption of identity very easily. I don't think I'm being hyperbolic here, it's all a very fascinating debate until you're in a life or death situation. All women and some men will be in danger if this rhetoric keeps ramping up and has credibility via The Daily Wire and other major media figures.
Totally hit the nail on the head, with age, Hans. Wonderful work, sir. Fair, well thought-out, well described. Higher resolution perspective.
Hate your punctuation style lol
29:16 Small point here, but what she calls 'extremely online' is not normal. It's less a function of how long the person uses the Internet for than a function of what kinds of corners they frequent online. E.g.: Using UA-cam for 3 hours a day is *NOT* extremely online, but using 4chan for even half an hour a day is.
I have to disagree as by your own implied definition, UA-cam can be 'extremely online' depending on what content you consume (there is a lot of deeply reactionary content on YT that is informed thoroughly by some of the worst parts of 4chan).
@@alexlindstrom9971 You're removing the phrase 'extremely online' out of its full context, which is why both the professor and you misinterpret it. It's closer to whether a person's identity is more fully expressed on the internet than in real life.
A person can watch 5 hours of UA-cam a day, but if they're just watching the Office funny moments while they drive a truck, they're not 'extremely-online'.
But an active user on an internet forum board that discusses their personal problems, their views and internet culture that they are themselves part of, who is losing touch with reality because other people on the board have a more significant influence on them than a person they interact with in real life, is extremely online.
And this same pattern applies to, in this case, highly fragile and insecure trans people who live on Twitter more than they do in reality. They are the people who think of online interactions as more significant than their real life personal struggles, perhaps because they are unable to deal with them in real life.
A highly successful UA-camr is extremely online.
If you have a mobile phone connected to internet, then you are 24 hours online.
@@rockugotcha No. It's like saying that just because I have faucet in my home that I can always access therefore I am infact drinking water 24/7. That's simply not how it works...
When does something become part of one's identity? Since very young age I have been aware that I can be knocked down and physically hurt by men to a degree that is not so with girls and women. I would call this sex awareness, but I don't know if this physical vulnerability is part of my identity as a woman. Part of my sex awareness has been also the knowledge that I can get pregnant. I chose not to, but was it ever part of my identity? I don't understand why there is so much noise about identity. Yes, I identify as a woman and as a citizen of my country and as a speaker of my language. But these are not things I have created or constructed myself, they are a given and therefore require almost no validation from my part. It feels to me that identity is a construction and I haven't done much constructing.
A bit flippant, perhaps, but if other people perceive you as an idiot, that may not mean that you think you are an idiot. We try to reconciliate the external validation and our internal sense of self, and sometimes at least I feel like I want to scream to the world "but I'm not *that*". If you have no such moments, I think you are very lucky
@@AppoloniaK I don't care much about what people think about me. I think that this or that person is an idiot all the time and I believe that they do the same. So, we are pretty even I would say.
I would like to offer my own term, "gender consciousness" in response to your "sex awareness." I developed some sex awareness as a man. It's kind of hard to explain beyond the thought "this is what it means to be a man" in response to certain situations, but it is similar to your own in that some men also can be harmed by other men, and in order to be a man you need to have at least some idea of being able to defend both you and yours, women will be afraid of you so you should treat them with chivalry, etc. But at some point I realized that I would be infinitely happier if I was instead a woman. Now, having transitioned and continuing to, a lot more men can hurt me than before. Is that what makes me a woman? No, it is the knowledge of that truth of my happiness which drives me to transition that defines my womanhood. It is only a problem because we are not all fully free to transition and live our lives as we wish to, and there are constant threats to both that freedom and our lives.
I would also point out that your sex awareness reflects a physical reality, but it also entails a social reality. The fact that you can get pregnant is an important consideration, but so is whether or not you have material access to contraception and abortion. Societal changes can be made to bring about a sort of sex/gender parity, at least in some senses (hopefully in more).
Then again, so does what I have described as my own sex awareness. It is based on an assumed physio-biological reality, but then I use that to determine what that "means", and hence arrive at a conception of gender (essentialism). A man *should* be strong. Women are a means to produce offspring. And so on. But I really don't like that line of thinking, because it pretty much directly leads to fascism in some form. (see above mention of "constant threats")
To identify oneself as a gender ultimately has less to do with the material reality of the body and much more to do with the ideological reality of society. Or at least the weight of societal ideas of gender is much more pressing. What kind of society needs such strict definitions of a woman/man (as proposed by reactionaries and TERFs) and is that one we want to live in?
@@tangolettuce3538 No. It is much more a physical reality than you think. Not just periods, but all things concerning bodily functions and health. To you "womanhood" is happiness, to biological women womanhood just IS.
It's capitalism basically. Identity replaces relations and experiences when those are cut off from our control.
This was a really good video. As a trans person, personally i see an "ideal" version of gender, to be no idea of gender at all. Where people can be who they want to be, and present how they want to present.
But at the same time living in this society where gender is seen as ridged or specific, almost real even. As a person who doesn't align with my socially predefined gender. it can be useful to use traits attributed to the other gender, as a way to separate my current presentation from my last.
basically i use "gender" to my advantage, well hoping to stab it in the back.
so what are they presenting?
@@paveantelic7876 Lilly means that they present as themselves. They wear what they feel comfortable wearing, do what they feel comfortable doing, and shape their body through medicine and lifestyle to be whatever they feel comfortable having - it's just that all this would have no association with any sex or gender.
At least that's how I interpret what they're saying.
@@NIN0ID curiously they always represent themselves as either feminine or masculine lol
@@paveantelic7876 what about non binary people?
@@joshme3659 same thing
As a trans woman (I prefer the term transfeminine person) I endorse this video until its last few minutes. The bit about not submitting one's body to "invasive medical regimes", as others have pointed out, seems overly simplistic, given that such regimes have been shown to increase trans people's mental and emotional well-being. I haven't had surgeries, but I have gritted my teeth through over 100 hours of hair removal and I can say without doubt that I am consequently more at home in my body. But worse still is the final directive: "Reject gender metaphysics and theology." Personally, I agree with Natalie Wynn on this topic, but as she herself says, she is a somewhat unorthodox trans person. A large percentage of trans people DO seem to embrace gender metaphysics, and I am not confident that, based on a few Contrapoints videos, we can disregard them entirely. I think we'd do well to remember that humanity's understanding of these topics is in flux, and developing more rapidly than at possibly any other time in history. I don't think it's the time for blunt prescriptions like this one, especially if they are put forth by cisgender people. Aside from that, I enjoyed the video. Thank you. I will count you as an ally.
EDIT: I don't know if you include hormone therapy among invasive medical regimes, but if so I think it's also worth pointing out that, contrary to widespread belief, cross-sex hormones do not just affect physical attributes and appearance, and therefore are not just concerned with gender profilicity. Feminising hormones, I can say from experience, affect emotional state, personality, sexuality, the nature of sexual ideation. They are not merely conerned with appearances and many if not most trans people understand that fact.
tell that to the axe wounds, stink ditches and rotdogs LOL. woman and feminine arent the same. you dont need to be trans to be feminine and you will never be a woman
@@Bette_B123 what?
I think the hormones are the most invasive medical intervention, and a lot of people dont realize that
@@estefaniaboujon6830couldnt agree more. Theyre framed as reversible and therefore harmless when really some stuff doesnt quite go away and the effect they have on health is horrible.
I’ve consulted Dr Google for a definition of “invasive” in a medical context: “An invasive procedure is one in which the body is 'invaded', or entered by a needle, tube, device, or scope.” Other definitions are similar. So no, from a medical standpoint I guess HRT is not invasive. Then again there is no definition at all for an “invasive medical regime”.
As to HRT being reversible, I am not aware that any medical practitioner has ever said that. Maybe some misinformed parents or trans people have said it, but no, HRT is not “framed” as reversible. Some effects are reversible, others not. You can’t un-grow breasts or un-break your voice. Puberty blockers, on the other hand, are generally framed as reversible.
Aren’t facts useful?
I really enjoyed this video, Prof. Moeller. Would you consider speaking on the topic of non-bindary identity in the context of profilicity as a follow-up? Thank you!
Non binary is a sham. It operates within the same sex stereotypes it claims to be fighting.
I enjoyed this video greatly; the terms "sincerety", "authenticity", and "profilicity" in the sense you use them are a great enrichment to my toolbox of concepts.
Also it seems like you're becoming more confident in front the camera which is nice to see. I appreciate your videos independently of production value but it's a beautiful extra
Why do we feel so strongly about our identities if there is no true self? It might sound idiotic, but I have always wanted long hair. I have very weak hair and it thin and looks like a cobweb... but in my mind I had long beautiful hair. I used to pull pants on my head to pretend its my hair. And I thought growing up I can find a hairdo and get over myself, but at 30 started to wear wigs. I discovered hair extension a year ago and never go back!! its me. How am I to udnerstand this?
Probably not as much through philosophy as through psychology or eventually neurology. Maybe within our lifetime we will have machines that can peel the layers of your mind and extract the interactions that make your personality, interests and identity.
I also want to understand more why he thinks authenticity is ... not achieavable?
@@olympiaelda1121 Partly because a lot of "authenticity" is actually just orienting one's "self" in alignment with some "higher true self" like you were getting at with the hair; you see yourself as having this glorious hair, and so you pushed your reality to match the pre-conceived image of yourself. (I'm not well studied on this, but this came to mind)
You describe a "cosmetic" want; fortunately achieved without pharmaceuticals/invasive surgery which may have
great risk of adverse metabolic effects. Are you otherwise in good health? Did you look into nutrition?
having a strong sense of your role feels good, maybe we just have exp early in childhood that pushes toward one or another and the culture pushes us toward an assigned one at birth?
I have class dysphoria
Lol. Me too
Its pretty common
king me too lmao
Damn i didnt realise i have one until i heard you say it exists. How can it be threated? Im really really suffering from it, send help please.
@@yglnvbrs 😒
The assertion that there is no true gender essence aligns with Buddhist thought, which teaches that there is no unchanging self/ego separate from the flow of consciousness. Thanks for this fascinating deeper dive into this important topic.
My philosophical background is in Daoism--which has similar views on "no-self."
@@hans-georgmoeller7027 i can see that influence in your work. the tao and many theravada texts formed my philosophical view as well. what do you make of the taoist belief to “cleave to the feminine” in relation to this?
Not sure that this is accurate. Buddhism teaches there is no true essence period. "There is no true gender essence" is typically claimed by people who do believe there are essences, just not gender.
This is line of thought is a bit lacking though because this ignores the fact we do in fact have bodies that are male or female. Your physiology and your psychology are not separate from eachother they are one whole system. The self may be an illusion but it's an illusion in the same way that a river is an illusion created by the constant flow of water. The superficial social behaviours of men and women may change over time but the core elements of masculinity and femininity remain constant
@@GayTier1Operator Briefly put, I think the distinction feminine/masculine in early Chinese thought (most famous in the form of the Yin/Yang distinction) is not really about today's questions of identity or human gender. It's a more general classification of "natural forces" as well as a basic vocabulary of strategic thinking--as in the line you quote.
I am here for this one! Great content as always. You have successfully nabbed my attention.
To me, "human adult female" is still the only definition that makes sense, is not circular (women are all people who identify as women), or behaviourally essentialist (women are people who like to wear makeup, paint their nails and watch sex and the city).
“behaviourally essentialist (women are people who like to wear makeup, paint their nails and watch sex and the city)” - God, from your comment it’s immediately clear what kind of information bubble you are in🤡 let me guess, you also think that trans people want to make all children trans and they are pedophiles, groomers
@@dobby2270 nah what he says is pretty consistent with how men who transition see women and portray them later on. I've rarely seen as much offensive all-pink legally blonde-type stereotyping as I see from MtF's bruv
the video mentions this common misunderstanding about what gender is. I'd suggest a rewatch
There's a whole bunch of stuff I don't like about this post, but I want to point out real quick that 'women are all people who identify as women' is not circular. Like, it just isn't. It is just reflexive. It means that woman is a social construct. That which it has been socially determined to be determines who will identify as it, and that identification affirms this social determination. Rather than circular, it's a reifying relationship. And sorry, that's just how a bunch of cultural things work. I know it's not the straight line of 'this thing has an essential, unchanging definition and that which fits that definition is necessarily that thing' but it's just the way it be.
@ sure. It’s not circular… it’s just circular. Got ya. And no, womanhood is not just a cultural concept. It goes much deeper than that. If anything, it is a biological reality that also has cultural extensions.
Great and "overdue" video. The overlap between your profilicity theory and performative gender theory is pretty clear.
I kind of like how you conveyed a good chunk of Contrapoint's work on gender in your own style. It's like a secondary source for people who don't feel her own style of making videos 🤣
Regarding the "gendered body" idea, I imagine it could be useful to mention that, as most would probably agree, XX people and XY people (chromosomal Females and Males) can not only change their gender associated bodily features medically and through fashion, makeup etc., but also that these features vary naturally already. Meaning, there can be women most would agree look somewhat "unfeminine" and even "manly" and vice versa.
So, to someone who would attempt to discredit this differentiation between chromosomal gender and the "gendered body", this could be an example to show that they themselves already dont think about and experience it as "essential" as they might believe and/or argue for.
Like, how could one argue there is only males and females in an essential and binary way, while at the same time they already commonly differentiate grades of femininity and masculinity regarding actual bodies of people.
Actually with medical intervention during puberty with blockers and then cross sex hormones you can prevent a number of unwanted characteristics and push more wanted characteristics. Think breasts or Adam's apples. Also voice. This is part of why preventing access to this care to minors can be so harmful. And when you talk about athletics, if a trans girl goes through an endocrinologist female puberty she doesn't develop those "male advantages" of puberty.
Because you always grade them on a scale between those two options
How can your differentiate in between day and night if there is dawn and dusk and we always talk about how late the day is aka different grades of day and nightness? Your point is not as deep or smart as you think it is. Nearly nothing in the physical world is truly binary, but we still differentiate it that way because it is extremely useful and the edges of the spectrum are still a very relevant thing very often. Also biological sex is actually very binary in humans. There is no single individual who produces both functional large and small gametes. Not even one.
@@chaosmonkey1595 I think youre missing the first point, namely the distinction made in the video between chromosomal sex and the "gendered body" (which is at least partly constructed, profilacted, a performance, but also, and that is the main point against non-gradual binarism views, already naturally variant in how congruent it is with the chromosomal sex)
@@chaosmonkey1595 "we still differentiate it that way because it is extremely useful" - in other words, the vulgar social construction is more at hand than the messy truth that is to be found down in the weeds, just as we might conceive New Year as part of our "Christmas" holidays, even though it is a secular date.
5:01 I am afraid that this is factually wrong. Many supporters of gender theory will precisely start a discussion about how biological sex is not clear, intersex, blah. So Contrapoints is retreating here to the proverbial motte, only to go to bailey again, when she talks about sex "assigned" at birth. Why use this phrase if Contra agrees that biological sex is binary? Or does she not? This is the core of the problem with the discussion.
There may not be a true gendered self, but my body feels horrible to be in if it's running on testosterone and far less horrible to be in if it's running on estrogen. I didn't publicly change my gender expression even among family for months after starting HRT, and it hadn't changed my body enough to impact how I viewed myself, but it still radically improved my daily conditions to the point where I had stopped self harming for the first time since my early teens. I've detransitioned since (primarily due to social pressure, being visibly trans is miserable and isolating at it's best) and it's only reinforced my views on it. Some people really just operate better and are far happier if they take hrt, just like any other medical treatment. I think it's easy for conversations about trans people (which will always be nearly entirely held by cis people, just by the numbers) to over-fixate on social aspects of gender because everyone experiences social pressures around their gender, but only certain trans people have experienced what actually changing the hormone you run on feels like and how monumental of a difference it makes in your daily life.
Exactly. This is one of the biggest lapses in cis (and even some trans) discussions of transitioning. Hormones change a lot more than your body.
But I’m disturbed to hear you’ve detransitioned despite that you believe estrogen was working for you. I dispute that being openly trans is always such a bad and isolating experience. Granted I’ve only been out for six months, but so far I feel more outgoing, and make friends more easily, than ever before.
@@Bette_B123 You're right, I definitely shouldn't generalize like that, it was just a particularly isolating experience for me.
As for detransitioning, even before transition I had severe social anxiety and in the rapidly worsening climate (especially in the south where I live where now there's dozens of laws targeting us) it just made it impossible for me to function. Granted I still pretty much can't, but I can leave my house without feeling afraid for my life or getting stared down by countless people and right now that's more important to me than living authentically or being happy in my body. Hopefully that can change someday, but I sort of doubt it.
@@Aaaa-gs7ww I'm so sorry to hear all that. I can totally imagine how living where you do could make you feel that way. There is a way life could change for you though: maybe one day you could move and live elsewhere. I realise if you suffer severe social anxiety this may be difficult, but maybe not impossible? Of course it's not fair that you have to leave your home in order to feel safe being yourself, but moving can also be a joyous experience.
But don't mind me, obviously I don't know you at all, and in many ways I have been blessed. I hope you find a way to improve your life whether or not you are able to present as you would like to.
As an XY-chromosomal person who indentifies as a man, I cannot express how much I agree with the last statement about genuine pretending.
I have increasingly felt more gender fluidity in me as I aged, but never dared to act on it for being afraid that that was not who I actually was (authentically and essentially, which I then still believed in). I would actually admit that your videos helped me to eventually decide to go crossdress to a party (in that community and for that party that was acceptable and even normal). Not as a joke, I really wanted to try to be seen as somewhat of a woman (even though I didn't shave my beard).
The strangest thing happened. In my daily life it became much easier for me to act genuinely masculine. Before, there would always be a part of me that felt betrayed if I acted too masculine. I didn't like masculine behavior, and didn't want to be identified with it. But now, after stepping into the role of woman, it was easier too to step into the role of man. It felt like it wasn't part of my identity; just something I did.
This all ties together with my personal philosophy. I often find that people are too much invested in finding the truth or whether they deserve something, while all that matters is the question: "do you want it?" Similar with gender. Don't ask "am I truly a (wo)man?", ask "do I want to be?" Do you want to be seen as a (wo)man? And can you reach that goal? Then go for it. This also goes for my leftist goals. Don't get trapped in hour-long discussions with your liberal uncle about whether the workers deserve more rights or are just spoiled. Ask "do I want more rights?", and "is it within my power to achieve that?"
It is an unspoken rule among many people across cultures or genders or any social denominations that it's taboo to say you want something. That should be abolished. That's my philosophy. I guess that's simply a hedonistic or even Machiavellian philosophy; but I didn't study philosophy, I'm just interested.
great comment.
@@alanovski. Thanks!
This is a very important comment :) keep sharing your story
Schizo comment
I’ll try to illustrate the problem as I see it symbolically.
As to what constitutes being a man or a woman and how such can be ascertained we seem to have…as far as I can tell…the following cluster of properties put forward in these discussions.
1. Identity, or inner sense, In these specific cases I think this can be distilled down to (desire).
2. Physical presentation (fashion).
3. Action or behavior (performance).
4. Biological makeup (sex).
So let’s try the following…
Desire identity =x
Presentation=y
Action=z
Biology=n
Currently, the discourse surrounding the trans discussion seems to assert that what makes someone a man/woman is some combination of x y and z but not n. As man/woman are described as distinctly different from male/female. Man/woman being categories of gender (made up of components xyz) whereas male/female are categories of sex that is described in terms of biology (n). The move here is to posit a categorical difference between the concepts of gender and sex so that it then becomes valid to have a case where a male can be referred to as a “woman” without committing category error. This is taken as a sort of axiom but never to my knowledge justified or explained.
More specifically, of x y and z, only x is sufficient on its own to establish one’s gender. So fundamentally what it is to establish that one is a man/woman is simply to establish the existence of x. Of all possible properties x,y,z and n….x is the only essential property to the category of man/woman while y,z and n are accidental properties…or so the gender identitarian assertion goes.
Interestingly x can only be articukated in terms of yzn. As in identity in question or “identify as” can only be articulated in terms of the particulars of an identified object or the particular things that make up the identity in question. The particulars of an object one desires to embody. These take the form of yzn. Without particulars of an object of identification there is no ability to articulate an object thus there is nothing to identify “as”.
X(yzn)
Y is articulated in terms of zn. To present is to present as some material thing, it is itself an action(verb) in relation to an object(noun). One’s presentation is an ongoing action that is only articulable in terms of behavior and adornment of the physical body. How one looks(n) and behaves(z).
Y(zn)
Z is only described in terms of n. Action, potential action, bahavior, movement, these are all functions of the material body. What is the action of the body? The behavior of the body? The movement of the body? Function of the body? Etc.
Z(n)
N is described with reference to material reality. The biological body is made of matter, described in terms of function and form of that matter, the behavior of that matter and subsystems of that matter.
N(matter)
So
X(yzn)
Y(zn)
Z(n)
N(matter)
The only necessary and common component of any of these descriptions is n. Biology. Material reality. Because this category (man/woman) is not an abstract virtual one but a category that rests upon physical matter and potential. Rather than x, as asserted by gender identitarians.
This is my position, what constitutes a man or a woman can be described fundamentally as a function of n as every other component is ultimately only articulatable in terms of n. To posit any one of the other variables as THE necessary variable is to still tacitly make reference to n.
So not only is (n)the essential property to the category of man/woman. The property without which the category itself cannot be articulated/does not obtain…but the assertion that gender and sex are separate categories dissolves as the particulars that one needs to describe gender (X y and z) themselves necessarily contain a description of (n). The category of gender requires a description of the category of sex that it claims to be separate from.
Additionally the very implication within “identifying as a man” or desire to be a man suggests that there is an externally observed thing (the external thing with which one identifies or sympathizes/identifies with) that is identified as token of a type that is not of the type of which the observer is a token. Else the statement need only be I am a token of the same type ergo I embody that type. I might argue One can feel no desire [to be] a thing which one already is, one can only acknowledge that they are the thing that they are. Desire, as a concept implies a discord between a subject and object. A desire-er and the thing desired. The duality implies that the subject IS NOT the object in and of itself but not a token of a type of which the object is a token.
So yes…There is an essence of gender. That essence is biological sex.
This episode should be called Contradictory Points. Identity and gender are not important, yet OK to pursue via drugs and surgery? I will also point out that being extremely online doesn't mean one isn't extremely in the real world as well. The consequences of the latter is what the uproar is about in our so-called culture war over trans.
The moment one says that one is trapped in a body and would like to have the opposite gender, isn't automatically admittance of gender essentialism? When a man says he actually belongs to a female gender, doesn't it reinforce the gender binary? Therefore, it maybe right to say that there is no gender apriori however, it would be self contradictory when you use this premise to "become" the *opposite* gender.
Nah, not necessarily. Because you can acknowledge that a thing isn't "real" in the universal sense while acknowledging that it's "real" within the context of your society.
When I say I'm black and would like to be recognized as such, it is not an admission that race is real.
@@yessum15 My point was not about whether something is "real" or not. It was about something being a binary or not. When you say you are black, you define a concept which can't exist without the existence of its opposite- a white color. If you begin with the premise that gender doesn't exist and then you take two reference points (male, female) to define where you currently are and where you actually belong, you contradict yourself.
yeah, probably! not all transgender ppl explain their genders in this way, and many of them do believe in gender essentialism!
in contra's case she has assigned herself woman bc it alleviates emotional distress. it's moreso that playing the role of woman gives her peace whereas playing any other role does not. That doesn't infer gender essentialism - but something closer to "my society and natural state have left me in a position where woman works for me." the natural state could be gender, if it is essential, or it could be some other quality, learned or not, that makes being a woman easier.
@@nobody983 I'll repeat myself. Again, no.
Because I can believe that a Black/White binary doesn't exist in the universal sense while acknowledging that it exists within my society.
Thus I self identify as Black while rejecting the objective existence of Black people.
In America I am Black. On Neptune it is unclear what I am.
Similarly, in America there is a concept of what a woman is. I don't believe that concept to be fundamentally true, but to the extent that this society treats it as such and I identify more strongly with the characteristics that this society associates with that made up category I insist on being included in it.
This is the case for most socially constructed identities.
I don't believe in the existence of VIPs, but to the extent that this nightclub treats certain guests as VIPs I believe I more closely fit your description of that.
When you step aside to allow the bouncer to let the VIPs cut in line are you truly convinced that these people are actually more important than you in an cosmic sense?
Listen to what Contrapoints says about the "trapped in the wrong body" language. Point 1 of 'Gender Critical' I think.
Small nitpick, sex is defined through gametes, not chromosomes. Crocodiles for example don't have their sex instantiated through chromosomes, but they still have males and females.
Also, I'm skeptical that "gender identity" exists at all. Rather it seems that people have traits, which in turn are gendered, which is not the same thing as "being" a gender. The genders are masculine and feminime, not male and female, those are the sexes.
On point! And those traits often (if not always) become gendered through association.
"Gender identity" exists in the same way that "body integrity identity" exists. The vast majority of us never really think about whether we fit in the "right" body. Our body is our body.
But, some people with mental distortions (like believing their hand is alien, their body is "wrong" due to not being as skinny as it should be) have a strong sense of the opposite.
Instead of admitting that these people have this issue and treating THEM all of us are lumped in as having a gender identity so this distortion is "natural" and not a problem
This second paragraph is exactly what contrapoints believes!
I think societally we tend to use more than just gametes, but if you like the definition of gametes better we can use it! Sex is just whatever humans define it as anyway as far as i can tell!
@@Tseltel This is interesting but doesnt make much sense to me. I feel like, the fact that some people feel ill at ease with their body must mean that others feel at ease to a greater degree than that person does. So everybody would be on a sliding scale of more or less body integrity identity. It's also strange bc gender has existed for a very long time afaik? unless you're defining gender differently it tends to refer to a sense of a persons social role in society related to their pronouns, how they physically present anyway. I feel like everyone has those?
@Gourd Clae
Sex is something we discovered, not something we invented. Dinosaurs had males and females, despite there being no humans around.
I don't know anything about the contrapoints person, but I'm skeptical she wouldn't say she's a woman on the inside. And I don't think that makes sense, we're not men or women on the inside, we're (among other things) masculine and feminine on the inside.
The only way I can make sense of the word "gender" (when it is not a synonym for "sex") is that it is empirical observations and culural beliefs about how behaviours and subjective experiences comparatively trend in the sexes.
Either way, the words boy/girl/man/woman refer to the sexes, whether they are or are not having experiences or engaging in behaviours that are more typical of their sex. It's as correct to say Natalie was born a boy as it is to say Natalie was born a baby.
Right. “Gender”, to the extent it has any robust meaning, is derivative of sex, and so cannot supplant sex. Attempts to do so are just pulling the rug out from under oneself. Only sex is real. And it cannot change. Nobody has a “gender”.
The words you are referring to do not necessarily refer to sex. When someone tells you to, for example, "please, give that woman there her tea", you are not going to run genetical tests, assess her gametes and genitals. You are going to rely on the social construct of gender to guide you.
Words have different meanings and usages in different contexts.
Moreover, as such as gender and sex are intertwined, there are and have been societies with more than two genders and with radically different conceptions of gender.
I think this is a fair handling of ContraPoints, well done. I've got a lot of affection for ContraPoints, I have been following Natalie's channel since the beginning (I.e. the "before times") and the performativity has definitely changed a lot since then. In the beginning the videos were mostly just a discussion of ideas without really situating herself within the discussion. (Hence the channel title)
As an aside - personally I can't quite give up on the idea of an ontological true self that one could (and should) try to be authentic to - I just think it's the sort of true self that escapes naming and definition, that is quite a bit more vast than the small world we have conscious awareness of, and which (rather flippantly) produces our story telling (rather than being produced by it.)
Authenticity to me is best embodied when you stop trying to name everything.
Do you believe in the soul?
Good point. I think that living authentically just means not caring so much about what others think of you. This seems to be an outdated view. I understand that I am full of contradictions and so is the society I live in. I try to play nice and respectfully disagree with the majority opinion even if that means risking people's good opinion of me. This does not feel very good and drives me to understand my own contradictions and make changes were necessary and leave things that I believe are correct. Then I live those ideas and beliefs out. With Contrapoints I think the problem arises when there is a political and moral demand made society.
I don't want to provoke a nasty UA-cam argument thread... and I think what both you and Garrett above describe definitely seeks a hopeful and positive result to pursuing authentic living. But I have to say I don't get the reasoning or "substance" behind these claims whatsoever. Firstly, "not caring what others think of you" is meaningless without being attached to some context. Standing up to (and "not caring about") the overwhelming peer pressure of a racist rally surrounding you and intervening in whatever way possible to act against it due to your own disagreement... is clearly a good sense of "self" that should be admired. But equally, standing up against to those who fight for equality and anti-racism and saying that I "don't care about your woke opinions, I have my own 'authentic' beliefs about the vital importance of race, culture and segregation" ...may just as equally be an expression of some "authentic self" and beliefs... even if not a positive one is many other (right-thinking!) people's eyes.
But far more importantly, neither has anything (so far as I can see) to do with "authenticity" in any straight-forward sense. You don't become a racist or become an anti-racist by "looking deep within" for answers... You do it by listening, reading and thinking about others opinions and experiences. In other words by "looking outwards" and seeking better answers. The feeling that seems to be described here as "authenticity" has little to do with finding an inner true self... and/or behaving authentically... and much more to do with finding some way of attaching one's accumulated life beliefs/experiences to larger revelatory explanatory concepts (that one can only ever find outside oneself). The sublime moment of the "authentic," in this sense, more likely comes from a moment of catharsis at being able to seize upon often conflicting, traumatic, puzzling or otherwise pressing events in the outside world... and reducing them to a comprehensible situation via accumulated social concepts and words ... and then bringing those words together into a coherent counter-statement. In other words... there is no "authentic" inner self to look for that is not a series of attachment words/names... being used as a counter-force to other words/names that are demanding something from you that you either accept or reject and seek to do something about. In other words it is the pursuit of an authentic outward belief/discourse to bind your life to. And not the pursuit of an authentic inner being.
I hope my answer has not been disrespectful. It has certainly been too long by far... so apologies for that!
@@Hic_Rhodus Hi. You have not been disrespectful at all. I also respectfully disagree. To sum it up poorly I believe in virtue ethics and am a ethical anti realist. That is to say that I don't believe ethics can be quantified. I think that if a person is trying to the best person they can be than they should adopt virtues such as honesty, integrity, kindness, humility ect. ect.. Sometimes living this way puts you on the outside of a social group and sometimes it puts you inside. Social groups themselves can neither be moral or immoral. Only people, and that is a stretch. I avoid moralizing because in general I believe moralizing is a human invented mind toxin. My point is that people should try their best to live with virtue and try to ignore others if they demand that you betray those virtues. That, s what I think it means to live authentically.
@@garrettbryan2717 Yeah, but the try to best to live with virtue tend to lead to reading philosophy and metamorality. Even if one knows a particular moral system (like utilitarianism), knowing one option is not enough. Though knowing them and internalizing them is different.
But that is secondary to what I wanted to say. All I wanted to write is to better have some people with similar moral system to check up on you, since we tend to out rationalize all norm.
What's always been curious to me is how in the social world: gendered language doesn't seem to function as a noun. We (i.e. the general peer) don't refer to a person's gender as a separate identity in the social world; instead, we seem to use gender as a kind of social adjective.
What seems to be the disconnect for me, is the lack of coherent descriptors (and tangible organisation) within social life. It would explain why people feel so underrepresented and others so unaccepting/dismissive: no one knows how to understand, or how to describe a some-gendered person, outside of the normal processing.
For example in dating, for a heterosexual man, the descriptive meaning of 'woman' has changed. Or in the medical profession, professional sports or in public situations like toilets or changing rooms (all ongoing debates).
We don't seem to 'use' gender to refer to identity, identity (at least this curated type) feels like it has no functional meaning outside of the first person.
We seem only to use it as a descriptor, in a third-person arena, to understand each other and our relationships with the social human world.
but not men...just women. anyone else notice how no one is questioning what a man is? we talk about gender a lot, but it only ends with the definition of women, not men.
@@junipershull23skidoo
Men have dicks.
@@junipershull23skidoo no this goes for men too
Yes xx are females and xy are male biologically- so yes, babies are born for the most part, essentially male or female by definition of the chromosomes. Just because we use male and female for social construction and biological life doesn’t make them interchangeable and every circumstance. So you’re saying just Cozumel is born with an xy chromosome they are not biologically male- yes, yes they are by your own definition. Of course, I understand. The problem comes when we expect male and females to perform certain roles. Or even the ability for a society to accept people who are not part of the gender social binary.
There is something missing in this.
We cant choose our gender!
Just like we cant choose our sexuality.
We cant choose what we are attracted to just as we cant choose as what we want to be attractive.
So obviously there is something essential to it.
A gay man remains gay, even if he chooses to marry a woman.
A trans woman is a woman even if she chooses to perform manlyness.
Our chimpanzee reletives have culture techniques that are shared only by the female individuals. That does not happen because the litte chimpanzee girl is told to behave like a girl. It happens because in social animals there is an inborn instikt that tells the individual who they should immitate... Or who they should identify with... In a gendered way. Because, in the end, sex is important. One could say gender is the sex of the brain.
Sometimes a litte chimpanzee immitates "wrong" and continued to do so as an adult... It happens, just like with humans.
Some of us social animals are gay, trans, gender non conforming, non binary... And as we cant choose it, it is an essential part of us.
I think therefor I am. My brain/consciousness is much more important for my identity than my genitals or chromosomes.
Deal with it.
P.S.:
If you count all the different condition of intersexuality together and include mild cases, they are not that rare.
Here's my two cents: sex, gender identity and identity in general belong to the domain of the non-rational. Ask 1000 people "what is a human?" Would they answer the same thing? Would they state something coherent? I feel both pro-trans and anti-trans influencers use arguments that have little importance in day to day living: chromosomes etc are invisible and private understandings of identity aren't visible either. Genital surgeries are as natural or unnatural as rhinoplasty or hip replacements. Besides, most of us live in artificially urban environments and navigate life using all kinds of artificial devices. There's nothing much socalled natural about us humans ...
I'd say validation for one's identity always comes, to some extent, from how others perceive us. No need to involve profilicity in this very basic feature of human behavior. However, the sense of identity was built on different bases in other time periods.
And that basis is profilicity nowadays...
@@otto_jk perhaps. I'm afraid it could end up proving too much. I mean, is profilicity when "your sense of identity depends in some measure on external validation"? In which case, yes, but I don't see many alternatives.
Yes. I think he overvalues the idea of profilicity and the role it plays in most peoples lives regarding their self worth and validation.
I don't know what i think or feel about this video yet, but i do know i will be watching it a few more times. Thank you.
Hey, very good and clear reasoning there. I really liked it.
Two thoughts have arised in my mind, though.
First: If profilicity is wanting to be "seen as", and therefore engaging in an tecnological performance that produces correct gender social recognition, isn't profilicity a immanent version of sincerity? Aren't we nurturing the traditional gender roles by craving for what's socially expected of a man or a woman?
Second: In my experience, I really can confirm these philosophical positions being supported. But I don't think that they are that solid and defined. I think that we spontaneously "transition" from one position to another, and even mix them together.
I am also curious about the distinction between sincerity and profilicity.
Transgender can't exist without a very rigid profiling of the two gender roles. And trans ideology often wants to dictate its views of the two gender roles on everybody. Quite a few tra*women claim to be more women than biological women.
My guess it's about where the identity is coming from. Either society tells you your gender/identity or you tell others what it's is through a curated profile. I like the part "as if I am a women" the truth comes from what we choose to tell people and not from the belief itself.
Yes, we do mix these technologies al the time. Both sincerity and profilicity are oriented to how one is being seen by others. But in sincerity, your actually present peers (e.g. family members) count more whereas in profilicity it's the "general peer" (hence the importance of pronouns). Importantly, in sincerity role expectations are stable (usually over a lifetime). in profilicity, profile expectations are unpredictable and highly dynamic.
Very interesting thought! It does seem like we've indeed returned to the idea that there does exist a concept of femininity, but that concept is a social construct. For sincerity it was just about what's in your pants. Quite the difference.
But this is a common point of contention by TERFs who still abide by authenticity. They see transgenders claiming to act feminine and are appalled by the notion that there would exist something like "the feminine" beyond biological sex. Their goal is to achieve a world in which people are defined by their sex in a biological setting, and as their own person in any other setting (which would be fine if they didn't believe that the male anatomy makes us innately prone to become sexual predators). They perceive it as going back to sincerity, which it isn't.
around 13:00 Hans describes how many roles within society have been, and may be gendered. 2 genders that seemed to have existed in it's beginning phase of human development had been for example "hunter and gatherer" -- fast forward to the modern era and you will see 10's of thousands of roles within society, and the old paradigm has become fractured again and again and again, to include a wide spectrum of roles. Sex will always have to do with reproduction, but gender has been proven to be a function of how one integrates socially.
I don’t believe that all aspects of what we call masculinity and femininity are merely socially constructed, and I don’t think this is gender metaphysics, which implies that it is not in this reality.
I think we actually do have innate patterns of behavior. We have much deeper psychology than who we believe ourselves to be.
So what I am saying is that even accounting for socialized gender, or if someone identifies with a different gender other than how they were assign at birth, or how one chooses to perform gender.
I think there are spontaneous patterns and unconscious aspects of behavior that are innate to their biological sex.
This is partly informed by Jung’s analytic psychology but a great deal from experience. I think there is an unconscious and that we can repress things in the unconscious.
I met a Syrian refugee an artist and he suffered from war trauma.
He asked me a question. He said, you studied psychology, I want to know why is it when an adult man cries women run away. But when a woman cries women runs to comfort them?
This struck me because, I, having suffered from Trauma experienced something similar.
I said I don’t know. But I noticed this too. I think men ought to be there for each other when we go through grief.
So what would be the innate pattern her? I think women may have a spontaneous harmonization with one another. And the may recoil from the tone of may grief. Maybe they fear the grief may turn violent.
But the recoil from male grief seems like a real pattern.
Obviously people believing in rigid gender stereotypes is silly and destructive and not very fun, it’s shallow.
But not considering that there might be dimensions which are spontaneous and unconscious I think we might be missing dimensions of ourselves.
and this is not to say that these deeper reflexes are “authentic”. I don’t believe in an authentic self because the self exists in consciousness. I am talking about spontaneous aspect or unconscious dimensions that we may or may not identify as an aspect of ourselves.
One thing that mystifies me is that Abigail Thorn (of Philosophy Tube) now claims that gender dysphoria doesn't actually exist - I think a video on that and contrasting w ContraPoints would be very interesting with your insight!
her argument was that gender dysphoria is misclassified. that kind of dysphoria isn’t a distinct feeling, and isn’t exclusive to trans people.
there are cis women with PCOS who are insecure about the way their condition has masculinized their body. there are cis men who are suicidal because their dick is small. both of those are examples of people experience dysphoria because their body does not align with their gender.
My understanding of her argument is that it doesn't exist as a pathology that medicine can define and therefore use as a weapon against trans people. Similar to how some in the neurodiverse community are trying to remove the medical pathology focus from how it is viewed.
@@firemermaid1980 I have autism and have problems with the neurodivergence movement doing that tactic. Neurodevelopmental disorders have medical consequences and comorbidities that need more medical support and research. There’s nothing wrong with being someone needing, benefitting, or even relying on medical support when it is appropriate to do so.
Taking it off the table that medical care might be appropriate and necessary is misguided and unhelpful to the very people that are supposed to benefit. It’s more of a morality claim, as if being ill or disabled in ways that require medical attention and care was morally inferior to not requiring medical attention and care.
I would like to see efforts to destigmatize shift from that tactic to one of just being nonchalant about the concept of pathology. Pathology doesn’t mean inferiority. It means there is disease or disorder present that it would probably be most ethical and practical to take into account. I would prefer we work on thinking about it that way.
@@JaneTheMessage it is true that there can be medical needs attached to autism and adhd, same as with trans people. The problem as you say is the stigma. I don't want to take the medical support needed for either removed, but some are using the medical language to infantilize and be paternalistic to both trans and neurodivise. And that isn't even getting into the outsized portion of trans people who are also autistic.
@@firemermaid1980 In a sense, I sort of understand in laymen's terms, that the use of pronouns and awareness, and acceptance of trans people is just so that we all can have some compassion. My only objection to this dialectic dialogue is that is too freaking hard to understand with this type of language. Regular people are confuse right thinking and fearing that everybody is going to turn gay or transgender... the old existential fear
I think it is important to use scientific research as a foundation for the gender/sex contretemps. There are two sexes but there is a tiny percentage that do not conform to this dichotomy; broken X, etc. MRI examination of female/male brains show vast differences in processing and areas of activity, especially in temporal and linguistic tasks; even here there is a continuum ( normative curve) with the 75% under the curve but a significant percentage of outliers.
Autism dominates in the trans community - it is 3 times more likely ( 400%) for a transgender to be on the autism spectrum - understandable when autism expresses as a inability to relate to social constructs.
Gender dysphoria have always been around - 1 in 20, 000 on average for most cultures.
1:42
Questioner: Why is the male and the female nature different?
_Ra: I am Ra. When the veiling process was accomplished, to the male polarity was attracted the Matrix of the Mind and to the female, the Potentiator of the Mind; to the male the Potentiator of the Body, to the female the Matrix of the Body. May we ask if there are any brief queries before we close this working?_
Ra Material
"and in that clip too she adds that she too cares about social validation.... by JK rowling."
FUCKING CLOCKED
this really is the eternal trans struggle: even if you absolutely despise someone as a person, you will still care about if they see you as your gender, probably even moreso than with the people who are your allies. its just so hard to divorce yourself from the feeling of "oh i'll show them, if they just see me as [gender here] i've done it." gender really isn't just what's on the inside, it's a continuous societal conversation and trans people won't go away as long as gender is as deeply rooted in our society as it is. we're here to stay.
Ohhhh yes babeyyyy. And I'll call a man a man when I see/hear one, and believe me I'm good at it
Sex(the noun), male and female are used below in reference to biology i.e. as gamete based.
The video segment where Contrapoints argues against essentialism comes from her video about autogynephilia. Contrapoints looks for an alternative explanation to autogynephilia only to find 'essential essence theory' lacking. And at that point Contrapoints seems to give up on the whole project of explaining 'transgender identity'.
However, what of autogynephilia?
It is argued that this is a condition that only males can exhibit. Therefore, it could be argued that Contrapoint's personal presentation using stereotypical / traditional female clothes/ makeup etc is an expression of a biologically male sexuality which seems to me to be an argument for an essential etiology: Contrapoints is 'transgender' because of a gynaphilic male biology.
For more context, the hijra are androphilic biological males. To my knowledge, they are similar to the fa'afafine of Samoa who present themselves in female stereotypical/ traditional ways in order to attract males i.e. they are androphilic as opposed to gynephilic. Again, this seems to be a biological basis for presenting as the opposite sex.
What I am seeing here (in autogynephilia and the hijra), is a point at which sex and gender interface. This seems to make the two inseparable. Contrapoint's presentation is predicated on sex. Likewise, the hijra's presentation is predicated on sex. otherwise, why attempt to change one's appearance?
As a footnote, whether this is correct or not, it still seems that gender profilicity requires some sort sex/gender interface. Otherwise, do you not have some sort of mind/body Elisabeth of Bohemia problem?
No she’s spoken about this before, she wears makeup and feminine clothing because it helps her pass, not because of some male sexual view of womanhood.
This is really interesting. Without wishing to be reductive, it makes me think about the difficulty I had as a cis straight woman when I was trying to work out why marriage was so important to me - despite understanding in a feminist way the constructed and fraught nature of the history of marriage, I still wanted to do it because of a deep psychological and social desire that made my relationship feel incomplete without it. I desperately wanted to sign up to the legal and social position of being married to my spouse. I would have found it heartbreaking and difficult to have not been allowed to square this circle of my own identity. I think we all construct our identities in the confines of our society, but that doesn't mean we can control what we want our identity to be and the freedom to self define and to fulfil the roles that we crave should be an absolute right in a free society.
As a feminist that defines her feminism by opposing marriage I really appreciate your comment.
I always had the exact opposite desire to you, I do not want to be marry. But not because I am a strong feminist (as I thought) but because being married does not mean a lot in my country and social circle.
Thanks. You put it well when you write "squaring the circle." Inevitably today, we're caught in between sincerity and authenticity and profilicity. Somehow marriage is inauthentic--or turns out to be inauthentic after a while. But not being married is insincere. And now, with profilicity added to mix, it gets eve more complicated. You'll never square a circle, and the futility of the attempt becomes increasingly obvious the more you try. But it can be somewhat of a relief to accept that whatever we do, we're "genuinely pretending."
Speaking as a male heavily indoctrinated into feminism in adolescence, it always seemed incongruent to me that I was raised to believe that marriage was an institution created by men to subjugate women and therefore I should oppose it as a kind of institutionalised prostitution and then finding that every women I met was obsessed with it, whilst men weren't really that kean for which they were denounced as "commitmentphobes"! I began to suspect that somewhere along the line I had been lied to! 😂
What's missing from gender ideology, and also from Carefree Wandering and Contrapoints, is the importance of evolution by natural selection in human gender. Gender is merely a polite synonym for biological sex. Humans are animals, males and females. There seems to be a conflation by philosophers like Judith Butler that gender is different from bio-gender and instead are gender roles rooted in human emotion and cultural construction. Butler specifically shies away from biology and reduces gender to gestures of performativity that become habituated over time and frequently mandated by society. For some odd reason human beings are so fearful of being animals that they are constantly finding ways to do the impossible: separate psychology from physiology. Mind-Body dualism. They have for millennia done this through theology, now through postmodern gender ideology. Carefree Wandering and Contrapoints do not go this far, but they do seem to struggle with it thinking that gender is "something different" and based in how one "feels" about their gender.
Brilliant summary, mister
I believe Gender is largely imposed by society. When I talk to people about their own feelings about gender I often find that a sizeable portion of them don't really ever question how they feel about their own gender. With our society removing most of the limits of how one can act within his own gender, we see the very concept of gender losing it's substance. When we picture a man or a woman, we have certain expectations about them in terms of their behaviour and their role. With these expectations removed, we lose the meaning of gender. I find it interesting that binary transgender people exist and I am fascinated by them. Some of them don't reject gender entirely, some even defend it. Listening to multiple transgender people reveals how different their beliefs can be, they vary wildly. It suggests that there is something more to this phenomenon, something we have not figured out yet.
Exactly! I have known some male to female transgenders that act more feminine than I do. I have always had this feeling of being a male, I have acted selfishly dominating, wanting to have sex with lots of women because I get bored fast with a commited relationship, I know, it's disgusting, I can feel the pain on both sides. But I do feel like I am this hot, wonderful "guy". Lol, and at the same when I have fallen in love everything clicks, mentally, physically and spiritually.
Trans people are varied and complicated and many pursue transition socially or physically out of comfort, some do it out of desire, some do it for fun, some do it because they have no choice. Transgender people have been a round a long time, and had many reasons for being the way they do. Conceptualizing it as a recent phenomenon with a coherent goal is new, and honestly I think a fool's errand. For many trans people, the fact they have changed their gender is a very tenuous connector for them to other trans people.
The weight of evidence is that gender is imposed by biology, and gender's existence is universal throughout human history. But it is mediated by society, and this affects the roles, and strikingly affects the symbols (famously pink and blue, long short hair). But it doesn't affect that there are roles. What people can do, hopefully, is make them less restrictive, but we haven't exactly seen that happen. Instead they are both more and less restrictive now. Maybe if people can make them less restrictive , they can get rid of them totally later, but it seems like that would be a techno-biological project as much as anything and people may not ever want it.
I don't understand what is so fascinating about them. Neither Contrapoints nor Muller advocate for the complete abolishment of gender. Just gender as a metaphysical entity. It is a common mistake to think gender is "fake" because it is a social construct. Money is a social construct and very real.
And yeah, of course transgenders aren't a monolith, are you really surprised by that?
Seems as if what you believe doesn't really match reality.
I feel as though the point re. over-investment and surgery isn't quite fully fleshed out. Just because a medical procedure can be risky does not necessarily mean that those that pursue it have 'over-committed'. After all, particularly for trans people, not looking in certain ways can be very dangerous, both in every day life, but particularly in countries where being 'clocked' can even mean going to jail. Of course, it's also worth re-emphasizing the psychological pain felt by many trans people due to profound incongruities between mind and body and the fact that many surgeries such as facial feminisation and top surgery have a very well established track record of providing lasting relief. The point still stands - there is a point at which one can become lost in 'identity', but it also true that what constitutes over-commitment is something that must be explored, at least to some extent, on an individual basis, and without clear or cookie cutter coordinates.
I'm a 25-year-old in a 65-year old's body, and a multi-billionaire in a multi-thousandaire's body, but there's no known way to make the transition.
@Eidelmania does Brad Pitt delete his yt comments?
to be taken seriously as one's gender is different than being taken seriously as a "woman" because as De Beauvoir points out to be a woman is situated as an experience of being a woman that is more than just a cultural construction, more than just biological chromosomes, more than just historical circumstance. It is the relational field between these axioms that gives the concept woman its material and psycho-social reality. As Nathalie has an anti metaphysics of gender to her own admission he can never be a woman. While she may live in the social world and communicate online as a woman, this is different than saying Nathalie can be a women, because being IS BEING - its metaphysical. existence precedes essence as Heidegger would say.
Gender theology is real, and Hans has done a good job not becoming a heretic.
Yup, being is BEING; well said. You never get to the core of being by explaining and deconstructing and intellectualizing. It would be honest to admit that woman (and man) is a mystery - despite all scientific research and all efforts to turn the inside out for everybody to see.
You took a sharp left turn in the last minute that warrants more discussion and support. What constitutes over-identifying with one's gender? What does it mean to be a gender fundamentalist? I agree that over-committing to gender congruity is a way to over-identify with one's gender. But you are unclear about whether to "submit one's body to invasive medical regimes to better fit a gender profile" constitutes overcommitting to gender congruity! Do any medical processes which increase gender congruence constitute as being a "gender fundamentalist" in your terms?
I am a trans woman. I give myself an estrogen injection once a week - less invasive than taking a daily vitamin - which helps enormously in curating my gender profile and makes my life easier. There are physiological and psychological benefits that are obvious to me. Is this medical intervention over-committing to my gender or congruence? Is it psychologically dangerous despite its obvious subjective psychological benefits. It is a pharmacologically safe intervention.
So what are you saying here? Being trans is fine as long as you don't alter your body? If this is not what you are saying, your viewers are going to misunderstand you as being (quite comprehensively) against any medical interventions for trans folks, and this is the absolute worst thing we need right now when governments are actively outlawing our access to vital medicine. Please clarify or reconsider your viewpoint.
Over-commitment to one's identity, in my terminology, basically means not acknowledging that identity is always "genuinely pretended." This is to say two things: 1) A genuine sense of identity results (paradoxically) from "playing" (pretending) an identity. We should understand genuineness and pretending as two equal components of identity building. Over-commitment means to deny the "pretending" element in identity. 2) Human existence is incongruent and dissonant. Identity "covers up" this dissonance--and we need to cover it up to some extent in order to be able to function. However, a perfect match of the dissonant aspects of human life is unachievable. To fanatically desire complete coherence of the different aspects of identity (e.g. social persona, body, personal thoughts and feelings) is identity fundamentalism. I am not in medicine and cannot judge the concrete evasiveness of medical procedures, but I would consider it over-commitment to gender identity if one would want to try to change their body so that it "exactly matches" how one feels, or how one wishes "to be seen as." in terms of gender. I reject advertising for cosmetic surgery that suggests it can fulfill peoples wishes to look "authentic" or be their "real selves" by gendering them in specific ways. This is exploitation of gender fundamentalism.
@@hans-georgmoeller7027 I completely agree with your assessment of identity then, but I highly suggest you look into the empirical difference between treatment of gender dysphoria with bodily intervention vs people with body dysmorphia altering their bodies. In the former case, bodily interventions tend to achieve satisfaction whereas the latter do not. Perhaps you are conflating the two. A trans person tends to be satisfied with their body post HRT, whereas a cosmetic surgery addict or compulsive bodybuilder tend to never achieve an end state that brings completion or fulfillment. I think you are also overstating how much transgender people attempt to "exactly match" the opposite sexed body. My not quite but mostly feminine biology at this point is enough for me to "genuinely pretend" my desired gender. There are very practical reasons that you might not be entertaining, Consider how much easier it is to inhabit a womanly air so to speak when one doesn't have to contend with far heavier and more apparent body hair, or male pattern baldness, or chest acne, or developed upper body musculature, or faster facial hair growth. These are all practical reasons why one would desire to alter their body with HRT, because a simple estrogen shot can compeltely alter all of them whereas trying to "genuinely pretend" womanhood without estrogen is a constant uphill battle against secondary sexual characteristics. Regardless, I certainly appreciate your general philosophical lens here, I just think you misunderstand the transgender phenomenon and are far too restrictive in terms of damning bodily intervention entirely to a kind of bad faith, when certain interventions can be completely aligned with a profile-based identity understanding.
@@AnnularFrisson Thanks a lot for your detailed response. I get your point, and it seems we're in basic agreement. I am not arguing against any of the interventions you describe. My point is, that in media discourse, and perhaps also in law and medicine, a problematic language of "authenticity" is currently being promoted--and marketed. And this problematic language/ideology may, in some cases, lead to medical interventions that people may later regret.As Contrapoints says in one of her videos, "passing as" a gender is a healthier approach (it seems to me) than chasing a "true self."
Since you asked about "over-identification" with gender roles, I will give you one concrete example. Over centuries, and under conditions of "sincerity" (identification in orientation to gender roles), many Chinese women were thought of as really female only if they had bound feet. There is evidence that many Chinese women personally embraced this kind of thinking and strongly desired/identified with bound feet. They didn't want to simply "pass as" women and rather show their "sincere commitment" to the female role with their bound feet. That's over-identification with a gender role under conditions of sincerity. I hope similar over-identification can be avoided under conditions of profilicity..
@@AnnularFrisson i think you’re right in what you say, but this is a tangential but ultimately different issue than what he’s talking about. no one would say getting an tumor removed or appendix removed or stint placed is about aligning oneself to an authentic self. it’s a necessary procedure to ensure the survival of the individual, which is exactly how i see hrt and other affirming surgeries. not about an authentic self as much as positive health outcomes. but many people have lingering body issues even after hrt, too. contra is an example. and at some point, a trans person can stop having trans body dysmorphia and just have regular, to which his theory would then apply. that’s how i see it at least. but good point
6:38 Must gender be different from sex? It seems to me we had two avenues in modernity. One avenue would remove any societal restrictions on people of the female sex, and would dispense with ideas as to how males or females should act or present themselves. The second avenue, the one we're taking, separates gender from sex, but despite despensing with ideas of how males and females act or present themselves, it retains notions how men/boys and women/girls should act and present themselves.
RE 5:31 - super funny to me that this ostensibly red-haired guy is saying intersex folks are "rare exceptions" when they're statistically just as common as... people with red hair
People with red hair are rare exceptions
4:29
U and contrapoints r wrong here
Sex is not binary it's bimodal
Gender is a social construct.
So the concept of cis(binary) is made up,
Gender abolition is the future(if u r against that ,u r a gender essentialist , patriarchal)
Also masculinity and femininity r archaic and reductive,binary, regressive category to categorize the people who r complex
,just call people by their name ,u r not a kid that needs a kids guide book to put people into binary boxes.
Just to make sure i am talking to people who understand that sex is bimodal and gender is a social construct
Not to a lib or reactionary or leftist who is not aware of the concept ,so they would throw away the argument that I made.
I have a theory that the mechanisms of Profilicity ergo the validation feedback loops may exhasperate mental health conditions related to self, i.e. dyshorias and that rising mental health issues in young and always online people are in part at least a product of this.
Possibly. Did you read his book?
The problem in my opinion with many feminist of gender theorists is, that they often seem to aspire to come up with universally true ideas. But people aren't universally all the same. If you want to overcome gender roles to become an authentic individual, good on you. But if you are a trans (or cis) person and are psychologically fulfilled by embracing a very traditional version of gender roles, then also, good on you. There just is a lot, that has to be answered by each individual themselves.
"If you want to overcome gender roles to become an authentic individual, good on you. But if you are a trans (or cis) person and are psychologically fulfilled by embracing a very traditional version of gender roles, then also, good on you" - THIS. As long as each *genuinely* respects other views and doesn't feel threatened by them - not just says 'i respect you' and means 'im secretly judging you/threatened by you passive aggressively' - then it all works! there are beautiful things about the traditional categories of gender as well as about ppl using neopronouns or being agender or gnc in general
I don't even want to be BOTHERED by people insisting, that their specific model for their life is THE model to base your life on. I hate people who make their life choices to feel superior, because I don't even care. And that swings all the ways there are. I have my views, on how I want to live, but that is nobody's business. I might tell somebody about it, but then I#m really only telling about myself. There would be nothing that tells anybody how they should live their lives. My life also isn't one, that should dictate how other people should live. If you're making an ideology out of what people's private lives should look like, something has gone wrong@@2b-coeur
30:45 I'm deeply confused. You both said you reject gender but then say it's necessary to make you happy???
The argument seems to be that there either is no true self or it's unknowable. We as humans like to fulfill roles, performing gender can make you happy bc you're filling a role. Different ppl lean toward different gender identities bc playing whatever roles makes them happy.
@@GourdClae That's a pretty banal philosophy of life, especially when you add drugs and cosmetic surgery to the equation. I understand we are living through this capitalist hedonism and the host describes it well, but do we just shrug our shoulders and leave it at that? I find online life personally depressing and socially destructive.
@@noktilux4052 it's definitely hedonistic for sure, i just think hedonism is neat. life is short if drugs and surgery make you happy then i say do it. Also, it may seem that gender affirming surgery is kind of, like, giving in to performing a gender rather than being authentic, and might seem hedonistic but in that case it's more about healing than hedonism, specifically. Realistically, our brains sometimes malfunction and you need to be pragmatic about doing the best thing you can to help it along.
Are you, maybe, incorrectly equating Natalie's personal views with one of the characters' she acts out as for the purpose of presenting a diversity of views on a topic?
Great video, I hope Natalie finds it socially validating :)
I wonder if you have any thoughts about non-binary identity? Contrapoints was "cancelled" on Twitter a few years ago when talking about an incongruity between trans- and non-binary gender identity. Her reasoning was that in everyday places, she would be called "miss" or "ma'am" without hesitation, but within leftist "safe spaces", she was required to confirm her gender identity and preferred pronouns (ostensibly to avoid assumptions and potentially misgendering people.) So basically, because they were rejecting the social signifiers in favour of an "authentic" self, she did not receive the social validation she needed to feel like she genuinely was a woman. Non-binary people seem to crave the same social validation (by using "they/them" pronouns), even though they reject the social perception of their identity.
good point, but I think it would be the extreme right who would mess everything up; in my opinion the left requiring to use the pronouns is not a bad thing. it is the alt- extreme rightists who refuse to show some freaking compassion to use them. I know only one Person who has asked me to use the them/they pronouns.... one fucking person! why would I be an asshole, not do it and shame them?
Nonbinary identity as a notion is nonsense. It only "defines" itself in relation to what it's not. That does not an identity or definition make. Moreover, as a negative "identity", it reproduces at a remove the binary it seeks to escape: binary people versus nonbinary people. The people claiming this "identity" aren't the brightest crayons in the box, evidently, but more likely seek special status and (self-)perception as the cutting edge of gender radicalism. But what do nonbinary people have to do enact this radicalism? It's as simple as declaring it.
@@umamicashflow1809 Nah I disagree. I am someone who has a lot of inner turmoil around how I see myself. This is due to a combination of factors such as growing up in two different cultures with conflicting gender roles, and having had gender envy towards the opposite sex since I was a child that flares up occasionally but isn't strong enough for me to want to fully commit to something my family wouldn't approve of.
I choose nonbinary identity to avoid having to think about any it. I know people will perceive me as the gender I was born as despite my continued efforts to appear androgynous, but my friends use they/them pronouns for me because they know it makes me feel comfortable and I appreciate them for it. It has nothing to do with seeking a special status, it's about feeling anxious about who I am and wanting to resolve it by stepping away from traditional gender roles and giving myself space to breathe.
Furthermore, many binary trans people use nonbinary identities on their way to transition as it's a good way to try out new pronouns without going all the way, and your comment invalidates that. I think you need to step back from your kneejerk reaction of derision and understand that nonbinary is a useful gender category for many people for a variety of reasons, possibly some I haven't even considered. I don't think it's helpful to gatekeep what is and isn't valid when it comes to gender.
Also, since the original comment in this thread is about the Contrapoints cancelling stuff, I want to give my take from the perspective of a nonbinary person: I can empathize with Contra's complaint and I think it's silly that she was cancelled for it. I unfortunately don't have a really good idea of how to fix that issue because on the one hand not making assumptions about someone's gender is probably for the best, but wanting validation is completely understandable as well.
Cheers.
@@ag8454 What you call gatekeeping I call safeguarding and protecting. Gender nonconformity is a well-established predictor of future same-sex orientation, but young lesbians and gay men are increasingly misrecognizing themselves as trans, which conceptualizes gender identity according to regressively sexist stereotypes. Cheers.
Not a philosophically geared answer at all, but Contra's complaint about this was very silly tbh - and the response to it was also overdone.
I understand here we are thinking about pronouns as mechanism for social acceptance but tbh im skeptical. For some nonbinary and binary trans ppl - sure. For others, I think it is a statement of authenticity.
Something I think you might be implying with the closing argument is a more universal understanding of gender dysphoria. Say I'm a cis man, but I'm not particularly big and strong. Maybe I don't get treated like I think men should be treated, but I strongly identify as a man and I find the dissonance painful.
So we could ask the question, is this hypothetical version of myself experiencing gender dysphoria, or something like it? Are a series of medical treatments (i.e. steroids) appropriate to align me with my gender? I mean, obviously you wouldn't, because you would say don't identify so much with your gender, but it would be a similar situation.
Of course, there is at least one critical difference. The politics of these treatments is not under serious contention. If I chose to go through with the procedures I wouldn't have conservatives scrambling to stop me and to keep me out bathrooms.
They would keep you out of sports though....
If the feeling and identity of gender is transient, changing and/or socially induced, on what exactly do you base the need for serious medical intervention?
One thing that I'm struggling with lately, are women that I know who insist on gender neutral pronouns, and yet make no effort to disassociate from their gender.
They still only date guys, they still wear women's clothing, display female sexuality, and yet insist on being referred to as genderless.
Meanwhile I have family who have gone through transition, and who have partners who I would identify as actually genderless.
To me, insisting on genderless pronouns means a commitment to that lifestyle, but I really have a hard time attributing that same meaning to women who simply insist on arbitrarily being called they/them.
And it's not some subversive act to try and undermine the discussion, these are individuals that consider themselves "allies" to gay/queer & minority groups.
lmaooo the images when the professor talks about ages
There's a contrast between the video essay styles of Contrapoints and this channel - Natalie is an entertainer, focused on costuming, lighting, and background to add to what she says, and what she says is part of the performance. This channel is less about theatrics and performance. I wonder what it would look like for Carefree Wandering as a channel to put on such a performance lol
If someone was born isolated on an uninhabited island, would that person have a gender?
If someone was born isolated on an uninhabited island, they would die
@@tangolettuce3538 Let's say there is a robot present that takes care of food, medical issues, etc.
@@dodec8449I'm guessing they wouldn't have any social phenomenons, including morals and language.
de Beauvoir: "One is not born, but becomes a woman." This helps me sort out one aspect of the trans thing that...annoys me. Like Natalie Wynn, many trans women strive to become ultra-feminine, as if to be a woman is to be ultra-feminine. (I myself am annoyed by the ultra-feminine as much as I am annoyed by the ultra-masculine.) This fixation on the ultra-feminine "ideal" slavishly kow-tows to the capitalist beauty industry; it reinforces an insecurity that as, she ages, will inevitably require more and more expensive fixes provided by that industry.
This issue brings to mind the image of Georgia O'Keefe, out there in dry, wind-swept New Mexico. No make-up. Unconcerned about aging. Centered. A different ideal. (One cannot imagine Georgia O'Keefe deliberately altering her voice so as to sound feminine. The altered-voice thing strikes me as a significant red flag. Like taking on a phony accent to sound more posh.)
but even the non-trans voice ultimately takes form through socialisation. Masculine and feminine intonation, rate, prosody etc. differ, and are all socially constructed. Have you never chatted to a pre-pubescent boy who is trying his darnest to sound like his voice has already broken? A lot of men never escape this little performance, and speak in a low monotone for the rest of their life. Is this behavior "natural" or "learned"?
@@BrennanYoung You make strong points, my friend, but you have not persuaded me.
To be ultra-feminine is to reveal a regrettable insecurity. Ditto, to be ultra-masculine. This is well-illustrated by the example of the pre-pubescent boy deliberately, consciously pretending that his voice has already changed; as it is deliberate and conscious, it could not be considered natural (though, of course, the continuation could become unconscious habit...a habit that is fed by insecurity). Natalie suddenly (that is, deliberately) changed her voice. I don't see this deliberate change being different than deliberately adopting an upper-class voice. An upper-class voice is, indeed, a social construct. To deliberately adopt an upper-class voice, likewise, reveals a regrettable insecurity. It is the deliberate, conscious change that is off-putting. If Natalie had been at ease (i.e., not insecure), she would not have needed to change her voice deliberately. (I assume that the hormone treatment might well have organically changed her voice, which would, of course, be perfectly legitimate.)
The non-trans voice does arise from socialization in childhood, though a child does not consciously adopt its "appropriate" voice; therefore, it is not a false voice. Socialization would also cause the child (to some degree, consciously) to adopt a hyper-feminine or hyper-masculine voice, alas. This also takes other forms. I can remember myself as a child deliberately dumbing-down my voice, adopting a cutie-pie treacly voice with the purpose of pleasing adults (i.e., manipulating them). This memory discomforts me. To consciously alter your voice is to be false in a fundamental way.
I have no problem with the trans phenomenon in itself. The eminent neurologist at Stanford, Robert Sapolsky (my favorite scientist), has convincingly lectured on the neurology of the trans brain (and, of course, there is an ample body of anecdotal evidence to back him up). It is the conscious adoption of ultra-feminine or ultra-masculine affect that displeases me. The ultra-thing is a toxic social construct. It has throughout history done great harm. It arises from insecurity. It is exploited by those people and entities who profit from the insecurity of others. When a woman believes that her face is not "good enough", the make-up industry exploits her insecurity. Her face is, in fact, good enough. It is also good enough as she ages. It is in the interest of the make-up industry that she believe her face to be not "good enough". It is in the interest of the make-up industry, as well as the plastic surgery industry, that she become increasingly insecure as she ages. The make-up industry and the plastic surgery industry have succeeded in extracting a great deal of money from Natalie. You know, it occurs to me that before her transition, Natalie also wore make-up, but one did not get a sense that she did so out of insecurity. It was more an expression of artistic fun. I would say that it was better when it was merely fun.
I know full well that to address these issues is an exercise in futility. Capitalism has brainwashed people. Oh, well.
@@BrennanYoung You know, Brennan, I have been further mulling over your reply. You said, "Masculine and feminine intonation, rate, prosody etc. differ, and are all socially constructed." Social construct or not, you are talking about stereotypes. I am a cis-woman. I do not, and have not ever, spoken in a manner remotely similar to that adopted by Natalie Wynn. Ditto her mannerisms. She is complying with a stereotype. She did not have to do so, as my own example demonstrates.
I don'y like sexism, even when an individual chooses to comply with with their own "appropriate" sexual stereotype, without at least questioning their choice. I again cite Georgia O"Keefe as a woman who was not subservient to stereotype. I admire O'Keefe, a confident personality. Not insecure.
I don't disagree with anything you've said here, but I think it's actually important to further clarify that sex is in fact mutable. Just like gender, sex has multiple facets, and only one of these facets (chromosomes) is immutable. Hormones cause physiological changes that can be simplified as changing one's sex, such that medically speaking trans people who have been on hormones for a long time are (except for reproduction) largely the same as cis people with the same hormones.
I totally agree!
One's sex is mutable does not = sex is mutable. This is the difference in social theory, which posits society exists.
That "except for reproduction" aside is doing quite a lot of work. Reproduction being the reason biological sex differences evolved haha. Maybe one day it will be different, but current transition technology doesn't change sex.
Male and female are used univocally across the plant and animal kingdoms to refer to the sex organized toward the production of sperm or eggs respectively. Therefore, hormones and chromosomes do not figure essentially into a definition of sex (crocodiles are male or female despite not having sex chromosomes, your sex doesn't change during puberty even though your hormones change, etc). You may find this helpful ua-cam.com/video/s9kNwAHThA8/v-deo.html
@@thanderhop1489 You are right - if we [decide to] define male/female as only [the possibility to or past history where they] produce sperm or eggs. I'd like to note, the part in brackets, which you implied but didn't say are important though. I say you imply them because 1. We inherently make decisions about what would be a most useful when we define and 2. If we don’t add not about potential/historywhen talking about producing gametes then sex absolutely does change. For example, small babies or elderly women or woman who have had a hysterectomy etc. Of course, this is a decision we’re making - we are defining it in a way so it doesn’t change - not because the actual biology is exactly the same in the same state. That’s fine! But, the definition brings other problems. Inadvertenly we are creating a scenario that is helpful for understanding how reproduction happens in general but we are failing to get any information at all about the ACTUAL potential to produce gametes in an individual. If you say a creature is female, what are we learning with this definition? Do they ONLY produce female gametes or do they also produce male gametes? Did they produce eggs before? Will they produce them in the future? If so, how do you know they will? If they never do produces eggs, does that mean they are not female? You could say that this doesn’t matter: they are sick, old or broken. I think there are plenty of times where this is not the case - but fine! Even still, it still leaves open the question of sex. Your model doesn’t describe ALL of reality (of course none can but we know not to say they are indisputable in most cases). If we include other things in the definition such as chromosome hormones etc we avoid this problem about knowing sex but we introduce the idea that sex can change. This isn’t to says that there is a perfect definition of sex that doesn’t run into problems like this. In fact, one that includes multiple factors also obscures facts when used a binary m/f - where it is useful is we can specify CHROMOSOMAL SEX, HORMONAL SEX, etc giving us clear information instead about what an individual has or does not have. Instead, this is to say, we decided what sex is - it’s not essential. And if we decide what it is, then it must be possible for somebody to fall out of the category of male or female based on our changing definition. And if that’s possible then sex can’t be “immutable”. I don’t even agree with OP on saying chromosomal sex is immutable. In the animal kingdom that is definitely not true ( see bearded dragons) and for humans it’s not true now - but that doesn’t mean it will always be that way. Even putting that aside, like you said, including chromosomes in the definition at all is up to us - making it mutable on that basis alone. ?
I love contrapoints' channel name, because she will counter every logical and rational thing you imagine :)
I would define gender as follows: to be male or female is to labor according to a sexual division of labor in a given mode of production. The categories of gender-authenticity, gender-sincerity and gender-profilicity have to be located within economic modes of production. They can not be seen as free floating (ahistorical, idealist) categories. These categories answer to different forms of class power and to historically differing modes of production. For example, gender-sincerity makes most sense in a feudal/agricultural mode of production, gender-authenticity in a modern liberal industrialized capitalist society, and gender-profilicity in a post-industrial, globalized finance-capitalist mode of production. One could say, then, that gender indeed has an essentialist component and is not entirely malleable insofar as societies have a need to reproduce labor through gendered and sexual divisions of labor, whether one likes it or not- see the current fertility crisis as evidence of what happens when a post-industrial concept expands beyond its material base.
I feel like "gender technology changes based on what the society needs" doesn't show an essential gender, but the opposite?
I enjoy the economic link thought that is so overlooked !!
To take it a step further, economics is only a manifestation of the underlying principle of survival. Animals across the board have divisions of labour based on the strengths and weaknesses of males and females. Trying to divorce physiology from psychology is a mistake. Many people treat the mind as though it is seperate from the body. It is not
What's the difference between curating a gender profile and conforming to gender roles, though? When contrapoints talks about presenting in a meticulously feminine way, is that not conforming to a gender role?
One can conform themselves to a gender role while not reinforcing or requiring gender roles from others, one can conform to aesthetic gender roles while challenging them in other fronts, etc.
It would be great to see this kind of good-faith engagement with some gender critical philosophers, such as Kathleen Stock or Holly Lawford-Smith.
That would be cool!
i don't think bringing up traditional third genders is done to "idealise them" as much as it is done to show that what we call "trans gender" now is a normal part of the human experience globally, and different cultures have recognised them (even if their theory of gender culturally is different to ours) showing that in fact our own binarism of gender in the west is particular and socially constructed. So while Contrapoints will have a different view on gender, she will also see this as an example of how other communities do not deny the existence of so called "trans" identities, i.e. those that do not conform to a gender binary.
I think many of us would love to hear this explored and broke down in to more digestible terms. I’ve sent this to Benjamin Boyce, would be great to hear you discuss this with him.
For me this is extremely useful in highlighting contras problems.
This is already broken down, what do you mean?
@@RedSntDK Oh, it's not as broke down as you think it's.
There's a lot not being said.
BB is a conspirary theory terf’y wacko
I have to disagree with both you and Natalie on the idea of being oneself without gender norms as utopian.
Social constructs are not eternal, nor sempiternal. Different societies have different constructs.
Her caricature of what it would imply to live in a genderless world completely misses the point. It's not about getting rid of everything that has historically been construed as gendered, actually the opposite: to open up the barriers and stop imposing on others arbitrary rules of appearance and behaviour based on gender. A good example of this that I think she'd agree with is gendered toys. Nobody is saying "get rid of cars and Barbies", what we say is "stop tagging them as toys for girls or boys, they're just toys".
As I watch more and more of these videos, the notions of sincerity and profilicity appear to became one and the same. A genuine commitment to a role largely created and validated by the societal context. Men and women sincerely commiting to their roles 200 years ago did so no less in expectation of a reaction from a crowd. The general peer was not as large, and the profile was not digizited but I see many similarities. Perhaps this is why neo-sincerity is appealing as a response to profilicity - because it is so similar.
Secondly, I think I can imagine your apprehensions, but I do wish you would talk more about the political side as well. Specifically Contrapoints dismisses some ideas on the grounds that they are not helping "achieve equality". I personally don't think equality can or even should be an achievable state in society and would love to hear your thoughts.
Fascinating video! I'm a big fan of Contrapoints and I found this analysis extremely illuminating. On the one hand, I do fundamentally agree with Prof. Moeller and Contrapoints that we should reject gender metaphysics. On the other hand, if a person from an early age, develops their gender identity incongruently with their biological sex, and it's a reliable fraction of the population in whom this occurs regardless of social conditions, then this calls for a scientific - neurological - explanation. Indeed, exactly analogously with sexual orientation, brain differences correlating to differences in gender identity have been reliably identified (see for example research by Dick Swaab).
So, while we should reject all notions of "gendered souls" or indeed whole "gendered brains", the neurobiological evidence gives us important clues as to just *how* contingent and socially malleable gender identity might be in general. Personally, I identify as a man, as gay and as a rock climber. I've been rock climbing very frequently for 20 years, so my brain must have changed physically to encode the learning I've done over this time: there'll be - in principle - a neuroanatomical signature that marks me out as a climber. This is obviously totally socially contingent, and yet also woven into my biology. There are also brain features that correlate to my sexual orientation (somewhere in the hypothalamus for starters), but this aspect of my identity isn't socially contingent: it's not changeable, it developed early (the signs were there before I ever experienced sexual desire), it goes against all my social conditioning and is certainly not under my conscious control. Similarly, my gender identity as a man is socially contingent in how it manifests, but there's northing I could do, or no social conditions I could be subjected to that could make me identify as a woman. I could change my identity as a climber by stopping climbing and taking up a different hobby, but there's nothing I can do to change my sexual orientation or gender identity. It's too deep in the brain, those systems developed too early on. This is why conversion therapy (both gay and trans) doesn't work.
I think that there is a risk that in rejecting gender metaphysics and gender identity under authenticity, we may throw away too much. This is where I'm uncomfortable with Prof. Moeller's apparent scepticism of gender-affirming treatment (e.g. surgery) as "over-identifying" with one's gender. If incongruent gender identity occurs due to early brain development, it's very deeply laid down and can't be changed; and in our highly gendered society life's going to be much easier to live if a trans person "passes". So scepticism towards surgery simply isn't warranted in those cases (but this is clearly not the case for everyone who identifies as trans). It should go without saying that anyone having any irreversible medical intervention should have all the required support to make absolutely certain it is the right thing for them; but I think I would rather trust trans people's perspectives on their healthcare than even the most insightful academic philosophers.
Well said.
Does this disagreement between Contra and Abigail Thorn have much to do with their stances regarding authenticity versus profilicity as it pertains to their understanding of their own trans identities?
I believe it has more to do with the differences in how the U.S. and U.K. healthcare handle transgender healthcare.
I heard someone comment on that it could be that Abigail is in the UK and Contrapoints is in the US. How you treat these things very much affects the type of medical care you receive in the US, unfortunately. Having a medical "illness" (scare quotes intentional) can impact whether or not insurance will pay for procedures.
@@James_ER Yeah, this was my understanding as well. The mental “illness” classification can make things harder in the U.K. from what Abigail says (for instance, breast reduction surgery isn’t gate-kept for cis-women who need it). Meanwhile, with the expensive costs for healthcare in the U.S., having the dysphoria diagnosis is the thing health insurance companies require to even consider taking on part of the financial burden of transitioning.
If gender isn't an unalienable aspect of some one's being, does that make gender based discrimination less morally repugnant? After all, the strongest point against bigotry is that it often targets something that the victim themselves cannot change about their self. Something they're just 'born with' through no fault of their own.
Probably the best video I've seen on the topic. Really well articulated. There's one bit in the conclusion I'm not so sure about though. Giving the example of "surgery to make your body fit a gender profile" - this is actually one thing which I think while it may seem as the most extreme example, is actually more do with biology or sex, rather than gender itself. As far as I'm aware there's an emerging literature on "gender" dysphoria and "brain sex" - where our brains have an inbuilt sense of what our body should be like, and gender dysphoria - or the type where you don't feel your body is the right sex (so, im really not sure why its called gender dysphoria, shouldnt this be sex dysphoria?). There is a medical aspect to the act of gender surgery, and I don't think it's always to do with aligning appearance to preferred gender expectations. Without knowing this I found it really hard to square the circle of trans peoples' experiences of gender dysphoria and I think without it, it can easily lead to a "gender essentialist" perspective. That trans people are proof that we "really are" wo/men (if you believe their testimonies anyway), because from a very young age they "knew" and "felt" like they were the other gender... So, surgery I see not as an act of performativity (though of course it really is as well for many, as contrapoints' statements show i think), but a medical procedure because of a mismatch of brain sex and body sex.
It’s not true, it’s make believe to justify gender theology.
The fact that a kid "feels" something doesnt make it real, you cant explain the existence of god with the fact that some people "feel" and "know" that there is a god
@@estefaniaboujon6830by that reasoning we shouldn’t listen when a child says they feel anxious or depressed all the time, because mood disorders are just “feelings”
Feelings are real.
To me, "authentic" in this sense just means not socially conditioned or coerced to behave in a specific way specifically tied one's sex. It doesn't means "somewhere inside me buried under my conditioning is the r.e.a.l. me." I.e. it's not something material or spiritual. It's just the state one would theoretically inhabit if one had developed sans gender expectations.
I think that your use of "male" and "female" when you seem to mean "masculine" and "feminine" is unnecessarily confusing.
30:10 if I remember correctly, she was talking about being taken seriously in order to develop relationships that would someone happy, not that just being taken seriously would make her happy. Try having friendships, relationships if no one takes you seriously
How to take seriously a person who plays "silly girl" year after year after year? I'm not referring to Contrapoints as such, but some other characters in the tra* movement. And yes, there are biological women too who adopt some kind of girly character and stick to it up into advanced age. Eternal boys exist as well.
@@Liisa3139 Someone "playing" the sill boy/girl is quite a different situation than a general fear that being seen by society as a category 'trans', or 'black', or 'gay', etc. is going to mean, with no ability to affect how people see you, that they will consider you to be e.g. a joke, inferior, etc. There is a distinction to be made there. I appreciate the idea you're getting at, but given you reference 'characters' in the trans movement, makes me think you're mostly referring to online influencers. Is that correct? That would be quite the over-generalisation and quite the unfair comparison.
@@cameronmclennan942 You can't win fear by hiding behind false identity constructions. Supporting false identities is not sound for societies either. Biology is biology. It is important to bear this in mind, also for tra*s. Say, when a tra* falls sick, the proper treatment may have a hell of a lot to do with the person's real sex.
@@Liisa3139 You clearly didn't understand, or don't agree with this video or Carefree Wandering then. He clearly states multiple times that he agrees with Contrapoints about practically all of her framing and evaluations of the philosophical positions of identity - i.e. that basically ALL of our identities are unfounded (or "false"). Your "biology is biology" sentance speaks volumes as to how little understanding of behavioural biology and psychology you have or are willing to allow in this discussion. Have a good one.
@@cameronmclennan942 What I'm after is questioning the importance of having much of an identity. I don't find it important, not very interesting even. It is like some kind of game that people who are very invested in branding themselves and creating a specific image and keeping their appearance do, but I see it as a useless waste of time and effort. Therefore I don't even understand the whole concept of identity. As I see it, it is rather meaningless. For a person who does not work in any performative profession and who does not produce even UA-cam videos or have a profile in Facebook - the whole identity fuss is inconceivable, total nonsense.
I would really like to see you two do a collaboration in the future. I realise you are a professor and Nat is more a philosophy themed video essayist but if you two could come together I would be amazed.
Not gonna happen. She does polemics, not debates. Tbf that's the majority of content on this channel too, with a couple interviews mixed in.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn i mean it doesnt have to be a debate either!
She just tweeted today she is not going to make any stuff about gender for a while.
@@dodec8449 She could take on the Profilic-Sincerity-Authentic identity schema as a phenomenon without talking about Gender.
@@dodec8449 Why?
Some criticisms:
-A lot of these claims are only forward looking, ignoring the implication of the statement. If you claim that there is no metaphysics of gender or theology of gender, you are building an argument on something that cannot be proved either way.
-A subtext that must be addressed is the death spiral of the European perspective toward reproduction, ancestor reverence, and their refusal to replace the word “role” with the word “responsibility”.
-An addendum to that is the refusal to acknowledge and investigate environmental factors that may play a huge role in the proliferation of the population.
I have to admit, I am a bit confused, so if I got something wrong, please correct me: so, we distinguish between biological sex and gender which is a societal/sociological/psychological component. Most people would say there are only 2 sexes. But are there only 2 genders? If there are, I assume they are what has in a given time in a given culture been perceived as masculine or feminine, correct? And here is where I don't get it: we then start talking about gender identity, which i must assume is not exactly the same as gender, and I have to wonder, isn't an assertion of being transgender just an affirmation of traditional gender roles and simply finding out I'm the "wrong" role, rather than rejecting or altering those roles? in other words, isn't it the case that those who transition because they feel they are the wrong gender, a case of buying into old- and often overhauled - tropes?
as for the gender sex distinction, even if we say gender is not the same as sex, don't we have to acknowledge that biological sex influences gender? For example, we know that in every culture throughout history, women have assumed the roles of those who give birth and take care of children, not because someone decided so (unless we say that someone is a god), but because biology prevents men from assuming this role. now, im sure we can debate about to what extend culture shapes those roles, but I don't think we can deny that sex does shape gender roles based on what we know from history.
Contrapoints ultimately argued for Judith Butler's more imclusive performance lens, its a common misunderstanding that that video was punching down at non-binary ppl as "trenders"
omg, i feel the same way you do; I'm 59 but i swear to God i feel 36, a huge libido, hyperactivity, overthinking, hyperfocusing, so yeah, we keep adding layers of identities, and we could even "feel" so many different perspectives, experiences, but I guess a lot of people deny themselves this. I also think that the reason for the culture wars, especially when it comes to have a little f....ng compassion towards other humans, it's our internal animal instinct of violence, rage will fix everything.
Sounds like ADHD. Source: I also feel like that and I was diagnosed with it 2 years ago. It's not defect, but medication give me more control on what I want to do etc.
@@prkp7248 yeah, I suspected it in recent years, and someone who’s a therapist told me this was classic adhd. But since I moved to Seattle last year I have been having a hard time because of my expectations that come from a space that feels I’m above that, all the stuff that goes wrong, all The stressors make it difficult to accept them. That’s the thing with adhd, hypersensitivity and trauma, we know what we have to do, but either procrastinating, anxiety or depression are getting in the way. I’m trying to get a diagnosis to start medicines but it’s hard. Very frustrating for us
Culture wars are mainly about groups in power using it to elevate their status by playing all the games people play.
This is really interesting to me. Doesn't Amia Srinivasan say our sexuality isn't who we are, it is what we want. And then now I'm on Simone Beauvoir on gender authenticity. Your host says she was the authority on it: "Gender as gender roles imposes a social conformity and the point is to find ones own individual authenticity by rejecting this conformity." That's really well said. To the people who are really passionate about these issues I want to say "Relax." Not my example but if you are passionate about the rights of transgender prisoners where do you come down on the rights of prisoners? Wouldn't it be more helpful to work on that?
I think the gender (trans) stuff is so interesting because it deals with what's given to us, our bodies and our lives, and how we create the world we live in, ascribing meaning and identification to things we don;t even know we are choosing. And it gets fuzzy fast. One example, it seems like we have a societal understanding or the male identified lesbian, words like butch dyke, and I think we understand how that could be an attractive sexual and relationship option for various women and for various reasons. It sort of makes sense that a masculine lesbian would date a more feminine lesbian. But what happens once that person goes through all the body transformation (sex change) and becomes a certified male. Then who do they date. Is that more attractive to some women than a butch female or a traditional birth-man (I just made that up)..Some males are attracted to females with penises. Where I live the story is that lots of men do gay sorts of things, the spectrum, but a lot of them don't have any gay identification, meaning how they want to present to the world. There's a real distinction about our private lives and what goes on with the people we know most closely and what we present to the world. I feel like a lot of this stuff should just be private, not criticized of forbidden, it's just some weird private, personal thing that people do. If you are a well behaved person in public and in general you can usually do whatever you want in private and people are fine. Is wearing your S&M adjacent clothes to work in the office an indication of your authenticity. Really cool topic. I'm just getting started.
the idea that activists should relax is a bit silly and im not sure what you mean!!
in your example, the answer is obviously to help both and that trans prisoners have unique needs that somebody must advocate for. There are many ppl advocating for prisoners in general but very few advocating for the specific needs of imprisoned trans people.
"I feel like a lot of this stuff should just be private,"
Why?
Attraction is interesting in rerence to gender. The answer mostly is that most ppl don't think about it that much. There are some ppl who fetishize trans ppl, so to some yeas it is more attractive to many others it's just kind of a quirky thing that this man used to be a woman.
The problem with keeping your sexual tastes private is that by doing so you can hurt both yourself and the people you are attracted to. As a trans woman, I know many straight-identifying men are attracted to me but virtually none of those men are courageous enough to be seen in public with me. The end result is that I feel hopeless w/r/t ever finding a serious relationship and they - or many of them - feel ashamed of both their attraction and their cowardice.
This was really, really good.
Question: do we have a chance of rejecting/not accepting profilicity in the future? I guess my approach to identity is authenticity (though I agree there is no true self), at least I tend not to participate in the acts of profilicity (which I guess in itself could be considered profilicity), and I don’t think I want my children to, would it be possible to raise them with accordance of authenticity? Sincerity lived on in the age of authenticity, will authenticity survive profilicity?
Rewatch his video on getting identity right.
These are merely technologies used to navigate complex interactions. This profilic environment may seem hostile to the authentic, but we must both survive and exploit it. Survival is the essential context needed here.
We’re all pretending.
In order to function in today's society, profilicity is unavoidable, I suppose (you need it for your bank account, for instance). But we can use the other technologies as well. It's like with actual technologies--new technologies do not completely erase the previous ones.
Nothing in Daoust seems to me not to mean « nothing » in the sense of absence, but ineffability, the real in the eminent way beyond the grasp of a finite concept.
I tend to think of gender as a job description and, like many jobs, sex plays a fundamental role in one's execution of the tasks necessary to complete the job effectively. Men, biologically, tend to skew towards a physical competence that lends itself well to combat, protection, sport, physical labor, etc. Men that aren't maximizing on these strengths (and thus maximally contributing to the community by focusing on core competencies) are socially derided as not being "manly enough" due to the perceived lack of "job performance" in the same way that a medical doctor spending much of their time on their dog-walking side-gig would be perceived as lacking in dedication to medicine and thus must not be "a real doctor."
The real push from the trans community, near as I can tell, is to change or opt out of these job listings without contempt. "There's no such thing as doctors and carpenters," says the doctor tinkering with cabinets to the detriment of their health practice. Society doesn't care what you want; It cares about whether or not you're contributing to the best of your ability and dog-walking is not the best use of a doctor's time, no matter what the doctor feels. The doctor is free to walk dogs. The doctor is not free to walk dogs without judgement.
this is very interesting but kind of fails for me At the end? I was nodding along like, "yeah sex is like a inclination toward a certain job"
at the end you make some claim that's basically "of course ppl don't condone you taking on a role that is inefficient for you". First im not sure what that means in this metaphor and also doesn't work for job metaphor bc,,, ppl can have multiple jobs, nobody judges a doctor for walking dogs, and even if they did that person isn't morally required to be optimally efficient to the community. ofc she should do what makes her happy. makes me think the metaphor is actually not that helpful! especially when you consider there are plenty of women who do "manly" things better and men who do "feminine" things better. in the metaphor, if we wanted to let them do the thing they're efficient at, there would be no reason for society to scorn them since it apparently loves efficiency
@@GourdClae Thanks for the thoughtful response, Gourd. I need to work on my analogy game, I guess.
What I'm trying to get at, I guess, is that if a doctor (high-skill) takes on dog-walking (low-skill), they're robbing society of a higher value contribution... which isn't likely to be taken well even if it's within that individual's rights to do whatever they want.
Also, while there are folks that excel at things that don't suit their traditional gender roles, it gets messy when we try to chase that down as an ideal or try to ignore that the inclinations ever existed in the first place or that they're rooted in biology rather than wholly socially constructed.
While it's tempting to tell a child they can be anything they want, it really obviously is not true and biology plays an almost exclusive role in determining what is and isn't possible.
@@virtualalias Children of a certain age tend to be very insisting on the validation of their sex. This happens when they realize that the two sexes are different. Raising children by a sex neutral principle robs them from the opportunity of finding joy in the recovery of ones own sex. Small children in general tend to be conservative in their views and clear definitions make a secure environment for growth. By this I don't mean a rigid stereotypical gender role scene (pink clothing for girls etc), but giving the necessary facts of biology and some facts about the society (most people who hunt are men etc). As kids grow they will start questioning things and some friction with their parent's views is only good. No need for the parents to go and validate everything.
@@virtualalias of course! : D
I really think most ppl don't think abt if a doctor is being optimally helpful. At least where I'm from we tend to value freedom- not really as a begrudging "yes, technically u can do whatever but you shouldn't" but as inherently good. Maybe we just have very different values on this? Or maybe you are just describing society as a whole without bringing your values in - I am not sure!
I think it gender is a mix of biology and social conditioning. In what way sdoes somebody pursuing a gender role that fits them become messy - and is that inherently bad or is that part of their personal journey in life? If it is good to pursue a gender role that works well for you, surely it should be good no matter where you start? Maybe I'm wrong? again, Im more concerned with ppls happiness than their function in society, personally though.
Just give science time it will change! In the meantime, I think allowing ppl to express themselves honestly and pursue the gender roles that makes them happy - doing everything we can to get them as close as possible is the kindest we can do. I think it would be more accurate to tell a child they have a right to pursue becoming whoever or whatever they want and that we will work to get them as close as possible!
Of course these are just my thoughts!
@@Liisa3139 When children are very young it is true they are more concerned with conforming than thinking critically yes! In what ways does raising a child as sex neutral rob them? the only kinds of ppl i know to do this, would love if the child asserted they were male or female regardless of how they were born. If anything, giving them their sex rather than allowing them to reach out and take it seems like it would rob them the opportunity of finding themself.
The idea that conflict is good between child-parent is obviously true, generally. However, validation is an important part of a parents role, on certain things and that includes their identity and potential.
Gender profile is a means to an end of being perceived in a way that matches what one sees as their authentic relationship with gender. Gender profile is a complicated thing for people who identify as non-binary/genderqueer because there is no set third gender role in our world. I lean more feminine, so I strive to be defaulted as a woman because being seen as a man feels more incongruent but I identify mostly gender less/gender neutral. So this is very complicated. I wonder how you’d fit non-binary identity into this concept of gender proclivity
It seems self-explanatory. Identity built around gender. Mutilating yourself if you have anything that doesn't conform to the manufactured stereotypes of the gender you "identify" as.
I love when I see Prof. Moeller doing the "in quotes" gesture. I like to image he is performing a butterfly as in Chuang Tzu dream.
Your videos are always excellent. What about someone like me who doesn’t believe we should care about genders. I am in the medical field, and I see people as male or female sexes, except for a tiny percentage. Gender is a word or category that doesn’t need to exist.
this has always been a pet thought of mine, but i think that the way we express ourselves, such as through gender is so fascinating i am conflicted D : Besides that, while bio sex can tell us something about bodies they sometimes hide more info than they give. u would expect a female to have a certain hormone level, gametes, etc but in reality, having the information about their hormone levels or windpipe diameter or bone density would be more enlightening than ticking off m or f! the categories of m or f are often more obfuscatory than informative!
Given that your patients are people and not animals, you will have to take it into account to some degree regardless, if you want to actually be an adequate medical professional at an interpersonal level. If you only view your patients as male or female, you aren't just diminishing gender as self expression, you are diminishing ALL self expression (in my eyes that includes things such as the ability to consent). But I highly doubt that's how you operate in reality, you still see your patients as people. So I'd say recognising them as individuals but not recognising their gender is a bit hypocritical. However, obviously, if a patient is just getting treated for a broken bone, their gender is irrelevant. Does that make any sense
It is quite disrespectful to misgender someone, and you will not have a good relationship with a patient if that is how you treat them. Whenever I am presented with an intake form that has a section where I can identify myself as a trans woman, I breathe a massive sigh of relief that the provider is at least somewhat aware that trans people exist and that probably I won't have to worry about how our interaction will go regarding that. Otherwise I have to explain and I just don't know how that will go. Most people are accepting, doctors probably moreso, but it's very hard to tell otherwise if someone is going to be transphobic or not unless they are visibly an ally.
The "tiny percentage" is very important. From the most heated corners of the trans debate it's easy to get the impression that trans is poised to take over the world. (A narrative for alarm or rejoicing, depending on position). Quite false, of course. I continue to be astonished how much heat and how little light is caused directly by this very basic misconception. Trans people remain a tiny fraction of the population, but seem to be the subject of a disproportionate amount of hand-wringing.
Another problem is the vulgar idea that sex and gender are synonyms. I suspect that this happens because (especially anglo-saxons) are too shy to utter the word "sex", whereas "gender" sounds more scientific, less pornographic. So they pick the word "gender" instead, and usually get it wrong.
Should you care? Should the concept of "gender" (distinct from "sex") even exist?
Gender is originally a linguistic term, meaning "type" (same etymology as the word "genre"). In linguistics, the genders are *not* always sex-related. Some languages have the two genders "animate" and "inanimate", rather than "masculine" and "feminine". All language is socially constructed, of course. Many languages have a "neuter" gender, and what is "masculine" in one language may be "feminine" in another, and vice versa. You might not care about this. That's fine. Pidgin dialects often "flatten" the gender distinction (e.g. the pidgin French dialects of Africa), but this does not make the distinction meaningless. And since many languages *have* no word for "gender" as distinct from "sex", confusion is inevitable.
The term "gender" (meaning the social *connotation* of sex) was imported from linguistics into anthropology (and later, sociology) precisely because it is useful in those fields, and therefore needs to exist in those fields at least. Anthropologists have to discuss the different ways the sex is connoted differently in *different* cultures. For example, Kayan women elongate their necks with brass rings not because they are female (sex) but because they are Kayan women (gender). If a tribal ritual features -say- cross-gender behavior (see "Naven" by Gregory Bateson) then it is important for the anthropologist to identify which of the studied behaviors is actually "crossing", and what this might mean for the ritual. The word "sex" is ill-suited for this purpose.
So the term "gender" as distinct from "sex" has genuine and valuable use cases. The problem comes when people try to shoehorn the useful notion of gender (i.e. how a given culture connotes sex) into the idea of "gender identity" which individuals somehow "have" (like a piece of personal property, as in "what are *your* pronouns?") - and interestingly it is the pronouns that *other people* use which both "Wokeism" and its detractors get so angry about.
I work in a medical field too, (and btw I am a trans person). I work with medical simulation. We have been talking this issue through quite a bit in relation to the roster of "virtual patients" that we use to train with. We certainly want to prepare nurses for encounters with trans people, just as we want to prepare them for encounters with vegans or children or elderly people, or their families and loved ones. I don't think there is anything harmful about that, on the contrary, it is fully aligned with the idea of "care" more generally. Rapport is good for effective healthcare, ergo, gender is something that medical professionals should care *at least a little* about, to the extent that it can help build rapport.
But how about this: What we have noticed is that if we include trans people amongst our "virtual patients", with a view to representing a diverse range of individuals, then there will be some learners who assume that the *entire case* is somehow about being trans (and why did we not make more of it), even though the simulated patient presents a symptom that has *absolutely nothing* to do with transition.
There is also the related phenomenon, *very commonly reported* by trans people, that any and every symptom presented to medical professionals is immediately suspected to be caused by or related to transition. "Headaches? Tsk tsk, that's probably because you're taking estrogen." "Sore elbow? Well it says here you're taking testosterone every day, maybe that's why?" Certainly endo-medication can have side-effects, but this knee-jerk blaming of symptoms on transition technologies is unhelpful, tiresome, destructive to rapport, and even if the endo-medication may indeed be involved, medical professionals should take care to entertain other hypotheses too. Persons with disabilities make similar complaints - that their disability (or the technologies used to manage it) is far too often considered the most likely cause of any symptom that they may present.
Now, even though I am a trans person, I think "Gender Identity" is a bogus idea, and I am dismayed that so many trans people and their allies have adopted it, because it simply invites the pertinent argument "But what does it actually mean to feel like a man/woman?". Another way to pose this question is "can you be transgender if you live alone on a desert island?" I would argue that this is impossible because there is no gender without a social context (and I believe that no social context can be entirely free of gender). Gender is a useful term and concept, but "gender identity" is heavily flawed.
But here's another angle: Basic courtesy. In UK at least, a surgeon has the honorific "Mister" rather than "Doctor". (Because surgeons were traditionally "Barber Surgeons" rather than "Physicians"). Presumably the maintenance of this honorific difference is important. It seems a bit weird, but it costs nothing to follow along, just as it is considered disrespectful or rude to refer to military persons except by their correct rank. If you are on board with calling a surgeon "Mister", or using the prefix "Sir" for someone with an OBE, then I find it perverse (and openly ideological) not to extend a comparably small courtesy -by respecting preferred pronouns- to the tiny handful of trans people in your life.
Gender profilicity (and profilicity in general ) seems to be dialectical especially with regards to interpersonal relationship of the general peer. If this is what you have in mind, You might also be interested in Frantz Fanon’s, work especially chapter in Black Skin, White Masks. particularly the chapter titled The Black Man Recognition and the part on Hegel. In that part of the book, Fanon is working through the security and the pitfalls of a what you might call a “racial profile,” with some attention to the social, historical, political and material conditions that produce race