There's no such thing as Transexuals

Clearly we have been sloppy with defining our terms.

As I understand and use the term “transsexual”, it encompasses people who sincerely identify as a sex different from what I’ve been calling their “biological sex” (wiki refers to it as “assigned sex”, I’ve also seen ‘birth sex’; in the context of this discussion I think ‘chromosomal sex’ is a mutually intelligible way to express the same idea). Wiki also makes a distinction between ‘transsexual’ and ‘transgender’, where the meaning seems to be that transsexual = transgender + surgery (hat’s being a bit glib, but true enough for present purposes). In other words, a transgender person has the subjective experience of feeling like the wrong sex, and a transsexual person acts on that experience to become the sex they feel they should be.

I would call the person in your story a transvestite: she doesn’t subjectively feel that she’s a man trapped in a woman’s body, she feels like a woman. She dresses like a man on occasion “for the lols”, as you put it. But my impression is that transvestism is not understood as an acute form of gender dysphoria, but as an entirely different thing. It’s roleplaying rather than a fundamental aspect of personal identity.

So perhaps we need to refine the constituent parts in the composite concept of sex. On the one hand, there’s how one perceives oneself, and on the other how one is perceived by others. On a separate dimension, there’s one’s social and one’s biological sex. That gives four quadrants:

(
\begin{array}{|c|c|c|}
\hline
& Social & Biological \ \hline
Perception\ by\ others & 1 & 2 \ \hline
Self\unicode{x2010}perception & 3 & 4\ \hline
\end{array}
)

So, for example, a cis woman who dresses as a man will have sex M in quadrant 1 and 2 (though 2 is by inference), and sex F in quadrant 3 and 4. A transman, by contrast, will have sex M in 1, 2, and 3 (if they are post-op), but sex F in 4. If they aren’t passing, they may have sex M in 1 and 3, and F in 2 and 4. Delusion is possible, as when a transman has sex M in 4, e.g. he really expects a genetic test to show that he is a man.

My position is that these four quadrants are different facets of the composite concept of “sex”, and can have different sex valence. You say that “it doesn’t make much sense to refer to and fundamentally think of a person as being one sex in some situations and another in other situations”, you’re treating sex as a unitary concept, such that all the quadrants should always have the same sex. But that’s not what I’m arguing. Rather, I’m arguing that a person’s sex can be static in each quadrant, but that in different contexts we care more about different quadrants (e.g. doctors care more about 4 than 1).

There is no single “overall…totality” of sex in the way you’re using it.

So, returning to the story, your character is not transsexual in the sense that her quadrant 3 aligns with her quadrant 4: she feels like a woman (3), and is biologically a woman (4).

Sure, but men are also more likely to sexually prey on men than are women.

In any case, the incidence is so low that it doesn’t more harm than it prevents to force people into a bathroom contrary to their sexual identity.

I know a lot of “two-day” or “cultural” Christians, and I don’t doubt their Christianity. I don’t think being a bad Muslim is the same as not being a Muslim at all.

Yeah, but not all things I can say about myself are like religion or (as I argue) sex. As I said to Thanathots, ownership of property isn’t a matter of self-identity. Neither is being 6 feet tall. And, as I acknowledge here, people can have delusions and just be mistaken about aspects of their sexuality. But that’s not to say that all aspects of sexuality work this way. Some aspects are matters of identity, they are about subjective experience and people are local experts on their own subjective experience.

(I’m even open to the possibility that someone can be mistaken about their subjective experience, but those are necessarily very weird edge cases that basically never apply outside of a philosophy discussion.)

Don’t say “we” when it is you, Carleas. Gloominary has been very specific, down to earth, and in alignment with realistic perceptions of phenomena and objective reality whereas you have consistently tried to redefine the meaning of male and female, genetics, safety, imposition, honesty, belief, standards, etc.

@Carleas

Okay but she is transgender, I don’t know why you keep insisting she’s not, it’s my story, and in the story I say she identifies as a man trapped in a woman’s body.
And the real reason she dresses up as a woman is to seduce me, not for the lols like she feigns, again it’s my story.
And even if she occasionally dresses up as the same sex for the hell of it, that doesn’t necessarily mean the times she dresses up as the opposite sex are insincere, I’m telling you it’s my story, she’s being sincere.
The point of the story is a persons physical sex matters in social situations, and actually, I’ve made that point regardless of whether she’s transgender or not.

Gay men have just as much opportunity to prey on men, regardless of whether we allow transwomen to use the women’s washroom or not.

Furthermore, men are more of a threat to women than other men anyway, because the vast majority of men are straight, and men are physically capable of defending themselves from other men.

According to the way you define sexuality, in the context of washrooms, only a persons physical biology is relevant, so transwomen should be called by their chromosomal sex in washrooms, not their coveted sex.

That’s your opinion it would cause less harm, my opinion is a handful less women being sexually preyed on, is worth restricting transwomen, who are not actually women, from washrooms.

And some men will in all likelihood abuse the system by insincerely dressing up as women to spy on women.

Well that’s your opinion and perception, and you’re entitled to it, just as Christians, Muslims, scholars and others are entitled to their opinion and perception that someone who doesn’t believe Jesus is the resurrected Godman, or that someone who doesn’t believe Allah is the one and only God, is not a Christian or Muslim.

If your experience isn’t objective, if people and/or science can’t confirm, deny, experience or infer it, than it may as well not exist to people and/or science.
Your subjective experience may be you are the lord of planet Zircon, and you should be addresses as such whenever you walk into a room, but we will not be able to confirm or deny it, so we don’t owe it to you.

I feel like a car.
What quadrant do you have for me?

What do quadrants change about reproductive functions, i.e. “SEX”?

Ah, I didn’t understand that she was lying when she said she dresses as a man “for the lols”, my mistake.

In that case, your story is just not a particularly good intuition pump. You’ve posited someone who is a transman who cross-dresses as a woman, and is generally gynophilic but also sometimes acts androphilic. That’s a weird case and doesn’t tell us much about transmen generally.

My point is that “the incidence is so low that it does more harm than it prevents to force people into a bathroom contrary to their sexual identity.” The “vast majority of men” aren’t assaulting women in any context.

I think this way of thinking of religious identity is problematic. Yes, some Protestants think Catholics aren’t Christians and vice versa, but to take too hard a line here risks eliminating the idea that someone can just be a bad Christian. It collapses the idea of apostacy completely, since a Muslim apostate is just not a Muslim at all. We can do that, but it isn’t very useful in understanding reality. We should expect a bad Christian to act differently from someone who doesn’t identify as a Christian at all.

This doesn’t seem to be the case. Behavioral psychology does a bad job of predicting behavior, because it treats people as a black box and discounts their subjective experience completely. But how we subjectively interpret experiences does affect how we behave. Cognitive behavior therapy backs that up empirically, addressing psychological issues by helping people to interpret their thoughts and experiences differently. The fact that it’s effective suggests that it isn’t the case that those subjective interpretations “may as well not exist”.

Sex is more than reproductive function. Genitals don’t have necessary implications about who does the parenting. Chromosomes don’t dictate who should propose, or what color they should wear at their wedding. Certain aspects of sex are present at birth, and others are provided by the culture in which someone is raised, and differ across culture and across times and place. Those latter aspects are contingent, they don’t follow from reproductive or chromosomal sex.

Good to know there is a man still there. You scared me for a second.

The rest is sophism. If you accept a girl may feel vulnerable in a bathroom, you accept that men acting like and even operating themselves and undergoing hormone therapy to look like and feel more like girls entering a girl’s bathroom has to be assessed in terms of a possible threat. It’s no longer so black and white as your PC sophism suggests.

We can assess anything we want, and I think our conclusion after a fair assessment will be that it poses no significant threat. The legislation and militating we’ve seen is based more on people feeling squicky about transsexuals than on an actual assessment of risk.

“I think our conclusion after a fair assessment will be that it poses no significant threat.”

Hm. I cannot afford this, with things like the law at stake. And I don’t mean the government’s law.

“The legislation and militating we’ve seen is based more on people feeling squicky about transsexuals than on an actual assessment of risk.”

Is perhaps possibly maybe yours based only on your reaction to this perception rather than what’s actually at stake concerning the issue? Potentially?

Impossible!

No but really.

Certainly could be! But I haven’t seen a defense of the policies that appeals to anything more than squickiness and fear.

And while the stakes are high, it’s not all or nothing, and there are interests on either side of the balance. Demonizing transsexuals hurts people, if it does no good then we’re hurting people with nothing to show for it.

If you allow your fear of your perception of the demonization of people to affect clear and intelligent assessment, as you have admitted it has, then you are doing worse damage than they.

I admitted what now?

“Certainly could be!”

I respect a man saving face. But, you know, it’s there.

If you admit that

A You only care about in this discussion that you percieve your opponents demonize the subjects being considered,

B That actually there is a possibility that these subjects could be a threat to girls

C That you won’t honestly assess whether they are a threat because A,

Then:

You have admityed that you allowed your fear of your perception of the demonization of people to affect clear and intelligent assessment.

Not a fan of logic, but it’s the only thing you prople seem to respect.

https://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF16F27.pdf

A list of 25 incidents where men and fauxfemales broke the law in women’s restrooms or changing rooms is at the end of the article. Tip of the iceberg that list.

@Carleas

even if she doesn’t cross dress as a woman, she’s androphilic, which many transwomen are, there’s plenty of potential for sex and romance with heterosexual men in social situations.
A persons physical sex is socially relevant, not just in one, two or a few ways, but many.
It’s part of their social identity.

Transwomen aren’t women, so it doesn’t do any, real harm.

And some Christians and Muslims identity as good Christians and Muslims, when most Christians, Muslims and others identify them as bad Christians and Muslims.
The point is identity isn’t just personal, it’s social.

For me, this is a really interesting point you bring up.
How much should we consider peoples introspective experience of themselves?
I’ll address it in a bit.

A: I think it’s unjust to deny people the right to their identity, and I care about justice, if that’s what you mean.

B: “There is a possibility” is a an almost meaningless claim. It is literally a truism that everything is possible.

C: This is a ‘liar’s paradox’ accusation. Both yes and no are the wrong answer when asked to “admit that you won’t honestly assess the threat”.

I’ve acknowledged that my self-knowledge is imperfect. So is yours.

I can’t believe how much shit you give me over sources.

You don’t know that. Don’t make me have to copy/paste more clown murder article URLs.

I agree with this. And there are some parts of identity in which society gives individuals great deference. I am arguing that certain facets of sex should be among them.

So… you are not perfect but your past reasoning on this sensitive matter is?

Or,

You are not perfect so you’re not really responsible?

Having a hard time understanding your point.

What’s your beef with the Family Research Council and the list of media reports included in the organizations article?

Mind explaining specifically how clowns have anything to do with female safety in female public restrooms and changing rooms that have been opened up to men who commit more crimes against women? Are you arguing that all costume wearing freaks should be kept out of female restrooms and changing rooms as well? Or that fauxsexual costume wearing freaks are less criminal than clown costume wearing freaks?

My point is that I’m not perfect because no one’s perfect. This isn’t an argument that targets me or my arguments specifically, it’s just a fact about human knowledge and reasoning: it’s flawed and can be misled. Acknowledging that doesn’t support your claim.

My point with the clowns is that a collection of news reports of incidents involving clown-generated violence don’t tell us much about how we should treat clowns. Similarly, a bunch of news reports involving men and bathrooms, or even transwomen and bathrooms, don’t tell us much about what the effect of permitting people to self-identify for the purpose of bathroom use will be. Your ‘source’ (which is a lobbying organization on behalf of policies that reflect Christian morality regardless of their empirical basis) includes reports of cis men entering women’s rooms for nefarious purposes. Cross-dressing was available to them, and they chose not to cross-dress. This doesn’t support a claim that permitting people who identify as women to use women’s restrooms will increase the incidence of bad behavior in women’s restrooms.

What you need is to compare rates across natural experiences like legal jurisdictions or the implementation of new laws or policies. The closest I found to support your position looked at the rate of incidents in Target following a company policy change around bathrooms. But the methodology here was pretty silly: counting up news reports of incidents in bathrooms. The problem is that news reporting isn’t an unbiased metric. Millions of crimes don’t make the news because editors and journalists don’t think their readers are interested them. Contrast that with a situation where a policy change by a national corporation occurs during a significant increase in the national conversation about trans bathroom use, and where you should expect an increase in reporting without an associated increase in incidents. (To their credit, they acknowledge the further issue that older news stories are harder to find, which creates the false impression that more such incidents occurred recently).

Supporting my position is reports from police chiefs, civil and human rights commissioners, and people who study sexual assault finding that state laws that protect trans use of bathrooms matching their gender identity have not led to an increase in sexual assaults in restrooms. The methodological problem here is just that there’s no consistent, stated methodology, it’s just asking people who should know of any increase and don’t. Some appeal to internal investigations and review of incident reports, which seem like a good approach but don’t appear to be published.

But that’s the kind of thing you need. Dozens of these policies have been rolled out over the past few decades. If, as you claim, they lead to a measurable increase in incidents, that increase should be discoverable using some sound empirical methodology. To my knowledge, no such increase has been found.

This is utterly confusing.