“I think it is an untenable assumption to suppose that people who want to have a social sex different from their biological sex don’t understand what they’re doing. They aren’t ‘genuinely delusional’, in that they are aware of the biological facts.”
The derangement that I refer to is not of the conscious choice, but of the inspiration. If a man believed himself to be a robot, insisted that society treat him as such with all of the benefits of warranties, guarantees, and replacement parts then proceeded to insist that the government fund the upgrading of his biological body with mechanical parts, would you be making the same argument? Should he be treated as less than you? Are you a bigot? Don’t you believe in healthcare for all?
What if he believed himself to be a dog or a tree. What is the difference in those beliefs and believing that he is a female? And why should other people pay to have him pursue his deranged belief?
“But the larger point here is about how we understand the social dimension of sex. We know what it means, socially, to treat virtual assistants as women, despite their lack of any sexual biology – and indeed, it’s the social dimension of sex that leads companies to choose female-presenting voices for their virtual assistants. This tells us that there’s a part of the concept of sex that has nothing to do with biology, and everything to do with social roles.”
I have a different education on that issue than you. I don’t think that I can accept your premise that sex is the only reason that females are chosen for those occupations. And so I cant accept your conclusion that it is all about social role playing. You seem to be accepting and presuming a fallacious sexist perspective to make an argument against sexism.
If women or female models are chosen for those occupations for a different reason than you propose ,and I believe that they are, then your argument is void.
“In a sense, all social identities are a kind of fiction. We present ourselves in a certain way to establish how we want to be treated, based on prevailing social norms and presumptions.”
Yes, that is your, I believe, false premise defeating your apparent socialist globalism support effort.
"People tune how they dress, how they speak, and what they do, to convey who they are and wish to be in society. Politicians famously flub their addresses to subcultures by attempting to affect aspects of social identity based on the crowds they’re addressing, assuming ‘folksy’ expressions and mannerisms and dressing more or less formally, all to convey the social fiction, ‘I’m one of you, I’m on your team’.
There’s little difference between these things and biological men who choose to present as women to adopt the female social role. They tune their dress, their speech, and their actions to convey that they should be treated socially as women."
I think that part is all true but irrelevant in that it is merely the aftermath of a possible delusion and intentional deceptive manipulation.
The issue that you seem to be avoiding entirely is, “why are they even wanting people to treat them as something that they clearly are not?” And that is related but a different issue than why people want their robots to seem gender related.
It seems to me that billions of years of evolution created behaviors of creatures by killing off what didn’t work for their survival and propagation. To now claim that it has all been merely a social role playing game that can be easily rewritten seems excessively naive and petulant.
“what’s your objection to a non-delusional adoption of a social sexual role different from ones biological sex?”
Who said that I objected?
When someone is ill, I don’t object to them coughing, being lazy, and perhaps irritable, and perhaps for the rest of their life. But that doesn’t mean that I am accepting that they are not sick. But I don’t see how that has anything at all to do with why androids are built gender specific.