Male and Female Robots

“one big difference is that there are a lot of people who identify as a sex different from their biological sex, and not so many (if any) who identify as a dog or a tree.”

All that says is that there are many more people who have cancer than influenza.

"Second, how we should fund healthcare is a distinct a complicated question. What counts as a discretionary procedure extends far beyond sex reassignment: Vasectomy? Vision correction? Sleep apnea? Cleft lip? "

Hey, there are a lot of serious things happening over the issue as to whether biological males are to be allowed abortion rights. People are being targeted, fired, and removed from influential positions due to the argument. So don’t think that any of this stuff has to make sense.

“the simpler question: There are plenty of pre-op trans people who only ask to be acknowledge in social contexts as the sex that they signal through their speech, dress, behavior, etc. We should grant that to them.”

They want, much as young children, to be treated in their own special way. But why should anyone be required by law to treat anyone as anything different than what they actually are?

You are now demanding that society be nothing at all but a fictitious pretense. This is what I was saying before. You are insisting that your premise of fictitious role playing be a requirement.

“I’m talking about a disembodied voice on a phone.”

Same difference. I believe that such things are chosen for reasons unrelated to social submission concepts and your demanded role playing scenario.

“I should clarify that I don’t think this is usually deceptive. A person anecdote: I grew up in Boston with a bit of the local accent, and my parents have fairly strong accents. I went to school in California and over a couple years, my accent shifted. My friends tell me that when I would go home for holidays, my accent would come roaring back. That wasn’t a deliberate choice on my part, I can’t even perceive the difference myself.This is a common thing, people tend to unconsciously mirror the people their around, in speech, behavior, body posture, etc. It’s part of human social communication, and likely aids cooperation and community.”

We were talking about the choices people make concerning how they present themselves and want to be perceived, not the general influences that cause perceptions to vary.

“I’m avoiding it because there’s not a single answer, and in a social setting you will never know why a specific person wants that. You have to make a choice in the absence of that knowledge. I’m arguing that in many other contexts, we make the choice to assign a social sexual role that is not tied to biology. We do that all the time, and so we should be willing to do it for people.”

You were questioning the legitimacy of my word “deranged”. Understanding their motivation is required to determine whether they are deranged or merely manipulative. If you choose to focus on those who are not consciously attempting to manipulate society either through deception or merely social pressure, there is no other option but that their mind has refused the reality of what they are. And that is called “being deranged”.

So it appears that you demand that people submit to the mental derangement of others.

Isn’t that the same as the immigration issue as it relates to criminal illegal aliens who are not only free from prosecution but also are to be given free healthcare, free homestead, free schooling, and free college. All at tax payers expense.

In both cases you are supporting the abuse of the current population (demanding that they obey and fund the deranged and sometimes illegal whims of others) for sake of manipulating a global socialism into supreme authority. Whether you do this intentionally isn’t my call to make but if you are familiar with global politics, especially as it relates to the USA, you can certainly see the direct relationship and inevitable consequences.

I think that robots are given gender appearance for teasing sales and manipulating a population into dictatorial submission. It has nothing to do with submissive social roles, but rather simple sex appeal as a snare into inescapable mass submission of both genders. And I find it hard to believe that you wouldn’t know that. Perhaps you can convince me.

This is interesting, because it seems completely aligned with what I’m arguing. To treat someone socially as a certain sex is to point to the map and say “New York”. We aren’t saying that the picture on a map has an aquifer or a looming problem with coastal flooding, and we aren’t saying anything about Siri’s genitals. Neither are we suggesting anything about the biology of a female-presenting person who clearly signals that they wish to treated socially as a woman when we grant them that.

I was mistaken, Measure of a Man was from the second season:

My argument here is that these works of fiction reflect our existing social norms: we do in fact treat social sex and biological sex as distinct, as evidenced by our application of the concept to thing we acknowledge to be abiological.

A few thoughts to support my claim:

Most importantly, it just erodes the meaningful distinction between men and women. As you show, it becomes harder to make true general statements about women if the set of women includes people with penises etc.

But another way is that it shifts how people signal female-ness. One reason that drag queens go over-the-top in terms of femininity is that they are trying to overcome their biology: as drag queens are by definition not transsexual, they still have many male traits; a flamboyant femininity is one way to outweigh them, so be perceived as feminine despite their male physiology. Similarly, because biological sex affects gross morphology like the shape of the face and body, features which are hard to alter even with sex-reassignment, transwomen may wear more feminine clothes and more makeup to overcome those latent male signals. As a result, as trans people gain prominence, it may be that the most feminine-presenting people in society are trans, and that very strong adherence to traditional sexual roles becomes a weaker signal of biological sex. That means that biological women who want to signal not only their social sex but their biological sex will be incentivized to be less feminine. The example that comes to mind is of the ‘pixie cut’, i.e. very short hair typically only worn by very feminine-featured women. Short hair is a traditionally male signal, but it can be a strong female counter-signal that says in a sense, “I’m so feminine that I don’t need traditional social sexual signals for you to see that I’m a woman”.

I have gotten the impression that anyone who tries to have a rational and self-consistent position on these issues is considered loopy. And with the world being what it is, I have to admit that it’s a bit crazy to take the risk of even engaging in a conversation such as this. But it’s clearly a topic worth discussing, if only so we have a reasonably well thought out response when our kids inevitably ask.

While I think the disease comparison is question-begging, I will point out that we do treat different diseases differently on number of dimensions.

I haven’t taken any position here with respect to law. My argument here is that people who don’t pedantically correct anyone who e.g. refers to Data as a man also shouldn’t pedantically refuse to e.g. call Caitlyn Jenner a woman.

What laws and social consequences follow from that argument are a separate issue. I will say that I don’t generally endorse speech restrictions. There are many things that I would consider irrational or even morally wrong that I don’t think should be illegal.

We recognize based on biology for it is literally what signifies gender. I don’t believe in social sexual distinctions as legitimate for they are based on unnatural lies.

Sorry, WendyDarling, I meant to respond to your early comment as well.

This doesn’t follow. Siri’s only social-sexual attribute is the sound of her voice (I think Apple actually been careful not to give her additional female social-sexual attributes, to the point that in WWDC talks and on their website, they actually don’t use gendered pronouns to refer to her).

Now, we consider some rules for social sex recognition: one rule is that we rely solely on biology, in which case it’s incorrect to refer to Siri as female. Another would be that we rely on biology for humans and the sum of social-sexual attributes elsewhere, which is what seems to be the predominant anti-trans position, and under which we treat Siri as female because the sum of her social-sexual attributes says ‘female’. My position is that we rely on the sum of social-sexual attributes in all cases, under which we treat Siri as female because the sum of her social-sexual attributes says ‘female’.

Come on, you don’t accuse everyone who refers to Alexa or Siri or Data or Thor by a gendered pronoun of being a liar. You don’t act the way you’re describing. You actually use gendered language for things that do not have a gendered biology, and you have no problem with other people who do that. The only basis on which you can do that is the social signaling of sex.

That’s a false analogy… on two fronts.
First of all you can point to the WRONG spot on the map, it’s not arbitrary where “New York” is represented there.
Second, referring to people as though they are of another gender is not like pointing to a map… people are not commonly viewed as “representations”.
It’d be akin to pointing to the ACTUAL city of Boston and saying “New York”… No one would assume what you meant was “it represents New York”
Even if they did I doubt they would agree… as it’s more akin to Boston than it is to New York…

Here’s a thought experiment to help underline this:
Imagine Data with Siri’s voice… I dare say most people would still refer to Data as male, because body type is more typical to gender than voice is, which makes the suggestion that Data represents a male, more compelling.
Now picture a member of an alien species that’s humanoid, mammalian, very stout, muscular and has plenty of facial hair and generally far more typically masculine than Data in appearance.
Yet this is the member of the species that birthes their live young and secrets milk etc… We’d all recognise this as the female of the species, and refer to it as such.
Because biological function is more typical to gender than superficial appearances…

There’s a pattern here Carleas… Our treatment of men and women socially is a reflection of what we perceive to be typical differences between them. Now our perception might be wrong, we might be misinformed, but we’re not looking for exceptions to inform our behavior… we’re looking for the norms, the most typical examples and patterns, that is what we want to inform our behavior. Because then our behavior will be suitable and comfortable to the majority.

Riker was having an emotional moment.
99.8% of the time the cast used the noun android in reference to the android Data, not man, and no one took offence to this, including Data himself.
From the very same episode:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4377HhZ_NSM[/youtube]

Riker: Commander what are you?
Data: An android…made to resemble a human being.

Dolls, manakins, puppets, sculptures and toys are made to resemble animals and human beings.
We may even call a figurine or statuette made to resemble a dog, a dog, but still no one would object to calling it a figurine, and everyone knows it’s essentially a figurine, not a dog, whereas many transwomen object to being called men, and want everyone to think of them as essentially women, even tho they know they were born with XY chromosomes and a penis, and women were, and still are defined by most people as having XX chromosomes, tits and vaginas.

Resemblance doesn’t precede existence, existence precedes resemblance.

Then why point to fiction?
Why not point to the social norms directly?

Mad Man P and I agree with the nature of what is biologically represented which you seem to have a disconnect with. Biological representations are constructed regarding Siri and Data that signify a biological sex which you want to dispute while at the same time supporting that faulty representations of biology in the case of trans persons should be accepted. No Siri with a female voice should not be interpreted as male which is what you desire people do in the case of trans when trans women sound like men but we should call them women. That is absurd.

Biological sex is often assigned to things that are not biological but most often the things represent biological attributes in manner of voice, shape of face, body type. Such assignments make sense since they are modeled on reality. What you espouse does not make sense for it is not modeled on reality.

Sure, and if you think a satchel is a purse you can be wrong about the intended signal about social sex.

That’s a bit flip, but the point is that we can misinterpret social sexual signals, and we can misidentify them in ways that are wrong in the same way that pointing to Boston on a map and calling it “New York” is wrong. That gets complicated, as your thought experiments illustrate: What if Data had Siri’s voice and lipstick? A beard and boobs? Exactly the same but wore a dress? The same as the series but played by a woman in a Brent Spiner mask? But I don’t think the existence of ambiguous cases is a defeater for clear cases.

I mean, both New York and Boston have ‘Chinatown’, what is that supposed to represent?

But more seriously, though I agree that “people are not commonly viewed as ‘representations’”, I think there’s a good reason to think that they actually are representations, or rather that their social identities are representations. As I mention above, social identity is a kind of fiction, we portray ourselves not how we are, but how we want other people to see us. That’s true when a biological man suppresses his emotions, and it’s true when she wears makeup and a dress and introduces herself as Brittany.

But if a person is telling you that their behavior will conform to the social norms of female behavior, and we have every reason to believe that they are accurately describing themselves, our behavior will be better informed to listen to them. And that’s exactly what we do with non-biological characters to which we ascribe a social sexual role.

It’s hard to search the script of the entire series for times when the word “man” is used to describe Data, so I can’t verify. But it’s not hard to find that in basically every episode, Data is referred to with male pronouns, he’s called “Mr. Data”, his subordinates refer to him as “sir” (though that term is used inconsistently in the Star Trek universe, and doesn’t reliably signal gender), and in an early episode a crotchety old man calls him “boy” a whole bunch (though perhaps not after learning he’s an android). He and Lore refer to each other as “brothers”.

In any case, he’s socially accepted as being male gendered, whether or not he is “a man”. That’s kind of the point I’m making here.

I dispute that they signify biological sex, yes. They signal social sex. No one takes Siri’s voice to say anything about her biology, and nothing about her social sex is in tension with that.

Again, I think you’re making a social/biological distinction, and just avoiding the word. No one is claiming anything about Siri’s biology why they refer to her as ‘her’. That use of ‘her’ is purely social: it’s social sex that’s being assinged.

Also, transmen who supplement testosterone get a deeper more masculine voice and a more male body type.

Exactly right… when we know a creature to have a biological sex, whether human, fish or alien we don’t need to do a lot of guesswork or interpretation based on approximations or similarity of appearance, voice, social behavior etc. Never mind the more abstract relationships like with “mother earth” or ships…

See this is why your approach to this topic is a red herring… I have to disagree with the above.
This is decidedly not what we do with characters like Data or Siri… What we do with them is not predicated on their preference, but rather our own judgements about what they represent, if anything.
A forklift does not get a gender… because we don’t feel it reminds us of any gender in particular and we’ve no sufficiently poetic relationship with them from which to draw a some abstract simile, either.

If you had left machines and fictional characters out of this, we could have had a separate discussion all together…

Some people wish they were a different gender than what they are…
We might well decide to treat some men like women and vice versa if that’s what they prefer and they can signal this to us by way of their dress, say.
On the other hand, there’s a case to be made that indulging such wishful thinking to the point of delusion might ultimately not be what’s best for people in that situation.
That perhaps the most compassionate thing we could do is look into ways that would allow them to find comfort in their own bodies…

And this is why I think you want to make the case you’re making. If we can undermine the “reality” of gender in the first place, there’s no “delusion” we could be complicit in creating.
Not that I’m questioning your motives… but noting the the utility of trying to separate biological sex from gender.

We can always separate the thing from our own behavior in response to the thing. Your “social identity” is merely how we respond to you socially.
You might do the same with regards to intellect and our social response to intellect. We could start treating morons as the greatest minds who ever lived… because that would make them happy.

I’m going to take your points out of order Mad Man, because I think my response to your later points clarifies the arguments you address in your earlier points.

I see myself as, first, describing the reality of how we assign social sex, and then applying the insights from that description to show that we don’t need to appeal to anything delusional to grant people their chosen social sexual identity. Rather than trying to undermine the concept of sex, I’m showing that the existing concept is already distinguished into a social and a biological component, and that those components are already applied separately. The idea that biological and social sex must be one and the same does not need to be undermined, it’s already demonstrably false.

But those are exactly the cases in which the social and biological concepts of sex are most clearly distinct. I’m pointing to the existing concept of sex in a context in which is purely social, and knowingly ignores biology.

It’s not predicated on their preference, but it is predicated on superficial, non-biological, purely social attributes like voice or dress or behavior.

A test case would be, if you learned that some person in your life had genitals that do not correspond to the sexual role you’d always assumed they inhabit, should you begin to refer to them as their biological sex and not the social sexual role you had previously granted them? (assume further that you learned about their genitals incidentally, i.e. not in some context in which the shape of their genitals is socially relevant (e.g. at the end of a date))

If you would continue to treat them as the same social sex as you always had, I think that says something about how you should treat someone who clearly communicates their social sexual preference. Since I watched Austin Powers recently, I am reminded of the scene in which Austin insists that Basil’s mother is a man because she looks “manish”. The gag is that doing so is awful, no matter how “manish” you think someone looks. How would you distinguish how you treat a manish-looking biological woman from how you treat a transwoman, if both are presenting as socially female (i.e., both offer the same signals about their preferred social sex, in the form of dress, speech, behavior, etc.).

Nor do we need a lot of guesswork or interpretation to treat someone in a dress and makeup and introducing themselves as Brittany as a female for social purposes, regardless of what we suspect about their genitals (and regardless even of what we know about their genitals, to the extent that it’s irrelevant. Just as those indicia are sufficient to treat a fembot as a socially female robot, so too are they sufficient to treat Basil’s mom or a transwoman as socially female. That’s how the concept of sex is already used in contexts that aren’t politicized.

Sorry Carleas, I get the sense that you’re not really understanding my arguments, much less addressing them.

This is not what you’re doing… you’re mixing numerous different things together, tossing spaghetti on the floor and inviting me to untangle the mess.
But I enjoy the challenge so let’s go…

You start by noting that objects, concepts, phones and androids, whether real or fictional are often addressed as male or female…
I comment that this gender is merely to reflect some simile we detect, it’s representational not descriptive. The same way New York can be found represented on a map… without it in any way BEING New York.
Or a more clear example could be the way we might say of someone “that man is a Lion”, that statement is not descriptive, it’s representational…
Yet, you mistake this for “social identity” either intentionally or mistakenly.
Then you equivocate on this misapprehension saying that “social sex” therefore does not hinge on biological sex… which is true, but for very different reasons that matter.

Social anything, whether sex, ethnicity, or whatever else, is merely what we call the social responses to a person’s sex or skin color or given attribute.
A response that changes depending on the culture, customs and perception. What’s more, this is true of any and all attributes of a person… intellect, age, height, eye color, whatever
We can treat people AS THOUGH they had a different hair color… and then we’d have a “social hair color” distinct from “physical hair color” and so on.

So to cut through the sophistry and language games, what we’re talking about here is treating people the way they want to be treated… and where we draw the line on that.
We can treat you AS THOUGH, any number of things… But should we?
Why not assign you a social “intellect” and call you a genius to make you feel better about yourself?

Intellect is after all just as separate from “social Intellect” as sex is from “social sex”… one is a factual statement about you, the other is a social treatment.
So we can assign people as “social” geniuses who are idiots… why not?

I would think the answer is obvious…
Like I pointed out before: Our treatment of men and women is a reflection of what we perceive to be typical differences between them
REAL differences… that we believe warrant the difference in treatment.
If you do not possess the characteristics that warrant the treatment, treating you as though you do would be an aid in establishing a delusion.
Telling males that they are women, is no different to telling idiots that they are geniuses.
Or telling Children that they are 60 year olds… Or short people that they are tall… or bald people that they have hair on their heads

Now you can rattle on about how It’s only a change in “social” treatment… no one is changing their real height or intellect, age or biological sex
You can claim that those terms only ever referred to the “social” intellect/height/sex, so it’s not a “delusion” if the social treatment really DID change.

But that’s a line of shit and we all know it… those terms were never addressing the “social treatment” but the actual attributes that we believed warranted the subsequent difference in social treatment.

Now I happen to believe that a lot of our cultural norms were justified on inaccurate beliefs about sex differences. Many changes in social behavior could be justified on our modern understanding of the differences in sex and what those differences warrant… But then take the case of trans women, that is biological men, being allowed to compete in female divisions of various sports. That is the product of a delusion that we’ve established.

The differences in physiology between men and women warrants keeping the sexes separate in the interest of fair competition and sportsmanship in lots of fields…
Yet for fear of disappointing these poor souls who feel trapped in their own bodies… we’ve decided to lose our fucking minds and throw a man into a cage match where he gets to beat the shit out of women

Carleas wrote

I haven’t seen you do this with anything other than the female naming of boats and nobody knows why they were named female names and that seems to be more of a thing of the past anyways.

Mad Man P wrote

I agree but how? Especially when their happiness hinges on our perception of them. It’s not enough for them to be humored with a female name or a her, they really want to be known as women in all respects even though their biology will never be overcome. They cannot not be delusional and what they demand in the forms of access and laws makes their delusions harmful to other people.

The answer is that while only we can be truly human on a biological level we can apply the definition to other beings for psychological / philosophical reasons
If we think of machine intelligence as being the next stage in human evolution it is only natural that the same terminology is applied for reasons of continuity

Assignations of gender are significant in various modes of perceptive or indicative ways.

Some or most literal gender signification are quite arbitrary, German being one of them.
Figuratively, the division between natural and simulated , as in intelligence, the modus is first scripted5, as in the Siri example, first the name is set as a feminine name, no correspondence with the role Siri performs.

Robots obviously by virtue of anatomical distinctions, do require a more factual representation.

Looking to others in order to validate ones own sense of well being is not a very good idea because not everyone thinks the same
I can accept how someone sees themselves but am under zero obligation to agree with them just because it will make them happy
I would never deliberately trigger anyone because of it but I must have the freedom to think for myself regardless of anything else
Everyone is ultimately responsible for their own state of mind and should not be expecting anyone else to see them exactly the same as they do
I can treat anyone with respect while within my own mind questioning how they see themselves - these two things are not mutually incompatible

To be fair, a lot of these demands are not coming from transexuals but rather people who are in an arms race of virtue and victimhood that pretend to speak for transexuals.
Those militant jackasses rub their stink off on transexuals and in the process errode people’s natural sympathy for the condition…

I don’t know a heck of a lot about transexuals nor the state of real science on the topic. I worry that even if there were a better solution waiting to be discovered, we’d be incapable of exploring it due to the dogmatic and delusional declaration that they ARE women and anyone who says different is a “transphobe”… who would want to fund that research and take the abuse that would invite?

I can’t imagine what it must be like for actual transexuals and at the end of the day, I’d be willing to “feed the delusion” if that helps ease their minds
until a better, less absurde solution presents itself… I don’t know how else to help them… but my willingness to play along has its limits.

The scientific definition of a woman is a human born with tits, a vag and XX chromosomes.
The conservative definition is in agreement with the scientific.
Under this definition, women are women and transwomen are men.

Now progressives acknowledge that about half of people are born with tits, a vag and XX chromosomes, and the other half with penises and XY chromosomes, but for them, sex organs and chromosomes don’t define humans as men and women, so what does?
What is, or are the progressive definition(s) of a woman?

Is the progressive definition of a woman: a human with more female physical secondary sex characteristics (shallow voice, hour glass figure, etcetera) than male?
If that’s the case, under this definition, (virtually) all women are women, and (virtually) all transwomen are men, for virtually all physical secondary sex characteristics align with primary sex characteristics (sex organs and chromosomes) for (virtually) all people.
And that’s not what progressives are looking for, is it?
They want 100% of transwomen to be 100% woman.

Is the progressive definition of a woman: a human with a female brain?
If that’s the case, under this definition, and according to the latest neuroscience, most if not all women are women, because at best women have female brains, and at worst women have androgynous brains, and most if not all transwomen are men, because at best transwomen have androgynous brains, and at worst transwomen have male brains.

Brain and mind are really just two ways of perceptualizing and conceptualizing the same thing, unless you’re say a Cartesian dualist that is (we won’t go there), so if you have a fully male or androgynous brain you have a wholly male or androgynous mind.

So in other words, the scientific/conservative definition of sex isn’t just biologically meaningful, it’s socially meaningful (brain = mind = behavior + biology is socially relevant in and of itself, I mean we interact with men and women differently because of their different primary, and physical secondary sex characteristics).
Is the progressive definition of sex biologically or socially meaningful?
Let’s first ascertain what it is:

If you believe you are or feel like a woman for any reason, or no reason at all, you’re a woman.
So you see, it doesn’t even matter how well you can pass as a woman.
If say Brock Lesnar wakes up one morning and says he believes he’s a woman, he’s a woman, even if he keeps on being the same ole hyper-masculine Brock Lesnar, he doesn’t have to so much as wear eyeliner or put on a dress, let alone tone down his extremely choleric, type A personality.
He doesn’t have to have his brain/mind examined by a neuropsychologist either, to see if they can find anything scientific.
So for the progressive, Brock Lesnar is every bit as feminine as say Katy Perry, Rihanna and Taylor Swift, if he says he is, and conversely, Katy Perry, Rihanna and Taylor Swift are every bit as masculine as Brock Lesnar, if the say they are.

So in other words, the progressive definition of sex is both biologically, and socially meaningless.
Now why should we turn meaningful words into meaningless ones?
Are beliefs/feelings as good as reality…are beliefs/feelings reality?

What else works like this?
Is the most extroverted person an introvert simply because they believe they are?
Is the most idiotic person intelligent because they believe they are?
Sure, maybe people are entitled to their delusions.
We may even go so far to say that is their reality for them, but is it our reality for us?

Masculinity and femininity aren’t just sounds, they’re suppose to refer to something we’re all able to experience.
If your words are 100% personal and unverifiable, they’re not really words or a form of communication, they’re noise, nonsense.
You may as well say you’re an alien from planet X.
Interesting perhaps, but we have no rational grounds for believing either way, in fact we have rational grounds for believing the contrary, so we don’t owe you our assent.

Now ask yourselves, why, why are the social engineers trying to subjectify sexuality into oblivion in particular, why not go after all or other aspects of reality?
Is there an agenda behind it, or is it just a kind of mass neurosis, virtue signaling gone off the deep end?

I remember Carleas brought up in a thread of mine that for him, someone is a Christian just because they say they are, even if they know absolutely nothing about Jesus or the NT, so long as their belief seems sincere, whatever sincerity would mean in this context.
Now I disagree with Carleas about this analogy, I mean Christians are excommunicated, and even punks and goths are disparaged as poseurs if they can’t live up to the norms of their subculture, but even if religion and subcultures worked this way, why should we make sexuality work this way too when most language and thought doesn’t?

I can accept that a transwoman who was born biologically male now see themselves as female
But that is not the same as a woman who was born biologically female and is still biologically female

Equally I can accept that a transman who was born biologically female now sees themselves as male
But that is not the same as a man who was born biologically male and is still biologically male

These distinctions are simply statements of fact and is the only reason for me stating them
For I accept the right of anyone to identify however they wish even if I disagree with them

The one thing that you will truly own is your own body simply because for the entirety of your life it is yours and yours only
So once you become an adult you should have the freedom to do to it whatever you want regardless of what anyone thinks

We may give objects like boats and dolls gendered names.
We may refer to them with gendered (pro)nouns.
But unless there’s something wrong with us, we do so in a playful way.
A doll is not literally male or female, just as it’s not literally human.
And even if it was, it’s in a shallow, superficial way, it’s masculinity or femininity is nothing compared to the genuine article.

And as for androids and gynoids, they haven’t been invented yet, or at least widely distributed, and what’s more, they’re primitive compared to the hypothetical stuff we read in novels, see in films and on television.
It’s silly to model our language after science fiction.

Right off the bat that’s a problem since there are true general statements about men and women, and there will continue to be. But further I don’t this is what is happening since the right hand and the left hand don’t know what the other is doing, and one of the Left’s hands is moving backwards. If you feel a certain set of not clearly delineated feelings, you are not your biological sex. Given what transsexuals then display - which tends to be traditional female personality traits, and accounting for their being trans along stricter sexual dimorphism (than wht the Left otherwise allows as true generalities), we are getting, yes, a double message, but one that includes a stronger dimorphism. Couple this with the messages about what is wrong with men, which is also strongly sexually dimorphism based, we don’t have some breakdown, we have a crazymaking mixed message that now includes stronger messages about the differences in the mix. Gregorsy Bateson is rolling over in his grave.

I think that is part of it. I think another part is they worship or have strong feelings about feminiity and see it in a certain way. It is a presentation to us and to themselves of an archetype of femininity.

Most transexuals who have become women still have visible male traits and likely not so easily seen as well.

I suppose that is possible. I think it is outweighed by the messages that if you feel a certain way which includes ‘women’s emotional traits and attitudinal traits and relational traits’ then you are or may well actually be women, is sending messages about who is a woman much stronger than those related to clothes. And looking at your own wording ‘to overcome male signals’. That also reinforces the differences or hypothetical differences.

And this sends weird messages about butch lesbians. Or anyone who just likes short hair as a woman. We are adding all sorts of meanings, still signaling wildly.

Well, you’re right, though I meant I believe in reincarnation and that one’s soul can end up in a body that does not match it. I don’t quite think of it in the ways ‘soul’ is traditionally used, but I don’t want to go into the complexity here.

Yes, I would only take this discussion up with close friends and family. These are socially (at the very least) dangerous times to not tow the party line of whatever party predominates in one’s social and professional circles. In social media minutes one could find oneself considered a fascist, racist, homotransphobic monster, or the equivalent wrong thing to be on the right.

I admit there way be trends of fuzziness about sex/gender due to the messages about sex - biological sex does not matter, biological sex matters a lot, men and women are the same, men and women are different and radically so. But I don’t see the fact that there is a contradiction weaking the strenght of either message. I think it will merely add more anxiety.

I also see the problem as most severe with children. Parents can allow kids to determine their sex very early and this will include medical intervention.

It seems to me any physicalist should be against this. IOW if the distinction between men and women is not there, then there should be no need to intervene in the endocrine system of growing children. Since to a physicalist, there is nothing but the physical body. Whatever traits it gives personality, sexual interest, relating traits, is identical to the person’s traits. Any intervention in the body, assumes philosophical beliefs that do not fit with physicalism.

Adults can be hypocritical, those that are, and change their bodies as they like. But kids should not have this done to them. And further, those people advocating for it, who are saying it makes senses, are being hypocritical if they are physicalists, as much of the left is.

rt.com/news/464888-doctors- … ign=chrome

There’s money being made on experimental treatments on children. And it is taboo on the left to question this (in general).