Male and Female Robots

I get that we’re in the middle of culture war and that in this particular case our language is caught in the crossfire… that generates ambiguity and confusion and makes communicating across the gap difficult.

If I say transwomen are men, you can’t then say I’m wrong and that they are women and expect that to track if you know what I meant was “biological sex”…
you can INSIST that I use language the way you propose but I see no great need to comply… Like I pointed out, I’d want to retain unambiguous words for the biological sexes.
The utility of having those words is far greater than the utility of having words to reference various “social treatments” that change and shift with fashion.

You have failed to convince me otherwise.

Nonsense.
There are tons of ways in which we have treated men and women throughout history and in different cultures…
There is no monolithic “social treatment” that goes with any gender, “social treatment” has always been a moving target.

The novelty isn’t the cultural shift in how we treat the genders… it’s the battleground being shifted to politising and controlling language.
This nonsense is born out of unease… When you call a transwoman “woman” you are technically lying to them and everyone else.
The request from transexuals is very much that they be addressed as the sex they are NOT, that’s the “social treatment” they want.
So you can muddy up the language to erase the inherent lie in granting that request, but we’ll make up new words for the sexes and then you will need to muddy them up as well… round and round we’ll go.

It’s so much easier to just accept that we’re lying in order to ease their pain… then we can save ourselves this trouble.

Society has changed… human biology hasn’t.
Language has change… human biology hasn’t

Yes words might shift in meaning, but if the original word had utility then a new one takes its place…
In all cultures and in all societies people care very much about human biology… if not because of fair cage fights or science then you know, cuz sexy fun times and babies.

I hazard to guess that if a friend set you up with “a nice woman” on a blind date, you’d be pretty surprised if you showed up to find a post-op transman. “I said ‘woman’”, they might protest, and, unambiguous as that statement is, you really should have seen it coming.

Calling a transwoman, “woman” is no more lying than is calling them “man”. Both descriptions can be accurate or misleading depending on how they’re understood. The trick is that we’re relying on a shared understanding of what they mean, and there is less and less shared understanding to rely on. That ambiguity isn’t created by people who want to call a transwoman “woman”, it’s created by changes in society.

Yes, and tons of things that “arms” have meant.

One difference now is the speed at which social roles are changing. My living grandmother was born before women could vote in the United States, and now we have women presidential candidates getting a majority of the vote. That’s quite a move in one lifetime. Much of that change seems to have been in the past few decades, in particular as the internet has allowed organizing at societal scale. Rapid change makes the traditionally slow transition of words insufficient, so the language has lagged the culture.

This is still question-begging; we aren’t talking about biology.

If it were a post-op trans woman the same protest would be voiced.
Sexual attraction isn’t just about biology but ALSO appearance… I’m trying really hard not to view this as a cheap rhetorical ploy

This isn’t a complicated maze to navigate dude… you’re trying like all hell to suggest that the muddy language is born out of necessity. If your friend had just called a spade a spade this would be easy peasy…
“I’m setting you up with a transman” see how easy that was? no words needed to be redefined… man still means man, woman still means woman… and transman/woman covers this scenario.

We absolutely are talking about biology… you want to make it about “social treatment” but you and I don’t disagree about “social treatment”
We both agree that the best option available to us is to lie to people with gender dysphoria… you and I will effectively give them the same “social treatment” so far as I can tell.

The disagreement we have is you want redefine “gender” to longer be a reference to the biological phenomenon but instead merely a form of self-selected title that we address people by…
The impetus behind this is entirely unwarranted by our circumstance and could only serve to make the process of LYING to people more palatable.
In fact, solving the problem of lying, by making the gender with which we address or describe people effectively meaningless and that way, no one can say we’re lying…
But this guilt-washing leaves me wanting words for this very real biological phenomenon previously known as gender…

I disagree. I think above I even raised the distinction between bluntly saying it and something like conveying it. Every person is who what is considered by many ‘ugly’ will have this conveyed to them in specific interpersonal ways and in general category type ways so that they will have dealt emotionally with this over much of their lives. The former comes via indirect comments and social exclusions, and less success than other job seekers, students, romantic partners - since being attractive benefits in all sorts of situations where the actual criteria for the role, except for the last role, are nevertheless skewing in favor of ‘attractive’ people. Body language, facial expressions, tones of voice from all sorts of people, including friends, family, clothing and shopkeepers, the opposite sex, employers in a wide range of situations will ‘convey’ and convey the judgments both of each of our attractiveness levels and then opinions about our hubris, overconfidence in ourselves, silliness for trying, value, status and so on related to our attractiveness. I am not saying this is good, just that it is endemic and extremely effectively carried out. And a person need not have been in a situation where they were treated by others formally in a rude way. Nevertheless this constant triangulating information will have made utterly clear to them where they stand. Now standards vary. The large assed somewhat overweight woman may get negative evaluations conveyed by her white peers and white men, and paradoxical positive evaluations by black men. But conveying is happening all the time. And it is defacto accepted because people are voting with their practice.

Sure. In the context of dating, biology matters. And of course I agree the whole thing could be avoided by saying “transman/woman”. But my point is that it is actually wrong to describe that person as “a nice woman”, right? I think think you agree with that, because you want your friend to use a different word. The word woman, in that context, is not dictated by what you’re saying it’s always dictated by, i.e. biology. Biologically, genetically, chromosomally, that person is a woman, and if those were really the criteria on which you think we should base our gendered descriptions, you should have no problem with that use of woman.

But you do, because it’s wrong: those aren’t the only relevant criteria.

But we disagree in that I don’t think it’s a lie. My argument in this thread is that it’s another accepted meaning of the words.

Karpel Tunnel, I see what you’re saying now, and I agree. You’re right that the information will inevitably be conveyed in subtle ways, and that that’s unavoidable. But a couple distinctions:

First, there’s pretty clearly a norm against intentionally reminding someone that they’re ugly. This would include outright telling someone, but probably also would cover not taking sufficient steps to avoid some of the less subtle ways. I’m thinking of something along the lines of the legal concept of recklessness, i.e. you knew or should have known that some action had a high likelihood of conveying the message “you’re ugly”. I’m thinking of something like making a disgusted face at someone ugly when you see them.

More generally, I would think that part of being a good a salesperson is suppressing even the subtle hints as much as possible, right? And if someone were particularly bad at hiding their disgust with ugly people, that would actually be a fireable offense in a lot of professions, even if it’s innocent in the sense that the person had no idea they were doing it and couldn’t help it (here I’m thinking something like flinching at the touch of an ugly person).

I’d say these things suggest a norm of avoiding reminding people that they’re ugly, even though you’re right that the message will get through. A lot of social niceties involving not turning something everyone knows into common knowledge.

It’s not “wrong”… it’s insufficient, neglecting to tell me something of critical import, especially in the context of a date.
If my friend had called a transwoman a woman, It’d be wrong.

I already explained WHY I’d want my friend to use a different word, so you wouldn’t have to “interpret” why.

“transman” would have conveyed this otherwise unexpected (and in many cases, unwelcome) surprise and in every way have been a superior description

Accepted by some… rejected by others
I’ve tried to make a case based on utility… So far as I can tell, you don’t find that persuasive.
So how do you propose we come to an agreement about a definition?

This may be splitting hairs, but that just seems like describing the way in which it’s wrong. If your friend describes a transman as a “woman”, they know or should know that it will give you the wrong idea of who you’ll find on your date.

I’m reminded of the doctor in Arrested Development who says of a patient, “it looks like he’s dead” when what he means is that the patient literally looks like a dead body because he’s covered in blue paint. There is a sense in which what he said is true, but the expected understanding of the statement is false. So too here.

This seems like the wrong question, and as a corollary it suggests that I’ve framed my argument poorly.

Language is about shared understanding, the meaning of a word is the ideas it conveys, both for the speaker and for the listener. My argument here should have been that speakers who call a transwoman, “woman” mean something like what we mean when we call Siri “female” or use the words “she” and “her” in relation to it. Instead, I tried the stronger claim that this is what “woman” already means for the whole speaker population, which isn’t true. Rather, the majority of the speaker population already has multiple meanings for female pronouns, some of which apply to biological women, and others of which apply to things that don’t have biology. The stronger but more modest claim is just bridging the gap between people who are using the same word to mean different things.

So, when you describe the use of “woman” to describe transwomen as “delusional” or a “lie”, that isn’t correct where you and the speaker agree on all the underlying facts and just think that “woman” is a better way to describe that person than “man”, i.e. they intend to convey true information and reasonably expect that description to most accurately convey a true impression.

I expect the objection will be along the lines of, “why not just say transwoman?” And in some situations that’s a real option and the best choice. But that isn’t always the case, and we should be careful, with something as fraught as gender, in assuming that the only impediment to using transwoman are those that are explicit (e.g. on a form that gives you the option of describing yourself as “man” or “woman”). “Men and women”, “boys and girls”, “ladies and gentlemen”, “men’s room and ladies room”, these all convey a complete dichotomy of humanity, and strongly encourage a choice between one bucket and the other.

It doesn’t take a lie to think that, when confronted with that choice, two people who agree on all the underlying facts nonetheless disagree about which side of the dichotomy a person will fall, when those people are using different meanings of the words “man” and “woman”, “he” and “she”. No one needs to be delusional, and assuming that only delusion explains it is uncharitable. Someone can say truthfully and clear-eyed, “I don’t fit either category by their traditional definitions, but if I’m forced to pick, it is X that fits best”.

As for the emotional reaction, I feel like it doesn’t take too much empathy to understand it. People are almost always the local expert on themselves. If someone suggests that, with everything they know about themselves, “it is X that fits best”, to say otherwise is to say either 1) “no, actually I know you better than you know yourself”, or 2) “no, actually I know the meaning of words in your native language better than you do”. Neither of those is particularly flattering, and both seem pretty likely to be wrong.

How you feel is irrelevant to whether or not a description is accurate.
Definitions and the facts are the only relevant factors to the accuracy of a description.

Man and Woman are the english words for the two sexes that humans produce and intersex covers the biological anomalies that cause someone to not fit either.
Gender dysphoria does not fall in the “intersex” category… it’s a psychological condition that may or may not result in surgery or hormone treatment.

You would say some people have adopted a different definition, which is fine… but it has robbed them of those words to describe biological gender.
I don’t see why any language should be impoverished… why not ADD new words, like transwoman/man to describe people, without sacrificing anything?
Well I think I know why…

Transexuals wish to be a gender they are not and that desire cannot be fulfilled if we describe or address them as anything other than the gender they wish they were…
No amount of “new” words will do the trick here… and that’s why it’s a lie we have to tell.
OR we muddy the words referring to gender such that we can address people with meaningless self-selected titles… but at the cost of those very useful words.

Lying is a smaller price to pay, in my estimation… and I’m happy to do it if it helps transexuals find some measure of peace.
The muddying of words is not for them, however, it’s for the people not comfortable with lying.

I don’t know if I can break down my objection any more clearly…

You’re born male, female or hermaphodite.

A computer is neither.

We all know that the bulk of jobs is in the service industry. Now that females work, sex appeal is more profitable, thus vast amounts of men are out of the most common job. The sex appeal is derived from sexual stratification which commodifies sex.

My point? It’s more profitable to have a non sex computer program be female because of the stratification of number of partners (which creates a desperation), just like women having almost all the service industry jobs, leaving men to live with their mothers, or work in coal mines …

Edit: in short, women make the company more money. Gays as well

m.youtube.com/watch?v=-8l3ntDR_lI

So, as I understand the concept of lying, it requires intentional deception, right? If so, then someone can’t be both delusional and lying, because by virtue of their delusion, they believe what they’re saying and are trying to accurately convey their (false) belief.

So, you have at least that problem in your position.

What if we assume the people are not delusional? Well, let’s say, for the sake of argument, your transwoman blind date is applying for a driver’s license, and is forced to identify as either a man or a woman (assume it’s explicitly required here). Which word is likely to produce the more accurate expectation? Which word, appearing on a license handed over by a person with long hair, makeup, and a dress, is more likely to by accepted as congruent during a traffic stop or at a liquor store? If they acknowledge that neither word applies to them, are forced to choose, and recognize that selecting “woman” will produce in the people who will receive that information a more accurate picture of the world, then it isn’t a lie. They are doing everything they can in the context to convey to the recipient an accurate picture of the world, i.e. to make it so the recipient’s expectations match their empirical findings. There is no intent to deceive.

And if there are contexts where a similarly placed person is implicitly forced to choose, e.g. by reasonable expectation that the recipient will misunderstand “transwoman”, and they similarly choose to convey the most accurate picture of the world that they can given that limitation, then they aren’t lying there either.

That is a further problem with your position: someone attempting to create accurate expectations in the minds of their audience is not “lying”.

Finally, look at your own use of the words. In your heart of hearts, you always think about vaginas and XX chromosomes when you hear the word, “woman”, so it feels like a lie when you grant it to someone who doesn’t use the word that way, who uses it in the forced-into-a-box-and-aligning-expectations sense. I can’t tell you that you aren’t lying; if your actually intending to deceive someone and you expect everyone to use the vaginas-and-chromosomes sense of the word, you may very well be. But I don’t think you have to, because not everyone uses the word that way, and to a large degree using “woman” in the aligning-expectations sense is likely to more accurately align expectations.

Is this just an aesthetic judgement? The evolution of meaning has always been a part of language, and it doesn’t seem to have impoverished language in any formal sense. By all means, add new words, but using old words in new contexts seems to be enriching the language. But if not, take solace in the knowledge that language doesn’t have a bank account…

You’ve lost the plot on this one.
I’m lying to aid in establishing another’s delusion… there are at least two parties involved here.

Using words like transwoman/man would be the way to do that…
As for your “forced” choice excuse… that’s a nifty way to dismiss the perfect utility of such words.
But you’re barking up the wrong tree best take that shit up with whomever forces that limitation in your vocabulary and leave me out of it.

Nope, factual observation. As a rule making words ambiguous or using ambiguous words is a great way to miscommunicate or lie and get away with it… depending on how cynical we’re being.

by the by, what is your word for a human female?
The dictionary suggests “woman” is the english word for human female, but I assume you take issue with that.

And here’s what it says about female:

But nevermind all that, right?
Who needs words for the biological sexes anyway? Why would we ever want to indicate such a trivial thing about ourselves or others… right?
why bother having a clearly defined language that allows us all to understand each other when we can all just make up our own idiosyncratic versions as it suits us…

This isn’t rocket science dude… making words like “man” or “woman” meaningless titles renders those words non-descriptive.

What exactly am I to expect if you tell me a woman is about to enter the room?
A transwoman? post op or pre-op? a real woman? just a normal dude in drag? Siri? a Sex Doll? Android? a Ship?
damned if I know… depending on your mood they all qualify as women to some degree… ironically, with the exception of the real woman who wants to be a man.

Where if I told you the same thing you’d know I meant a human female…
She might not look the way you imagined… she might be a burn victim, have a beard, be wearing a batman costume, had work done to look like a man or even to look like a god damned lizard.
Maybe you might think that description was insufficient under such conditions… but what I DID tell you was unequivocal and accurate…
and if need be I can always convey more relevant information using other words without needing redefine what the hell woman means.

So I have, my apologies.

Though if you agree that they aren’t lying, it’s a bit strange to think that it would be lying when you respond with the same words.

And this is a nifty way to dismiss the real disutilities to the people you’re asking to use them.

And lest you think this is to excuse the lie, in the way that we may think it’s OK to lie to the Nazi at the door (because I think you’ve made it clear that, even though you think it’s a lie, you think it’s an excusable lie because it’s the less harmful option), I would again point to the communicated meaning of the words. Transsexuality is a relatively new development, at least in the US, and still fairly rare (~.6% of the population). I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that, on average, describing a transwoman as a “woman” will give your audience a more accurate picture of the world than if you described them as a “transwoman”.

One related point about coining new words that I think is in your favor: I think it would be considered rude or offensive to describe a transwoman as a transwoman. That’s hard to fit with my argument here, because my argument rests on the inability to do so, and so shouldn’t proscribe using that word where one can. And in many contexts where they feel comfortable, trans people to openly describe themselves as trans and aren’t offended by being called trans.

But in many contexts, I think it would be taken as offensive. One response would be that letting a transwoman know that she’s not ‘passing’ is tantamount to letting her know that’s she’s in danger, or just not fitting into social standards for how one ought to appear. Or it may be making genitalia and biology salient in a way that isn’t appropriate (similar to how it can be offensive to discuss sex or genitals or defecation or even disease in many social contexts), since the distinction between a woman and a transwoman is one of genitalia and biology.

Still, I think it’s weird to say both that we should call transwomen “women” because it’s more true, but also we shouldn’t call them transwomen, even though that’s even more true. And I expect that you agree that there’s a tension.

You “observed”, from Latin observare “watch over,” though presumably you didn’t ‘see’ the language get impoverished with your eyes, but inferred it with your reason. “Impoverished”, of course, as I alluded to before, means “to make poor”, but language has no money, it isn’t taking a pay cut when we let the meaning of words change. Perhaps this is another argument on which I’ve “lost the plot”, but this is an argument, not a work of fiction! or did you mean “plot” as in a plot of land? I can assure my title is sound. Perhaps I’m just not seeing this language stuff “clearly”, probably because I’m arguing with pixels on a computer monitor instead of letters shaped from transparent glass. “By the by”, I come at this from a different direction, which says that the expansion of meaning, even if it increases ambiguity in some cases, also greatly enriches our language. You say you disagree, but your words betray you – have them shot at dawn.

I’m not sure how useful this is, but let’s explore it a bit. We agree, I think, that a post-op transman entering the room would be incongruous with the expectation. But I think it would not be so incongruous to see a post-op transwoman, that would be pretty close to my expectation (though admittedly not the paradigm case). So too would a female-presenting android be much closer to my expectation than a post-op trans man; is that not true for you?

New York is on the map… but it’s not really new york. How are we not confused by that? Could it be context?
So what happens if we confuse the context?

Well you just demonstrated that quite nicely… congrats, you made my point.

Gender only has a literal meaning in the context of describing biological creatures… which is why we can use gender freely to describe androids, ships, toys, etc, without confusing anyone. Context is the clue.
So how do I know whether or not you mean biological sex when you describe a person as a man or woman?
How do you clue me in on your meaning?
Well you can’t… and that’s the point. That way you can call anyone who likes “man” or “woman” and it’ll never be a lie.

Spelling this out is going to sound painfully condescending, because it’s yet again a matter of common sense…

If I tell you a woman is about to walk on stage, you’re going to expect a typical human female… if the woman who is about to walk up on stage is radically different from the norm, you might be in for a surprise.
Let’s say this woman has been surgically altered to look like a lizard, I should probably give you a heads up about that.
Unfortunately we don’t have a single word that conveys “human female made to look like lizard” which means I have to use more than one word to describe this person.
We might invent a shorthand for this sort of thing if it’s common enough to warrant it. “female translizard” maybe?
I would not be giving you more accurate expectations, however, by saying “a female lizard is about to walk on stage”…

Yet I can imagine you telling me how this woman made to look like a lizard, really is best described as a lizard using the exact arguments you’ve put forward here in this thread…

“we call robots lizards when they look like them”
“there are aliens on tv shows we call lizards when they look like them”
“being described as a lizard isn’t about biology, it’s a social treatment”
“language is enriched by us expanding the definition of lizard”
“people are the best judges of their own identities, if they say they are lizards, we should respect that”
etc…

1. You’re avoiding my point about the richness of language. All those ambiguous words and phrases you use clearly add richness to the language. And they may not seem ambiguous in context now, but consider the first use where they were applied outside the then-accepted meaning.

2. The use of woman I’m defending is context-dependent.

Philosophy often requires explaining very basic things; I took no offense, and I hope you’ll bear with me as I return the favor

Let me point out that this isn’t the case we’re talking about, it is a different case dealing with different concepts and it may have a different answer.

To see how these differences might matter, look at the case of a brunette who has been surgically altered to look like a blonde (a non-invasive surgery, as it turns out).

Unfortunately we don’t have a single word that conveys “human brunette made to look like blonde” which means I have to use more than one word to describe this person.
We might invent a shorthand for this sort of thing if it’s common enough to warrant it. “brunette transblonde” maybe?
I would be giving you more accurate expectations, however, by saying “a blonde is about to walk on stage”…

And you can imagine me telling you how this brunette-made-to-look-like-a-blonde really is best described as a “blonde” using the exact arguments I’ve put forward here in this thread…

/condescension

So is being a woman more like being a lizard or more like being a blonde? Simply giving one example as dispositive is just question-begging: if you think “woman” is mostly about biology, then the lizard case is more on point; if it’s more about superficial appearance and social role, then the blonde case is more on point. We can come up with examples that cut either way, and they don’t relieve us of the necessity to analyze this case.

It’s not about what any individual “thinks” but what the words mean in a given language.
Again I refer you to the dictionary…

It seems “blond” and “brunte” have as a subject the color of a person’s hair… an appearance
While the subject of “woman” is the age and biological sex of a human… no appearance was specified, no social role was specified.

You can of course petition people to change the definition of “woman”.
It’s on you to propose an alternate definition and convince the rest of us that this change is for the better… maybe answer some questions that arise

Are you recommending eliminating the old meaning or simply adding a new context-dependent alternate meaning referring only to appearance and/or social role? can you specify the appearance and/or social role?
If it’s the latter, what are the context clues that lets us know which meaning is being used? confusion isn’t very enriching, after all.
Also would that mean retiring words like transman/woman? They already serve this function while maintaining clarity on biological sex…
If you do recommend eliminate the old meaning… then what words would you recommend we use to indicate biological sex?
Or is it your position that we don’t need to indicate biological sex? That appearances/social roles are all that concern us?

Sell me on this… convince me that this petition to change language isn’t simply to ease your own guilt for lying to people suffering from gender dysphoria.
That instead it’s an honest attempt at optimising communication and that you’ve really thought this shit through and can conclusively say your way is superior.

The dictionary doesn’t dictate definitions, it describes them, and it’s a trailing indicator of language and, even at its most up-to-date, an imperfect mirror. All of the words I mocked in my earlier post would at one point have been used in contravention of their dictionary definition (if dictionaries had existed at the time, which they probably didn’t, but amazingly words still meant things!)

I think that marks the end of this conversation

If your best argument is quoting me a single dictionary definition, and probably not even the full definition from whatever dictionary you’re using, then perhaps we should leave it there. If you looked at more than one dictionary, or likely more than one definition within the dictionary you chose, you’d find a much broader meaning than the narrow one you’re advocating.

And this meaning of female is significant because these dictionaries use “female” to define “woman”:

Do these change your mind? I should bloody well hope not. So why are we even talking about dictionaries if they aren’t your actual authority on what the language means?

You’ve used a dozen words in your last post whose meaning clearly derives from an expansion of an earlier meaning. Do you disagree? If not, how do you square that with an appeal to an ostensibly static meaning of words, and moreover the claim that the expansion of meaning of words makes language less useful?

The meaning of a word isn’t what’s in a dictionary, it’s what’s conveyed by it between speakers, it depends on the who the speaker and listener are, the context in which it’s used, and it changes over time. Dictionary authors do their best to catalog the language as they find it, but it’s a moving target, and the meanings are so large and nuanced, layered with connotations and associations that shade the meaning.

Case in point: about half of Americans think transwomen and transmen should use the women’s and men’s restrooms, respectively, and the other half think so antirespectively. Those people disagree about what it means for a bathroom to be a “women’s room” and a “men’s room”. These are presumptively native speakers who aren’t confused about the language they’re using or the specific facts applicable to the case, and they disagree about the meaning of words. Is your whole takeaway from half a speaker population using a word in a certain way that they just need to read the dictionary to clear everything up?

In not too long, I expect that dictionaries are going to get woke under social pressure, and start putting the woke meaning of woman and man, to explicitly include transwomen and transmen explicitly, into dictionaries. You agree with that, right? Are you going to give up the fight then? I don’t think you should! Fuck the dictionary, “literally” does not mean “figuratively” and I will die on that hill.

You’ve argued that most uses of “woman” and “man” are about biology – they aren’t.
You’ve argued that broadening the sense of words impoverishes the language – it doesn’t.
Now you’re arguing that the dictionary says so – 1) it doesn’t, and 2) that is a very weak philosophical position.

That’s not my argument… nor the reason we’re stuck.

We’re caught in a loop… allow me to show you the loop.

Loop it from here…