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CutieMouse said:
Actually, the university WAS doing their job - allowing someone with a strongly dissenting opinion from the norm, the same platform to express his opinion as someone who's opinion better aligned with the "norm".

The guy might be a dick, but he still has a right to publicly state his views.
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He does. But he does not have a right to a platform at UCB. The university gets to decide whether they provide him with one, and people who have a stake in that decision (including but not limited to students and faculty) have the right to protest if they feel the university fucked up.

Legally, that extends only to peaceful protest. I'm not endorsing violent rioting in that case, but I do think it's worth reading what MLK had to say about riots.

And people who agree with him (or not) have a right to pay for tickets to listen to him. The same way Westboro Baptist has a right to stand on public property and spout hatred.
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They do. But by the same token, other folk have the right to show up to WBC protests and drown them out.

Or the National Right to Life organization has a right to run a website and put forth their agenda.
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Milo already has a website, and plenty of other places where he can be heard. If every university in the USA banned him from their campuses he would still have a far bigger pulpit than you or I are ever likely to have. He is not being silenced.

If we as a society remove the right of someone to say something just because we disagree or we find it offensive, who's to say the same thing won't happen to the current majority opinion when political tides turn? Denying speech simply because it is offensive, is a slippery slope.
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(1) I am not advocating preventing Milo from speaking. I'm saying that UCB is not obliged to offer him a platform, and that doing so was a bad and irresponsible call.

(2) No white supremacist has ever said "well the left were respectful to us last year, so we'd better be respectful to them this year". It doesn't work that way.

Fascists who want to hurt people will simply invent provocations if there aren't any real ones to use as an excuse. (See: Reichstag Fire, Bowling Green Massacre, attempts to portray Quebec's Trump-loving white-supremacist mass-murderer as an Arabic Muslim, plenty more).

If you feel morally obliged to extend fair play to such folk, then you gotta follow that compass, but do not do so in the hope that it will be reciprocated.
 
KimGordon67 said:
I think BT's point is that most trans WOMEN (not men - they're NOT men) don't engage in this sort of 'deception' (I could argue whether it's really a deception or not), but the constant depiction of this extremely rare scenario means that people feel justified in violence against trans people because they supposedly engage in deception'. I don't know many trans people who wouldn't tell someone they were trans prior to getting to the kissing point PRECISELY BECAUSE of the risk of violence, so I think you're safe from being 'tricked' by some 'dude'.
BT's point was that these depictions, which trans people don't consume, still affect their lives.
I also think you're pretty safe because no trans person in their right mind would go near someone who's so obviously transphobic.
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Kim has it right. The fact that you seem to think a trans woman would want to trick you into intimacy in the first place is exactly the problem I'm talking about.
 
Bramblethorn said:
Kim has it right. The fact that you seem to think a trans woman would want to trick you into intimacy in the first place is exactly the problem I'm talking about.
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... and the fact that people think this happens 'all the time'. What trans person in their right mind would go through the inevitable grief that would result from that? Like life isn't difficult enough in our stupid society for them anyway?
 
KimGordon67 said:
I think BT's point is that most trans WOMEN (not men - they're NOT men) don't engage in this sort of 'deception' (I could argue whether it's really a deception or not), but the constant depiction of this extremely rare scenario means that people feel justified in violence against trans people because they supposedly engage in deception'. I don't know many trans people who wouldn't tell someone they were trans prior to getting to the kissing point PRECISELY BECAUSE of the risk of violence, so I think you're safe from being 'tricked' by some 'dude'.
BT's point was that these depictions, which trans people don't consume, still affect their lives.
I also think you're pretty safe because no trans person in their right mind would go near someone who's so obviously transphobic.
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If you want to stop violence to sexual minorities, it's not their unfavourable depiction in movies that you should ban.

The answer is shocking to some. Bible. And other similar religious books.
Up until Christianity spread, sexual relationship with the same gender was completely fine, and no one gave it a second thought.

And really, if you talk about trans-gender people. You know, it's not movies that make me dislike them. It's the minority of them who are very keen on rubbing their difference into everyone's eyes, go onto half-naked parades and such. That's what forms an unfavorable impression of them IN ME. Maybe it's personal, but I doubt it is.

Kim has it right. The fact that you seem to think a trans woman would want to trick you into intimacy in the first place is exactly the problem I'm talking about.
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... and the fact that people think this happens 'all the time'.
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I don't think neither. I just said how I'd feel in this situation - that it is INDEED not a situation anyone wants to be.

But I disagree that movies affect the public view very much. Movies depict and get laughs after numerous topics, not just transgenders. In the end of the day, it's the real life that affects us and makes our mind. Movies? Not so much. I can't deny there's SOME influence, but you are way overstating it.
 
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Nezhul said:
If you want to stop violence to sexual minorities, it's not their unfavourable depiction in movies that you should ban.

The answer is shocking to some. Bible. And other similar religious books.
Up until Christianity spread, sexual relationship with the same gender was completely fine, and no one gave it a second thought.

And really, if you talk about trans-gender people. You know, it's not movies that make me dislike them. It's the minority of them who are very keen on rubbing their difference into everyone's eyes, go onto half-naked parades and such. That's what forms an unfavorable impression of them IN ME. Maybe it's personal, but I doubt it is.

I don't think neither. I just said how I'd feel in this situation - that it is INDEED not a situation anyone wants to be.

But I disagree that movies affect the public view very much. Movies depict and get laughs after numerous topics, not just transgenders. In the end of the day, it's the real life that affects us and makes our mind. Movies? Not so much. I can't deny there's SOME influence, but you are way overstating it.
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Trans people aren't a sexual minority.

Sexual relations with between a cis gender man and a trans woman is not sexual relations with the same gender.

There wouldn't be a need for GLBTQI rights parades etc if people weren't so freaking phobic. Why shouldn't 'they' rub 'their' differences in your face for one day a year (although - here's a thought - just don't go to the parade. You won't die if you can't walk down the main street for one day of the year). Trans people sure get cis gender stuff rubbed in their faces every other day of the year. I don't whinge about sporting parades or military parades, even though I find them a fairly offensive celebration of a version of masculinity that irritates the crap out of me. I just don't go - easy.

Movies are part of the discourse that affects the ways in which the mainstream public views people they don't come into contact with in their everyday lives. Trans people have been regularly the butt of humour in movies since Marilyn Monroe's day. This unequivocally shapes people's opinions, because many of them have no other source of information.
 
Bramblethorn said:
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I would argue that he should be allowed to speak at whatever university he wants because he has now acquired a $250,000 book deal from a major publisher, become a conservative media personality having made it onto FOX news and other right-wing outlets and has a far longer wikipedia page than most of his detractors, all solely from entitled (yes, entitled. You never hear about the universities that peacefully decline his event requests.) university students throwing a fit and playing right into his hands which he reaps the benefits of.

Clearly schools are the bottom of the media barrel that he has access to, but they're simultaneously his bread and butter for gaining fame. We know he's not sincere about being the 'free speech crusader' he paints himself as, the only reason he even speaks at universities is in the hopes that exactly what happened at Berkeley, happens. Regardless of the political alignment of the instigators. Heck he was on the main FOX news evening broadcast 30 minutes after fires started being set.
 
Trans people aren't a sexual minority.
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Oh? So there's equal amount of trans people as straight people? No.
There are MUCH less trans-genders than straight people. Thus, they are the minority.

Sexual relations with between a cis gender man and a trans woman is not sexual relations with the same gender.
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It is. Let's leave it at that. If you can prove that transgender can have a child (as a woman) and has a woman's DNA, then I give you a noble prize.
A man who is transgendering into a woman is still a man with surgery done to him.

What's your deal anyway?
 
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Consilience said:
So just for the record; I'm not a fan of Milo either. But he was in a twitter feud with her because she implied he and his fans were racists and/or misogynists for criticizing the producers of the Ghostbusters remake using a female cast as a cheap gimmick. Which was the main talking point of the cast, studio and director in response to the overwhelming criticism of the trailer (which is now something like the 6th most disliked video on youtube).

So at least in that instance the critique of Milo is not valid.
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Er... even accepting all that as true for the sake of argument*, I really don't see that it justifies Milo's subsequent behaviour towards her.

*BTW - that's not intended as a snide "I don't believe you", it's an "I like to do my homework on this sort of stuff but I don't have time or patience to go archive-diving just now".

Especially so since he's very vocal about his attraction to black men.
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Anti-racism is not sexually transmitted. Plenty of extremely racist people are sexually attracted to the very same people they view as inferior. Strom Thurmond, Thomas Jefferson, etc. etc.

On a side note; I would speculate that labelling their potential audience as racists and sexists at every opportunity because they made a bad promo would be a primary factor for why the movie was a commercial flop.
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Probably didn't help, but from all I can tell the whole "not screening in China" bit was a much bigger factor.
 
Nezhul said:
If you want to stop violence to sexual minorities, it's not their unfavourable depiction in movies that you should ban.

The answer is shocking to some. Bible. And other similar religious books.
Up until Christianity spread, sexual relationship with the same gender was completely fine, and no one gave it a second thought.

And really, if you talk about trans-gender people. You know, it's not movies that make me dislike them. It's the minority of them who are very keen on rubbing their difference into everyone's eyes, go onto half-naked parades and such. That's what forms an unfavorable impression of them IN ME. Maybe it's personal, but I doubt it is.
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If you think LGBTI people are blatant about their sexuality, wait until you meet heterosexual cis folk.

Apologies if this makes you sick, but - some of these people actually wear a ring on their finger 24/7 just to signal to everybody they meet that they're in an opposite-sex relationship! If you walk into a newsagent you can sometimes see magazines with women in swimsuits... oh I know what you're going to say, that's just to help women choose swimsuits, but believe it or not, most of those magazines are sold to MEN!

Nezhul said:
Oh? So there's equal amount of trans people as straight people? No.
There are MUCH less trans-genders than straight people. Thus, they are the minority.
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Kim's point, which apparently flew a long way over your head, is that "transgender" is a GENDER minority, not a sexual one.

There are straight, gay, bi, and asexual trans people. Transgender is not about "sexual relationship with the same gender" as you seem to think.

It is. Let's leave it at that. If you can prove that transgender can have a child (as a woman) and has a woman's DNA, then I give you a noble prize.
A man who is transgendering into a woman is still a man with surgery done to him.
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So a person who can't have a child is not a woman? That would be news to a hell of a lot of women.

As to DNA... as a rule, the more people know about the science of DNA, the less likely they are to say that sex is a simple matter of genetics.
 
Bramblethorn said:
Er... even accepting all that as true for the sake of argument*, I really don't see that it justifies Milo's subsequent behaviour towards her.

*BTW - that's not intended as a snide "I don't believe you", it's an "I like to do my homework on this sort of stuff but I don't have time or patience to go archive-diving just now".

Anti-racism is not sexually transmitted. Plenty of extremely racist people are sexually attracted to the very same people they view as inferior. Strom Thurmond, Thomas Jefferson, etc. etc.
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It's not meant as a justification, just that the "I guess Milo just hates black women" remark doesn't jive with reality from what I know of Milo. I've been familiar with him for a while and I would never ascribe the labels of 'racist' or 'misogynist' to him. Unprincipled self-hating megalomaniacal clown works just fine though.

If you don't know about the self hating thing: He's an openly gay pseudo-Christian literialist who is against gays having equal rights.
 
If you think LGBTI people are blatant about their sexuality, wait until you meet heterosexual cis folk.

Apologies if this makes you sick, but - some of these people actually wear a ring on their finger 24/7 just to signal to everybody they meet that they're in an opposite-sex relationship!
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You are just bullshitting and playing with facts now.
A wedding ring is a sign of bond meant to enforce the commitment made to your partner. It's not something that's meant to demonstrate to OTHERS that you are married and heterosexual - think before you say something. And by the way, gay people can wear wedding rings. Nothing prevents them to. Even transgenders can.
It's a symbol of bond, not your sexuality.

oh I know what you're going to say
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Oh yea, right....
You know what everyone thinks and says, don't you?

is that "transgender" is a GENDER minority, not a sexual one.
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There are two genders in this world. And both are not a minority.
There's no such thing as "transgender gender". It's a sexual quirk, it is a rare one, and thus - a sexual minority.

There are straight, gay, bi, and asexual trans people.
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So you just put trans people in line with "straight, gay, bi and asexual" - which are all sexual orientations. And yet you state right away that trans is NOT a sexual orientation.

So a person who can't have a child is not a woman? That would be news to a hell of a lot of women.
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There's a difference between not being able to have a child because of some ilness, and not being able to have a child because you actually COULD have children but castrated yourself and mutilated your body.
Women who can't give birth, sadly, exist. But that's a tragedy that befell onto them despite their wishes. You can't compare them to transgenders who either are perfectly fertile as their birth-given gender (but not as their new gender), or who willingly gave up their fertility because for them reproduction is less important than what they have in bed - i.e. sex. Which again lands them into sexual minority category.

There's a case in history when a transgender woman (i.e. woman who made herself a guy) became pregnant through the needle and then gave birth through C-section.
On papers she was a man who gave birth, but no one rushed to give her that noble prize that still awaits it's winner. So I guess we could argue this point indefinitely, it all depends from how you look at it.

For me, no matter how much body modifications you make - you are just making yourself a freak. It doesn't mean you change your gender.
It's the same with people who do other weird shit with their bodies. The man who tatooed his whole body in a tiger pattern may call himself a tiger-man, but it's not like he became less human or more feline because of that.

As to DNA... as a rule, the more people know about the science of DNA, the less likely they are to say that sex is a simple matter of genetics.
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Very philosophical. But useless.
 
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Nezhul said:
You are just bullshitting and playing with facts now.
A wedding ring is a sign of bond meant to enforce the commitment made to your partner.
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"enforce the commitment"? How does it do that? Does it turn red-hot if you think about cheating on them or something?

It's not something that's meant to demonstrate to OTHERS that you are married and heterosexual - think before you say something. And by the way, gay people can wear wedding rings. Nothing prevents them to. Even transgenders can.
It's a symbol of bond, not your sexuality.
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And there is the double standard. When a LGBT person says or does something that identifies them as LGBT (like, say, marching in a Pride parade, or kissing their partner) folk like you interpret that as an inherently sexual act. When a straight cis person wears a ring or kisses their partner in public, that's "a symbol of bond" or some such.

What about the swimsuit calendars and the girlie mags? I note you didn't reply to that part of my post; are you seriously claiming there's no sexual element to those?

Oh yea, right....
You know what everyone thinks and says, don't you?
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That "I know what you're going to say" was intended as obvious tongue-in-cheek sarcasm. I apologise if that wasn't clear.

There are two genders in this world. And both are not a minority.
There's no such thing as "transgender gender". It's a sexual quirk, it is a rare one, and thus - a sexual minority.

So you just put trans people in line with "straight, gay, bi and asexual" - which are all sexual orientations. And yet you state right away that trans is NOT a sexual orientation.
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Dude...

In English, when presenting a comma-separated list, the "and" directly precedes the last entry in the list.

When I write "straight, gay, bi, and asexual trans people", the list there is "straight, gay, bi, and asexual". "Trans" is NOT part of that list; it's a modifier that applies to every word in the list. It's semantically equivalent to "straight trans people, gay trans people, bi trans people, and asexual trans people".

If I wrote "straight, gay, bi, and asexual Belgians" it would be pretty fucking stupid to interpret that as saying "Belgian" is a sexual orientation. That's the exact same error you just made.

"Sexual orientation" is about who you're attracted to. Being transgender is NOT about who you're attracted to.

There's a difference between not being able to have a child because of some ilness, and not being able to have a child because you actually COULD have children but castrated yourself and mutilated your body.
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Er... I don't know what books you've been reading, but SRS is not a DIY operation.

Women who can't give birth, sadly, exist. But that's a tragedy that befell onto them despite their wishes.
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Well, that's a rather sweeping and inaccurate generalisation.

There are plenty of women in the world who can't have kids and don't see that as any kind of "tragedy" whatsoever. For many it's a deliberate choice; there are operations such as tubal ligation that a woman can have in order to avoid getting pregnant, as well as shorter-term options like IUDs.

You can't compare them to transgenders who either are perfectly fertile as their birth-given gender (but not as their new gender), or who willingly gave up their fertility because for them reproduction is less important than what they have in bed - i.e. sex. Which again lands them into sexual minority category.
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Yet again: being transgender is NOT about "what they have in bed - i.e. sex". Through the course of this discussion, it's becoming clearer and clearer that you don't know the first thing about transgender people.

There's a case in history when a transgender woman (i.e. woman who made herself a guy) became pregnant through the needle and then gave birth through C-section.
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#1: "Transgender woman" is somebody who was identified as MALE at birth, but lives/IDs as female. You're talking about a transgender man.

#2: There are actually quite a few cases of trans men becoming pregnant and having kids. This is not a unique event.

#3: While I don't know which specific case you're talking about, I'm rather puzzled by this "became pregnant through the needle" business. A needle is generally not involved. I suspect you're a bit confused about some anatomical details here.

Nezhul said:
sexual and sociological, yes.

what do you think? Explain your point of view.
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I think I can guess the answer but I'm going to ask anyway: how many trans people did you talk to before coming to this opinion?
 
All you can do is twist words in your favor and tell me that "I'm wrong".

I'm quite done with your bullshit. I see several threads now where you are just so far from reality that you start inventing impossible examples to prove your opinion.

Like this whole business of wedding rings being a demonstration of heterosexuality. If you view yours like that, I'm kinda sorry for your wife.
Pathetic.

I'm done with you.
 
Nezhul said:
All you can do is twist words in your favor and tell me that "I'm wrong".

I'm quite done with your bullshit. I see several threads now where you are just so far from reality that you start inventing impossible examples to prove your opinion.

Like this whole business of wedding rings being a demonstration of heterosexuality. If you view yours like that, I'm kinda sorry for your wife.

Pathetic.

I'm done with you.
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...so, may I take it that the answer to my previous question is "zero"?
 
Just had to share this - again, of most interest to UK kinksters -

The Open Rights Group (ORG) have launched a spoof recruitment campaign to highlight absurd proposals in the Digital Economy Bill, which will give the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) the power to classify and censor websites, just like they do for films.
https://www.newgovernmentjobs.co.uk/

Light hearted, but makes good points :)
 
Lol I love how almost everything in this video resembles a dick in some sort.
Talk about bad imagination.
 
Nezhul said:
Oh? So there's equal amount of trans people as straight people? No.
There are MUCH less trans-genders than straight people. Thus, they are the minority.

It is. Let's leave it at that. If you can prove that transgender can have a child (as a woman) and has a woman's DNA, then I give you a noble prize.
A man who is transgendering into a woman is still a man with surgery done to him.

What's your deal anyway?
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Firstly, I apologise profusely to MM for side-tracking this thread, but I think it's important to correct the sort of misinformation that's being potentially spread here. Even if Nezhul just reads some stuff and becomes better informed himself, that'd be a result.

'My deal' is that I don't like people being offensive in contexts where the people they're being offensive about might see the things they're saying. When I'm writing about groups of people of which I'm not a member, I think to myself 'How would I feel if a person from X group read what I've just written while they were sitting in front of me?' If the answer is 'Pretty uncomfortable', I think about rephrasing what I've written.

BT has cogently responded to every single point you've made. I think the main problem here is that you're trying to make quite a complex argument without some of the requisite knowledge and understanding. I can assure you that I do know what I'm talking about here - it's difficult to explain why without potentially compromising my anonymity, so you'll just have to take my word for the fact that I'm not spouting off stuff based on my personal opinion. (I suspect the same it true of BT.)

Fundamentally, you're confusing three concepts - 'biological sex', 'social gender', and 'sexuality/sexual orientation'.
  • 'Male/female' = 'biological sex'. (There's quite a strong argument for saying the meanings attached to these is actually social anyway, but that's a little complex for current purposes.) This includes things like genitals, DNA, blah blah blah. However, they're not easily divided - for every single marker of biological sex, there are people who don't have those markers that we'd still accept as 'male/female' ... and then a fairly significant chunk who just do fall somewhere in between (ie 'intersex'). Nature isn't as binary as you might think.
  • 'Man/woman' = 'social gender', but these are NOT the only genders. Admittedly, they're usually the two main ones, but people have identified as differently gendered at various points in time and in various cultures - e.g. the native American berdache. Gender is generally loosely based on biological sex, but that's only because we've all agreed this is the case. My reproductive capacity is not what makes me a woman, nor does my vagina. Most people accept I'm a woman and they've never seen my vagina.
  • 'Hetero/gay/bi/etc' is sexual orientation. To some extent, that is premised on your gender (as in, some attracted to women who's hetero must be a man), but fundamentally sexuality is about who you're attracted to. Your sexual orientation does not determine your gender. If I was a lesbian, I'd still be a woman.

Before you argue any more about this topic here or elsewhere, I suggest you get your head around the above - the relevant Wiki entries would be useful - and also read some stuff written by actual trans people. Rest assured, they are not going through that process because of some 'sexual kink'. Reading their actual stories might give you a little more empathy, if nothing else.
 
No need to apologize for the side track. At this point this is where the thread is and I've been reading along but am not currently confident in my ability to speak for the trans community. :) Also, thanks for advocating I appreciate it.

Also, thanks for the link LucyBee01.

If this is to be a general politics and advocacy thread then it is. Seeing the board posting for me is better than the slow crawl of new posters asking for advice. Even if I don't agree with something, I like seeing it all.
 
KimGordon67 said:
Gender is generally loosely based on biological sex, but that's only because we've all agreed this is the case. My reproductive capacity is not what makes me a woman, nor does my vagina. Most people accept I'm a woman and they've never seen my vagina.
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Not really...
If you mean gender in reference to expected behaviour i.e gender roles then yes of course, those are mostly socialized. But if you are saying that the (apparently more difficult to describe than I thought) sense of self/personal gender identity is some kind of wholly socially conditioned construct well then no, sorry, the very existence of transgender people contradicts that.
And if we had all agreed that, then socially conservative transgender people would probably be as rare as unicorns.

Unless I'm misreading that, then ignore this.
 
Consilience said:
Not really...
If you mean gender in reference to expected behaviour i.e gender roles then yes of course, those are mostly socialized. But if you are saying that the (apparently more difficult to describe than I thought) sense of self/personal gender identity is some kind of wholly socially conditioned construct well then no, sorry, the very existence of transgender people contradicts that.
And if we had all agreed that, then socially conservative transgender people would probably be as rare as unicorns.

Unless I'm misreading that, then ignore this.
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I'm a little confused by your response - sorry - and I suspect I wasn't explaining myself very well. But I think you're saying that our individual sense of ourselves as one gender or another is innate, not socially conditioned?
And yes ... that's a fair point, and one that all the theorising has yet to adequately deal with. I think, however, we're hampered a little by living in a very binarily gender society. So you are born with A set of genitals, but don't feel particularly aligned with A gender ... the only other option is really B gender, so you go 'OK, that's probably it then'. However, there are other cultural context where you are born with A set of genitals but don't feel aligned with A gender ... but there's C option where you can hang on to those genitals (or not), but still not (always) be A gender.
I think we're moving into a position where we'll accept that gender is a continiuum, with man at one end and woman at the other, and a whole range of possiblities in between. But we are pretty attached to the binary model - that's why bisexual people have such a hard time being taken seriously.
Having said that, there definitely are trans women who hyper-feminise, and effectively reinforce the binary model of gender, hence the feminist backlash. (Well, that's one 'hence' - there's a few others as well that are too dull to go into.)

Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting a dismantling of gender at all. I think it's kind of fun, and I like being a girl. But it worries me when it's used a system to make decisions for people or marginalise them, rather than a resource on which to draw in identity construction. (That may be the best thing I say this week - thanks for giving me the opportunity to articulate that.)
 
KimGordon67 said:
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The continuum thing doesn't work for me. If we're talking about that innate sense of which sex a person feels that they are, well that is not a social construct and that's plainly identifiable. The reinforcement of gender roles starts pretty much as soon as somebody is born, so if there wasn't a fixed neurological setup for a person's gender identity and it was simply the product of culturally conditioning an arbitrary model into people then transgender people most likely just wouldn't exist and if they did then they would only exist in a few western countries and electrocuting them into psychologically aligning with their sex would actually work.

I'm fairly positive that a person's identity independent of gender roles is a naturally binary structure which has developed through biological necessity, just like any other example of sexual dimorphism in humans. (E.g greatly uneven male/female muscle proportion, differences in displays of aggression, differences in interpersonal relations, etc.
Transgender people obviously aren't just a simple variation in human gender identity, contrasted with gays and bisexuals, since they by-and-large experience an innately lower life satisfaction as a result of their abnormality (independent of how people treat them or what they tell them) whereas with sexual minorities that distress would be the result of actual social conditioning.

If in 10 years it turns out that I'm wrong and gender is far more malleable then I promise to be the first one to stop calling these self-described Zee's, Qualiagenders and Trigender Pyrofox twentysomethings insincere attention seeking transtrenders. :)o)
 
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Consilience said:
The continuum thing doesn't work for me. If we're talking about that innate sense of which sex a person feels that they are, well that is not a social construct and that's plainly identifiable. The reinforcement of gender roles starts pretty much as soon as somebody is born, so if there wasn't a fixed neurological setup for a person's gender identity and it was simply the product of culturally conditioning an arbitrary model into people then transgender people most likely just wouldn't exist and if they did then they would only exist in a few western countries and electrocuting them into psychologically aligning with their sex would actually work.

I'm fairly positive that a person's identity independent of gender roles is a naturally binary structure which has developed through biological necessity, just like any other example of sexual dimorphism in humans. (E.g greatly uneven male/female muscle proportion, differences in displays of aggression, differences in interpersonal relations, etc.
Transgender people obviously aren't just a simple variation in human gender identity, contrasted with gays and bisexuals, since they by-and-large experience an innately lower life satisfaction as a result of their abnormality (independent of how people treat them or what they tell them) whereas with sexual minorities that distress would be the result of actual social conditioning.

If in 10 years it turns out that I'm wrong and gender is far more malleable then I promise to be the first one to stop calling these self-described Zee's, Qualiagenders and Trigender Pyrofox twentysomethings insincere attention seeking transtrenders. :)o)
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Actually, research suggests that in societies that don't work with a binary gender system, those people who identify as neither normative 'man' or normative 'woman' are perfectly happy. The 'distress' of felt by trans people could thus be argued to be largely a function of social context.

I disagree with the notion that binary gender is a necessary function of evolution. We could breed perfectly well with only one gender, or with a multiplicity of genders. With many of the things you note (e.g. gendered differences in relationships or aggression), even if there are natural variations (which I'm sceptical about), we magnify both the differences and their significance beyond all necessity.

Neither I nor anyone else really knows why gender exists ... and the same with trans people, really. Although I understand your argument regarding neural pathways, I'm not sure I'm convinced by it ... and ultimately, I just don't really think it's relevant. There just are some people who are happy with the gender they're assigned at birth, and others who aren't. The point is what we do about that, not 'why' it happens ... the 'why' arguments too readily lend themselves to then being used to (attempt to) eliminate whatever contradiction to the norm is being discussed - see those born intersex as a salutory and immediately pertinent example.

I think the huge amount of change that is evidenced historically suggests that gender IS infinitely malleable.
 
Consilience said:
The continuum thing doesn't work for me. If we're talking about that innate sense of which sex a person feels that they are, well that is not a social construct and that's plainly identifiable. The reinforcement of gender roles starts pretty much as soon as somebody is born, so if there wasn't a fixed neurological setup for a person's gender identity and it was simply the product of culturally conditioning an arbitrary model into people then transgender people most likely just wouldn't exist and if they did then they would only exist in a few western countries and electrocuting them into psychologically aligning with their sex would actually work.

Sorry - just to further follow up on the bolded point ... it's not as 'plainly identifiable' as you'd always think. There's a surprising number of exceptions to the 'rules' of binary physical sex. The speed with which the medical establishment seeks to 'correct' them (without the permission of the person concerned, and historically often with their parents' knowledge) is clear evidence of how much anxiety this causes and our commitment to the 'rightness' of the binary system. There's quite a vocal intersex movement now of people who are saying they really wouldn't have preferred to not have had their genitals operated on in infancy. It's a tricky area, but I prefer to follow the voice of those concerned, rather than ... I don't know ... science, religion, social norms, whatever.
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