Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Pattern-chaser]

No other serious physiological/psychological conditions do we rely on self diagnosis and affirmation.

Yes. For autism, self-diagnosis is surprisingly accurate, but formal recognition and diagnosis requires more than just acceptance or affirmation; it requires careful consideration. I imagine the same is true of any condition.

[Sculptor1]

OMG.
This can be like swimming thought treacle.
I did not imply that the "concept" is innate. I suggest that gender is due to unnate propoensities and is not primarily a socially imposed phenomenon.
If you have been following what I have been saying, I talked about a monkey strudy.
I''m pretty sure that those monkey girls attracted to dullies, and those moneky boys attracted to toy trucks do not have a "concept" of gender, but are in fact expressing an innate propesity to behave in gender specific ways..


Gender is a thing. Ask any elephant.

I am not an elephant. I have been much influenced by elder brothers and an admired father and mother with the result I have always regarded myself as female sex and female gender, and I preferred building things and making dens to playing with dolls and prams. Now I am adult I'm more interested in steam engines and transport than fashions , and I always have been. I don't feel abnormal.
Elephants have had enough years to evolve by natural selection so that secondary sexual behaviours are well defined and predictable as for elephants. This is not the case with homo sapiens who evolve very fast compared with other species , and sapiens's reliance on cultural evolution is their only strategy for subsistence; sapiens has a bad backbone , poor posture, and not very good special senses.

So what?
How does this counter anything I said?

The possibility of rapid cultural change applies to humans but hardly at all to elephants.

Obviously , but cultural change is not innate, only the propensity for it. IN exactly the same whay that personal choices about which skirt you prefer to wear in not innate. But the basic orientation is innate. People do not chose their alignment.

This discussion is about innateness of gender.

DUH.
And this is EXACTLY what i have been talking about

Gender is comparative behavior . Secondary sexual characteristics in humans and elephants are behavioural and anatomical. The degree to which the sexual and other behaviour of elephants is almost absolutely innate is because it almost entirely is selected naturally .

Human behaviours change too fast to be attributable to natural selection.

I think you want to point out that fast changing behaviours are cultural and not genetic. Actually both sucumb to NS, in different ways.
A culture that is not sucessful goes by the wayside.
But that is a completely different story.

[Lagayascienza]

I agree, Fried Egg. As I mentioned above, I now question my own inclination towards the innate model. We just do not know enough and, therefore, extreme caution should be used with transitioning, especially where surgery is being considered.

Whether or not gender is innate or cultural, a better society would not gender anybody. I call for gender to be as politically incorrect as race.

That's a nice post-modernist ideal, Belinda. But in reality, don't people "gender" themselves to a large extent? Did it not just dawn on you, given your physical bits and pieces, and based on feedback you got from family and others, that you were a girl (if you are a girl), and did you not then, more or less automatically, identify as a girl? That's certainly how it was for me. It was always obvious to me that I was a boy. There was never any uncertainty in my mind. Therefore, I wonder of it's possible for society not to "gender" us when we do much of the "gendering" ourselves.

The question of gender identity and gender dysmorphia are seeming more and more to me like multi-faceted issues. There is what the individual thinks their gender is or ought to be, and then there is what others close to them and what "society" feel about how the individual feels about it. So, I'm a lot less sure about it than I was.

[Sculptor1]

Now what about gays and trans? It's clear that maleness and femaleness is not equally distributed amongst us. Some women make bad mothers and refuse to have children, whilst some men can make better parents than their wifes. Some men weak; some women strong.

There are both feminine males/men and masculine females/women. There is both female masculinity and male femininity. But the basic biological distinction between males/men and females/women isn't thereby blurred at all!

For each of us there is no blurring.
We are however hampered by our insistance to pidgoen hole everything; to make everything easier to understand and prejudge.
Men are caring, yet since this attribute seems to be more prevalent in women it gets a "feminine" lable.
Women are agressive,yet since this attribute seems to be more prevalent in men it gets a "masculine" lable.

Culture and experience can nurture these attributes, and there is no doubt that the labels have a role to force norms.
The result can be extreme. So we get rancid MAGA idiots; traditionalists; fundementalists and so on that insist that gender "dysphoria", or homosexuality is some kind of communist/demonic/or "woke" plot to destroy American or other (insert equally absurd notion) way to destroy the family and state.

By the same token culture can help iron out the false divisions so that it might be okay for men to not be such arses, and to contribute more to childcare; whilst women might be allowed to break the chains of the kitchen sink, and have a career.

It is my view that whatever innate element we possess that humans can thrive more happily if they are allowed to express that innateness. To this end the second example works better; allowing the individual to find their own place on the spectra of male/female atributes.

Whilst it cannot be doubted that expression of gender indentity is informed and modified by our social experience. There one other thing that might be of some significance, and that is the physical environment.
It is clear that horrmones play a very big part in our behaviour. There is also no doubt that pseudo-hormones are the result of human pollution and these get into the food chain.

Alligators can switch gender according to the prevalence of environmental oestrognes in the water. And there have bee cases of a lack of male gators reported attributable to HRT, and The Pill getting into the water supply.
There was also a report of Jack Daniels having dangerously high amounts of oestrogens concentrated through the mash used by the industry.
I wonder to what degree gender dysphoria may be partly on the increase due to pollutants.

I realise the section in blue seems rather speculative. But the Forum does not allow citing offcite, SO you will have to investigate this yourself.

Whatever the cause of gender dysphoria, it is real for the children it affects and the backlash is not only harmful to them but hysterial can shrill; red rags for the gammon of the MAGA ranks.
Gender dysphorics deserve better.

[Sculptor1]

I agree, Fried Egg. As I mentioned above, I now question my own inclination towards the innate model. We just do not know enough and, therefore, extreme caution should be used with transitioning, especially where surgery is being considered.

Whether or not gender is innate or cultural, a better society would not gender anybody. I call for gender to be as politically incorrect as race.

That's a nice post-modernist ideal, Belinda. But in reality, don't people "gender" themselves to a large extent? Did it not just dawn on you, given your physical bits and pieces, and based on feedback you got from family and others, that you were a girl (if you are a girl), and did you not then, more or less automatically, identify as a girl? That's certainly how it was for me. It was always obvious to me that I was a boy. There was never any uncertainty in my mind. Therefore, I wonder of it's possible for society not to "gender" us when we do much of the "gendering" ourselves.

Do people "gender themsleves"?? Really?
I think I am with you with this one.
I am male
I did not chose that.
I could not be gay. I've had gay friends and so very complimentary offers of what would be amazing sex (and I love sex) - But there is no way I could ever touch a man sexually. This is viscerally abhorant; disgusting.
But I can't hate a gay man. There are even aspect of a gay man that I find attractive. But that is because the are feminine. And it is the feminine that nature has made me desire..

If "choice" is woke then woke is making a big mistake. The truth is better than a slogan.
We have a moral duty to support gender dysphorics, and the entire LGBT community allowing them to be free to express themselves as they wish. And to the degree that such expression is innate or a choice should not change that support.

However I think it is a dangerous myth to pretend that gender indentity is simply a choice. Because that would make religious conversion therapy a viable strategy, when in truth it is used to oppress and surpress the true natures of young people. And that is horrific.

[Lagayascienza]

I've heard both gay and straight people say the same thing, Sculptor1. I have several gay male and gay female friends (same sex couples) and they say that the idea of having it off with the opposite gender has never crossed their minds; that they would find it abhorrent, just as straight people like yourself say that they find the idea of same sex relations abhorrent. And my gay friends say that they have always been thus, from their earliest sexual awakenings. And all the straight people in my life say the same. If this is so, then, clearly, sexuality is deep-seated and, at least in the gay and straight in the people I know, seems to have had nothing to do with choice or upbringing or socialization.

Against this, however, we have to consider that there are actually people who are bisexual - that is, they can "swing" either way. So maybe human sexuality, in all its variety, is just sexuality, and variety in sexuality in humans is normal. That is, as well as being polar, sexuality in some people can also be be somewhat fluid. Therefore, that fluidity, too, is likely natural. If this is so then, like gay and straight people, I imagine that bisexual people do not make a choice to be bisexual. They just are.

I'm fine with all of this. As far as i can see, we only get problems where certain people want to police sexuality and , as you say, want to "oppress and suppress the true natures of young people". And, in my experience, the people who seem inclined to "suppressing and oppressing" seem to predictably be religious fundamentalists who just seem incapable of entertaining the idea of diversity. They seem to want everyone to be as they are. And they know they worship the right god because their god hates the same people they do.

[Sculptor1]

I've heard both gay and straight people say the same thing, Sculptor1. I have several gay male and gay female friends (same sex couples) and they say that the idea of having it off with the opposite gender has never crossed their minds; that they would find it abhorrent, just as straight people like yourself say that they find the idea of same sex relations abhorrent. And my gay friends say that they have always been thus, from their earliest sexual awakenings. And all the straight people in my life say the same. If this is so, then, clearly, sexuality is deep-seated and, at least in the gay and straight in the people I know, seems to have had nothing to do with choice or upbringing or socialization.

Against this, however, we have to consider that there are actually people who are bisexual - that is, they can "swing" either way. So maybe human sexuality, in all its variety, is just sexuality, and variety in sexuality in humans is normal. That is, as well as being polar, sexuality in some people can also be be somewhat fluid. Therefore, that fluidity, too, is likely natural. If this is so then, like gay and straight people, I imagine that bisexual people do not make a choice to be bisexual. They just are.

The existence of bisexuality is not "against this" just another aspect of it. Such people are se in the niddle of the spectrum of desire, capable of either direction or both.

I'm fine with all of this. As far as i can see, we only get problems where certain people want to police sexuality and , as you say, want to "oppress and suppress the true natures of young people". And, in my experience, the people who seem inclined to "suppressing and oppressing" seem to predictably be religious fundamentalists who just seem incapable of entertaining the idea of diversity. They seem to want everyone to be as they are. And they know they worship the right god because their god hates the same people they do.

Yes, such people are scared of difference. Education can address this problem but I understand the many states in the US are taking steps against this brading this as "woke"; banning books, and other freedoms of expression. Trump's friends in the religious right plan to make this nationwide with "Project 2025". Although I do not live in the US- such moves and encourage bigotries in Europe. We seem to be sleepwalking towards a new nazi state. Paradoxically the right peddle the idea that "woke" is unamerican, antifreedom, fascist, nzi and communist all at the same time. We live in a Orwellian world with ideas and words urned upside down.

[Consul]

Clearly, we still do not know enough about the cause(s) of GD. And, therefore, we do not know which, if either, of the developmental, biopsychosocial model or the innate gender identity model of GD is correct.

In my opinion, the latter is incorrect simply because its basic concepts of gender and gender identity are ill-defined.

What is not ill-defined is a transsexual person's cognitive dissonance between knowing that one is male/female and desiring to be female/male.

[Sy Borg]

Clearly, we still do not know enough about the cause(s) of GD. And, therefore, we do not know which, if either, of the developmental, biopsychosocial model or the innate gender identity model of GD is correct.

In my opinion, the latter is incorrect simply because its basic concepts of gender and gender identity are ill-defined.

What is not ill-defined is a transsexual person's cognitive dissonance between knowing that one is male/female and desiring to be female/male.

I would suggest that transpeople who are not talking about having babies are well aware of their biological status, just that their sense of self is at odds with that, probably in at least some cases, is due to hormonal and chemical influences during the period of brain formation during gestation.

[Belinda]

Does anyone here think an entire woman who falls in love with another woman would go to all the trouble of turning herself into an entire man, so she can make love to her? I don't !

I think it much more probable she would change her gender identity to suit the other woman who is the object of her love or lust.
It's comparatively easy to change gender identity as gender does not exist .

[Pattern-chaser]

Does anyone here think an entire woman who falls in love with another woman would go to all the trouble of turning herself into an entire man, so she can make love to her?

Are you asking/commenting about the difference between being gay and being trans-gender?

[Lagayascienza]

Clearly, we still do not know enough about the cause(s) of GD. And, therefore, we do not know which, if either, of the developmental, biopsychosocial model or the innate gender identity model of GD is correct.

In my opinion, the latter is incorrect simply because its basic concepts of gender and gender identity are ill-defined.

What is not ill-defined is a transsexual person's cognitive dissonance between knowing that one is male/female and desiring to be female/male.

Yes, whatever theory we may want to subscribe to, is somewhat beside the point. The point is that, as you say, in the case of transexuals, there is cognitive dissonance between knowing that one is male/female and desiring to be female/male. It is a real problem the trans person has to deal with, whatever its cause.

If this dissonance could be easily resolved by the trans person just by a simple act of will, that is, by simply deciding to accept and identify as their birth sex, we might write GD off as just a fad or bit temporary whimsy. But GD has been around forever and it appears to be very deep-seated. Like most things in humans and other animals, I suspect GD has at least some physical basis. That is, I doubt it is entirely psychological. The reason I say this is because there is evidence to suggest that other variations in human sexuality, such as homosexuality, have a physical basis.

[Samana Johann]

Does anyone here think an entire woman who falls in love with another woman would go to all the trouble of turning herself into an entire man, so she can make love to her?

Are you asking/commenting about the difference between being gay and being trans-gender?

There would be no matter on such if there isn't any sense of gender... yet now should one think of how much troubles the "genderless" folk produces, and struggle with it. So much about the genderless-stupidy and effects of pseudo-liberalism. Btw. celibacy and virtues, holly life, would be the way toward the Brahma realm. Beings there have no gender issues, since beyond sensuality. Just for the case one desires for real ways of liberalism, but possible to hard, and easier to try further to claim.

[LuckyR]

We all have an innate sense of self.

What is a self?

Sorry, you misread, I didn't say "innate sense of a self".

[Belinda]

Does anyone here think an entire woman who falls in love with another woman would go to all the trouble of turning herself into an entire man, so she can make love to her?

Are you asking/commenting about the difference between being gay and being trans-gender?

Not quite.
I'm submitting that each individual's sexual orientation is on a spectrum between almost totally gay, and almost totally not gay.
I also claim that before many years have passed sexual orientation whatever and whenever it be will have become normalised.
I also claim that gendered behaviour will soon be as entirely a cultural matter as religioned and politicised behaviour.