And a community of transgenders or non-binary people who report conflicts between the cultural norms they're in, their gender expression, the expectations of their bodies, and the words they need to use to describe them... This doesn't count as a linguistic community? — fdrake
There are commonalities of experience here, shared cultural norms, shared words - just a different embedding in them. — fdrake
UN definitions of gender expression/identity and transgender and sex put you in mind that it's a private language? — fdrake
But the moment the word 'woman' is used to describe how a single individual feels, with no external reference at all (associated behaviours such as with 'pain', 'happiness' etc), — Isaac
But it completely baffles me how you think gender identity is just what an individual feels, rather than a composition of how someone feels and society's norms... how they identify with them? — fdrake
Can you really not talk about how it feels to take a place in a social role? Society? Culture? — fdrake
One of the things that suggests a rule is in play is that mis-identification can happen. It does. Most of the time gender non-conforming teens stop gender non-conforming and do not feel the need to transition. — fdrake
'identifying with a gender' isn't a speech act on par with writing down a symbol for a mental sensation, it's a whole social role which is performed; a correlated series of speech acts with bodies and gestures, choices, thinking styles, norms... The image that you have of 'identification' with a gender is very shallow if you think that it resembles writing down a symbol to convey the presence of a sensation in all relevant respects. — fdrake
one is not speaking about something other than gender, but rather a fact of gender itself, set by nothing other than itself. — TheWillowOfDarkness
I'm saying that it makes no sense for them to have a private view as to what referent the gender words are used to pick out.
People are labouring under the expectation gender means something other than gender. Gender isn't recognised as itself amongst many people. They think a membership granted by having some other fact. — TheWillowOfDarkness
So what can the trans person mean in this context? The usual accounts of gender membership don't work. Their identity is opposite or other to other gender asserted in these accounts. Something else has to be found. — TheWillowOfDarkness
one is trans because they have a gender which is other to what is expected under some notion of gender — TheWillowOfDarkness
I guess what grinds my gears here is that trans people have commonalities of experience, as do men and women, so do non-binaries. You can do sociology, anthropology, psychology and medicine on this topic. If discourse on gender and the self reports/gender identifying processes of people were so lacking fixity, like the arbitrariness you suggest in:
I'm saying that it makes no sense for them to have a private view as to what referent the gender words are used to pick out.
I'd think the world would look a lot different. If gender identification actually worked like what W criticises in the private language argument; there could be no articulable commonalities. And there are. — fdrake
Sure, I'll grant that, but what does that have to do with what frdake said, or this topic?Say you're born into a family where your parents used ivf with donor sperm and eggs. They also had already adopted two other kids. They raise you and love you your whole life.
According to you, these would not be your family? — Artemis
You're talking about legalities. I'm talking about genetics.you can very much legally disown children and parents. — Artemis
So trans people aren't men or women, they are trans. You can't say that trans have a commonality of experience with men or women, only other trans.I guess what grinds my gears here is that trans people have commonalities of experience, as do men and women, so do non-binaries. — fdrake
Sure, I'll grant that, but what does that have to do with what frdake said, or this topic? — Harry Hindu
What form of life underpins the uses of the word 'woman', 'man', 'gender' etc? Come on, words are never just words alone. We have the benefit of a social background to look at here. — fdrake
Can you describe how this works to me? Like, give me an example — fdrake
We're talking about two different kinds of familial relationships. My point was that you don't need a government or culture to create the biological family relationship that is inherent in nature. You can only disown the socially constructed version.The whole point was, if you don't recall, that family is based on actions and social roles rather than just genetics.
If we can assert that I can become part of a family without being genetically related to them, and if I can stop being part of a family I am genetically related to, then it's an action and choice-based social role. — Artemis
You can only disown the socially constructed version. — Harry Hindu
You can't disown genetics. I did use that term, right - "genetics"? Yep, so either you're not paying attention, or you're building straw-men.
I never said there wasn't one. I said that they're different types of relationships - genetic and social - and that we're not talking about the same one. Why do you think that is?But how can you disown the socially constructed version? I thought there wasn't one! — fdrake
Now, let's imagine a world where we have this mystical new word called 'gender_H', — fdrake
No, social constructions aren't magic. They're just like being able to disown a family you're born into. You don't disown the hereditary mechanism, that'd be a category error, but you don't belong in a family just because you're born into it; otherwise disowning would be impossible. If you can bend your mind to accept a dictionary definition, or Google's, or the UN's, where gender has socially constructed aspects, I'd be very happy to continue trying to explain word meanings to you. — fdrake
Social constructionism is a theory of knowledge in sociology and communication theory that examines the development of jointly constructed understandings of the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about reality. — Wikipedia
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