this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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The article asks what is the politically neutral answer to the question of whether a trans woman is a woman. I wonder why this is a political question at all. Send like a question for scientists - biologists and sociologists and such. Seems they have achieved something like a consensus on the matter. I don't see anything inherently political about that, except that folks of a certain political bent have made it political. It's not a matter of "what do we do in public policy about trans people" but "fascists refuse to accept trans people in society and have decided to lambast and punish them".
In case my position isn't obvious, trans people are people and trans rights are human rights. If there wasn't a group of people trying to make them into a second class group of citizens (or a group of "eradicated vermin") we wouldn't be having a political conversation about this at all.
Let me preface by saying that I myself am not making a political statement, just a quick retort/correction:
No, that's not a scientific question or statement, it's a sociological one, which makes it intrinsically political.
We, as a society, or a large enough group, can come up with a consensus belief that trans rights are human rights and that we can collectively treat other people by the gender role of their choice.
But biologically speaking, being trans doesn't change one's chromosomes. Which is why I think it's misguided to say that trans issues are actually questions that hard science should answer, they aren't.
Which, ironically, is why Elon's moronic AI gambit is failing (by his metrics), because the online culture he used to as a dataset to train it, has collectively agreed that trans women are women, amongst other social and political opinions that his sycophants can't stand.
He probably should have trained it with TruthSocial's cesspool instead.
I can't wait to see Tay AI 2.0 level reincarnation after they "retrain it". It's going be to hilarious.
Sociology is a social science.
I mean, science is a framework that can be applied to anything. Sociology included. So we can't currently measure a genetic cause for trans. I guess that means our current best measurement is what gender people associate with, what they personally feel is right. That also happens to be the best path towards not being a dick to people who feel like their gender does not match their "biological" gender.
If and when we can improve our measurements of this maybe we'll learn something new. Maybe we can learn what components of nature and nurture lead to gender disphoria. Then we can try to further improve quality of life for affected folks.
Fun fact, chromosomes aren't the whole story when it comes to the way a person's body develops and isn't a useful measure of what someone's gender is in any form. There are plenty of women that aren't trans with xy chromosomes and vice versa with men. See swyer and de la Chapelle syndromes for more information. There are all sorts of combinations of chromosomes someone can have and we aren't anywhere limited to just xx or xy.
Alright, you convinced me. I'm switching to Team Elmo.
That was your goal right? Take someone who agrees with your larger belief system, find something you can nitpick, and then berate them about it until they can't stomach the thought of politically aligning with you?
Because you did a bang up job.
Now excuse me, I need to go sign up for Twitter Blue and get some MAGA hats.
I'd argue that it's pretty obvious that man and woman are socially constructed, and as such - there's just no fact of the matter to get down to. I also find that most things of strict self-id basically become just a place to have "no true scotsman" arguments, and therefore we'd be better served to stop using the terms for policy making at the very least.
The person you're replying to doesn't seem to be implying anything you're arguing against in your response.
No, they're not. They're saying that because a person's chromosomes don't change based on whether they are trans or cis that a clear biological answer to the question being posed is impossible.
Like... did you read the rest of the person's comment? It's pretty clear they are not anti-trans if you read the entire context and don't just cherry pick a random sentence .
Even if the statement "trans women are women" was uncontroversial and mainstream, it'd still be political. "Cis women are women" is political.
How is “cis women are women” political when literally no one is arguing against that point?
It might be nigh-universally accepted, but that lack of controversy doesn't change a thing. It's still a statement about identity and the relationship between groups of people, and therefore a political statement.
In all seriousness, I think the politically neutral answer to "are trans women women" would probably be, "Most people think so" or "It's subjective." And if asked to provide that as a yes/no answer, the answer would be "N/A".