Conversation between two philosophers: what does it mean to be a man or a woman?

Holly: "You also said “in fact the vast majority of women objectify men sexually just as much as men objectify women”. Hah! I hope it does not seem too obnoxious to suggest that this might be an example of what I have just been trying to explain, namely some things being largely invisible to men, which allows them (here, you) to assume the situation is roughly symmetrical for the sexes. Girls start being sexually objectified by boys and men around the age of puberty. They are routinely subject to sexualised comments about their bodies and appearance, from people they know, and from people they don’t, e.g. in street harassment and catcalling. Many teenage girls develop eating disorders or self-harming problems in what is arguably a result of this treatment. Pornography, which presents a particularly distorted view of women and girls as things for men to fuck, makes this situation considerably worse. Advertising uses women’s bodies and women’s sexuality to sell products. In her representations in film and television she is generally presented as something whose primary value lies in her appearance.None of thisis true for men. I am sure you can find some examples of a handsome shirtless man being used to sell cologne or whatever, but this is nowhere near as pervasive, and with nowhere near the consequences, as it has for girls."

Well said.

Exactly that

Treats women with total dismissal

While I agree with a lot of what Michael Hauskeller is saying, it's interesting that he is making the same mistake that many men seem to make in this argument. Which is namely to assume there is a symmetry between man/woman, transman/transwoman.

We can all understand the asymmetry in race - i.e. that a white person claiming a black identity is far more offensive than a black person claiming a white identity.

Dr Lawford-Smith tries to point it out but you can tell he's just not getting it. At one point he even tries to argue that women objectify men as much (and in the same way) as men objectify women. I liked Holly's response: "Hah!"

Really interesting. Holly in particular makes a lot of excellent points. Thank you for posting.

The other point you made was about hypothethical-you’s claim to be a woman, and how that connects to knowing what it is like to be a woman. I think this claim, when men make it, is enormously hubristic, and reveals a complete dismissal of women. It is ‘colonial’ in the metaphorical sense – it treats ‘woman’ as a sort of conceptual terra nullius, that has no indigenous inhabitants

That very neatly nails something we've been discussing here for years.

I've only read the first two sections as yet, good so far especially Dr Lawford-Smith's part.

"But the claim itself is ontological: it is about what I am, and not about what I want to be or have, or how people should or should not behave towards me. And that is what makes it so interesting philosophically because it is not at all obvious what exactly it is that is being claimed here. For that reason, it is also unclear what would make such a claim true or false."

This has for me always been the central issue - those who hold that TWAW are making an ontological claim, which they (a) never flesh out (other than by assertion or by listing a set of sexist stereotypes) and (b) never tell us what the truth or falsity of such a claim consists in.

This is particularly clear with the "no true transwoman" claim often made vis a vis sex offenders for instance: the line shifts from "this will never happen" to "this hardly ever happens" to (when you point out that half the trans-identifying male prisoners are banged up for sex crimes) to "but they're not really true trans" without ever telling us how we could know the truth or falsity of someone's claim to be a woman.