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Original poster

I am an elderly man. I cannot understand transgender ideology ...

88 replies

9toenails · 28/12/2020 09:11

... I think this is because it is incomprehensible. It is not possible to understand something that does not make sense.

Given what 'transwoman' means, 'transwomen are women' is analytically false (sc. logically contradictory) if 'women' means 'women', and plainly nonsensical if 'women' is taken to mean something other than 'women'.

Confused about what 'women' means? Well, think of your mother; she was certainly a woman. The mother of my children, she is a woman, as is the mother of any human child; likewise my grown-up daughters. All of them, women. Knowledge of the meaning of such a common word as 'women' is not, as they say, rocket science, at least for a native English speaker.

Do transgender ideologues themselves understand their own claims? No, they do not, at least if they sincerely try to assert 'transwomen are women'. 'Transwomen are women' just cannot be true. At best it can be analytically false; more likely it makes no sense.

I know many such ideologues are very young. Still, though, it strains credulity to think they have no inkling of their own lack of understanding. Why, then, do they keep up their nonsense rather than trying to learn? It would seem we are forced to consider more-or-less nefarious motives. Such as ... ?

Can anyone help me out here?

OP posts:
Original poster
9toenails · 29/12/2020 13:24

@notassigned

I'm afraid a lot of the logic theory arguments are over my head but the way I look at it is this:

Can I identify as a transwomen? No. Why not? Because I was born (and therefore am) female*. TW are born (and are) male. Women can not be male. Therefore transwomen cannot be women

  • this relies on woman = adult human female. And it explains why some TRAs rail so vehemently against the definition of women as AHFs. And why they say man/woman is 'gender' and male/female is sex.

It underlines why we cannot and must not let go of that definition which has served us for all of history.

Some TRAs are now also trying to claim the word female for TW. Overreach will always be their undoing.

Theory, though interesting to some, is really beside the point. What counts is practice. Your logic looks impeccable, in practice, like that of most people here.

OK, we can all make mistakes, sometimes about facts, sometimes in thinking things through. Luckily, we can often rely on others helping us to see, and rectify, our errors. Debate: a good thing.

However, you do not need any explicitly formulated logical theory to think things through correctly.

In a similar vein, I wonder if strict emphasis on definition may be a mistake. More often than not, we do not need any explicit definition in order to know what we mean.

In some contexts mostly of a more-or-less technical nature definitions may be useful; for instance, 'a zoonotic disease' is 'one that can be transmitted naturally from animals to humans'. Or (here is a relatively recent neologism) 'a transwoman ' is 'a man who wishes/believes himself to be a woman.'

That is fine as far as definition goes. In most cases, though, we do not need an explicit definition in order to know the meaning of a word and use it correctly. In such cases, it may be a distraction, I have found, to look for a specific, explicit all-encompassing definition.

I know what 'woman' means. We all do. We do not need a dictionary to tell us. We just need to know English. (Compare: it is only recently I found out what 'zoonotic' means; likewise 'transwoman'.)

Do transgender ideologues know English? The English ones surely do. So we have the right to just ask them, off the bat as it were (without opening the OED or whatever), what on earth they think they mean by 'transwomen are women', given that this is either self-contradictory or meaningless.

No theory needed. Just common sense.

OP posts:
AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 29/12/2020 12:23

the perception, not they perception

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 29/12/2020 12:22

I think we need to start from the basis that there is a difference in kind between "female" and "feminine", and between "male" and "masculine".

"Female" and "male" are biological, in all cases; some individuals may be a combination of both, or may be neither, but all cases of female or male are defined by their biology.

"Feminine" and "masculine" are performative, and can be said of actions performed by anyone of either female or male sex.

Thus weightlifting is perceived in general as a masculine performance, nurturing in general as a feminine performance. Females can weight-lift, males can nurture, but they perception of the activities is of feminine and masculine.

Male people who for whatever reason strongly wish to be female find that performative femininity is not satisfactory to them, and wish actually to become female. They cannot do this, but they want very much to be acknowledged as female (except where this is not convenient, as eg nursing the elderly, deferring at all times to the male, being paid less for the same work as a male, and so forth). Hence their assertion that what is not fact, is fact. Similarly females who long to be male wish to be told that they are male.

All the rest stems from that desire: it is what used to be called "crying for the moon".

SpudulikaSlob · 29/12/2020 12:05

I sometimes feel like starting a thread for people like me who regularly feel a bit thick on here.
We can discuss the basics all over again.
All you smart cookies would be welcome to lurk, as long as you didn't post anything Xmas Grin

InvisibleDragon · 29/12/2020 12:03

If you are interested in logic arguments, you might like this article. I warn you that it's very long and takes quite a while to come around to the gender identity point, but it is at least quite readable.

It's a few years old, but it gives an interesting, category / set-based argument for "trans women are women" - basically that gender is a human-constructed category and that we can alter the category boundaries if another categorisation becomes more useful.

I actually bought into this argument for quite a while, by maintaining the distinction between gender identity and biological sex. I no longer do, because of the new insistence that biological sex does not exist / is a social construct. Which made my brain explode.

slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/

RufustheSniggeringReindeer · 29/12/2020 11:18

I can’t spell the big words

And my spell check hates me

😩

But seriously it is a very interesting thread...ds1 and his boyfriend pulled this stuff on me back in October...the whole logic thing, I didn’t know whether to be impressed or pissed off. I went for pissed off as i felt it hid the fact that i had no idea what they were saying 😀

DialSquare · 29/12/2020 11:16

I regularly feel a bit thick on this board but this is taking it to another level!

HecatesCats · 29/12/2020 11:11

GrinGrinGrin Rufus. I'm very much enjoying this thread and googling the big words.

RufustheSniggeringReindeer · 29/12/2020 11:09

Wait thats no strictly true

I understand the title...

RufustheSniggeringReindeer · 29/12/2020 11:08

I have literally NO idea whats going on 😳

Sounds good though...

Original poster
9toenails · 29/12/2020 10:04

@CaraDuneRedux

OP, I think you're confusing propositional and predicate logic. Also I think the relationship between predicate logic and set theory is rather more complex than you think it is (it is possible to prove soundness and completeness for predicate logic, which quantifies over individuals, but not for higher order logics which quantify over the predicates themselves).

But you're spot on about trans ideology being a pile of hooey.

You are right to pull me up on this. We do need more than propositional logic to pick up the fallacy.

'Bachelors are married' may, indeed, be parsed as 'For all x, if bachelor(x) then married(x)'. So, indeed, full first-order, given the analysis. Likewise 'transwomen are women': its analysis (which is what shows its status as a contradiction) requires looking at the predicates. So, sure, first-order predicate calculus is needed.

As you say, the real divide comes at the movement to second-order. But thanks anyway for the correction. I was just sloppy.

As for the relation between set theory and logic, yes, complicated. But at a basic, informal level the isomorphism works well enough, I think. And, well, ZFC is first-order, no? Am I missing something else here?

[None of this does anything to let the trans ideologist off the hook, as you emphasise. And it is something of a derailment. I would be grateful for any further thoughts, though, particularly about how this all might play out with the non-technically adept.]

OP posts:
notassigned · 29/12/2020 10:03

I'm afraid a lot of the logic theory arguments are over my head but the way I look at it is this:

Can I identify as a transwomen? No. Why not? Because I was born (and therefore am) female*. TW are born (and are) male. Women can not be male. Therefore transwomen cannot be women

  • this relies on woman = adult human female. And it explains why some TRAs rail so vehemently against the definition of women as AHFs. And why they say man/woman is 'gender' and male/female is sex.

It underlines why we cannot and must not let go of that definition which has served us for all of history.

Some TRAs are now also trying to claim the word female for TW. Overreach will always be their undoing.

CaraDuneRedux · 29/12/2020 07:23

OP, I think you're confusing propositional and predicate logic. Also I think the relationship between predicate logic and set theory is rather more complex than you think it is (it is possible to prove soundness and completeness for predicate logic, which quantifies over individuals, but not for higher order logics which quantify over the predicates themselves).

But you're spot on about trans ideology being a pile of hooey.

FWRLurker · 29/12/2020 05:55

Here’s my steelman of the argument, though I don’t think trans activists would agree, some transsexuals probably would.

A trans woman is a person born male who would prefer that everyone they interact with is either deceived into believing they are female, or at least pretends to. In order to make this more likely trans women will sometimes change their clothing or have cosmetic medical procedures done or alternatively just shout at people until they comply some trans women have very negative perception of the sexed aspects of their male bodies as well that causes them great distress, called gender dysphoria.

When people say trans women are women what us meant is “trans women should be treated in law as if they are women, despite the fact that they are male and the usual definition of woman is adult human female, because they’ve suffered so much and can’t we just be nice?”

dyslek · 29/12/2020 01:43

From your original question, I think the conundrum is not 'in what way is this idology logical' as it obviously isen't.
The conundrum is how/why are so many following an idology that is so obviously such utter nonesense.
I wish I knew the answer.

ClaireP20 · 28/12/2020 23:42

Do you fancy Eddie Izzard? If not, why not?

(Is it that 'she' still gas a fully functioning penis and wears false breasts? Does this make you transphobic)

Mumofgirlswholiketoplaywithmud · 28/12/2020 19:31

@9toenails thank you- that's really helpful!

StillWeRise · 28/12/2020 18:00

I think the comparison to transubstantiation is pertinent. To people outside of that way of thinking, especially in modern times, it seems utterly bizarre and of no consequence if none believes or not. There are people still believing in it now of course and it has importance for them personally but doesn't greatly impact how they go about their everyday lives.

However, there have been times in history when whether or not you believed in transubstantiation would have massive implications...on what profession you could enter for example.

Original poster
9toenails · 28/12/2020 17:56

@TheGreatSloth

OP, what is propositional calculus? Do I need to dig out my old (very old) logic text books?

(And I agree with your earlier point: because this is an irrational belief akin to a religion, trying to demolish it by means of reason is difficult if not impossible. Its adherents are in search of emotional validation, not accuracy.)

Propositional calculus is the formal basis of logic dealing with the notion and usage of words such as "NOT," "OR," "AND," and "implies."

[This taken from Propositional Calculus, in Eric Weisstein's wonderful encyclopedia of maths (bought by Steven Wolfram a while ago, long story).]

Some people call it ' sentential calculus'; I suppose it depends on whether you think of sentences as themselves being true, or more carefully, perhaps, that it is what sentences say or express ('propositions', in other words) that can be true (or false of course).

I think the latter, but it is easier to explain if I pretend to think the former. So, here are three sentences (which express three propositions; I will stop saying that):
A: The cat sat on the mat.
B: The dog ate the bone.
C: The pigeon flew out of the window.

Each of those could be true or false. Think of these as atomic sentences or atoms of meaning. OK, now, we can combine these to get molecular sentences as follows: (examples)

A=>C ('If the cat sat on the mat, then the pigeon flew out of the window' or '(the truth of) "the cat sat on the mat" implies (the truth of) "the pigeon flew out of the window"'
(A and B) => C ('If the cat sat on the mat and the dog ate the bone, then the pigeon flew out of the window')
not (A or B) ('It is not the case that the cat sat on the mat and the dog ate the bone')

OK? Now, the truth of a molecular sentence depends on the truth of its constituent atoms and how these words 'not', 'and', 'or', 'implies' work. For instance, for any two sentences X and Y, ( X and Y ) will be true whenever X is true and Y is true, but false otherwise ... and so on. (The thing most students find tricky here is how 'implies' works: ( X implies Y ) is true whenever it is not the case that X is true and Y is false. Think about it.)

( 'not', 'and', 'or', 'implies' are called ' logical connectives ': they connect sentences to get other sentences. They are interestingly related.)

There. Propositional calculus. As I said, this is structurally the same as ('isomorphic to') basic set theory (think 'set union' and 'set intersection' as 'or' and 'and' ... 'subset of' will get you 'implies': can you see how?). Also there is an isomorphism between each of these two structures and the structure of certain basic electrical connections in circuits (connectives are now 'in parallel'/'or'/'set union', 'in series'/'and'/'set intersection' ...) -- Hence computers.

This, with all its As, Bs, Xs and Ys, looks a bit like algebra. The algebraic structure exemplified by the logic, the set theory, the computer circuits and so on is called Boolean Algebra, after George Boole (1815-1864). Also important, ... well, look it up: Stanford, a good place to start.

[Sorry, you probably did not want that much. My teacher-mode took over. There's a start, anyway.]

OP posts:
Abitofalark · 28/12/2020 17:07

[quote Mumofgirlswholiketoplaywithmud]@Abitofalark it's just from butler's Wikipedia page en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler#:~:text=Given%20the%20social%20nature%20of,associated%20with%20male%20or%20female.

I'd used the phrase "strawman" and "steelman". If someone wants to give a definition of "woman" which is a steelman of the ideology then I am happy to listen..[/quote]
Thanks for the reference. I know what strawman means, as in strawman argument.

Angryresister · 28/12/2020 16:47

Be careful 9toenails . Poster including myself have been deleted here for comparisons to a weird religion...of course you may be exempt being a male!

TheGreatSloth · 28/12/2020 16:32

OP, what is propositional calculus? Do I need to dig out my old (very old) logic text books?

(And I agree with your earlier point: because this is an irrational belief akin to a religion, trying to demolish it by means of reason is difficult if not impossible. Its adherents are in search of emotional validation, not accuracy.)

Original poster
9toenails · 28/12/2020 16:13

@auldcraw

Ninetoenails - If your new to this transwomen=women idiology, then your in for a rollcoaster ride of hard to believe facts. Your not wrong - no one can change sex. If you want to learn more and like my OH who is a man of a certain age like yourself you might enjoy Glinner on you tube - "The mess were in". There's a lot more to this than womens rights - though thats a big part of it. Its also about safeguarding children - have you followed the story about Keira Bell. Read the transgendertrend site (type in one word no hyphen else you'll end up reading balony about changing sex) to read what's being taught in our schools too Its also a free speech issue - Suzanne Moore, Harry Miller, Maya Forstater, these are names to look up. Sorry if you know more about all this than I'm giving credit - I really don't want to come across as a pain - but when I started to talk about this my OH thought i was making some of this up - or had joined some strange cult.
Thank you auldcraw.

I am not new to this, although I do have a lot to learn.

Yes, really it was the implications for children that really made me sit up and take notice. My own children are full-grown and in many ways well-insulated from sexist nonsense, at least in thought and sensibility. But I have grandchildren ...

Not the least concerning aspect of transgenderism is the way it reinforces the very gender stereotypes we once fought solidly against in our own lives and in our children's upbringing. It is weirdly strange that young people who consider themselves socially progressive should explicitly support such a regressive and reactionary sexist ideology.

Yes, it seems like a strange cult, not least in its irrational/nonsensical underpinnings. One aspect among many of the general loss of good sense in our culture? Sometimes I fear so. But then my own children and the women of MN FWR give me hope.

OP posts:
Original poster
9toenails · 28/12/2020 15:45

@FanEffinTastic

I'm enjoying this thread, *@9toenails*. Many thanks.
You are welcome. Thank you for the feedback.
OP posts:
Original poster
9toenails · 28/12/2020 15:44

[quote Mumofgirlswholiketoplaywithmud]@9toenails that is an excellent post. Wine[/quote]
Thank you. That is kind.

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