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

[9toenails]

... 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?

Great thread. Thanks for taking the time OP.

A religious upbringing taught me that there’s no nonsense that can’t be rationalised by someone prepared to put effort and linguistic skill into it.
Consequently I have very low tolerance for this stuff.

An amazing thread. I’m with Spud and Rufus in the bewilderment but am reading slowly with my finger under the words-faint, but pursuing.

I am also astounded that the usual posters who come and assert their gender ideologies on every thread on FWR are absent...

Hello @9toenails

Well this thread is an education! And sorry for not replying earlier to your detailed reply to my previous post (your post 28/12/2020 15:42).

So, similarly, as I said, ' 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'.

Does this count as 'demolish[ing] by semantic logical syllogisms'? I cannot be sure (what do you mean by 'semantic logical syllogism'?); and 'demolishing' is maybe a bit strong for such a simple demonstration. I stand by what I said, though. I think it correct.

Do you understand? Or do you still think me mistaken? If so, where am I going wrong, in your opinion?

I cannot begin to argue with you on logic, although I think I understand it. However I stick to my view that you cannot disprove trans ideology by logic. It is not illogical. It (as I understand it) would define a transwoman as a man who has become a woman. Or possibly someone who always was a woman and was mistakenly labelled a man. In which case 'transwomen are women' is correct.

You can question the science (and the substance). But the logic of the statement seems flawless to me, and your argument seems to me to be abstract and purely formal.

It's only logical if you have a non biologically based definition of woman.

We've been asking for one of those for quite some time, to no avail.

Male Xs are Xs - yes, fine, perfectly logical, except when the definition of X includes 'female' as both a necessary and sufficient condition.

'Male females are female' is nonsensical. It's like saying 'male cows are cows' - the word for male cattle is bull, not cow, and so there's an error in the first two words: if it is male, it is not a cow; if it is a cow, it is not male.

There is some slipperyness to this, philosophical formal logic may not be the correct approach because the issue is definitional, not logical. I am not a philosopher but I believe this is a problem of epistemology (knowledge/truth) and metaphysics (nature of reality), as well as ethics/politics philosophy of course.

Trans activists would like to change the definition of the word “woman” to be the following concept: “anyone who claims to be one”. The justification for this is from what I can see purely based on a point of view deriving from certain branches of ethics which elevate personal definition/choice over all other ethical concerns. It’s also completely unmoored from any materialist metaphysics, or rather rejects these as of any importance to peoples lives. It’s probably best therefore to approach this conversation from an ethical POV. Though certainly I think that some philosophers have done a fantastic job of hammering this POV from a metaphysical perspective, it doesn’t matter much if the entire field of material metaphysics is a priori declared unethical.

One might reasonably assert that "all women are men" if one held to the tradition calling the human race "men" (or "mankind"); but I can't see that "all men are women" would be valid, and I cannot see that replacing "all" in that proposition with "some" would increase the validity.

Both male and female bovines are cattle (or kine or neats); male ones are called "bulls", or if they are castrated called "bullocks" or "oxen" or "steers", and female ones are called cows or heifers. "A bull is a cow" is a nonsense, as much as "a cow is a bull".

(I have no idea what sort of bovine is a dogie, though I suspect it's another word for steers.)

If you change the meanings of words, as Humpty Dumpty did, you can say anything you want and it can be made to seem sensible with enough word-wrangling. Colourless green ideas sleep furiously, after all: that is grammatically correct, but semantically nonsensical.

What is wrong with 'transwomen are women' is not that its advocates are over-endowed with theory partially digested; it is that they are silly. The best way of dealing with silly arguments in or out of the philosophy class is to point out their silliness. Taking a theoretical stance rarely helps with this. Common sense is needed.

I'm as gender-critical as the next adult human female but I really take exception to this approach. Women, the AHF type, have suffered greatly in history from the codification of incorrect and limiting beliefs about us as "Common Sense" and women who challenge them as "Silly". A hundred and fifty years ago the idea that women are the intellectual equals of men and should have the same rights would have flown entirely against common sense and be considered the silliest of ideas. The same could have be said at various times about the working classes, the Irish, gay people, people who are not white, Catholics and most of the French. Common Sense exists, but in practice it is very often a fig leaf for the beliefs of the dominant class so I am suspicious of any argument that appeals to it.

Oh, and I reiterate my point about definition. Arguing about definitions is a mugs game when we are really just interested in meaning (and hence use).

That I entirely agree with. I actually think the whole TWAW thing is a rabbit hole that's sucking attention away from what matters. I don't need to get sucked into a debate about what the word Woman means, I can use the changed language to say Transwomen are Women with Male privilege, and therefore don't need the protections and laws that counteract Male privilege. There will always be a way to say this, because the reality of sexed bodies and sex-based socialisation is always there.

Arguing about definitions is a mugs game when we are really just interested in meaning

true. And EVERYONE KNOWS what 'woman' and 'man' mean. they really do, even the ones who pretend they don't

If I'm wondering what sex a person is, I just ask myself what I'd do if they approached me and said they'd started bleeding from their genitals

hand them a tampon - woman
call an ambulance - man

everyone knows what a woman is

TWAW thing is a rabbit hole that's sucking attention away from what matters.

Isn't that deliberate?

@HecatesCats

TWAW thing is a rabbit hole that's sucking attention away from what matters.

Isn't that deliberate?

Yes.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

One might reasonably assert that "all women are men" if one held to the tradition calling the human race "men" (or "mankind"); but I can't see that "all men are women" would be valid, and I cannot see that replacing "all" in that proposition with "some" would increase the validity.

Both male and female bovines are cattle (or kine or neats); male ones are called "bulls", or if they are castrated called "bullocks" or "oxen" or "steers", and female ones are called cows or heifers. "A bull is a cow" is a nonsense, as much as "a cow is a bull".

(I have no idea what sort of bovine is a dogie, though I suspect it's another word for steers.)

If you change the meanings of words, as Humpty Dumpty did, you can say anything you want and it can be made to seem sensible with enough word-wrangling. Colourless green ideas sleep furiously, after all: that is grammatically correct, but semantically nonsensical.

A maverick is an animal, usually a form of cattle, that does not carry a brand.[ It is a word also used to describe a person who acts free from constrains or from organizational guidelines. ....Other analogous U.S. terms include slick, hairy dick. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangler_(profession)

It follows (and I never thought I'd say this) that a hairy dick can be male or female

The trouble is, I love the language, and I love playing with the language, and it makes me really quite cross when people deliberately abuse it.