The Incoherence of Gender Ideology - Quillette

[WhatyoutalkingaboutWillis]

This really is the most succinct, coherent piece of writing on this subject I've come across.

Enjoy!

quillette.com/2021/08/04/the-incoherence-of-gender-ideology/?fbclid=IwAR3oLz0iaZ11-xDaNAKuz-GTfb-CdvxavRNhRFM2X8PtdNnxyqIU-vj-q9c

The idea that he might just have been sincere but wrong is almost never considered.

That comes under the 'lunatic' argument. Someone walking around, sincerely believing to be the Son of God would be mentally unsound - unless they were in fact the Son of God.

And the 'liar' one is more about the argument that Jesus would have to die for something that he knew to be a lie. Or that he faked his death.

In the case of the Gospels, there is the fourth possibility: That is all or partly fiction written long after the fact by people who weren't there.

@Jaysmith71

"The" Right is no more one coherent thing than "The" Left.

The Truth is always the truth, whoever says it.

This

Also BrozTito perhaps you are US based?

The Conservative party have shown no interest in rolling back abortion or banning sex education and are apparently the only party which might actually have a science based understanding of what a woman is (apart from the SDP and the communists neither of which show up on the ballot in most constituencies).

It seems that a large proportion of humanity has a deep and genuine need for shared spiritual expression/religious community.

I do think that many who reject established religion and even neo paganism may be seeking to meet this need through the rites, rituals, community, mantras and hope for consolation, healing and support to be a better person through gender identity/queer theory.

Someone once said that you can’t reason someone out of a position which they didn’t arrive at by reason. Faith specifically does not rely on reason. I believe that may even be stated at some point in the New Testament.

For eg. according to many gender critical feminists on these boards - for trans - related issues, especially those situations where a person is considering transitioning, then sex is the only thing that is relevant to GC feminists - because gendered behaviour is not really a thing - after all, what is it to be a man or a woman - either sex is perfectly capable of any characteristics and stereotypically feminine or masculine behaviour? Which is why GC feminists consider there is such a problem with identifying as the opposite sex or transitioning - because what's the point in swapping genitals when there absolutely nothing else that distinguishes a sense of what it is to be a man or a woman?

I don't know whether you are misunderstanding, or trying to deliberately misrepresent the feminist viewpoint, but the bit I have bolded there is not the feminist argument. Not one of us claims gendered behaviour is not a thing. We have long and involved discussions about the very negative aspects of gendered behaviour - be it the aggression and entitlement of men or the socially submissive and people pleasing behaviour of women. We argue that the sole defining characteristic of women is our sex, and that as men cannot share that characteristic, they cannot be women, therefore there is no such thing as 'transition' which is not based on gendered stereotypes, none of which is innate. No one denies the stereotypes exist. The whole bloody point of the feminist movements of the past century + have been about not boxing women into rules and roles based on the arbitrary gendered stereotypes and showing that these gendered ideas are not innate, but infinitely malleable, (to the point where we are now, astonishingly, having discussions about whether males can perform the gendered stereotypes better - which I'm sure they can, and crack on, still doesne make you a woman.)

However, when it comes to things like access to spaces, GC feminists on these boards DO believe in gender over and above sex and whatever is between the legs, because they note that there IS more to it than genitals actually; there are characteristics and behaviours that seem to be associated with particular sexes, and it is important to recognise that and maintain separate spaces and treatment at times. A behaviour associated along sex lines is to do with gender.

Again, this passage doesn't show that there is any internal incoherence in feminist thinking, it simply shows you haven't understood it. I'll try again for the peanut gallery - I suspect there is little point hoping you might understand it if I explain it one more time, you've been around long enough to have read it many time.

Immutable dimorphic sex is the only thing that defines women and men. Each human being grows up in a culture with its own perspective on those two sexes, and most of the time, that culture imposes gendered rules on each respective sex. Some may be connected to assumptions about the specifics of biology, some may be innocuous, but by and large, the gender system will disadvantage women by insisting that women and men are a certain way based on those stereotypes, and organizing society based on those rigid assumptions.

Feminism pushes back against those strict gender rules and says that women can be any kind of person, just as men can, and that the only time a distinction needs to be made between men and women is when their sex is relevant - so when women are vulnerable, need privacy, a fair playing field in competition, and so forth. This is also necessary because gendered (not innate, socialized) behaviour from men can have an impact on women who have been socialized into the gendered behaviour, as well as the physical aspects already mentioned.

There isn't anything even slightly incoherent, inconsistent or contradictory in any of this. You simply don't like it because it points out that gender isn't innate, and as a social construct is entirely subordinate as a concept to the reality of physical sex.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions

I feel sorry for people with gender dysphoria who’ve had their struggles co-opted and appropriated.

May I ask if this includes the ones in Press for Change for whom this was always their battleplan and long term strategy? (Several threads recently have made me rethink my stance this group of 'true" GD and I'm still reformulating a number of thoughts.)

Those are two separate matters imo. I feel sorry for people with genuine GD who have had their condition appropriated as some kind of trendy look.

However, that doesn’t mean all individuals with GD would continue to get my sympathy and support if they took actions with which I disagreed.

(Sorry for the contorted reply, trying not to single out individuals or say anything unnecessary)

You have more patience than me, Floral.

Eresh I have a really bloated tummy today too, so I'm basically Buddha.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions

There could be some discussion about this author's interpretation of Wittgenstein on private language. And there are those who might challenge his take on the analytic/synthetic distinction. But these are small matters in the grand scheme and can be easily fixed. Overall conclusions, spot on.

I'm completely happy for you to expand on these. I have a general awareness of these terms and would be grateful for some informed commentary on something that I've read (this article).

I do like a well-written piece (I haven't written well in years - I blame the constriction of the reports that I continually read or write for warping my style).

I mentioned private language and analytic/synthetic really just to warn any neophytes not to take the author's views as exactly characterising conventional wisdom thereon. His conclusions pretty much stand independently of determinations of any controversial issues in either area.

If you want to know more, Stanford Encyclopedia gives good coverage: private language; analytic-synthetic. Bibliographies there are useful, in particular.

That is more reading than many might wish for. And perhaps I should offer a little more than references. Here is something some may find useful/interesting, and which iirc does not make it into the main Stanford piece (although it is covered in some of the references in the biblio). I think it might help make the point here.

As well as what we might call the 'standard' private language argument (from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations ), Wittgenstein offers another argument which might also be called by the same name. Norman Malcolm describes this as an 'external', as opposed to 'internal', 'attack on private language'. (See Malcolm 1954 ‘Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations’, The Philosophical Review, 63 .) (I have seen this described as the 'conceptual' private language argument.)

Here is Malcolm's (genuinely succinct, and I think clear as well as exegetically correct) characterisation of this (Wittgenstein's) external argument:
" ... If I were to learn what pain is from perceiving my own pain then I should, necessarily, have learned that pain is something that exists only when I feel pain. For the pain that serves as my paradigm of pain (i.e., my own) has the property of existing only when I feel it. That property is essential, not accidental; it is nonsense to suppose that the pain I feel could exist when I did not feel it. So if I obtain my conception of pain from pain that I experience, then it will be part of my conception of pain that I am the only being that can experience it. For me it will be a contradiction to speak of another's pain. This strict solipsism is the necessary outcome of the notion of private language." ( op. cit. P.538)

This is about (the concept of) pain. The conclusion is that I cannot (on pain of being condemned to a very strict form of solipsism) learn what pain is from perceiving my own pain. Does the argument go through similarly with the concept of gender (construed as some kind of feeling of being a certain way)?

Malcolm considers a possible response: what if I simply say, 'If I talk of someone else's gender [pain], I am talking of her having the same as me when I talk of me having my gender'? ... "But if I suppose that someone has a pain, then I am simply supposing that he has just the same as I have so often had" (see Philosophical Investigations 350 ).

Here Malcolm continues,
'I will quote Wittgenstein's brilliant counterstroke in full:
"That gets us no further. It is as if I were to say: "You surely know what 'It is 5 o'clock here' means; so you also know what 'It's 5 o'clock on the sun' means. It means simply that it is just the same time there as it is here when it is 5 o'clock."-- The explanation by means of identity does not work here. For I know well enough that one can call 5 o'clock here and 5 o'clock there " the same time," but what I do not know is in what cases one is to speak of its being the same time here and there.
"In exactly the same way it is no explanation to say: the supposition that he has a pain is simply the supposition that he has the same as I. For that part of the grammar is quite clear to me: that is, that one will say that the stove has the same experience as I, if one says: it is in pain and I am in pain." ( ibid ) '

Again, try replacing 'pain' with 'gender' (as a kind of feeling or perception of one's identity). Does that help? Interesting, anyway, I hope.

@FloralBunting Ok, so: The sole defining characteristic of women is their sex, and this is something men cannot share.

There is such a thing as gendered behaviour and stereotypes and these are socialised and malleable, not innate, and should be challenged.

Feminism pushes back on gender rules - women can be any kind of person, as can men.
....

So you want there to be freedom for any kind of (presumably ethically unproblematic) behaviours and expressions for both sexes and to escape the rigid gender stereotypes that are harmful for both men and women (but particularly women)

And yet the efforts of this type of feminism are presently centred on the preservation of distinctions between the sexes (and let's say this for what it is - the anticipation of gendered behaviour on the basis of sex, not simply the presence of particular genitals).

Don't these actions accentuate the stereotypes that exist? It is this brand of feminism that is pigeon-holing male bodied people into aggressors and females into victims, and reinforcing those ideas in the public consciousness.

Is there not an incoherence to the stated desire for freedom from gendered stereotypes but yet a dependence on these to justify differing treatments, eg. keeping trans women out of women's spaces?

The general public appears to believe more seriously in the ability of males and females to be free of negative gendered stereotypes than this brand of feminism.

It feels like 'This is what we're fighting for but we'll set the game so that it can never be achieved."

I'm so tempted to just write 'no' and just ignore you, tbh.

But for the benefit of anyone reading and wondering if you have any kind of point - it is not the job of feminism to stop men behaving in the damaging gendered ways they do, and until men stop interloping where they don't belong and behaving in those ways, women need rights and protections to enable them to be full participants in our society.

Maybe one day, men will all change and we won't need to discuss the threat males are as a class, and male entitlement won't shit all over women as a default.

But the evidence is, right now, when TRAs are delighted about rapists locked up with women, that none of you are even slightly there, so women will keep our rights and protections whatever you think it feels like. Because, bluntly, feminism isn't for you.

I found the quote about Communist propaganda being used to demoralise the population the most chilling.

The conservative party which has Chope (tried to prevent legislation making upskirting a crime and female genital mutation) Phillip Davies (talks of feminazis and claims men are equal sufferers of DV) and the haunted pencil? The tory party which is packed with anti abortion activists? Who constantly block sufficient sex education? Who despise muslim women? You're doing the very modern thing of choosing a single fairly non extreme issue to support but then travelling all the way with extremists, agreeing unrelated nonsense to save face (see also brexit). The Right (and il ignore the studenty. "right&left are just the same, man' stuff) have stood in the way of every freedom women have wanted. So enjoy absorbing a mentality which despises women and actively shits itself at the mention of feminism. Its an eternal truth-liberals and centrists will always side with the far right when it comes down to it.

The only mainstream GC politicians are in labour or the left internationally

You'll give yourself terrible wind, you know. Chew your food.

WTF has it got to do with communism? The communist party is GC and rejects trans ideology. Its like reading the youtube comments of 14 year old US incels

@Empressofthemundane

I found the quote about Communist propaganda being used to demoralise the population the most chilling.

hoodathunkit recently posted a video series about an investigation into disinformation and it was thoroughly alarming: Operation Infektion

@BrozTito

WTF has it got to do with communism? The communist party is GC and rejects trans ideology. Its like reading the youtube comments of 14 year old US incels

There are about 5 communist parties in Britain alone. Some communist parties do support T ideology. Others are very much against. However, isn't the main point here that there is a sort of authoritarianism involved in T ideology - epitomised by "#nodebate" and the repetition of mindless slogans ("TWAW"). I can see why some people would see a relationship to the authoritarian incarnations of "actually existing socialism".

Is there not an incoherence to the stated desire for freedom from gendered stereotypes but yet a dependence on these to justify differing treatments, eg. keeping trans women out of women's spaces?

You seem to have got this back to front. It's not that feminism requires these stereotypes in order to justify the exclusion of males, it's that stereotypical male behaviour means that mixed sex spaces are often dangerous for women, so it is safer for women if males are excluded.

It's not that we want to exclude them so we have to find a reason for doing so, it's that males as a class are a danger, so it is necessary to exclude them.

This article has some statistics about male violence against women.

www.womenarehuman.com/transgender-sexual-offending-context-is-all/

When men stop raping and otherwise harming women, perhaps then we can reconsider.

@9toenails "I mentioned private language and analytic/synthetic really just to warn any neophytes not to take the author's views as exactly characterising conventional wisdom thereon. His conclusions pretty much stand independently of determinations of any controversial issues in either area.

If you want to know more, Stanford Encyclopedia gives good coverage: private language; analytic-synthetic. Bibliographies there are useful, in particular.

That is more reading than many might wish for. And perhaps I should offer a little more than references. Here is something some may find useful/interesting, and which iirc does not make it into the main Stanford piece (although it is covered in some of the references in the biblio). I think it might help make the point here.

As well as what we might call the 'standard' private language argument (from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations ), Wittgenstein offers another argument which might also be called by the same name. Norman Malcolm describes this as an 'external', as opposed to 'internal', 'attack on private language'. (See Malcolm 1954 ‘Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations’, The Philosophical Review, 63 .) (I have seen this described as the 'conceptual' private language argument.)

Here is Malcolm's (genuinely succinct, and I think clear as well as exegetically correct) characterisation of this (Wittgenstein's) external argument:
" ... If I were to learn what pain is from perceiving my own pain then I should, necessarily, have learned that pain is something that exists only when I feel pain. For the pain that serves as my paradigm of pain (i.e., my own) has the property of existing only when I feel it. That property is essential, not accidental; it is nonsense to suppose that the pain I feel could exist when I did not feel it. So if I obtain my conception of pain from pain that I experience, then it will be part of my conception of pain that I am the only being that can experience it. For me it will be a contradiction to speak of another's pain. This strict solipsism is the necessary outcome of the notion of private language." ( op. cit. P.538)

This is about (the concept of) pain. The conclusion is that I cannot (on pain of being condemned to a very strict form of solipsism) learn what pain is from perceiving my own pain. Does the argument go through similarly with the concept of gender (construed as some kind of feeling of being a certain way)?

Malcolm considers a possible response: what if I simply say, 'If I talk of someone else's gender [pain], I am talking of her having the same as me when I talk of me having my gender'? ... "But if I suppose that someone has a pain, then I am simply supposing that he has just the same as I have so often had" (see Philosophical Investigations 350 ).

Here Malcolm continues,
'I will quote Wittgenstein's brilliant counterstroke in full:
"That gets us no further. It is as if I were to say: "You surely know what 'It is 5 o'clock here' means; so you also know what 'It's 5 o'clock on the sun' means. It means simply that it is just the same time there as it is here when it is 5 o'clock."-- The explanation by means of identity does not work here. For I know well enough that one can call 5 o'clock here and 5 o'clock there " the same time," but what I do not know is in what cases one is to speak of its being the same time here and there.
"In exactly the same way it is no explanation to say: the supposition that he has a pain is simply the supposition that he has the same as I. For that part of the grammar is quite clear to me: that is, that one will say that the stove has the same experience as I, if one says: it is in pain and I am in pain." ( ibid ) '

Again, try replacing 'pain' with 'gender' (as a kind of feeling or perception of one's identity). Does that help? Interesting, anyway, I hope."
---

This is interesting and I wonder is psychology has bridged this seeming gap with the discovery of structures like mirror neurons?

These are a class of neuron that modulate their activity both when an individual executes a specific motor act and when they observe the same or similar act performed by another individual. And their influence extends beyond simple motor actions - eg when a person cries and this prompts crying from a person that sees them it is considered that mirror neurons are at work. They can provide a direct internal experience of another person's actions or emotions and may be the neurological basis of empathy.

So they could provide a pathway for explanation for sharing another's pain ( & gender???). There is no contradiction to speak of another's pain with these mechanisms, and you can learn about the more general feeling of pain from experiencing it yourself.

You seem to have got this back to front. It's not that feminism requires these stereotypes in order to justify the exclusion of males, it's that stereotypical male behaviour means that mixed sex spaces are often dangerous for women, so it is safer for women if males are excluded.

It's not that we want to exclude them so we have to find a reason for doing so, it's that males as a class are a danger, so it is necessary to exclude them.

Quite.

Me : The conclusion is that I cannot (on pain of being condemned to a very strict form of solipsism) learn what pain is from perceiving my own pain.

suggestionsplease1 This is interesting and I wonder is psychology has bridged this seeming gap with the discovery of structures like mirror neurons?

-- No. How could psychology bridge the 'seeming gap'? Think about the difference between scientific propositions and semantico-logical/metaphysical propositions. (The synthetic-analytic distinction is useful here, as are distinctions that historically at least tended to be bundled in with it, such as a priori-a posteriori, necessary-contingent, essential-accidental, ideas-facts and so on.)

How does your mistake arise? Possibly a misunderstanding of modality (always a good place to start looking in such cases, ime): you may be reading 'cannot' in '... I cannot ... learn what pain is ...' as referring to a natural (scientific) rather than conceptual necessity.

I hope that makes sense.

Your 'seeming' is worth looking at a bit more. There is no real gap: this is a mere seeming. There is, indeed, no contradiction in speaking (in English -- no need for mechanisms! ) of others' pains. But, as Malcolm/Wittgenstein point out, there would be such a contradiction if ... (insert epistemic/semantic private language antecedent about 'my own case'). So the conclusion follows. No?

This is maybe a little OT now. I will say no more. Just let me reiterate that, yes, the author linked to by OP gets matters right in his conclusion about the incoherence of gender ideology.

There is no such thing as gender identity. This is not a scientific claim: the non-existence of gender identity is not relevantly similar to the non-existence of, say, unicorns or the King of France; rather it is a bit more like the non-existence of square circles or the rational number sqrt(2).

@9toenails

Me : The conclusion is that I cannot (on pain of being condemned to a very strict form of solipsism) learn what pain is from perceiving my own pain.

suggestionsplease1 This is interesting and I wonder is psychology has bridged this seeming gap with the discovery of structures like mirror neurons?

-- No. How could psychology bridge the 'seeming gap'? Think about the difference between scientific propositions and semantico-logical/metaphysical propositions. (The synthetic-analytic distinction is useful here, as are distinctions that historically at least tended to be bundled in with it, such as a priori-a posteriori, necessary-contingent, essential-accidental, ideas-facts and so on.)

How does your mistake arise? Possibly a misunderstanding of modality (always a good place to start looking in such cases, ime): you may be reading 'cannot' in '... I cannot ... learn what pain is ...' as referring to a natural (scientific) rather than conceptual necessity.

I hope that makes sense.

Your 'seeming' is worth looking at a bit more. There is no real gap: this is a mere seeming. There is, indeed, no contradiction in speaking (in English -- no need for mechanisms! ) of others' pains. But, as Malcolm/Wittgenstein point out, there would be such a contradiction if ... (insert epistemic/semantic private language antecedent about 'my own case'). So the conclusion follows. No?

This is maybe a little OT now. I will say no more. Just let me reiterate that, yes, the author linked to by OP gets matters right in his conclusion about the incoherence of gender ideology.

There is no such thing as gender identity. This is not a scientific claim: the non-existence of gender identity is not relevantly similar to the non-existence of, say, unicorns or the King of France; rather it is a bit more like the non-existence of square circles or the rational number sqrt(2).

I'm sure you will correct me if I'm wrong but what I'm taking from this is that you feel that real life scientific studies can't impact upon semantico-logical/metaphysical propositions (whatever that means!) - they are 2 distinct worlds that can not touch upon each other, so it is non-sensical to bring in scientific psychological findings to a discussion on language, logic, metaphysics etc?

I think in response to that I would have to say the real world does not live purely in constructed language and the logic that can be derived from that. It is an incredibly limited approach to real world problems to resign them to the world of language , which, after all has been created by humans with all the limitations that we have.

I could construct a language and derive logic from it and feel very self-satisfied that I had understood and correctly argued every permutation of it.

That doesn't inherently mean I understand anything about the real world, however.

You seem to be trying to derive information about sensations (pain) from language - are you not guilty of the same mistake by thinking it is possible to talk meaningfully about real-world sensations from the completely different world of language?

I do believe language and logic are extremely important, but they are not the be-all and end-all.

relief.news/2019/07/10/i-feel-your-pain-emotional-mirror-neurons-in-the-brain-respond-to-pain-in-the-self-and-in-others/

Here's a study showing that a brain region called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) contains nerve cells, dubbed “mirror neurons,” becomes active both when a rat undergoes pain itself and when it sees another rat experiencing pain.

This issue is central to that philosophical enquiry...didn't Wittgenstein argue that sensations are private? And yet here we have evidence of animals' brains firing up in the same way when they witness another animal's pain as when they experience pain themselves.

Excellent essay thank you for sharing

@9toenails
This is maybe a little OT now. I will say no more. Just let me reiterate that, yes, the author linked to by OP gets matters right in his conclusion about the incoherence of gender ideology.

Did you not think his argument rested on a false premise; that language is fixed and does not evolve?

The author states that "indexicals within a language, such as “he” or “she” indirectly connote and refer to fixed meanings deep within our overall shared network of public meanings and are not similarly revisable according to individual personal preference."

However, as I have already pointed out earlier in this thread, the pronoun 'she' has been used to refer to adult human males, and this usage is widely understood and recognised, even by populations that would not use the pronoun themselves in the same way.

Because of this, the author's assertion that the meaning is fixed is incorrect.