I too have been thinking of this topic due to its media exposure. I was going to post about it in my Leftow not Democracy thread but here will do:

@Catholics, there have probably been more articles about the transcendent horror of transvestites having free choice of gender bathrooms in the last couple of months than there have been on the Modal Problem of Evil since the latter's formulation in the early '80s. I hope you all feel suitibley ashamed!

A serious response to Greg how broached the question in all good faith:

I opt for a somewhat deflationary take on gender, viewing it largely as a construct out of various social roles, habits and aesthetics. Body dysmorphia though presents a more challenging case - in terms of bodily apperception/self-sensing does it feel different to have a male as opposed to female body? There are of course experiences pertaining to gender specific biological functions to take into account as well. If either of these two are the case, and the second surely is, and it's possible for someone of the opposite sex to have these experiences abnormally (say though a neurological oddity) then yes I would claim Gender is something above and beyond Sex.

A person's sex doesn't appear essential either though. Would NLers object to sex change operations of they actually worked that is transformed a fully fertile man into a fully fertile woman capable of beating children?

Last edited by DanielCC (6/06/2016 2:19 pm)

DanielCC wrote:

 Would NLers object to sex change operations of they actually worked that is transformed a fully fertile man into a fully fertile woman capable of beating children?

Alexander Pruss has written something on this question:

"Even if the whole of the reproductive system were transplanted, including, say, a penis, testicles, and prostate, or a vagina, clitoris, cervix, uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries, these organs would not have the same meaning, because surely they would not be directed toward their purposes by the whole organism. A normally functioning, genetically male human body presumably does not direct anything toward its own pregnancy and a normally-functioning, genetically female human body presumably does not direct anything toward making another person pregnant. Hormones would not help, because they would still be an extrinsic directing rather than an intrinsic one. Moreover, if Casey, genetically a woman, receives a transplant of Fred’s reproductive system, then even if it can be argued that the system would be directed toward human reproduction, it would arguably not be directed toward reproducing Casey but toward reproducing Fred, since the genetic material therein derives from Fred. It may be that if it were possible to change the genetic identity of the whole body, the person would become capable of the sexual union indicated by the newly modified body. But it is not clear that a person could survive a change of an entire chromosome throughout the body. Even if clinical death did not result, it is unclear whether the resulting human being would be the same person after such a momentous change."

Thoughts?
 

The reason, by the way, that this is showing up now on "the left" is the effect of what is sometimes called "the oppression olympics". It seems pretty obvious that since gay marriage was achieved, there has to be a place to put to work all the sexual-liberation institutions, rhetoric, and enthusiasm, so people go looking for a "more oppressed" group to apply them to. South Carolina was stupid enough to try and press the issue over bathrooms, and so a national platform was found for it. Who knows how much money trans activist groups were able to draw in donations off of that, but I'm sure it was a start.

I think most trans and trans supporters get hung up on the idea of "gender role"- the set of generally expected behaviors for their gender -rather than on some spurious or loaded notion of gender. One often doesn't seem to feel like a girl (or what have you), just as such, but has the experience of desiring non-gender appropriate behaviors, being socially corrected in that desire, and rebelling in later life. I mean, I myself have been accused of some level of effeminacy simply for being slim and aloof. It's not a hard leap of imagination to see how I might think, given a few degrees more of non-standard behavior, that I'd be more socially comfortable in the role of a woman.

iwpoe wrote:

The reason, by the way, that this is showing up now on "the left" is the effect of what is sometimes called "the oppression olympics". It seems pretty obvious that since gay marriage was achieved, there has to be a place to put to work all the sexual-liberation institutions, rhetoric, and enthusiasm, so people go looking for a "more oppressed" group to apply them to.

A friend recently pointed me toward a blog post on this topic, though it has more to do with the eagerness with which groups argue that they are, in fact, the least privileged.

It's struck me, as protests and lists of demands have cropped up at America's universities, that part of the aim is to justify the continued existence of institutions of and expertise in sexual liberation. It is demanded that universities hire larger and larger groups of social justice professionals to run safe spaces and such. And the goal will be for similar roles to be developed, where they haven't been already, in lower education and in industries. Because what else are you going to do with your _______ Studies major?

iwpoe wrote:

I think most trans and trans supporters get hung up on the idea of "gender role"- the set of generally expected behaviors for their gender -rather than on some spurious or loaded notion of gender. One often doesn't seem to feel like a girl (or what have you), just as such, but has the experience of desiring non-gender appropriate behaviors, being socially corrected in that desire, and rebelling in later life. I mean, I myself have been accused of some level of effeminacy simply for being slim and aloof. It's not a hard leap of imagination to see how I might think, given a few degrees more of non-standard behavior, that I'd be more socially comfortable in the role of a woman.

I think this is right, and it is what gender dysphoria has to come down to: a certain profile of desires for occupying one gender role, frustrated because one is socially required to occupy the other.

Someone told me that many of the accounts are kind of like that: someone looks in a mirror and feels "alienated" from his/her body, as though it is "the wrong sex." (The accounts are supposed to be similar to people with body integrity identity disorder, where people look at their limbs and feel as though they are not theirs.)

I'm not sure whether that is accurate, though. I wanted to see if there is a repository of interviews with trans people, or something, that I could consult.

Ray Blanchard distinguishedbetween what he saw as two different sorts of transsexualism. He thought some transsexuals were just homosexual men; these were the ones who "felt" like they were women "from birth." He called the other class autogynephiles, and thought that transsexualism had a later onset; they, basically, are just sexually attracted to the idea of themselves as women. His work is somewhat controversial, I understand. (I think he suggested that the desire for homosexual transsexuals to transition usually passed; so his work could be taken to suggest that early transitioning is unwise. The notion of an autogynephile is also reductive; activists want to say that Caitlyn Jenner is really a woman, and that's some sort of deep fact about Caitlyn Jenner; they don't want to say that Caitlyn Jenner is just a man with a particular, uncommon sexual fantasy.)