What gets left out of all these 'discussions' is the right of each of us to think whatever we want. We've reached an absurd level of forced conformity of thought in what is allegedly a free society.
If a male wants to call himself a woman and dress like a woman, he is free to do so. And each of us is free to have an opinion about it. No, we are not required, as a result of some social/cultural dogma, to either accept or reject such a person. A person is free to dress how they want. I rarely/never hear anyone suggest that they don't have that right. But acceptance of that dress cannot legitimately be required. And it's fundamentally stupid of people to proclaim, "You must accept me because I'm LBGQRDENW+"
Nobody has to accept anybody. I can't think of anything that is more pathetic than a bunch of insecure people who are apparently afraid to present to the world as secure individuals, capable of standing on their own. Individual freedom is unattainable until a person is capable of not giving a crap what others think.
Dress how you want, and expect nothing from anyone else. Think how sad it is that people insist on being accepted. My instinct is to instantly reject them. Why wouldn't I? Such a person sees me as nothing but a crutch to bolster their insecurity. THAT is what I reject, regardless of how they dress or identify.
Qdos to both, great to front and debate. 11:10 David hits it, the phrase 'trans women are women' is a political statement that trans women are a kind of women, where women exists prior and with two different references (trans women and women). The claim needs women to exist prior and be a separate referent otherwise you would just be saying 'women are women'-- there's no conveyance of meaning in that phrase.
The claim trans women have 'feminine characteristics' also doesn't work without prior definitional content because otherwise what are those characteristics? If women doesn't link to biological females but refers to women as 'possessors of feminine characteristics' then we're in circularity. If feminine characteristics is outside women altogether we're in absurdity. If there were a planet of only males, what would femininity be?
It is also how many trans women think of themselves, they desire to become women as something separate and prior, not to acquire female characteristics and not for the women they desire to be, to be only a possessor of feminine characteristics. You don't hear, 'I knew I was a woman because I wanted to acquire characteristics that women happen to have'—they want the 'women' of the characteristics.
Philosophically it is parasitic to depend on sex for meaning yet claim definitional priority or even equality in a homogeneous definition - it is incoherent. In an homogeneous 'feminine-attribute possessing' definition the thing that has to define feminine is women outside of the definition otherwise it's circular.
Its also unnatural to say women are women because they possess their own traits. This is stupid, they possess these traits because they are women and they aren't a constructed category they are a real thing.
The only way it works is if trans is secondary, and we treat them 'as-if' they are women in an umbrella category. Social and legal accomodations originated in that understanding but now the Ouroborus is eating it's own tail.
Ie you can't escape the circularity by deferring to concepts of femininity, gender without acknowledging priority of biological sex for definitional meaning.
Last one - I'll do a contra post if i think of any more, rather than spew all over your post.
If a trans woman has a penis (definitely male attribute right) does that mean that person is a woman with clothes on and a man with clothes off? You'd say perhaps identification trumps but that's just self-Id defining the category, which is stupid.
I suspect that there was some talking past each other with the talk of 'definitions' -- that Matthew was using the word to mean definition of a word, like a non-circular description of the meaning of the word, and Volodzko more had in mind the Aristotelian sense of 'definition', a definition of a thing, or the essential features of a thing (actually, I suspect that Volodzko was not keeping the two meanings of 'definition' distinct). This would explain his hesitation towards using the chair example, since it is more doubtful whether artificial things like chairs have essences.
I suspect that Volodzko would endorse an account of the origin of words (excluding technical terms, which 'woman' presumably is not) such that we recognize things in reality (platonic universals perhaps, except in the case of proper names) and give names to them -- or in cases where the words don't refer to universals, they at least ultimately make reference to them (like how 'feminine' refers to the natural kind of female human). So, instead of making up arbitrary categories and giving names to them, we discover them and give names to them. This was probably the basis for his suggestion that you were endorsing post-modernism -- at one point he might have been under the impression that your account of the meaning of 'woman' was just an arbitrary disjunction of a conjunction of traits. However, the traits are not completely arbitrary, since they are unified by being associated with adult female humans. This is maybe what he meant by the 'core' of the definition -- without reference to the natural kind of adult female human, your proposed meaning would just be an arbitrary combination.
It seems that he takes it as evidence that your use of 'woman' is metaphorical that the 'core' (in the above sense) of it is adult female human. I do think that he has a point here. Even some of the opponents of the 'adult female human' definition give accounts such that the only thing that 'tethers it to reality' or stops it from being a mere arbitrary combination that we came up with, is referencing the category of adult female human. Further, it would be quite surprising if there was a word meaning 'someone sufficiently like an adult female human', but no word for 'adult female human'. The best explanation of these facts might be that the primary meaning of the word 'woman' is 'adult female human', and the other uses are secondary/metaphorical.
The problem is that there are consequences when we acknowledge that trans women are men but then try to put them into the category with the same needs as biological women. That has real world problems and that is the nub of the matter.
We can support the trans community without erasing the adult human female community. Identify as you like, without taking away the rights of adult human females.
Trans women are women is a circular. These things over here are those things over there. What’s the point of saying it if they are both the same thing? One acknowledges the other. And that is the difference between the two.
What gets left out of all these 'discussions' is the right of each of us to think whatever we want. We've reached an absurd level of forced conformity of thought in what is allegedly a free society.
If a male wants to call himself a woman and dress like a woman, he is free to do so. And each of us is free to have an opinion about it. No, we are not required, as a result of some social/cultural dogma, to either accept or reject such a person. A person is free to dress how they want. I rarely/never hear anyone suggest that they don't have that right. But acceptance of that dress cannot legitimately be required. And it's fundamentally stupid of people to proclaim, "You must accept me because I'm LBGQRDENW+"
Nobody has to accept anybody. I can't think of anything that is more pathetic than a bunch of insecure people who are apparently afraid to present to the world as secure individuals, capable of standing on their own. Individual freedom is unattainable until a person is capable of not giving a crap what others think.
Dress how you want, and expect nothing from anyone else. Think how sad it is that people insist on being accepted. My instinct is to instantly reject them. Why wouldn't I? Such a person sees me as nothing but a crutch to bolster their insecurity. THAT is what I reject, regardless of how they dress or identify.
Qdos to both, great to front and debate. 11:10 David hits it, the phrase 'trans women are women' is a political statement that trans women are a kind of women, where women exists prior and with two different references (trans women and women). The claim needs women to exist prior and be a separate referent otherwise you would just be saying 'women are women'-- there's no conveyance of meaning in that phrase.
The claim trans women have 'feminine characteristics' also doesn't work without prior definitional content because otherwise what are those characteristics? If women doesn't link to biological females but refers to women as 'possessors of feminine characteristics' then we're in circularity. If feminine characteristics is outside women altogether we're in absurdity. If there were a planet of only males, what would femininity be?
It is also how many trans women think of themselves, they desire to become women as something separate and prior, not to acquire female characteristics and not for the women they desire to be, to be only a possessor of feminine characteristics. You don't hear, 'I knew I was a woman because I wanted to acquire characteristics that women happen to have'—they want the 'women' of the characteristics.
Philosophically it is parasitic to depend on sex for meaning yet claim definitional priority or even equality in a homogeneous definition - it is incoherent. In an homogeneous 'feminine-attribute possessing' definition the thing that has to define feminine is women outside of the definition otherwise it's circular.
Its also unnatural to say women are women because they possess their own traits. This is stupid, they possess these traits because they are women and they aren't a constructed category they are a real thing.
The only way it works is if trans is secondary, and we treat them 'as-if' they are women in an umbrella category. Social and legal accomodations originated in that understanding but now the Ouroborus is eating it's own tail.
Very good points
Ie you can't escape the circularity by deferring to concepts of femininity, gender without acknowledging priority of biological sex for definitional meaning.
Last one - I'll do a contra post if i think of any more, rather than spew all over your post.
If a trans woman has a penis (definitely male attribute right) does that mean that person is a woman with clothes on and a man with clothes off? You'd say perhaps identification trumps but that's just self-Id defining the category, which is stupid.
I suspect that there was some talking past each other with the talk of 'definitions' -- that Matthew was using the word to mean definition of a word, like a non-circular description of the meaning of the word, and Volodzko more had in mind the Aristotelian sense of 'definition', a definition of a thing, or the essential features of a thing (actually, I suspect that Volodzko was not keeping the two meanings of 'definition' distinct). This would explain his hesitation towards using the chair example, since it is more doubtful whether artificial things like chairs have essences.
I suspect that Volodzko would endorse an account of the origin of words (excluding technical terms, which 'woman' presumably is not) such that we recognize things in reality (platonic universals perhaps, except in the case of proper names) and give names to them -- or in cases where the words don't refer to universals, they at least ultimately make reference to them (like how 'feminine' refers to the natural kind of female human). So, instead of making up arbitrary categories and giving names to them, we discover them and give names to them. This was probably the basis for his suggestion that you were endorsing post-modernism -- at one point he might have been under the impression that your account of the meaning of 'woman' was just an arbitrary disjunction of a conjunction of traits. However, the traits are not completely arbitrary, since they are unified by being associated with adult female humans. This is maybe what he meant by the 'core' of the definition -- without reference to the natural kind of adult female human, your proposed meaning would just be an arbitrary combination.
It seems that he takes it as evidence that your use of 'woman' is metaphorical that the 'core' (in the above sense) of it is adult female human. I do think that he has a point here. Even some of the opponents of the 'adult female human' definition give accounts such that the only thing that 'tethers it to reality' or stops it from being a mere arbitrary combination that we came up with, is referencing the category of adult female human. Further, it would be quite surprising if there was a word meaning 'someone sufficiently like an adult female human', but no word for 'adult female human'. The best explanation of these facts might be that the primary meaning of the word 'woman' is 'adult female human', and the other uses are secondary/metaphorical.
This is a chair.
You can sit in it.
This is a chair with spikes.
You really shouldn’t sit on it. Though some might!
They are now two different things. But it’s still spikes that have been put on a chair.
This is a man.
He dresses as a woman. Calls himself a woman.
But he’s still a man.
The problem is that there are consequences when we acknowledge that trans women are men but then try to put them into the category with the same needs as biological women. That has real world problems and that is the nub of the matter.
We can support the trans community without erasing the adult human female community. Identify as you like, without taking away the rights of adult human females.
Trans women are women is a circular. These things over here are those things over there. What’s the point of saying it if they are both the same thing? One acknowledges the other. And that is the difference between the two.
You keep saying let me finish… then you cut him off. Repeatedly.