8 Bit Philosophy: Is Gender Real?

[FalloutJack]

Snip

Okay, I need to ask something for my own personal clarification, because this is going nowhere fast. You and Mars have been splitting hairs over all of this. It's essentially an argument over labeling. Well, I'm sorry to say, but they're not labels of convenience. They're our labels for stuff that is observed in the universe. Just because you teach Kryten from Red Dwarf to lie about a banana doesn't mean the banana has changed. It's a banana. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB-NnVpvQ78] If this genetalia means nothing and this banana is a female aardvark, then there is no point to language, logic, science, observable nature, or anything else. I'd rather not have to clean up after that mess, thank you.

 

[mike1921]

:| hm....

Well you see when people are born...

..a doctor looks at their genitals and makes a decision about whether what he or she is looking at looks more like an arbitrary ideal type of male or female genitals.

The decision is what establishes gender. Not the genitals. The criteria for the decision are dictated by a set of medical priorities decided by whatever is considered to be culturally important at the time.

Are those criteria the same as the bodies to which they apply? Obviously not, otherwise it would never be necessary to whip out a scalpel and cut bits off people to make their bodies fit the judgement.

I hope I'm missing some context that makes it clear you're talking about people with deformed genitals or something, not that the decision is arbitrary in the average birth and that fringe cases where someone doesn't fit into a certain sex make sex not exist.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Just because you teach Kryten from Red Dwarf to lie about a banana doesn't mean the banana has changed.

True, now think about what that actually means..

I.e. it is possible for Kryten calls the banana an orange, and yet the object itself is unaffected.

That's because the word "banana" is not in and of itself the object, it is an arbitrary sign which signifies an object. In fact, depending on whether we use a two or three part semiotics, the word "banana" may not even directly signify the object banana at all, but rather the signified concept of a banana (hence why "cats are fluffy" is a true statement despite the fact that not all cats are fluffy).

The nature of the object does not bend in accordance with language.. you've correctly noticed this yourself, and yet you haven't followed it through the logical implication that there is nothing inherently "banana-like" about the banana. The universe does not care if you call it an orange, or a aeroplane, or whatever made up word you want. Jesus Christ is not going to teleport in to slap you for trying to change the immutable laws of the universe by doing so. What this means is that language is not in and of itself reality, it is a tool for describing reality which is created by and only of use to human beings.

We don't have to dismantle the entire history of Western philosophy to see that language can be an imperfect tool. It's actually incredibly obvious that language and the categorizations it imposes are often fairly arbitrary.

This raises a lot of questions which it becomes necessary to answer if we're going to try and talk about the world. It creates an epistemological responsibility to justify the language we use, not simply to assume it's okay because hey, people use these words and people have never been wrong about anything!

I hope I'm missing some context that makes it clear you're talking about people with deformed genitals or something, not that the decision is arbitrary in the average birth and that fringe cases where someone doesn't fit into a certain sex make sex not exist.

No. The decision is always arbitrary

Some people have lobed ears. Some people have unlobed ears. That's a real physical difference which exists. But if someone started dividing babies into social categories and expecting them to function and behave differently based on whether or not they had lobed or unlobed ears, you'd presumably say.. "what the fuck, dude, that is arbitrary" because it is.

Bodies exist. They have a substantive physical reality which is not something I'm seeking to question. The meaning which is assigned to them, however, does not.

If you want to try another thought excercise, imagine a universe in which there is and has only ever been one human being, drifting alone in space.

This human being has a penis.

Is it male?

 

[FalloutJack]

Snip

Yes, but Kryten is lying. He's being taught how to speak misinformation. The labels are labels, but they're our labels, and we put them there because you need words to represent facts in our language. It's not arbitrary. A man is not a woman just because he puts on a dress. That's a transvestite. A man is not a woman if he prefers men. That's a homosexual. Equally, a woman does not become a man by wearing pants and preferring women. That's just wearing pants and being a lesbian. You can't just cross over mentally. 'Tis not by word, but by deed. There is male and there is female and they are two different beings even if you call them radishes and bean sprouts, for all the good it does, because they're separated by more than concept, but by physical nature. Only by mental AND physical change do you truly cross the boundary, and that is why gender is real.

EDIT: I want to add a bit, to ask about your question to the other guy. Ummm...about this one singular human in existence... Is his name ADAM, perchance? Because if so, there are some theologens that want a word with you.

 

[Terminal Blue]

The labels are labels, but they're our labels, and we put them there because you need words to represent facts in our language.

Exactly. They are our labels and we put them there. They are part of our social reality, but this does not mean they have existence beyond that.

I'm anticipating the standard anti-postmodern response here, which is "lol, you can't just decide what words mean!" No, I agree that you can't. But that's not because of truth, that's not because everything we say which isn't deliberate deception has to be "true". It's because of power. Power secures the meaning of language, not truth. The ability to decide when someone is telling the truth and when someone is lying, the ability to tell other people what words mean and have them agree, that is the actual process through which language is generated.

It's not arbitrary.

What you've said actually suggests the opposite.

A man is not a woman just because he puts on a dress.

A woman is also not a woman because she puts on a dress.

A woman is a woman because people look at her, or touch her, or talk to her and say "that's a woman".

Of course, that judgement is always contingent, which is actually the point Butler is making with performativity. A woman walks down the street in a dress and people might think "that's a woman", but if she took the dress off people might think "that's a man". Is this the revelation of an authentic truth that the woman is actually a man? Only for those who think it is. The woman can put the same dress on the next day and go out and have people think "that's a woman" again.

To say that gender is performative is to realize, correctly, that it is only real in the sense that it is constantly enacted and performed through the momentary, temporary success or failure to meet the arbitrary standard of being a woman, whatever that means in any given context. Gender is never just there, it has to be repeated and maintained constantly.. that's not to imply that we can control the outcome of the performance or that the basic shapes and attributes of our bodies are irrelevant, but any importance or meaning placed on our bodies is placed there by us. It's never "just there." It only matters in the sense that we decided to factor it into that judgement of "that's a man" or "that's a woman".

As you say, our labels.

EDIT: I want to add a bit, to ask about your question to the other guy. Ummm...about this one singular human in existence... Is his name ADAM, perchance? Because if so, there are some theologens that want a word with you.

"His" name can be whatever you want it to be, it's functionally irrelevant. If you want to phrase it in terms of whether Adam was male before Eve, then fine. The purpose is to explore the question of whether gender can "exist" outside of semiotics (or more broadly, outside of language). I'm not really interested in regurgitating established theological doctrine.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Not a single sentence here makes sense.

Okay.. what specifically doesn't make sense?

Because actually, what we're talking about here isn't terribly difficult. It's a process you can observe happening if you feel so inclined, although you don't necessarily need to because how it works is incredibly common knowledge.

Imagine you're in a labour ward, and a baby has just been delivered. What happens now?

 

[cleric of the order]

Is GENder real? Yes. it is predicated upon your GENitals.

And how do we know what genitals someone has?

Sexual dimorphism, neotony, basic physical telldales.
While there are exceptions to which SEX has different Sexual characteristics, using good sense is a good rules of thumb

 

[FalloutJack]

Zoop

I'm seeing alot of handwaving and ignoring established facts of life, but I'm not seeing any reason to believe your point of view. It complicates a very uncomplicated thing for no actual reason. It's all very interesting to talk about, but it isn't how things are. And when you get into a Monty Python Argument Sketch over it, it becomes clear that's spent itself up.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I'm seeing alot of handwaving and ignoring established facts of life, but I'm not seeing any reason to believe your point of view.

While I'm disappointed, I don't find that surprising. It's not an easy argument.. I've been reading queer theory full-time for about five years now, and I'd say it's only really in the past year or so that it's come together for me.

And yes, I am asking you to ignore "established facts of life", or at least to develop a certain detatchment from the "esatablished facts of life" which allows for critical examination of where they come from and what they actually are. This requires a degree of skepticism which most people aren't taught, and even those who are don't tend to use outside of an academic context.

I don't need you to "believe" anything, what I would have liked is for you to stop assuming that certain things are true simply because "that's the way things are", because how exactly do you know how things are? There's an epistemological question which you're waving away when you talk about "the facts of life" or say "this is how things are!"

Basically, it would have been interesting if you could have restrained your idea of "how things are" purely to what it is possible to know about how things are, to stop making second order assumptions about reality and assuming that things need to be a certain way in order to explain the world you live in and to focus purely on the actual nuts and bolts of how categories like gender come to exist in the first place, not as "facts of life" which must be true because they are facts of life, but as statements of truth, because statements of truth are visible, I'm making some right now.. "facts of life" are not.

It complicates a very uncomplicated thing for no actual reason.

And how do you know that?

 

[FalloutJack]

Zoop

Well, if you don't need me to believe anything, then we don't need to discuss anything either. If we're going to ignore facts and evidence and information on the whole, then I can declare myself as God on my say-so alone and that'll be the end of it. I DID say the consequences of your line of thinking was to basically deny all things scientific, religious, historical, linguistic, and logical. The argument requires us to be living in a world that is not this one, which means a thought experiment that does not apply to real life. If you want to argue that it's like this in real life while ignoring all input to the contrary, then I can be God on that same ticket, and deny your claim.

 

[scw55]

Sex is biological level denoted by chromosomes.
Gender is a choice and doesn't have to reflect sex.

Humans seem to be the only organisms on this planet with free will. We have choice.

 

[MrFalconfly]

Sex is biological level denoted by chromosomes.
Gender is a choice and doesn't have to reflect sex.

Then why not just say "gender doesn't exist", because "gender" has officially become useless as an identifier (and it's becoming ever more useless as an identifier as fringe element lunatics invent more and more "genders").

Sex on the other hand is VERY useful as an identifier, since it can be confirmed empirically, without any subjective components.

EDIT:

As for social roles. Can't we all just agree that we've entered the 21st century, and there is only one social role, and that is "human".

 

[Terminal Blue]

Its a poke at quantum physics, might I be as bold as to suggest you look up

I wasn't sure if you were being serious or not. There are a lot of extremely non-sequitur arguments on this thread.

And your entire argument is based on the assumption that "gender"(as you define it) does not exist.

That's really not true.

I've devoted a significant chunk of my life now to studying gender because I think it is real, I've experienced it as indeed we all have. I have no problem with the idea that something can be arbitrary or subjective or even linguistic and still exist. But that doesn't change the fact that it isn't "real" in the same sense as physical objects, such as human bodies, are real.

And that is your opinion.

Okay, do you want to pretend that the word "essential" means something different to what it actually means?

We can do that if you want, but it's not going to make one tiny shred of difference. If you don't have the capacity to make a judgement which applies in every case, then the judgement you're making is not "essential" (or whatever term you want to use instead) in the sense that it very clearly doesn't constitute a purely self-evident natural category.

Or are you just using "that's your opinion" as a way of saying "nothing you say can possibly be true or false because it is the product of a subject position with limited perspective of reality". In which case.. yeah, round of fucking applause. Now follow the implications of that.

Addressing your point, I do believe you are defining "gender" as "gender identity".

Not really.. Although I will define gender as a word which can be defined as gender identity if one so chooses.

Or else I am just going to assume you are arguing in bad faith.

Assume what you like. I proof read and edit posts after posting them all the time. I don't do it to make other people look bad, but if it's a problem for you I'll try not to do it with your posts from now on. I'm also not sure you can really take the moral high ground when it comes to arguing in good faith, since you don't seem to be responding to any points I've actually made.

Well, if you don't need me to believe anything, then we don't need to discuss anything either.

You're right. It can be interesting to try though.

If we're going to ignore facts and evidence and information on the whole, then I can declare myself as God on my say-so alone and that'll be the end of it.

Saying "I am God" is a fact. We're ignoring facts, remember..

This is literally the point. Stop unilaterally declaring what the truth is. Stop just saying what the facts are without actually justifying them. Stop pretending that because you say something is a fact then it automatically has to be true. Be skeptical.

I DID say the consequences of your line of thinking was to basically deny all things scientific, religious, historical, linguistic, and logical.

Why would you think so?

I don't deny any of these things, but I will happily point out that things are not magically more meaningful or truthful for being scientific, religious, historical, linguistic or logical. To know how truthful things are, we need to go beyond simply saying that they're scientific or historical, and we need to look at what they actually do to help us arrive at the truth.

You're beyond help.

Prove it.

 

[mike1921]

I hope I'm missing some context that makes it clear you're talking about people with deformed genitals or something, not that the decision is arbitrary in the average birth and that fringe cases where someone doesn't fit into a certain sex make sex not exist.

No. The decision is always arbitrary

Some people have lobed ears. Some people have unlobed ears. That's a real physical difference which exists. But if someone started dividing babies into social categories and expecting them to function and behave differently based on whether or not they had lobed or unlobed ears, you'd presumably say.. "what the fuck, dude, that is arbitrary" because it is.

Bodies exist. They have a substantive physical reality which is not something I'm seeking to question. The meaning which is assigned to them, however, does not.

If you want to try another thought excercise, imagine a universe in which there is and has only ever been one human being, drifting alone in space.

This human being has a penis.

Is it male?

The decision of whether or not they have lobed or unlobed ears is not arbitrary though. The doctor's decision is by no means arbitrary, the importance placed on it may be but penises and vaginas are functionally different, it's not some nonexistent difference. If you look at someone with hair that most people would call blonde you don't go "Oh my god that's so arbitrary someone decided that for you".

But yea, because people with lobed and un-lobed ears are the same mentally, it would be entirely arbitrary; it would also be a poor analogy to sex and gender roles. Males and females have different hormonal and brain structures, so yes they're going to have different social tendencies and generally we're fairly accepting of people who don't fall into them; there's still a pretty big package of things that come with being biologically male or female.

A penis similar to a normal human's? Attached to testicles that make semen? I think it's a fair assumption to make with our definitions. Of course biologically I would think males are based on their ability to interact with females reproductively so it would be pointless to have that definition in that universe.

 

[FalloutJack]

Snip

You're missing the point entirely. You can't have this discussion both ways, and me being god transcends all necessities for logic because I doth declare. Now, you can keep on going, but your statement is unproven, and it will remain so unless you can give me a better angle that makes sense.

 

[scw55]

Sex is biological level denoted by chromosomes.
Gender is a choice and doesn't have to reflect sex.

Then why not just say "gender doesn't exist", because "gender" has officially become useless as an identifier (and it's becoming ever more useless as an identifier as fringe element lunatics invent more and more "genders").

Sex on the other hand is VERY useful as an identifier, since it can be confirmed empirically, without any subjective components.

EDIT:

As for social roles. Can't we all just agree that we've entered the 21st century, and there is only one social role, and that is "human".

Because I choose to.

 

[Terminal Blue]

You already did my job for me.

If this is the best job you can manage, then I'm not surprised.

The decision of whether or not they have lobed or unlobed ears is not arbitrary though.

..but as you correctly point out the attachment of meaning to it is, and that's what the decision is.. it's the attachment of meaning. Whether you make the decision or defer it doesn't alter the bodies one bit.

There's a distinction between things and the concepts of things. That's a (if not the) central problem of Western philosophy for the past few centuries. Unicorns don't exist, and yet "unicorns have horns" is not a meaningless statement. Thus, how can you be sure that when you say "men have penises" that you're reflecting the existence of an ontologically distinct category of "men" which exists in reality? Penises exist, sure, but so do horns.

Males and females have different hormonal and brain structures, so yes they're going to have different social tendencies

That's a non-sequitur. Even if men and women do have different hormonal and brain structures (and bear in mind that everyone has different hormonal and brain structures, and degrees of difference are often quite dependent on the frame of reference) how would that guarantee different social tendencies? It may be true, but it isn't something you can just assume and neither is it required in order to abductively explain reality.

You're missing the point entirely. You can't have this discussion both ways, and me being god transcends all necessities for logic because I doth declare.

I'm not missing the point, but I rather think you are. You're not parodying my position, you're parodying your own. You can declare yourself God just as you can declare that men and women are self-evident categories in nature, but since those aren't self-evident facts you're not actually getting anywhere by doing it.

If I'm too skeptical to even believe that men and women are self-evident categories in nature, which is something that's actually genuinely hard to be skeptical of, what makes you think for one tiny second that I'm going to accept that you're God simply because you said so? Do you really think that's the logical conclusion of my argument? Because, if so, you don't understand my argument. I'm not advocating that you do away with epistemological limits. I'm not advocating that everything is true or can be true (I'm also not arguing in a hard sense that nothing is true). What I'm suggesting is a kind of skepticism that treats truth as a matter of perpetual inquiry and never something which can simply be assumed because you or anyone says so.

This requires that we not assume that gender "exists" as a stable ontological category because we can make meaningful statements about it, whether or not those statements are "scientific", "religious", "historical" or any other classification.