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Nearly Everyone
Apr. 28th, 2010 10:28 pmArguing with people on the Internet is compelling for me because I have a thing about not being heard, and almost all the time, when someone disagrees with me (and bothers to engage with me about it), they don't believe anything fundamentally different from what I believe -- or so it seems to me. It's just a misunderstanding, and if only I keep trying to explain the truth well enough, to be a good enough teacher, the other person will see the light and agree with me.
When it doesn't immediately descend into profanity (which is boring, but which actually usually doesn't happen), talking to people on the Internet about gender is even more compelling, because it's just so easy to expose fundamentally wrong assumptions with a few well-honed questions.
For example, everyone is convinced that chromosomes are what make a person a man or a woman -- what give people some fundamental essence of being male or female that is both socialy significant and that no amount of social or medical adjustment can change -- but everyone is also happy to fling about "man" and "woman" all the time for people whose chromosomes they have never examined.
Everyone is convinced that it's easy to spot a transsexual, but nobody actually knows how many people they've seen and believed were transsexual actually weren't trans, or how many people they've seen and believed were cissexual were in fact trans.
Everyone is convinced that, even if one makes the politically correct concession of calling trans people by the right name and pronouns, it's still appropriate and meaningful to call a trans woman "biologically male". But nobody can conjure up the objective, biological characteristic that differentiates cis women from trans women. No, it's not the subjective, social characteristic of having been assigned female (or not) at birth; no, it's not the internal, psychological characteristic of knowing oneself to be a woman or a man. Then what is it? Everyone knows there's something there, something measurable, that denotes your woman-ness or man-ness independently of your beliefs or those of a specific person or group of people observing you. But no one can actually name or describe that very concrete, very objective criterion... whatever it may be.
Of course, you can tell people as many times as you want that some boys are born with penises, some girls are born with penises, some boys are born with vulvas, some girls are born with vulvas, and some people are born with either but aren't girls or boys, and none of these groups are intrinsically more authentic than any of the others. But it's much more fun to try to find the right questions to ask that will force them to say that themselves, if you can get them there before the Shitcock Effect sets in.
When it doesn't immediately descend into profanity (which is boring, but which actually usually doesn't happen), talking to people on the Internet about gender is even more compelling, because it's just so easy to expose fundamentally wrong assumptions with a few well-honed questions.
For example, everyone is convinced that chromosomes are what make a person a man or a woman -- what give people some fundamental essence of being male or female that is both socialy significant and that no amount of social or medical adjustment can change -- but everyone is also happy to fling about "man" and "woman" all the time for people whose chromosomes they have never examined.
Everyone is convinced that it's easy to spot a transsexual, but nobody actually knows how many people they've seen and believed were transsexual actually weren't trans, or how many people they've seen and believed were cissexual were in fact trans.
Everyone is convinced that, even if one makes the politically correct concession of calling trans people by the right name and pronouns, it's still appropriate and meaningful to call a trans woman "biologically male". But nobody can conjure up the objective, biological characteristic that differentiates cis women from trans women. No, it's not the subjective, social characteristic of having been assigned female (or not) at birth; no, it's not the internal, psychological characteristic of knowing oneself to be a woman or a man. Then what is it? Everyone knows there's something there, something measurable, that denotes your woman-ness or man-ness independently of your beliefs or those of a specific person or group of people observing you. But no one can actually name or describe that very concrete, very objective criterion... whatever it may be.
Of course, you can tell people as many times as you want that some boys are born with penises, some girls are born with penises, some boys are born with vulvas, some girls are born with vulvas, and some people are born with either but aren't girls or boys, and none of these groups are intrinsically more authentic than any of the others. But it's much more fun to try to find the right questions to ask that will force them to say that themselves, if you can get them there before the Shitcock Effect sets in.