I think that when people say "woman" they ordinarily mean "adult human female." If we want to construct a definition intentionally, we can try to create one that solves the trans inclusion problem, but it would have to be meaningless. As Tomas Bogardus says, the trans inclusion problem cannot be solved because “no matter what it means to be a woman, it’s one thing to be a woman, and another thing to identify as a woman” [1].
All the talk about neurology and so forth seems rather tangential because (1) this is not the ordinary use of the terms man/woman and (2) this doesn't even solve the issue entirely because you can have involuntary trans people and miss some people. No matter what the external trait is, you can have an internal sense of gender which contradicts it. What to do in those cases? Aella and Bentham argue just be dishonest and respect identity. I don't think we should go that route.
I think the trans movement is sociall harmful and unfortunately results in genital mutilation for many. I think this will be cast aside, rather than continue. I don't think this stuff should be indulged and that articles like Scott's are infohazards (and motivated reasoning). For my view, you can see my article Womanhood is Not Like Parenthood [2].
Like I said, I think the adult human female definition is very much an acceptable or good one and I don't begrudge anyone using it. I do wonder, though, what your intuitions are about edge case body swap scenarios. Would you say that a man who goes to sleep and wakes up a woman just *is* a woman, then? I'm inclined to think he's still a man, just trapped in a woman's body, which is why I drag all the neurology stuff into play, to explain away that intuition.
It seems like we think "that's not your body, it's someone else's body" and although you're attached to this new body, it's not yours. I suppose if your body morphed into this new body, then you would become a woman. Whereas, if your brain was moved to a different one, you might not be one because it's not your body. Not sure. What do you think about that? Imagine your penis morphed into an actual vagina and your body changed at the DNA level
That's a fun hypothetical! Personally, my intuition is that re-writing all my DNA would be sufficient to change me into a woman, but not necessarily because of the genital anatomy. I'm thinking there might be some sort of neurological change that would result from re-writing my DNA that would make me identify as a woman. I'd definitely need therapy in any case though!
My twitter account is https://twitter.com/ChefStamos but functionally, no. I forgot my password and got locked out of my account AND got locked out of the email account I had set it up with so I can't even reset the password lol, but it's still set to automatically share my substack posts there. Silly me!
Yes, I think that's a good hypothetical. That seems to challenge my view. I think the transracial stuff seems like a clear implication of this thinking.
I think that when people say "woman" they ordinarily mean "adult human female." If we want to construct a definition intentionally, we can try to create one that solves the trans inclusion problem, but it would have to be meaningless. As Tomas Bogardus says, the trans inclusion problem cannot be solved because “no matter what it means to be a woman, it’s one thing to be a woman, and another thing to identify as a woman” [1].
All the talk about neurology and so forth seems rather tangential because (1) this is not the ordinary use of the terms man/woman and (2) this doesn't even solve the issue entirely because you can have involuntary trans people and miss some people. No matter what the external trait is, you can have an internal sense of gender which contradicts it. What to do in those cases? Aella and Bentham argue just be dishonest and respect identity. I don't think we should go that route.
I think the trans movement is sociall harmful and unfortunately results in genital mutilation for many. I think this will be cast aside, rather than continue. I don't think this stuff should be indulged and that articles like Scott's are infohazards (and motivated reasoning). For my view, you can see my article Womanhood is Not Like Parenthood [2].
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-022-00525-9
[2] https://parrhesia.substack.com/p/womanhood-is-not-like-parenthood
Like I said, I think the adult human female definition is very much an acceptable or good one and I don't begrudge anyone using it. I do wonder, though, what your intuitions are about edge case body swap scenarios. Would you say that a man who goes to sleep and wakes up a woman just *is* a woman, then? I'm inclined to think he's still a man, just trapped in a woman's body, which is why I drag all the neurology stuff into play, to explain away that intuition.
It seems like we think "that's not your body, it's someone else's body" and although you're attached to this new body, it's not yours. I suppose if your body morphed into this new body, then you would become a woman. Whereas, if your brain was moved to a different one, you might not be one because it's not your body. Not sure. What do you think about that? Imagine your penis morphed into an actual vagina and your body changed at the DNA level
That's a fun hypothetical! Personally, my intuition is that re-writing all my DNA would be sufficient to change me into a woman, but not necessarily because of the genital anatomy. I'm thinking there might be some sort of neurological change that would result from re-writing my DNA that would make me identify as a woman. I'd definitely need therapy in any case though!
Are you on Twitter or discord?
My twitter account is https://twitter.com/ChefStamos but functionally, no. I forgot my password and got locked out of my account AND got locked out of the email account I had set it up with so I can't even reset the password lol, but it's still set to automatically share my substack posts there. Silly me!
Yes, I think that's a good hypothetical. That seems to challenge my view. I think the transracial stuff seems like a clear implication of this thinking.