Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place • Hacker News Board

Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

#641

Post by memling » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 12:23 PM UTC

nandhinianand wrote: post #640

memling wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. is pretty close for ex: most brain functions can be called subjective, and therefore not that relevant. Sorry for the delay. HN is not a great forum for long discussions (on purpose, I guess). I've been noodling on this for awhile, and so maybe just blathering into the ether. I'm not sure that subjective and irrelevant necessarily go together. I guess the argument I'm thinking of is more this: my pronoun prefere…

I think we're on the same page..I was collating subjective and irrelevant together for the sake of the parent comment. and it is quite common in the "objectivist philosophy/meta-physical" view . > Language shapes reality, Sorry I have disagree on this one. I don't think language shapes reality. It definitely shapes our perception, filters, and biases but shapes reality only in a very Probabilistic graphical model sen…

> > Language shapes reality,

> Sorry I have disagree on this one. I don't think language shapes reality. It definitely shapes our perception, filters, and biases but shapes reality only in a very Probabilistic graphical model sense. And even then it shapes(as in cavemen---> civilization) reality as much as say, air shapes reality, mathematical formulae and theories shape reality .

Sorry if it's not clear: I'm not trying to say what's true, despite having opinions on the subject; I'm interested in best arguments.

What I think the implications are in assuming that gender is as much state-of-mind as state-of-body (if not more) is two-fold:

1. The body really does matter. It's inconsistent to say that the body has to align with the mind if the body doesn't matter. Surgical and hormonal intervention make no sense if the mind and the body aren't somehow connected in a very deep way.

2. The desire for pronoun usage is more, too, than mere courtesy, but the desire for consensus on reality. If I'm a woman trapped in a man's body or have no particular gender, when I ask someone to use pronouns of my preference I am actually asking them to make a statement about what is real and true. This implies in no small way that language shapes and makes reality in some nontrivial way.

Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

#642

Post by realityking » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

memling wrote: post #639

realityking wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm still not quite sure how this addresses my question about how using biological pronouns instead of preferred pronouns somehow "ignores the existence of the intersex" as you earlier asserted. My point, perhaps poorly delivered, was that not every person has a “biological pronoun”. How do you even define it? There are people with XY chromosomes and female genitalia (and usually female identity): https://en.m.wiki…

> My point, perhaps poorly delivered, was that not every person has a “biological pronoun”. How do you even define it? My understanding is that historically the presence of the Y chromosome was considered determinative. One was male (therefore "he") if the karotype was 46,XY or 47,XXY or 48,XXXY, etc. Indeed, in discussions of the more common abnormal karotypes (e.g., Klinefelter), most of the literature I've seen us…

We‘ve taken this conversation pretty far over the past 12-days (thanks for sticking with it!). I think it‘s fair to circle back to your original question that I responded to:

> Why is the subjective experience of gender privileged over the objective biology of sex?

My point was that biology is not all that objective and if we were to use pronouns in accordance with your thesis, we‘d eliminate the identity of many intersex people.

Whether gender-identity can be out of sync with your body in the absence of conditions described as intersex (which, for the record, I do believe in) and whether it should be respected is somewhat orthogonal to that. I believe the examples I’ve given of conditions where biology is either ambiguous or actively out of sync are sufficient to illustrate that using “ objective biology” would eliminate the identity of many intersex people. It’s my opinion, that that alone is reason enough to privilege gender over sex.

Re: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place

#643

Post by memling » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

realityking wrote: post #642

memling wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point, perhaps poorly delivered, was that not every person has a “biological pronoun”. How do you even define it? My understanding is that historically the presence of the Y chromosome was considered determinative. One was male (therefore "he") if the karotype was 46,XY or 47,XXY or 48,XXXY, etc. Indeed, in discussions of the more common abnormal karotypes (e.g., Klinefelter), most of the literature I've seen us…

We‘ve taken this conversation pretty far over the past 12-days (thanks for sticking with it!). I think it‘s fair to circle back to your original question that I responded to: > Why is the subjective experience of gender privileged over the objective biology of sex? My point was that biology is not all that objective and if we were to use pronouns in accordance with your thesis, we‘d eliminate the identity of many int…

Thanks for the consistent and thoughtful replies. It's been helpful for me as I think about these hot-button topics. I'll certainly leave here but will probably reference the thread for my own sake for some time to come; thanks again.