i speak cockney and wingdings

@Zoe I think your logic isn't going to convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you. You are making authoritative arguements about the meaning of abstract concepts. While the sources you references have no innate authority over the subject.

Authoritative arguements are only effective if the larger community can agree that the referenced people are an authority on the subject.The WHO, APA, and WPA are organizations that deal with health and psychology. So referencing them only works if everyone agrees that "maleness", "femaleness", and "gender," are health and psychological issues. While simultaneously getting everyone to agree that these organizations are in fact an authority on the subjects.

But as I pointed out earlier, this debate is not inherently about health, biology, or psychology. It is about the definition of these words, and the implications in the larger society. I would even go so far as to say that using authoritative arguments like that are nearly meaningless. Because they are only substantive if people already consent that gender is a health or psychological issues. But if they consent to that, than they consent to the framework that leads to your conclusion. Thus using that sort of authoritative argument as your antecedent, really is predisposing your consequent argument.

Now I am not claiming that it is not a rational way to view gender, it is in fact a perfectly rational framework. I am just pointing out that it is not the only rational framework. Failing to recognize this just leads to you creating logical arguements that only make sense sense to people who already recognize and accept your underlying assumptions concerning gender (ie they agree gender is a health or psychological issue). So in essence, that type of authoritative argument only convinces people who already agree with you, but does nothing to convince people who disagree with you. If you want to convince people of your view, you need to start by convincing people gender is in fact a health or psychological issue.

@OxTheAutist The above post also goes for you. Just adding that referencing academia is also just a vague authoritative arguement, and that what makes something silly is completely relative to the individual and community someone lives in.

Edited 6/2/2019 18:33:38

Anyone who knows literally anything about gender will agree that it's partly a health and psychological issue. I'm not even going to try and convince anyone who doesn't already agree with this very basic notion.

Part of me feels weird about this entire gender/sex thingy, because in German we dont have 2 different words for it. Both "Sex" and "Gender" translate to the same German word "Geschlecht". We dont differ between those two.

While the sources you references have no innate authority over the subject.

it's very easy to pretend there's no innate authority over the subject of gender if you ignore gender studies

Part of me feels weird about this entire gender/sex thingy, because in German we dont have 2 different words for it. Both "Sex" and "Gender" translate to the same German word "Geschlecht". We dont differ between those two.

I guess that's the beauty of the English language... 200 words that all mean the same thing

Before we go further I feel like we should clarify something. A word can have multiple meanings. Take the word "love" according to Merrium-Webster "love" has at least 9 possible definitions. One possible definition is "strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties" another is "the sexual embrace", yet another is "a score of zero (as in tennis)." I don't think anyone who understands these definitions would claim that the underlying concepts behind the definitions hold the same meaning. That is essentially what I am claiming is the case with gender.

@OxTheAutist Even gender studies do not have an innate authority over the definition of "gender." They do have an innate authority if you want to view "gender" through the gender studies paradigm (which is perfectly rational way to view it), but the power to decide the meaning of any word always comes from the community in which it is used. Remember "gender studies" was named after the word "gender", not the other way around. Just because a community names itself after a word does not give it the innate authority to redefine that word, in other communities. Which, reiterating my previous point, is the core of this debate. We have one community that wants to replace the existing definition of "gender" used in other communities, with a new definition of "gender" conceived in their own community.

@Zoe Are you claiming it CAN be viewed through a psychological or biological lenses, or that it MUST be viewed through one of those two lenses? I agree it can be viewed from a health and psychological lenses. But if you are claiming that it MUST be viewed through those lenses then I would continue to disagree.

Second, I think you are misrepresenting how academia views the word "gender". It is true many fields in academia have largely redefined the word "gender" (especially in the social science) during the past two decades. But even just reading the Wikipedia pages for "gender" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender) and "gender and sex distinction" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction) you will see that its definition varies greatly between academic fields, and depends largely on its context. Which I believe more closely reflects my argument that "gender" is a word with many meanings depending upon the community in which it is used. Rather than that there is one unified definition of gender, that you seem to claim is supported by academia.

Edited 6/4/2019 01:13:01

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/08/27/trouble-in-science-massive-effort-to-reproduce-100-experimental-results-succeeds-only-36-times/?utm_term=.ce558f150edc

"Now a volunteer army of fact-checkers has published a new report that affirms that the skepticism was warranted. Over the course of four years, 270 researchers attempted to reproduce the results of 100 experiments that had been published in three prestigious psychology journals.
It was awfully hard. They ultimately concluded that they’d succeeded just 39 times."

"A more fundamental problem, say Nosek and other reform-minded scientists, is that researchers seeking tenure, grants or professional acclaim feel tremendous pressure to do experiments that have the kind of snazzy results that can be published in prestigious journals."

So considering that the psychologists and social scientists have fabricated a narrative from dubious studies, I would posit that referencing "what psychologists think" instead of referencing specific studies that have actually been replicated, is out of the question as a valid form of evidence. Social "scientists" who "study gender" are literally under threat from getting blackballed from academia if they don't reaffirm the UN position on gender.

The whole point of the social sciences is to act as a gatekeeper of intellectual society, to put fools on ethics committees and blackball legitimate scientific studies.

Edited 6/5/2019 03:18:30

You can never get anywhere with anti-science people like this. Have an entire field of academia and a plethora of both national and international organizations disagree with you? They MUST be silencing everyone who disagrees with the general consensus, they HAVE to be hiding something. Nevermind my complete lack of evidence for even just this assertion. I mean seriously, these people make such massive assumptions and mental gymnastics in order to justify their decidedly anti-science beliefs, it's like talking to a flat earther.

Who here is being anti-science? 𝘝𝘌𝘙𝘕𝘈𝘓 𝘝𝘐𝘕𝘈𝘐𝘎𝘙𝘌𝘛𝘛𝘌 main post is talking about a real problem in academia, that academia has openly recognized and is trying to solve. For example in my own field, statistics, there has been quite a bit of talk about the use of hypothesis tests, and p-values and how a general lack of understanding of the nuisances and complexities of these sort of statistics has contributed to the bigger issue of reproducibility and other issues in academia.

While my posts are not supposed to be anti-science, they are pointing out the limitations of science. Such as forcing people to accept one redefinition of a commonly used word over another. I have never claimed that transmen or transwoman don't exist, or that they are some how 'lesser,' they aren't. They are human beings deserving of both respect, and the same equality of opportunity as the rest of us. Nor have I claimed your use of the word 'gender' is irrational. I am merely pointing out that science does not have a monopoly on all forms of knowledge, and that the science you are portraying does not really have the consensus as you have portrayed it.

Really this forum post has been a debate that is supporting your version of what appears to be empiricism(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism), and mine which is a form of pragmatic skepticism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism
) and rationalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism). Both views are valid, and these sort of epistemic debates go back at least as far as Socrates and Aristotle. But writing off our side as anti-science without even trying to address the beliefs is just dogmatic, lazy, and inaccurate.

Edited 6/7/2019 18:39:02

All of this talk about so called "gender-studies" makes me wonder .... what kind of studies did those guys do? I never really looked into it, because, like I said, we dont differ between those 2 things in the German language. But I am curious now what kind of research they did to came to those conclusions.

Gender studies and feminism has constructed a very interesting system from which to view the world. I don't know if I know enough about to adequately explain. But I've been making my way through The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory, and I would suggest you take a look at it if you are interested in learning more. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199328581.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199328581

None of the UN social agendas are remotely scientific. Non-scientists control funding and give research grants to the scientists they agree with.

Zoe, you clearly haven't taken a basic logic class, otherwise you would have realized that it doesn't matter that a PLETHORA!! of big organizations with the same social agenda all have the same "scientific" conclusions about gender. That's called an appeal to authority, dummy.

Deferring to people who have spent their lives studying this and widely respected international organizations who also dedicate themselves to stuff like this isn't an appeal to authority.

From LogicallyFallicious.com, "Be very careful not to confuse "deferring to an authority on the issue" with the appeal to authority fallacy. Remember, a fallacy is an error in reasoning. Dismissing the council of legitimate experts and authorities turns good skepticism into denialism. The appeal to authority is a fallacy in argumentation, but deferring to an authority is a reliable heuristic that we all use virtually every day on issues of relatively little importance. There is always a chance that any authority can be wrong, that’s why the critical thinker accepts facts provisionally. It is not at all unreasonable (or an error in reasoning) to accept information as provisionally true by credible authorities."

And again, I'd like to point out this is the same logic Flat Earther's use. Entire scientific field disagree with you? They all have an agenda! They're all just lying! Who cares about "science" or "scientific consensus" amirite?

@vernal vinaigrette Don't try and reason with Zoe. He has not been a good faith participant in this conversation. Given he has yet to give a real response that refutes or even addresses any of the points made against him, while repeatedly making the same logical fallacy over and over again (the definition of "Appeal to Authority" given on the his site is "Insisting that a claim is true simply because a valid authority or expert on the issue said it was true, without any other supporting evidence offered." Which is exactly what he has done thus far.) At this point he is essentially covering his ears and screaming "I can't here you! LALALA!".

Deferring to people who have spent their lives studying this and widely respected international organizations who also dedicate themselves to stuff like this isn't an appeal to authority.

From LogicallyFallicious.com, "Be very careful not to confuse "deferring to an authority on the issue" with the appeal to authority fallacy. Remember, a fallacy is an error in reasoning. Dismissing the council of legitimate experts and authorities turns good skepticism into denialism. The appeal to authority is a fallacy in argumentation, but deferring to an authority is a reliable heuristic that we all use virtually every day on issues of relatively little importance. There is always a chance that any authority can be wrong, that’s why the critical thinker accepts facts provisionally. It is not at all unreasonable (or an error in reasoning) to accept information as provisionally true by credible authorities."

Again, what kind of scientific studies did those people do to come to those conclusions?