Tags: epistemology, sex differences, The Unit of Caring, transhumanism
Status: draft
+> Thou shalt not strike terms from others' expressive vocabulary without suitable replacement.
+>
+> —[Alicorn](https://twitter.com/luminousalicorn/status/839542071547441152)
+
_(Attention conservation notice: perhaps not that much new content relative to length if you've already read ["The Categories Were Made for Man to Make Predictions"](http://unremediatedgender.space/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/).)_
The author of the (highly recommended!) Tumblr blog [_The Unit of Caring_](https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com) [responds to](https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/171986501376/your-post-on-definition-of-gender-and-woman-and) an anonymous correspondent's observation that trans-exclusionary radical feminists tend to define the word _woman_ as "adult human biological female":
I've addressed this class of argument at length (about 7500 words) in a previous post, ["The Categories Were Made for Man to Make Predictions"](http://unremediatedgender.space/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/), but to summarize _briefly_, while I _agree_ that categories can be defined in many ways to suit different cultural priorities, it's also the case that not all possible categories are equally useful, because the cognitive function of categories is to group similar things together so that we can make similar predictions about them, and not every possible grouping of entities yields a "tight" distribution of predictions that can be usefully abstracted over.
-A free-thinking biologist certainly _could_ choose to reject the othrodoxy of grouping living things by ancestry and reproductive isolation and instead choose to study living things that are yellow, but their treatises would probably be difficult to follow, because "living things that are yellow" is instrinsically a much less cohesive subject matter than, say, "birds": experience with black crows is probably going to be _more_ useful when studying yellow canaries than experience with yellow daffodills—even if, in all philosophical strictness, there are a million things that these categories could have been drawn around, and who can say but that some other culture might have chosen color rather than ancestry as the true determinant of "species"?
+A free-thinking biologist certainly _could_ choose to reject the othrodoxy of grouping living things by ancestry and reproductive isolation and instead choose to study living things that are yellow, but their treatises would probably be difficult to follow, because "living things that are yellow" is instrinsically a much less cohesive subject matter than, say, "birds": experience with black crows is probably going to be _more_ useful when studying yellow canaries than experience with yellow daffodills—even if, _in all philosophical strictness_, there are a million things that these categories could have been drawn around, and who can say but that some hypothetical other culture might have chosen color rather than ancestry as the true determinant of "species"?
-It is of course true that different cultures will place different emphases and interpretations on various ways in which people can differ: being prepubescent or being a parent might have special significance in some cultures that outsiders could never understand. But to say that prepubescents might as well be a "gender"—well, at this point I must confess that I'm really not sure what this "gender" thing is the author is trying to talk about.
+It is of course true that different cultures will place different emphases and interpretations on various ways in which people can differ: being prepubescent or being a parent might have special significance in some cultures that outsiders could never understand. But to say that prepubescents might as well be a "gender"—well, at this point I must confess that I'm really not sure what this "gender" thing is that the author is trying to talk about.
-And I guess that's the problem. People who assume the "TERFy" definition of _woman_—like, say, the authors of the Mirriam–Webster dictionary [("noun, **1.a.**, an adult female person")](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woman)—generally aren't trying to invalidate anyone's "gender"; they're trying to talk about _biological sex_ using simple, universally-understood words. Biological sex is obviously not the only category in the world—in a lot of situations, you might care more about whether someone has living children—or for that matter, whether an organism is yellow—than what sex it is.
+And I guess that's the problem. People who assume a TERFy definition of _woman_—like, say, the authors of the Mirriam–Webster dictionary [("noun, **1.a.**, an adult female person")](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woman)—generally aren't trying to invalidate anyone's "gender"; they're trying to talk about _biological sex_ using simple, universally-understood words. Biological sex is obviously not the only category in the world—in a lot of situations, you might care more about whether someone has living children—or for that matter, whether an organism is yellow—than what sex it is.
-But when people _do_ want to talk about sex—when they want to carve reality along that _particular_ joint, without denying that there are [superexponentially](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/82eMd5KLiJ5Z6rTrr/superexponential-conceptspace-and-simple-words) many others in the vastness of configuration space—there's something _profoundly frustrating_ about Blue Tribe culture's axiomatic insistence that certain inferences _must not_ be made, that certain conceptual distinctions must not be _expressible_, except perhaps cloaked behind polysyllabic obfuscations like "assigned sex at birth" (as if the doctors made a _mistake_!).
+But when people _do_ want to talk about sex—when they want to carve reality along that _particular_ joint, without denying that there are [superexponentially](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/82eMd5KLiJ5Z6rTrr/superexponential-conceptspace-and-simple-words) many others in the vastness of configuration space—there's something _profoundly frustrating_ about [Blue Tribe](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/) culture's axiomatic insistence that certain inferences _must not_ be made, that certain conceptual distinctions must not be _expressible_, except perhaps cloaked behind polysyllabic obfuscations like "assigned sex at birth" (as if the doctors made a _mistake_!).
Even if many usages of words like _woman_ can and should be interpreted in a trans-inclusive sense, it's important that it also be possible to sometimes use the words in a trans-exclusive sense in those cases where the distributions of trans people and cis people of a given "gender" differ significantly for the variables of interest. The point is not to be mean to trans women (who are a huge fraction of my and _The Unit of Caring_ author's friends); the point is that it should be socially acceptable to _describe reality using words_.
<p class="flower-break">⁕ ⁕ ⁕</p>
-If it's socially unacceptable for people who want to talk about sex to say "That's not what I meant by _woman_ in this context _and you know it_", then people who would prefer not to acknowledge sex will always get the last word.
+The point being illustrated here is that if it's socially unacceptable for people who want to talk about sex to say "That's not what I meant by _woman_ in this context _and you know it_", then people who would prefer not to acknowledge sex will always get the last word—not because they have superior arguments, but because the very terms of discourse have been [systematically gamed to conflate dissent with unkindness](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/).
+
+To this it might be objected that trans activists are merely advocating for greater precision, rather than trying to make it socially unacceptable to think about biological sex: after all, you can just say "cis women" (which excludes trans women, trans men, and natal-female nonbinary people) or "assigned female at birth" (which excludes trans women, but includes trans men and natal-female nonbinary people and presumably [David Reimer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer)) or "people with uteruses" (which excludes trans women and natal females who have had a hystorectomy) if that's what you _really mean_. I think this is underestimating the usefulness of having simple, [_short_](https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/soQX8yXLbKy7cFvy8/entropy-and-short-codes) descriptions for the categories that do the most predictive work on typical cases.
+
+Kind or not, morally justified or not, voluntary or not, sexual dimorphism is _actually a real thing_. Studying the pages of _Gray's Anatomy_—[or _Wikipedia_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_physiology) if you're on a budget—you can absorb all sorts of detailed, _specific_ knowledge of the differences between female and male humans, from the obvious (sex organs, vocal pitch, height, muscle mass, body hair) to the less-obvious-but-well-known (chromosomes, hormones, pelvis shape) to the comparatively obscure (blood pressure! lymphocyte concentrations! gray-matter-to-white-matter ratios in the brain!). Nor is this surprising from a theoretical standpoint, where we have theories explaining [mechanisms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisogamy) [by which](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection) sexual dimorphism can evolve and [what kinds of differences](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parental_investment&oldid=832276512#Trivers'_parental_investment_theory) it produces in different species.
+
+If—like me—you're the kind of person who is not necessarily _happy_ about sexual dimorphism, you can always deliberately define your categories in order to minimize it: if there's a large sex difference in some observable measurement, just say you _don't care_ about predicting that particular measurement.
+
+But people who have _other_ concerns than minimizing Blue Tribe people's quasi-religious discomfort with sexual dimorphism (it's my former quasi-religion, too, so I'm allowed to make fun of us) might want a common word—or even just a particular _sense_ of a common word—to describe the world they see, in which sex is a real thing worth noticing.
+
+It might be worth noticing even if you don't believe in psychological sex differences! That's why generations of feminists have fought valiantly for women's rights on the grounds that women are every bit the moral and intellectual equals of men, rather than the grounds that it's not clear whether "women" actually exist as a non-arbitrary category.
+
+Being limited to just saying "people with uteruses" when the topic of conversation happens to be childbearing (or whatever the approved socially-just construction turns out to be) is not a suitable replacement (per Alicorn's maxim) when the speaker wants to refer to all the _other_ dimensions along which women statistically have things in common, including things that are hard to articulate or measure.
-To this it might be objected that trans activists are merely advocating for greater precision, rather than trying to make it socially unacceptable to think about biological sex: after all, you can just say "cis women" (which excludes trans women, trans men, and natal-female nonbinary people) or "assigned female at birth" (which excludes trans women, but includes trans men and natal-female nonbinary people and presumably [David Reimer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer)) or "uterus-havers" (which excludes trans women and natal females who have had a hystorectomy) if that's what you _really mean_.
+And including things that may not even be currently _known_. _I_ certainly don't know what differences in gray-to-white brain matter ratios _mean_ psychologically, but my map is not the territory: it doesn't mean some future sufficiently-advanced neuroscience won't be able to say what the difference means about female and male minds, and some sufficiently advanced evolutionary psychology, under what selection pressures it evolved.
-And it's true; [you _can_](/2016/Nov/editorial-process/). But I think this is underestimating the usefulness of having simple, [_short_](https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/soQX8yXLbKy7cFvy8/entropy-and-short-codes) descriptions for the categories that do the most predictive work on typical cases.
+_Speaking_ future advances in knowledge, the author continues to her second objection—
-Kind or not, morally justified or not, voluntary or not, sexual dimorphism is _actually a real thing_. Studying the pages of _Gray's Anatomy_—or [_Wikipedia_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_physiology) if you're on a budget—you can absorb all sorts of detailed, _specific_ knowledge of the differences between female and male humans, from the obvious (sex organs, vocal pitch, height, muscle mass, body hair) to the less-obvious-but-well-known (chromosomes, hormones, pelvis shape) to the comparatively obscure (blood pressure! lymphocyte concentrations! gray-matter-to-white-matter ratios in the brain!).
+> 2) Someday people are just going to be able to generate the exact physical body they want to inhabit. At that point, "biological" anything isn't going to apply.
-If—[like me](/2017/Dec/theres-a-land-that-i-see-or-the-spirit-of-intervention/)—you're the kind of person who is not necessarily _happy_ about sexual dimorphism, you can always deliberately define your categories in order to minimize it: if there's a large sex difference in some observable measurement, just say you _don't care_ about predicting that particular measurement.
+I definitely agree that biological anything isn't going to apply in the glorious posthuman future of unimaginable power and freedom when people can reshape their body and mind at will.
-And as long as you're _already_ optimizing your _categories_ for the purpose of assuaging your fear of sexual dimorphism (which is not identical to the purpose of maximizing predictive accuracy and must therefore trade off against it in at least some possible worlds), why not optimize your _hypotheses_ along the same criterion? If there _is_ a large sex difference along some dimension that you have to admit that you care about, you can just say it's due to socialization! Science is difficult enough that no one will ever be able to _prove_ you wrong.
+[(If we survive.)](https://nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html)
-But if you are furthermore an aspiring rationalist with [something to protect](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SGR4GxFK7KmW7ckCB/something-to-protect)—if you perceive a duty to see the world as it really is, even when it hurts—_especially_ when it hurts—
+But it's also not clear how much relevance this science-fictional scenario has to people in the unglorious preposthuman present. Yes, we do have HRT and SRS, and these are magnificent acheivements for the grand cause of morphological freedom, and should be available on an informed-consent basis. It's definitely something.
-[uturus-havers isn't sufficient bc natural categories]
+But it's also definitely not-everything. To get a sense of how far we have to go, I strongly recommend reading [Eliezer Yudkowsky's heartbreaking 2009 take](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QZs4vkC7cbyjL9XA9/changing-emotions) on what an actually effective male-to-female sex change would take.
-[quote the transhumanism objection]
+In my youth, I used to be more optimistic about the future of human enhancement. "Oh, sure, that may be true of _present-day humans_, but _in general_ ..." felt like a relevant and useful form of argument.
-[I used to do this, too]
+These days, dwelling on the general case feels awfully pedantic. I think what changed is that as I read more and gained some personal experience with real-world technology development (albeit in mere software), I began to appreciate technology as the sum of many contingent developments with particular implementation details that someone had to spend thousands of engineer–years pinning down, rather than as an unspecified generic force of everything getting better over time. _In principle_, everything not directly prohibited by the laws of physics is probably possible, which basically amounts to any miracle you can imagine. In practice, we get a very few, very _specific_ miracles that depend on vast institutions and supply chains and knowledge that can be lost as well as gained.
-Imagine if we applied the same tactics to _other_ standard transhumanist goals—
+I don't doubt that the inhabitants of some future world of Total Morphological Freedom won't use the same concepts to describe their happy lives that we need to navigate our comparatively impoverished existence in which we [aren't sure what basic biological mechanisms even exist](http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/04/04/adult-neurogenesis-a-pointed-review/) and [don't remember how to go the moon](https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2015/12/11/how-we-lost-the-ability-to-travel-to-the-moon/) or [build a subway for less than a billion dollars a mile](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/). But while we work towards a better future (_n.b._, _work towards_, not _wait for_; waiting doesn't help), we have to go on living in a world where [our means don't match our ambitions](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EQkELCGiGQwvrrp3L/growing-up-is-hard), and—as we typically recognize with respect to _other_ standard transhumanist goals—the difference can't be made up by means of clever redefinitions of words—
<p class="flower-break">⁕ ⁕ ⁕</p>
<div class="dialogue">
-<p><span class="dialogue-character-label">Alice</span>: Ever since I lost my mother, I knew I could not rest until Death itself was defeated!</p>
+<p><span class="dialogue-character-label">Alice</span>: When I lost my mother, I knew I could not rest until Death itself is defeated!</p>
<p><span class="dialogue-character-label">Bob</span>: But as long as you remember her, your mother lives on in you!</p>
<p><span class="dialogue-character-label">Alice</span>: I mean, metaphorically yes, but I meant <em>death</em> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death">as in, like</a>, the cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism.</p>
-<p><span class="dialogue-character-label">Bob</span>: Oh, yeah, sorry, I've heard that one, too, though I've yet to find anyone willing to justify it. If you can find anyone explaining why this is a good definition, or even explaining what good properties it has, I'd appreciate it, because I did sincerely put in the effort and—uncharitably, it's as if there's just 'matches historical use' and 'doesn't involve anyone I love being dead'.</p>
+<p><span class="dialogue-character-label">Bob</span>: Oh, yeah, sorry, I've heard that one, too, though I've yet to find anyone willing to justify it. If you can find anyone explaining why this is a good definition, or even explaining what good properties it has, I'd appreciate it, because I did sincerely put in the effort and—uncharitably, it's as if there's just 'matches historical use' and 'doesn't involve icky people from the past being in my category'.</p>
<p><span class="dialogue-character-label">Alice</span>: ...</p>
</div>
<p class="flower-break">⁕ ⁕ ⁕</p>
-[...]
+The _Unit of Caring_ author continues:
+
+> If your definition of a 'woman' is one where trans people will be their preferred gender once the tech catches up, then I think you should probably reflect on what actually changes about anyone's lived experience on that magic day when our cyborgs hit your threshold. And if it isn't, then you're stuck asserting that if a woman is cell-for-cell identical to me then she still might not be a 'biological woman'. That's a sign that this isn't actually about biology.
+
+I would rather say that's a sign that we're facing an instance of the [Sorites paradox](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/), the ancient challenge to applying discrete categories to a continuous world. If one grain of sand doesn't make a heap (the argument goes), and the addition of one more grain of sand can't change whether something is a heap, then we can conclude from [the principle of mathematical induction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_induction) that no number _n_ ∈ ℕ of grains make a heap. (Or, alternatively, that the absence of any sand constitutes a ["heap of zero grains"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nso8WXdjHLLHkJKhr/the-conscious-sorites-paradox).) Analogously, if a sufficiently small change in MtF transition outcome can't change whether someone is a woman, then we are seemingly forced to accept that everyone is a woman or no one is.
+
+While the Sorites paradox is certainly an instructive exercise in the philosophy of language, its practical impact seems limited: most people find it more palatable to conclude that that the heap-ness is a somewhat fuzzy concept, rather than that the argument isn't actually about the amount of sand in a location. And if you brought a single grain of sand when someone asked you for a heap, they probably wouldn't hesistate to say, "That's not what I meant by _heap_ in this context _and you know it_."
+
+> If that's the side of this question you come down on, then I encourage you to ask yourself why that trans women still doesn't count. I expect that whatever your answer, that's the real definition you’re using, not "biological".
+
+I definitely agree that this is a valuable thought experiment: in this limit of perfect physical transition technology, what possible reasons could there be to deny that trans women are women? Allow me to give a conditional answer.
+
+_If_ psychological sex differences aren't real, then there aren't any: _ex hypothesi_, the physiological differences between females and males are the only thing for the word _woman_ to attach to, and _ex hypothesi_, we know how to fix those.
+
+Alternatively, _if_ psychological sex differences _are_ a thing, _and_ transness is a brain intersex condition such that pre-transition trans women are _already_ psychologically female, then again, there aren't any.
-_Nature to be commanded must be obeyed_.
+However, if we should be so unlucky to live in a world where psychological sex differences are a thing _and_ most trans women are motivated to transition by some _other_ reason than already having female minds, then we have some nontrivial difficulties.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff