I sometimes regret that so many of my attempts to talk about trans issues end up focusing on psychological sex differences. I guess I'm used to it now, but at first, this was a very weird position for me to be in! (For a long time, I [really didn't want to believe in psychological sex differences](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#antisexism).) But it keeps happening because it's a natural thing to _disagree_ about: the anatomy of pre-op trans women is not really in _dispute_, so the sex realist's contextual reply to "Why do you care what genitals someone might or might not have under their clothes?" often ends up appealing to some psychological dimension or another, to which the trans advocate [can counterreply](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/man-should-allocate-some-more-categories/), "Oh, you want to define gender based on psychology, then? But then the logic of your position forces you to conclude that butch lesbians aren't women! _Reductio ad absurdum!_"
-This is a severe misreading of the sex-realist position. No one wants to _define_ "gender" based on psychology. You can't coerce reality into changing by choosing different definitions! Rather, there's _already_ a multivariate distribution of bodies and minds in the world, and good definition choices help us coordinate the concepts in different people's heads into a _shared_ map of that territory.
+This is a severe misreading of the sex-realist position. No one wants to _define_ "gender" based on psychology. Definitions don't matter: you can't coerce reality into changing by choosing different definitions! Rather, there's _already_ a multivariate distribution of bodies and minds in the world, and good definition choices help us coordinate the concepts in different people's heads into a _shared_ map of that territory.
_One_ of the _many_ distinctions people sometimes want to make when thinking about the multivariate distribution of bodies and minds in the world, is that between the sexes. Sex is by no means the only way in which people differ! In many situations you might want to categorize or describe people in many different ways, some more or less discrete _versus_ categorical, or high- _versus_ low-dimensional: age or race or religion or social class or intelligence or agreeableness or
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff