(2) "Woman" is a noun.
(3) _Therefore_, you can't define "woman" any way you want without cognitive consequences.
-Note, **(3) is _entirely compatible_ with trans women being women**. (I normally eschew the use of boldface in prose, but I'll make this concession to people's inability to read a post of this length.) The point is that if you want to claim that trans women are women, you need some sort of _argument_ for why that categorization makes sense in the context you want to use the word—why that map usefully reflects some relevant aspect of the territory. If you want to _argue_ that hormone replacement therapy constitutes an effective sex change, or that trans is a brain-intersex condition and the brain is the true referent of "gender", or that [coordination constraints on _shared_ categories](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/edEXi4SpkXfvaX42j/schelling-categories-and-simple-membership-tests) [support the self-identification criterion](/2019/Oct/self-identity-is-a-schelling-point/), that's fine, because those are _arguments_ that someone who initially disagreed with your categorization could _engage with on the merits_. In contrast, "I can define a word any way I want" is a denial of the possibility of merits.
+Note, **(3) is _entirely compatible_ with trans women being women**. (I normally eschew the use of boldface in prose, but I'll make this concession to people's inability to read a post of this length.) The point is that if you want to claim that trans women are women, you need some sort of _argument_ for why that categorization makes sense in the context you want to use the word—why that map usefully reflects some relevant aspect of the territory. If you want to _argue_ that hormone replacement therapy constitutes an effective sex change, or that trans is a brain-intersex condition and the brain is the true referent of "gender", or that [coordination constraints on _shared_ categories](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/edEXi4SpkXfvaX42j/schelling-categories-and-simple-membership-tests) [support the self-identification criterion](/2019/Oct/self-identity-is-a-schelling-point/), that's fine, because those are _arguments_ that someone who initially disagreed with your categorization could _engage with on the merits_. In contrast, "I can define a word any way I want" can't be engaged with in the same way because it's a denial of the possibility of merits.
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https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/
"People started threatening to use my bad reputation to discredit the communities I was in and the causes I cared about most."
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projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff