X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=content%2Fdrafts%2Freply-to-ozymandias-on-fully-consensual-gender.md;fp=content%2Fdrafts%2Fhow-dumb-do-you-think-we-are-a-reply-to-ozymandias-on-fully-consensual-gender.md;h=dc431d274ca92611271f6d56527a9c9a5dd984df;hp=81370fd4ed53542dd70cc2baaef3cbd2265804d3;hb=2fc071e3d84c1ead3fcc932cba95bae1b28a18a7;hpb=1207840d562a974eeefe6072299fd084e53088ef diff --git a/content/drafts/how-dumb-do-you-think-we-are-a-reply-to-ozymandias-on-fully-consensual-gender.md b/content/drafts/reply-to-ozymandias-on-fully-consensual-gender.md similarity index 67% rename from content/drafts/how-dumb-do-you-think-we-are-a-reply-to-ozymandias-on-fully-consensual-gender.md rename to content/drafts/reply-to-ozymandias-on-fully-consensual-gender.md index 81370fd..dc431d2 100644 --- a/content/drafts/how-dumb-do-you-think-we-are-a-reply-to-ozymandias-on-fully-consensual-gender.md +++ b/content/drafts/reply-to-ozymandias-on-fully-consensual-gender.md @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -Title: How Dumb Do You Think We Are? A Reply to Ozymandias on Fully Consensual Gender +Title: Reply to Ozymandias on Fully Consensual Gender Date: 2020-01-01 Category: commentary Tags: epistemology, Ozy, sociology @@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ Status: draft > > —Rudyard Kipling, ["The Gods of the Copybook Headings"](http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm) (paraphrased) -At the end of [their reply](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/man-should-allocate-some-more-categories/) to [my reply](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) to [the immortal Scott Alexander on gender categorization](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/), [friend of the blog](http://unremediatedgender.space/tag/ozy/) Ozymandias makes an analogy between social gender and money. What constitutes money in a given social context is determined by collective agreement: money is whatever you can reliably expect everyone else to accept as payment. This isn't a circular definition (in the way that "money is whatever we agree is money" would be uninformative to an alien who didn't already have a referent for the word _money_), and people advocating for a _different_ money regime (like [late-19th century American bimetalists](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bimetallism&oldid=864176071#Political_debate) or contemporary cryptocurrency advocates) aren't making an epistemic _mistake_. +At the end of [their reply](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/man-should-allocate-some-more-categories/) to [my reply](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) to [the immortal Scott Alexander on gender categorization](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/), [friend of the blog](/tag/ozy/) Ozymandias makes an analogy between social gender and money.[ref]As teased at the beginning of [the bulleted list in my post-Christmas cry of pain last year](/2018/Dec/untitled-metablogging-26-december-2018/#post-ideas-list), I _also_ have responses to the other arguments Ozy makes earlier in ["Man Should Allocate Some More Categories"](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/man-should-allocate-some-more-categories/). The fact that the present post focuses specifically on replying to the gender/money analogy shall not be construed to mean that I'm conceding any other points—just that I'm a [ludicrously, _miserably_ unproductive writer](/2017/Nov/the-blockhead/). (Compare the June 2018 date of Ozy's post to the September 2019 date of this one.)[/ref] What constitutes money in a given social context is determined by collective agreement: money is whatever you can reliably expect everyone else to accept as payment. This isn't a circular definition (in the way that "money is whatever we agree is money" would be uninformative to an alien who didn't already have a referent for the word _money_), and people advocating for a _different_ money regime (like [late-19th century American bimetalists](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bimetallism&oldid=864176071#Political_debate) or contemporary cryptocurrency advocates) aren't making an epistemic _mistake_. I _really like_ this analogy! An important thing to note here is that while the form of money can vary widely across sociocultural contexts (from [shell beads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wampum), to silver coins, to fiat paper currency, to database entries in a bank), not just any form will suffice to serve the functions of money: perishable goods like cheese can't function as a long-term store of value; non-fungible items that vary in quality in hard-to-measure ways can't function as a unit of account.[ref]_E.g._, my goat might be healthier than your goat in a way that neither of us nor any of the other local goat-herders know how to quantify.[/ref] @@ -41,13 +41,24 @@ Categorization really doesn't seem like this. If there's a conflict between one Ozy gives a list of predictions you can make about someone on the basis of social gender, as distinct from sex, apparently meant to demonstrate the usefulness of the former concept. But a lot of the individual list items seem either superficial ("Whether they wear dresses, skirts, or makeup"—surely we don't want to go for "gender as clothing", do we??), or tied to other people's _perceptions_ of sex.[ref]The harrassment and expected-sacrifices example in particular are what radical feminists would call sex-based oppression.[/ref] [ref][Friend of the blog](https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/837846616937750528) Ray Blanchard [recently proposed on Twitter](https://twitter.com/BlanchardPhD/status/1054743819206434816) that the term "subjective sex" might be more useful than "gender".[/ref] -Take the "How many messages they get on a dating site" item. The _reason_ men send lots of messages to women on dating sites is because they want to date people with vaginas and female secondary sex characteristics, and maybe eventually marry them and father children with them, _&c._[ref]And the fact that it's women being deluged with messages from men rather than vice versa is predicted by the evolutionary logic of [Bateman's principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bateman's_principle) and [parental investment theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_investment): the sex that invests more resources per offspring will be "choosier", and the sex that invests less will compete for them. There are a few species (like the [pipefish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipefish) or the [Eurasian dotterel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_dotterel)) in which males are the more-investing sex, but humans aren't one them.[/ref] +Take the "How many messages they get on a dating site" item. The _reason_ men send lots of messages to women on dating sites is because they want to date people with vaginas and female secondary sex characteristics, and maybe eventually marry them, father children with them, _&c._[ref]And the fact that it's women being deluged with messages from men rather than vice versa is predicted by the evolutionary logic of [Bateman's principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bateman's_principle) and [parental investment theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_investment): the sex that invests more resources per offspring will be "choosier", and the sex that invests less will compete for them. There are a few species (like the [pipefish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipefish) or the [Eurasian dotterel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_dotterel)) in which males are the more-investing sex, but humans aren't one them.[/ref] Suppose one were to say to such a man, "Ah, I see you're sending lots of messages to women, by which I mean people who self-identify as women, in accordance with the utilitarian-desirable social policy of fully-consensual gender. Therefore, you should also send messages to these non-op trans women who aren't on HRT." -I think the man would reply, "How dumb do you think I am?!"[ref]This isn't necessarily trans-exclusionary—a lot of such men be happy to date trans women who were _on HRT_ and thereby came to more closely rememble [cis/natal/actual](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/10/code-switching-i/) actual women. But that just gets us back to passing (like I was trying to say thousands of words ago), not fully consensual gender.[/ref] +I think the man would reply, "How dumb do you think I am?!"[ref]This isn't necessarily trans-exclusionary—many such men might be happy to date trans women who were _on HRT_ and thereby came to more closely rememble [cis/natal/actual](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/10/code-switching-i/) women. But that just gets us back to passing (like I was trying to say thousands of words ago), not fully consensual gender.[/ref] + +One might respond with, "But there's a lot of cis women who you _also_ wouldn't date. Therefore, while you're allowed to not date trans women if that's your preference, you can't say it's because they're not _women_." + +So, I think there's actually a [statistically sophisticated reply to this](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cu7YY7WdgJBs3DpmJ/the-univariate-fallacy) which I really need to elaborate on more in future posts. To be sure, our man is just relying on his intuitive perception and probably doesn't _know_ the statistically sophisticated reply[ref]Although I would argue that the sophisticated statistics are part of the cognitive-scientific _explanation_ of what he perceives.[/ref]—but one also hasn't given him a _reason_ to trust clever verbal arguments over his own perception. + +I happily agree that fully consensual gender is a _coherent_ position. That doesn't make it _feasible_. _How_ are you going to maintain that social equilibrium without it being _immediately_ destroyed by normal people who _have eyes_ and don't care about clever philosophical definition-hacking mind games the way that readers of this blog do? + +That's not a rhetorical question. In the case of fiat currency, the question _actually has a literal answer_, although I personally am not well-versed enough in economic history to tell it. _Somehow_, societies have evolved from a state in which the idea of paper currency would have provoked a "How dumb do you think I am?" reaction, to the present state where everyone except a few thoroughly marginalized + + + + -I happily concede that fully consensual gender is a _coherent_ position. That doesn't make it _feasible_. _How_ are you going to maintain that social equilibrium without it being _immediately_ destroyed by normal people who have eyes and don't care about clever philosophical definition-hacking mind games the way that readers of this blog do? @@ -55,7 +66,7 @@ I happily concede that fully consensual gender is a _coherent_ position. That do [TODO: it's possible that I'm underestimating the social-engineering feats that might be possible—it's kind of surprising that fiat money equilibria aren't also destroyed by a "How dumb do you think we are?" faction—but fiat money equilibria evolved over a long time for complicated reasons; you need more of an actual argument than "maybe things would be better"] -https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GIRL +the girl in the [G.I.R.L.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GIRL) The question remains: how dumb do you think we are?