Nice. It's true that labeling can be very productive and helpful, or very destructive and harmful. I love using words to describe everything. And then I also realize that not all things fit into the same category, or should be labeled as one thing. For instance, LGBTQ+ is supposedly one thing, a label for a group of people, but it includes such disparate types of people as to be not only useless, but destructive because it confuses issues and misleads people into thinking unrelated issues are the same. I could go on and on, but the point is that I agree with you that use of labels can be helpful in analyzing phenomena, and aren't always restrictive, if used correctly! Society isn't doing a good job with labeling lately, but maybe we can use labeling to counter these societal ailments.
The power of words to both clarify and confuse... in a very real way, we are prisoners of our language. One of my favorite words is discernment. We must choose our words and how to use them with as much consciousness as possible right now.
Could not be truer. I'm not a collector of poems, but my favorite is Emily Dickenson's "A word is said, it's dead, some say. I say, it just begins to live that day."
"Society isn't doing a good job with labeling lately, but maybe we can use labeling to counter these societal ailments."
Indeed. Though a great many political opportunists, charlatans, and grifters are apparently trying to muddy the waters by redefining words -- "male" and "female" in particular -- to further some rather "questionable" agendas. Though part of that is carelessness, and part is historical uses of words that conflict with marginally more scientific definitions. For instance, see this fairly decent summary by biologist and Substacker (Reality's Last Stand) Colin Wright of the different definitions for "gender" that are in play:
"1/ Most confusion about 'gender' results from people not defining it. Many definitions are in circulation:
The recent kerfuffle over Jon Stewart illustrates that, at least in the snippet shown below, he was more or less using definitions 3 to 5 while those -- mostly on the Right -- that he was throwing stones at, Tucker Carlson in particular, were using definition 1:
Prognosis for consensus is unlikely if we can't even agree on our definitions. Although there are clearly quite distinct properties in play there -- reproductive abilities (sex), versus personalities and personality types -- so it makes more sense to use "gender" as the latter, as definitions 3 to 5.
An earlier essay at The Atlantic (should be readable in an incognito window) talks of that type of "Tower of Babel" situation, though more broadly than just the transgender issue:
"... 'Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.' ....
... so let’s hold that dramatic image in our minds: people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension."
Totally agree. And to be even more clear, "Gender" used to be a synonym for sex (male or female), which was probably a way of avoiding confusion between a person's biological characteristics and the act of sex. However, it has morphed into (or was it always used for both?, I don't know) stereotypes, other societal notions relating to, and personality characteristics associated with being male or female, rather than the biological aspects of being male and female people. I think that's a useful distinction so am happy to go with sex being the biological characteristics and gender being all the other stuff associated with gender. Where we really go awry is in adding to "gender" #2 above. While there are feelings associated with the experience of being male or female and the experience of having a male or female body (e.g. feeling more vulnerable as a female, or a feeling that is more aggressive because of testosterone in males), that is different than what is now called a "gender identity," which is supposed to be simply one's sense of whether one is male, female, neither or both (or perhaps some other "gender" that really gets weird). I believe (I have no research to back this up, so it's just a thought) "gender identity" started out meaning one's feelings in relation to one's biological sex, like how masculine or feminine one feels, how connected to one's body one feels, etc. It then morphed into this separate feeling of an indisputable truth of what one "really" is. It makes no sense because, divorced from biology, stereotypes, personality characteristics and other societal notions usually associated with a particular sex, there is no definition of "male" or "female" or "both" or "neither" or any of these other weird things. So gender identity is one's sense of a totally undefined and undefinable thing! Yet we base serious, permanent medical treatments on this undefined and undefinable thing. That's what makes the current stance on "affirmative care" a religious notion. So I think we need to remove the phrase "gender identity" from the conversation - or define it -and make clear the definitions of "gender" and "sex" as above. I can go on all day, but I'll leave it at that. :)
Hippiesq: "I think that's a useful distinction so am happy to go with sex being the biological characteristics and gender being all the other stuff associated with [personality characteristics & stereotypes]."
Agree 100% - at least 99.9% ... 🙂, at least given those qualifications & clarifications in brackets. But "useful distinction" hits the nail squarely on its head; promoting that idea seems one way off the horns of a rather painful and enervating social dilemma caused those conflicting definitions.
As something of a case in point, it seems many if not most feminists see "gender" as only a collection of stereotypes -- hatched in the inner sanctums of "The Patriarchy!!11!!" -- "designed" just to "oppress" women. No doubt that some religious and governmental groups use such stereotypes for various reasons, some more justified than others, but the brute fact is that those stereotypes, as with most stereotypes, are not cut from whole cloth. They're generally the result of many people actually exhibiting the behaviours that turn into those stereotypes. Analogously and for example, there is the stereotype, the personality type of "extrovert", but it's also a fact that there are many people who exhibit extroversion to a greater or lesser extent -- a spectrum.
Hippiesq: "Where we really go awry is in adding to 'gender' #2 above. While there are feelings associated with the experience of being male or female ... morphed into this separate feeling of an indisputable truth of what one 'really' is. .... So gender identity is one's sense of a totally undefined and undefinable thing! ... a religious notion."
"amen" to all of that too; think you need to get your own Substack on track and do some "thinking out loud". 🙂 Somewhat apropos of which, you might have some interest in an essay at the Journal of Cultural Anthropology where the author, Sahar Sadjadi, had these cogent and relevant observations:
Sadjadi: "Moreover, the magico-spiritual undertone of the conversations I witnessed was striking... As a physician and anthropologist of medicine, ... I was perplexed by this merging of science, magic, and religion in explaining children’s gender transition."
"merging of science, magic, and religion", indeed.
But the whole concept of "personal identity" is a rather murky one; you might also be interested in an overview of the topic at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), a very useful resource:
Too many "philosophers" often "muddy the waters to make them seem deep", but there are also many useful concepts and signposts therein.
Hippiesq: "So I think we need to remove the phrase 'gender identity' from the conversation - or define it -and make clear the definitions of 'gender' and 'sex' as above. I can go on all day, but I'll leave it at that. :)"
Quite agree; and I know the feeling -- an important issue that one can really get one's teeth into. 🙂 But I'll also leave it, at least for the moment, at a link to my Welcome post where I make a preliminary attempt to "rationalize gender":
I appreciate your thoughts and the references. I'll check out your substack. I'm still trying to figure out what to put in mine. As I start writing, I end up with something so long that nobody will get through it. And when I try to break it down into chunks, I can't because everything relates to each other, but one day - after I read enough other great substacks like StoicMom (and yours - I'm assuming based on your comments) - I'll put something out there.
But know what you mean by "something so long ..."; takes some effort and experience to remain focused -- I know I have a tendency to go off into the weeds following some connections. I haven't tried this yet myself, but seems that Substack allows the creation of separate menu items to group essays by a common theme. One then doesn't need to say everything that can be said on a topic in a single post. 🙂
But reminds me that, more than a few decades ago 😲..., I'd read about a writing technique that has paid me some significant benefits over the years:
"By using a framework while you’re speaking, you’ll be able to quickly organize your thoughts, rather than starting, rambling, and finishing in flames. Although there are many ways to frame up your message, here’s a simple example that you can try today: the P-R-E-S (point, reason, example, summary) model."
They're talking about speaking to an audience, but I'd read about using that P-R-E-S technique in writing. Not many results from a Google search but some might provide additional clarification and avenues to pursue.
Amen to that. Apropos of which ... 😉, you may wish to take a gander at my kick at the kitty, at that age-old question of "What is a woman?" 😉 [Categories and categorization to the rescue]:
The point is that there is some rhyme and reason to how and why we name and create categories. "woman" and "female" are JUST names for particular categories -- with objective criteria for membership -- and members of them; they are NOT "immutable identities" based on any sort of "mythic essences".
Causes no end of grief and animosity to insist otherwise.
Nice. It's true that labeling can be very productive and helpful, or very destructive and harmful. I love using words to describe everything. And then I also realize that not all things fit into the same category, or should be labeled as one thing. For instance, LGBTQ+ is supposedly one thing, a label for a group of people, but it includes such disparate types of people as to be not only useless, but destructive because it confuses issues and misleads people into thinking unrelated issues are the same. I could go on and on, but the point is that I agree with you that use of labels can be helpful in analyzing phenomena, and aren't always restrictive, if used correctly! Society isn't doing a good job with labeling lately, but maybe we can use labeling to counter these societal ailments.
The power of words to both clarify and confuse... in a very real way, we are prisoners of our language. One of my favorite words is discernment. We must choose our words and how to use them with as much consciousness as possible right now.
Could not be truer. I'm not a collector of poems, but my favorite is Emily Dickenson's "A word is said, it's dead, some say. I say, it just begins to live that day."
"Society isn't doing a good job with labeling lately, but maybe we can use labeling to counter these societal ailments."
Indeed. Though a great many political opportunists, charlatans, and grifters are apparently trying to muddy the waters by redefining words -- "male" and "female" in particular -- to further some rather "questionable" agendas. Though part of that is carelessness, and part is historical uses of words that conflict with marginally more scientific definitions. For instance, see this fairly decent summary by biologist and Substacker (Reality's Last Stand) Colin Wright of the different definitions for "gender" that are in play:
"1/ Most confusion about 'gender' results from people not defining it. Many definitions are in circulation:
1. Synonym for sex (male/female)
2. A subjective feeling in relation to one's sex
3. Societal sex-based roles/expectations
4. Sex-related behavior
5. Personality traits"
https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1234040036091236352
The recent kerfuffle over Jon Stewart illustrates that, at least in the snippet shown below, he was more or less using definitions 3 to 5 while those -- mostly on the Right -- that he was throwing stones at, Tucker Carlson in particular, were using definition 1:
https://twitter.com/TheProblem/status/1578777239855972354
Prognosis for consensus is unlikely if we can't even agree on our definitions. Although there are clearly quite distinct properties in play there -- reproductive abilities (sex), versus personalities and personality types -- so it makes more sense to use "gender" as the latter, as definitions 3 to 5.
An earlier essay at The Atlantic (should be readable in an incognito window) talks of that type of "Tower of Babel" situation, though more broadly than just the transgender issue:
"... 'Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.' ....
... so let’s hold that dramatic image in our minds: people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension."
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
Seems like an accurate, if damning summation of the "debate" over gender ...
Totally agree. And to be even more clear, "Gender" used to be a synonym for sex (male or female), which was probably a way of avoiding confusion between a person's biological characteristics and the act of sex. However, it has morphed into (or was it always used for both?, I don't know) stereotypes, other societal notions relating to, and personality characteristics associated with being male or female, rather than the biological aspects of being male and female people. I think that's a useful distinction so am happy to go with sex being the biological characteristics and gender being all the other stuff associated with gender. Where we really go awry is in adding to "gender" #2 above. While there are feelings associated with the experience of being male or female and the experience of having a male or female body (e.g. feeling more vulnerable as a female, or a feeling that is more aggressive because of testosterone in males), that is different than what is now called a "gender identity," which is supposed to be simply one's sense of whether one is male, female, neither or both (or perhaps some other "gender" that really gets weird). I believe (I have no research to back this up, so it's just a thought) "gender identity" started out meaning one's feelings in relation to one's biological sex, like how masculine or feminine one feels, how connected to one's body one feels, etc. It then morphed into this separate feeling of an indisputable truth of what one "really" is. It makes no sense because, divorced from biology, stereotypes, personality characteristics and other societal notions usually associated with a particular sex, there is no definition of "male" or "female" or "both" or "neither" or any of these other weird things. So gender identity is one's sense of a totally undefined and undefinable thing! Yet we base serious, permanent medical treatments on this undefined and undefinable thing. That's what makes the current stance on "affirmative care" a religious notion. So I think we need to remove the phrase "gender identity" from the conversation - or define it -and make clear the definitions of "gender" and "sex" as above. I can go on all day, but I'll leave it at that. :)
Hippiesq: "I think that's a useful distinction so am happy to go with sex being the biological characteristics and gender being all the other stuff associated with [personality characteristics & stereotypes]."
Agree 100% - at least 99.9% ... 🙂, at least given those qualifications & clarifications in brackets. But "useful distinction" hits the nail squarely on its head; promoting that idea seems one way off the horns of a rather painful and enervating social dilemma caused those conflicting definitions.
As something of a case in point, it seems many if not most feminists see "gender" as only a collection of stereotypes -- hatched in the inner sanctums of "The Patriarchy!!11!!" -- "designed" just to "oppress" women. No doubt that some religious and governmental groups use such stereotypes for various reasons, some more justified than others, but the brute fact is that those stereotypes, as with most stereotypes, are not cut from whole cloth. They're generally the result of many people actually exhibiting the behaviours that turn into those stereotypes. Analogously and for example, there is the stereotype, the personality type of "extrovert", but it's also a fact that there are many people who exhibit extroversion to a greater or lesser extent -- a spectrum.
Hippiesq: "Where we really go awry is in adding to 'gender' #2 above. While there are feelings associated with the experience of being male or female ... morphed into this separate feeling of an indisputable truth of what one 'really' is. .... So gender identity is one's sense of a totally undefined and undefinable thing! ... a religious notion."
"amen" to all of that too; think you need to get your own Substack on track and do some "thinking out loud". 🙂 Somewhat apropos of which, you might have some interest in an essay at the Journal of Cultural Anthropology where the author, Sahar Sadjadi, had these cogent and relevant observations:
Sadjadi: "Moreover, the magico-spiritual undertone of the conversations I witnessed was striking... As a physician and anthropologist of medicine, ... I was perplexed by this merging of science, magic, and religion in explaining children’s gender transition."
https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/article/view/3728/430
"merging of science, magic, and religion", indeed.
But the whole concept of "personal identity" is a rather murky one; you might also be interested in an overview of the topic at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), a very useful resource:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/
Too many "philosophers" often "muddy the waters to make them seem deep", but there are also many useful concepts and signposts therein.
Hippiesq: "So I think we need to remove the phrase 'gender identity' from the conversation - or define it -and make clear the definitions of 'gender' and 'sex' as above. I can go on all day, but I'll leave it at that. :)"
Quite agree; and I know the feeling -- an important issue that one can really get one's teeth into. 🙂 But I'll also leave it, at least for the moment, at a link to my Welcome post where I make a preliminary attempt to "rationalize gender":
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/i/64264079/rationalized-gender
Seems "gender" is a useful concept, but definitely a "work in progress"; would definitely appreciate hearing your thoughts on it. 🙂
I appreciate your thoughts and the references. I'll check out your substack. I'm still trying to figure out what to put in mine. As I start writing, I end up with something so long that nobody will get through it. And when I try to break it down into chunks, I can't because everything relates to each other, but one day - after I read enough other great substacks like StoicMom (and yours - I'm assuming based on your comments) - I'll put something out there.
Thanks. 🙂
But know what you mean by "something so long ..."; takes some effort and experience to remain focused -- I know I have a tendency to go off into the weeds following some connections. I haven't tried this yet myself, but seems that Substack allows the creation of separate menu items to group essays by a common theme. One then doesn't need to say everything that can be said on a topic in a single post. 🙂
But reminds me that, more than a few decades ago 😲..., I'd read about a writing technique that has paid me some significant benefits over the years:
"By using a framework while you’re speaking, you’ll be able to quickly organize your thoughts, rather than starting, rambling, and finishing in flames. Although there are many ways to frame up your message, here’s a simple example that you can try today: the P-R-E-S (point, reason, example, summary) model."
https://www.themuse.com/advice/3-smart-ways-to-keep-yourself-from-rambling
They're talking about speaking to an audience, but I'd read about using that P-R-E-S technique in writing. Not many results from a Google search but some might provide additional clarification and avenues to pursue.
"We must—or how would we communicate?!"
Amen to that. Apropos of which ... 😉, you may wish to take a gander at my kick at the kitty, at that age-old question of "What is a woman?" 😉 [Categories and categorization to the rescue]:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman
The point is that there is some rhyme and reason to how and why we name and create categories. "woman" and "female" are JUST names for particular categories -- with objective criteria for membership -- and members of them; they are NOT "immutable identities" based on any sort of "mythic essences".
Causes no end of grief and animosity to insist otherwise.