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With Caitlyn Jenner figuring so prominently in the news, the comparison has been made here and essentially everywhere else on the internet between her and Dolezal.

To take this particular discussion back to Dolezal, I suspect BeAfraid would allow that some kind of genesplicing that would increase the melanin expression in Dolezal's skin would be sufficient to make her black.

 Manchu wrote:
Gender is not an expression of sex. The correlation is pervasive but not necessary.

I don't know what relevance this has to anything. Nor where I ever said that gender is an expression of sex.

There certainly seems to be a desire among most people to have the two equate.

That is why transsexuals undergo re-assignment surgery. So that the two match as closely as possible.

You seem to be too hung up on that, when it is irrelevant to the issue.

The only relevance (which I pointed out earlier) is that to most people sex and gender are an identity (they are equal to each other - not an "identity" like a superhero's secret identity).

The language of Social Politics only clouds the issues in biology. To say nothing of running into some rather substantial contradictions with biology due to the persistence of dualistic thinking in much of philosophy.

MB


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 Manchu wrote:
With Caitlyn Jenner figuring so prominently in the news, the comparison has been made here and essentially everywhere else on the internet between her and Dolezal.

To take this particular discussion back to Dolezal, I suspect BeAfraid would allow that some kind of genesplicing that would increase the melanin expression in Dolezal's skin would be sufficient to make her black.

Easily, and you don't even need genes. We have an epigenetic system that would darken her skin with the exposure to the right hormones (it would alter genetic expression). But the genes controlling melanin are already present.

MB

BeAfraid wrote:
Nor where I ever said that gender is an expression of sex.

BeAfraid wrote:
So, like thoughts and the brain (you cannot have thoughts without the brain) you cannot have gender without sex (gender is an expression of sex - whether it is an identical expression of sex is what concerns gender-dysphoria).

BeAfraid wrote:
The language of Social Politics only clouds the issues in biology.

The issue of gender is not only nor even primarily biological. The same applies to the question of race.

BeAfraid wrote:
Stop trying to think of this in terms of good/bad/true/false as if it were a value judgment.

This is just about WHAT IS

Not about truth, simply about "WHAT IS." This is totally incoherent.

 Manchu wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:
Nor where I ever said that gender is an expression of sex.

BeAfraid wrote:
So, like thoughts and the brain (you cannot have thoughts without the brain) you cannot have gender without sex (gender is an expression of sex - whether it is an identical expression of sex is what concerns gender-dysphoria).

OK... So I did say it.

It is an incomplete expression, which is factually correct, but technically wrong (or is that the other way around???).

The point that I was trying to make is that gender is irrelevant without sex. You can't even have a gender without sex (what gender is a hydra or a paramecium?)

But I will retract the statement in favor of the more correct statement that one cannot have gender without sex.

MB

BeAfraid wrote:
one cannot have gender without sex

Even if that is true (which is questionable) it is still not a demonstration that gender is necessarily a function of sex. To accept your premise for the sake of argument, and to contextualize it as a historical phenomenon, it could simply be a matter of sex heretofore serving as the frame of reference against which gender has been constructed.

In terms of the value-laden usage of "truth' that you used before, it has nothing at all in relation with the existential truth involved in what is (ontology).

You seem to be using the word "truth' to mean "Something morally valuable."

When the issue of the causes of gender-dysphoria is not concerned with the moral value of whether a person has a form of gender-dysphoria or not. The issue is just to find those causes so that they might be of use (utility) to the people who have such a dysphoria, so that they might make a decision about what they wish to do (if anything) about it.

MB

BeAfraid wrote:
The point that I was trying to make is that gender is irrelevant without sex.

Nope. Remove all of a person's physical sex characteristics and they'll still have a gender.

(what gender is a hydra or a paramecium?)

That's an irrelevant question because a hydra or a paramecium does not have self-awareness or society. Sex is physical characteristics and genetics, gender is how we see ourselves and how we fit into society. An entity that is neither capable of thinking about what it is nor interacting socially with other members of its species can not have any concept of gender, regardless of its sexual attributes (or lack thereof).

BeAfraid wrote:
You can't even have a gender without sex (

check out the Berdache system used in the Aztec Empire before Cortez showed up with his merry band of conquistadors.




To the OP, I am curious.... In the other article that I read, they talked to her parents, who said, "she's always identified with the African community" and even went so far as to adopt black siblings "for her" At some point, as a parent, shouldn't you sit back and say, "ya know there may be something wrong here?"


For the record, I'm not saying that IDing with a culture is wrong.... It IS wrong however to say you ARE of that culture. To me, it doesn't matter if you say you are a pony, cat-person or black person, there's still a disconnect in the brain somewhere. I mean, if she's IDing her black neighbor as her father, instead of her actual father, is there something serious in her past that caused this disconnect to where she doesn't see her actual parents as parents? I'm thinking of a Sybil-esque situation, where perhaps there was some serious abuse in the past, and this woman, to escape from it, ended up IDing with her neighbor, and viewed him as her father, etc.

BeAfraid wrote:
You seem to be using the word "truth' to mean "Something morally valuable."

Actually, what I am getting at when I use the word in evaluating your seeming worldview is that it is tantamount to will. But yes, I think your metaphysics are driven by a sense of morality that may be invisible to you because you so deeply take it for granted.


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 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
At some point, as a parent, shouldn't you sit back and say, "ya know there may be something wrong here?"

There is a lot being left unsaid. Why is she so estranged from her parents? They say it is because she doesn't want to be seen as white. But what's her story? And why did one of her adoptive brothers decide to leave her parents' home, seemingly cut off all contact from them, when he turned 16? Seems like a very complicated situation that is being underrepoted to maximize outrage about someone daring to identify with a race despite how strangers reading the story would prefer to categorize her.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2687799/Man-I-feel-like-woman-Surprisingly-simple-genetic-quirk-transgender-algae-reveals-separate-sexes-evolved.html

As a quick read about some of my points.

As to gender being possible without sex.

It makes no sense for a variable with no signifier to have a value.

It is pointing to an empty set.

Claiming that "If you remove a human being's "Sex" and they can still have a gender" is nonsense, because it is impossible to remove a mammals' sex.

Mammals, and MOST animaliaCANNOT BE SEXLESS this is like trying to claim you can be any letter you wish in an alphabet that does not exist.

And it is the primary point of disagreement among the more strident members of the Social Justice Movement and biology as a whole.

It might be possible at some point to create a person who reproduces through cellular mitosis (asexually) but for them to claim a gender would be meaningless with the way that way associate gender in our world (which might be a problem).

But this still ignores the fact that gender-dysphoria is not a choice, while gender might be a choice (although, not likely).

People with gender-dysphoria didn't decide that they wanted to be that way, and we have found AMPLE physical and genetic differences in male->female transsexuals that indicate that this dysphoria was something that occurred in the uterus.

MB

BeAfraid wrote:
It makes no sense for a variable with no signifier to have a value.

It is pointing to an empty set.

This is a fairly common social phenomenon.


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BeAfraid wrote:
People with gender-dysphoria didn't decide that they wanted to be that way

You're tilting at windmills here. Neither I nor any other of your interlocutors (so far as I can tell) are arguing that transgendered people choose to be transgendered. (I am not going to use the debatable terminology of "gender-dysphoria.")

BeAfraid wrote:

Claiming that "If you remove a human being's "Sex" and they can still have a gender" is nonsense, because it is impossible to remove a mammals' sex.

again... check out the Berdache system.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:

Claiming that "If you remove a human being's "Sex" and they can still have a gender" is nonsense, because it is impossible to remove a mammals' sex.

again... check out the Berdache system.

The Berdache System is irrelevant to the issue. I am not contesting the existence of alternative genders, but simply that none of them are something that a person chooses like they do their socks in the morning. All are pretty much the product of a genetic or epigenetic factor.

The issue I am pointing out is that Gender-Dysphoria:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Dysphoria

is something that some people choose to correct by having re-assignment surgery, because the availability of a complete genetic replacement is currently not available, and the danger exists that the dysphoria could persist after such a genetic replacement, such that's the person still felt they were not the correct gender (which is what Gender Dysphoria is).

But Manchu is trying to pull some sort of obfuscation of the issue by constantly bringing up an irrelevant issue about gender, as if that makes any difference to people who currently do not have the same gender and appearance, these people wish that's their genotype matched their phenotype after re-assignment, yet it might not be possible to achieve this, depending upon the causes of gender-dysphoria to begin with (sorry Manchu, but that is the terminology we use for the issue. If you have something better, that actually defines the issue as precisely, then feel free to suggest it to the appropriate authorities for official adoption).

MB

BeAfraid wrote:
that is the terminology we use for the issue

Who are "we"?

BeAfraid wrote:
feel free to suggest it to the appropriate authorities for official adoption

Are "we" by any chance the "official authorities"?

It's not obfuscation to point out that gender is not a primarily biological phenomenon.

 Manchu wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:
that is the terminology we use for the issue

Who are "we"?

BeAfraid wrote:
feel free to suggest it to the appropriate authorities for official adoption

Are "we" by any chance the "official authorities"?

It's not obfuscation to point out that gender is not a primarily biological phenomenon.

We, as in "Biologist, Psychologists, Psychiatrists, Cognitive Scientists, Neurologists, Geneticists, etc."

And, Good luck finding something non-biological that identifies its own gender in some fashion.

Identity Politics is a failed ideology, it does no work.

And while there contain real issues with which it concerns itself, it's post-modernist roots prohibit it from doing any work. It cannot be grounded.

MB

BeAfraid wrote:


The Berdache System is irrelevant to the issue.

It is relevant to the issue, because as you have said many times, sex is gender, at least, plays a very significant part to it.

The Berdache system proves that all wrong. Society plays probably the biggest role in "gender" identity, and the Aztecs happened to have had a system in place where fathers could determine the gender of their children at any point in that child's life.




Anyhow... Yeah Manchu, I think that there are some significant issues not being brought up in any of the articles about the OP, and the more it's not talked about, the more I'm inclined to think there was some form of abuse going on in that household when that woman was growing up.

I can see why the lies and falsehoods she willfully perpetrated are causing issue. That being said, when you have to declare your race isn't it essentially what you choose to identify with?


And just for a little bit of humor

If a white woman gets to call herself black and be taken seriously, can I identify as a Kryptonian?

Just don't get upset when you are exposed for having no super powers.

 nels1031 wrote:
Just don't get upset when you are exposed for having no super powers.

Racist.

Well played.

I want to identify as Native American For those scholarships.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
If a white woman gets to call herself black and be taken seriously, can I identify as a Kryptonian?

I suppose that you can if you can show that you can mimic the properties of a Kryptonian.

Do they have spray-on bullet-proof skin?

MB


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 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I want to identify as Native American For those scholarships.

THIS gets to the heart of why this sort of cross-cultural identification is problematic.

Technically, I have no problem (nor should anyone else) if a person wishes to identify as another ethnicity (using the term "race" is problematic, since such a term has no definition that can be properly nailed down. "Ethnicity" though does have a definition that does work - is capable of defining things which have specific markers of either culture, identity, or appearance/phenotype).

I happen to qualify as being both Native American (my Great-Great-Grandmother was a Caddo/Choctaw Indian/Native - her mother was Caddo, and father Choctaw), and Jewish (again, I have relatives who were German and Swiss Jewish, many of whom converted to Lutheran between WWI and WWII in order to escape persecution).

But I have not used either of those in order to get scholarships, or other benefits because I am primarily German/English/Irish, and I come from a family who was fairly wealthy (and parts of it still are, thanks o my older sister protecting much of the Estate from my uncle's idiocy and lecherousness).

There exists a real need by many minorities for help and assistance in overcoming poverty (which I did not fully understand until I was disowned when I was younger for defying my parents, and wound up living on the streets).

Poverty is not something that is due to laziness, or poor management of money (it requires actually having enough money to "manage" for that to even be a factor), but mostly due to a culture that continues to marginalize the poor, and forces them to pay more for goods and services that others with capital.

Also, some minorities suffered pretty severe treatment that officially marginalized and penalized them for centuries, prior to the mid-20th century, and the aid we offer to these minorities is an attempt to raise them as a group to an equal status to the largely white ruling class in the USA and Western Europe.

So... For someone to adopt an ethnic identity of a marginalized group carries with it problems of whether they qualify for aid offered to members of that minority.

Just saying outright "NO!" seems at first to be the right and sensible thing (which I largely agree with - they have every opportunity to take off the minority "clothing"/appearance they have adopted in order to return to their privileged (Oh! how I HATE that word!) status as a member of a dominate ethnic group (in the USA and Western Europe, this is Caucasian/White).

But, depending upon how deep their association with that adopted ethnicity goes, they could very well have become so deeply identified with that ethnicity that they too suffer from the depredations that actual membership]/i] in that ethnicity causes.

So... Turns out to be more complex an issue.

As an example:

My older sister married a Persian, which required her to convert to Islam. They are not particularly observant Muslims, but it has caused friction where she works (she is the VP and Head of the Legal Dept for a major Petro-Chemical company in Texas, as well as the executor and CEO of our family's estate), and at the schools of their daughter (where my sister is looked down upon by the largely WASP demographic of the other students.

So, despite my sister's membership in the Upper-Class, economically, she does suffer from pretty severe discrimination as a result of an adopted identity.

But.... As I have pointed out to her, a LOT of this is due to her tendency to [i]OVERLY identify with the culture, and much of what she suffers could be resolved by simply dressing a bit more Western, as she did before she was married.

I know a LOT about what it is like to be persecuted because of an affected or adopted physical appearance.

I was one of the 2nd Generation of Punks, and the first generation of Goth/Deathrockers in the USA. In the 1980s, we suffered horrific persecution from the mainstream population due to our appearance.

But we had the luxury of being able to simply drop our affected appearance, and return to normal. Just like a person who adopts another Ethnicity.

MB

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
If a white woman gets to call herself black and be taken seriously, can I identify as a Kryptonian?

You're free to identify yourself as whatever you want. Noone is able to or has the right to stop you from doing that. Don't be offended, however, if people don't call you / see you as a Kryptonian. You're asking them for a favor, not the other way around.

 nels1031 wrote:
Just don't get upset when you are exposed for having no super powers.

Now you're just profiling

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
If a white woman gets to call herself black and be taken seriously, can I identify as a Kryptonian?

You're free to identify yourself as whatever you want. Noone is able to or has the right to stop you from doing that. Don't be offended, however, if people don't call you / see you as a Kryptonian. You're asking them for a favor, not the other way around.

By that logic, asking a crazed gunman not to shoot you is asking for a favour too. It's true, but it's also meaningless; we don't call the gunman reasonable for simply rejecting this simple favour, do we?

This pretty much sums up how I feel about this.

And the story deepens...

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/bizarre/rachel-dolezal-discrimination-lawsuit-786451

Pregnant? I thought an earlier story said she didn't have children, and the boy she claimed was her son was actually her brother...


If so, it sounds like someone ignored Frazzled's advice.

She is one crazy/insane woman.

It is probably just me, but we seem to be in a period of peak insane among the population in the USA.

I suppose it could get worse.

But it is troubling enough as it is.

We have Radial Right-Wing "Patriots" shooting up the police in Dallas, and insane "Political Correctness" in people going to extremes with attempts to appropriate ethnicity.

MB