"Gender" Is A Mess

I want to dig into an issue that I've noted in passing in my last couple of posts, that current discussions of "gender" are something of a mess from a semantic standpoint.

Consider, to start, definitions of "gender" that turn up via a Google search for the term:

• Google's info card: Either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female.
• Gender Spectrum: "A person's gender is the complex interrelationship between three dimensions:"... "body", "identity", and "expression".
• Wikipedia: Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e., the state of being male, female, or an intersex variation), sex-based social structures (i.e., gender roles), or gender identity.
• Psychology today: Gender-or the different characteristics that begin to define a person as masculine or feminine-consists of several categories apart from the traditional binary ends of the male/female spectrum. It's possible for someone to identify as transgender, for instance-with a gender identity that does not correspond to their biological sex-or cisgender, with a gender identity that does match up with their biological sex. Others, whose gender identity feels neither masculine nor feminine, may identify as non-binary.

I'm not holding any of these out as definitive, but rather just trying to show that, while there's substantial overlap among common definitions, there are also a non-trivial areas of disagreement. The definitions above disgree as to whether

• Biological sex is independent of gender.
• Gender is defined relative to concepts of "masculine" and "feminine".
• Gender is synonmous with, or different from "gender identity".
  

That third point, about the relation between "gender" and "gender identity", is particularly interesting. A couple of posts back I did a comparison of common definitions of "gender identity", which were all pretty much in agreement that "gender identity" is a person's conviction/personal sense/identification as male/masculine, female/feminine, or some third gender category. However, a complication arises in those instance where gender identity is treated as a component of gender: "gender" is defined partially in terms of "gender identity", which is in turn defined in terms of "gender". There's a circularity of definition which leaves one searching for firm semantic ground to stand on.
There's also the question of the meaning of "male"/"man"/"masculine" and "female"/"woman"/"feminine". For example, consider the definitions proffered by the National Center for Transgender Equality:

• "male"/"female": Adjectives referring to a person's gender identity.
• "man"/"woman": Nouns referring to a person's gender identity.
• "gender identity": A person's internal knowledge that they are a man, woman, or another gender.

So "man" and "woman" are gender designators or classes, and "gender identity" is a person's internal knowledge of which class ey belong to. Which is all you get in terms of formal defintion; there's no explicit discussion of what distinguishes the two gender classes. Interestingly, NCTE appears to accept the common understanding of these terms:

So, someone who lives as a woman today is called a transgender woman and should be referred to as "she" and "her." A transgender man lives as a man today and should be referred to as "he" and "him."

The above quote strongly implies that:

• The designations "man" and "woman" have a behavioral component ("lives as a" man/woman).
• These behavioral components are distinct ("lives as a woman" is different than "lives as a man").

Note also that this discussion is accompanied by pictures of two transgender individuals whose presentation closely matches lay notions of "female" and "male". I take all of this to indicate that the NCTE has a "thick" definition of gender (at least for "man" and "woman") that includes packages of behavior.
It's interesting to contrast this with self-identification-based definitions of gender. As I noted in my previous post, defining gender purely through self-identification ("a person is gender X if they self-identify as X") leads to gender categories which are fundamentally empty of meaning i.e. learning that someone is gender X only tells you that they self-identify as X. The more I think about this the more it seems fundamentally at odds with how people use gender terminology. Consider:

• When someone says "I'm a X" they're doing more than just making the tautological statement "I'm a member of the class of people who self-identify as X"; there's almost certainly a "thick" definition of X lurking in the background.
• Having a preference for (i.e. self-identifying as) gender X over gender Y really only makes sense if X and Y are non-trivially distinguishable.
• The concept of "transitioning" also implies that moving from one gender to another entails non-trivial changes.

Now, in truth, some people use self-identification as a heuristic rather than as a strict definition; after some reflection I believe that Hj Hornbeck falls into this category. However, there's undeniably a contingent that defines gender solely on the basis of self-identification ("Full stop", if I'm remembering a particular FTB post correctly). Which leads to this... divergence... between formal definition and actual usage and the associated tensions.
The more I think about it the more it seems that all if the issues I've noted above doom casual conversations about gender from the start; it's difficult to have a conversation about a contentious topic if you can't even agree on what it is you're actually discussing. Like it says above, it's a mess.

More Dialogue with Hj Hornbeck: Ophelia Benson and the Definition of Gender

Hj Hornbeck has another interesting post up, this time dealing with Ophelia Benson's claims regarding trans athletes. I think I'm pretty much with em as far as Ophelia's empirical claims go: if you make a testable claim, and the data goes against you, you pretty much have no recourse. However, Hj really only engages with half of Ophelia's argument:

Ophelia Benson: Precisely. That's why I did, too. Demanding to be called "she" and "her" while brandishing all the weapons in the macho bully playbook in the faces of women is not social justice but a fucking insult.

I may have been a fan of Benson's in the past, but I was never as close to her as PZ Myers was. It doesn't hurt me nearly as much to be explicit and unambiguous.

Ophelia Benson is a TERF.

Put another way, Ophelia Benson hates women who do not conform to her ideal of woman-hood.

Hj's claim that Ophelia "hates women who do not conform" significantly misstates Ophelia's objection. I'll get to that in a moment, but first some setup so that we're all on the same page.

Let's step back a moment and think about the learned aspect(s) of gender. In eir previous post, Hj appears to believe that gendered behavior is at least partly learned:

It doesn't matter if every single one of them are fifty feet tall, what only matters is if you accept the existence of gender dysphoria as at least partly grounded in biology.

"Partly ground in biology" implies that that the rest is learned (or socially conditioned or "nurture" or... take your pick). Moreover, this view seems to be widespread among proponents of social justice; concepts such as "male toxicity" and "male privilege" and "mansplaining" all derive, at least in part, from the notion that men are socialized to behave in objectionable ways. These phenomenon are unique to individuals who are perceived to be men; a search for "female toxicity", for example, mostly turns up toxicology studies. Given these observations I think it is reasonable to hold that individuals raised as male-gendered are socialized (in general, #notallmen, etc.) to engage in pathological behavior which has no parallel in individuals raised as female-gendered.

It's worth considering why these behaviors are considered pathological; let's take "mansplaining" as a example. Lily Rothman, in A Cultural History of Mansplaining, defines it as "explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman". Restating slightly, it's a gendered form of epistemic arrogance, the assumption that because one is a man one automatically knows more about a subject than a woman who has more actual expertise.

Now here's where it gets interesting, and is where I think that the difference between Hj and Ophelia may be at least partly linguistic (semantic?) rather than being substantive. Let's consider a hypothetical:

• Person A has historically identified as a man, and has a history of mansplaining.
• Person A has recently self-identified as a woman.
• Following the change in self-identified gender Person A is seen explaining a subject to a woman, even though the woman has demonstrable expertise in the subject in question

How would Hj and Ophelia react to this behavior?

I think it is safe to say that both Hj and Ophelia would agree that Person A is being an ass. Where they differ is their interpretation of how this behavior reflects Person A's gender.

Tentatively I think that, in addition to saying that Person A is an ass, Ophelia would go on to say that this behavior is indicative that Person A remains male-gendered despite their self-identification. Ophelia's working definition of gender appears to include packages of socialized behaviors; Person A continues to engage in male-coded behavior (mansplaining, in this case), which is grounds to call their self-identification into question.

This is where I think Hj misunderstand's Ophelia's criticism. Ophelilia is not concerned that McKinnon does "not conform to her ideal of woman-hood". Rather, Ophelia claims that McKinnon is "brandishing all the weapons in the macho bully playbook", i.e. continuing to engage in pathological, male-coded behavior. Even if we disagree with Ophelia's assessment in this particular case, asserting that someone is being an ass in a male-coded fashion is far different from asserting that women must act in a specific way.

Minor digression: It's trivially true that Ophelia's criticism implies that women shouldn't engage in male-coded, ass-ish behavior. However, I think that's its safe to say that Ophelia doesn't want men doing that either, in which case Ophelia isn't policing gender boundaries but rather asserting the general principle that people shouldn't be asses.

I think it's also worth pointing out at this juncture that Ophelia's (apparent) working definition of gender is consonant with "male toxicity", "mansplaining", and so on. All of these concepts refer to behavior exhibited (more or less exclusively) by male-gendered individuals; it's not obvious to me that these concepts are meaningful if "gender" doesn't include packages of typical behaviors.

I'm much more tentative in trying to extrapolate how Hj would respond to the hypothetical above. Based on eir previous post linked to above, I think eir reasoning is something like this:

• Gender is partially defined by biology, but
• There are no tests for this biological component, therefore
• We must defer to peoples' gender self-identification.

Assuming this is more-or-less accurate, I think that Hj is bound to hold that Person A is a woman (because that's how Person A self-identifies) engaging in behavior which is typically male-coded. There's nothing inconsistent about this; a woman may engage in behavior typically exhibited by men, though I have some issues with the "male-coded" part to which I'll return momentarily.

To summarize, with regards to the hypothetical Person A above:

• Ophelia: Person A is an ass. Additionally, Person A was a man, and continues to engage in patterns of behavior consistent with being a man, which is grounds to suspect Person A's self-identification as a woman.
• Hj: Person A is an ass. Additionally, Person A is a woman engaging in behavior which is typically male-coded.

I'll not hazard an opinion on which of these contentions is "true", but I will offer that Ophelia's response is not obviously outrageous either. There's even a sense where both of these assertions can be true at the same time, because Ophelia and Hj are using different defitions of "gender". When Ophelia says "man" or "male", she's referring to one common conception of the term which includes a package of gendered behaviors and is implied by phrases like "male toxicity" and "male privilege". Hj, on the other hand, defines gender purely by self-identification, which is another common conception. This is what I mean when I say that their differences are linguistic rather than substantive; they both (presumably) agree that Person A is behaving inappropriately, but differ in how they define "gender".

As for arguing about who's definition is "correct", I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Ok, now back to the "male-coded" part. If gender is based solely on self-identification, then genders cease to be information-conveying categories. The statement "X is a Y" is exactly equal to "X self-identifies as a Y" for all Y in the set of genders; no additional information is conveyed. I don't think you can have male-coded anything given that formal definition of gender.

"But GG", you may say, "you're being obtuse. We can look at members of the gender Y and identify lots of commonalities". This observation is absolutely true as a matter of facts on the ground; one can look at members of gender Y (at least for genders with large numbers of individuals) and verify that yes, the vast majority of Y share a number of traits. This is basically a matter of practical linguistics; words convey information, which is certainly true of popular usage of gender terms such as "man" and "woman". Words which don't contain information tend to fall out of use.

However, in a social justice context generalization from facts on the ground is... sketchy? Asymmetrically applied? Consider two examples of extrapolation based on shared characteristics of gender:

• Sufficient men engage in a variety of pathologic behaviors that it's worth coining terms such as "mansplaining", "male toxicity", and so on.
• Most women have vaginas/vulvas (probably north of 95% after accounting for intersex and trans individuals).

I haven't been able to find much in the way of objection to the first observation. There are a few people observing that "mansplaining" may have been stretched beyond recognition as a concept, but there doesn't seem to be anyone of note objecting to the recognition and use of concepts derived from observations of common male behaviors.

On the other hand, it is easy to find objections to behavior ground in the observation that most women have vaginas:

• 'Vagina Monologues' Canceled -- 'Not All Women Have Vaginas'
• It's time to drop the vagina as a protest symbol
• Pink pussyhats: The reason feminists are ditching them
• "Project Vulva" deemed transphobic and sparks outrage

And so on.

A possible rejoinder to the above is that one observation is exclusionary and the other is not. Absolutely true, and I'll not argue the contention. I'm only trying to demonstrate that its not a given that one can go from accurate generalizations of facts on the ground to evidence or reasons which can be proffered in moral discourse. Just looking around at common usage it appears that most folks engaged in the social justice movement implicitly behave as if the category "male" means more than just "identifies as male", but may not agree that "female" means more than just "identifies as female".

Which goes back to my prior observation that discourse around "gender" and "gender identity" is something of a mess. Returning to the task at hand, Hj seems to be on OK ground in that "male-coded" is generally considered a valid concept for use in moral reasoning. But Hj, having indicated an interest in the philosphical aspects of the discussion, might stop to ponder whether the assymmetry I've laid out above can be rationally justified.

A Response to Hj Hornbeck vis-a-vis "Trans Atheletes and the Existence of Gender Identity"

Quoth Hj Hornbeck:

So: is gender dysphoria a thing?... I argue yes, via two avenues. The first is an argument from absurdity: almost all the arguments made against gender identity also work against sexual orientation, and since we accept the latter we must accept the former.

This is an insightful observation, and worthy of engagement.

The first thought which comes to mind is that the validity of the comparison depends quite a bit on how you define "gender dysphoria". As I recently noted, you can't take it for granted that terms like "gender dysphoria" enjoy anything like a consensus definition these days. So, here's a sampling of definitions:

• Hj says "If gender identity exists, then it becomes plausible to have a mismatch between your body and your identity; gender identity and gender dysphoria aren’t synonyms, but the existence of the former strongly implies the existence of the latter". Ey seems to be defining "gender dysphoria" as a mismatch between a person's body and their gender identity.
• Wikipedia: "Gender dysphoria (GD) is the distress a person experiences as a result of the sex and gender they were assigned at birth. In this case, the assigned sex and gender do not match the person's gender identity, and the person is transgender".
• DSM-5: "DSM-5 states that the initial condition for the identification of gender dysphoria in both adults and teenagers is a noticeable incongruence between the gender the patient believes they are, and what society perceives them to be."
• The UK's NHS: "Gender dysphoria is a condition where a person experiences discomfort or distress because there's a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity."

There seems to be a general consensus that gender dysphoria is defined as a mismatch between gender identity and something else, but that something differs from definition to definition:

• Present state of a person's body.
• Historical perception (usually by a single individual or very small group. -GG), of a person's sex and gender at birth.
• Present perception of a person's gender by a large group ("society").
• Biological sex

You can see already that there are several areas where the defintions don't agree:

• Present state vs. historic state
• Others' perception of a person's gender vs. a person's physical/biologic features.

Lest I be accused of pointless pedantry, these variations do have practical implications. For example, under the DSM-5 definition a person who is successfully "passing" does not have gender dysphoria (which I expect would be a contentious claim), whereas under both Hj's and the NHS' definitions, which do not hinge on societal perception, someone who is successfully passing may still have gender dysphoria. While it remains to be seen whether these differences are material in the comparison with sexual orientation, it's important to note that they exist.

The definition of "gender identity", at least, seems to be pretty consistent:

• Hj doesn't provide an explicit definition of "gender identity", but ey excerpts an article which defines it as "the conviction of belonging to the male or female gender".
• Sexual Orientation and Gender Expression in Social Work Practice, as cited by Wikipedia: "Gender identity refers to an individual's personal sense of identity as masculine or feminine, or some combination thereof."
• DSM-5: "Gender identity - is a category of social identity and refers to an individual's identification as male, female or, occasionally, some category other than male or female. It is one's deeply held core sense of being male, female, some of both or neither, and does not always correspond to biological sex".
• NHS: "Gender identity is the gender that a person 'identifies' with or feels themselves to be."

Given the definitions above, it's pretty clear that gender dysphoria is "a thing" (is a real phenomena); it's easy to point to individuals (as Hj does in eir post) which meet each of them. So what gives? Why did Hj bother to write a post in the first place? The devil is in the details:

This argument should be the focus when discussing trans athletes. It doesn't matter if every single one of them are fifty feet tall, what only matters is if you accept the existence of gender dysphoria as at least partly grounded in biology. If so, then the above argument demands you let them compete in the gender category they identify with. If that leads to situations you think are unfair, then you shouldn't be using gender as a proxy for athletic ability, instead relying on metrics like muscle mass or height. (Bolding mine -GG)

Whether gender dysphoria is "a thing" is a much different question than whether it's "a thing" "partly grounded in biology"; minus points for conflating the two. Some observations in this regard:

• Not all definitions of gender dysphoria necessitate any sort of physical component. The DSM-5 definition, for example, is based purely on a mis-match between a person's self-perception of gender and society's perception of that person's gender.
• It's doesn't require much of a stretch to posit a physical basis for gender dysphoria if "gender" is limited to "masculine", "feminine", and maybe a few intermediate conditions. It becomes much harder if "gender" is broadened to include 32 or 51 or 63 or 112. I will go out on a limb and posit that not all 112 genders presently recognized by Tumblr have an identifiable, physical cause.
  • A counter-argument is that "There aren't really 112 genders". Recall, however, that all the definitions of gender identity cited above agree that gender is asserted solely via self-identification. A consequence seems to be that we're bound to recognize at least 112 genders, because at least one person has asserted each of them.
• Can it be the case that gender has both a biological component and is entirely socially constructed? Hj seems to be commiting to at least a weak form of gender essentiallism.
• It's not obvious that the "mismatch" definition which Hj appears to be using can be reconciled with work of Talia Mae Bettcher, which Hj cites approvingly here.

Now, to be perfectly clear, at this point I am being both pedantic and a bit of a troll, but with a point. The philosophical angle is a mess because key terms such as "gender identity" are defined so weakly that it leads to absurd results. Scientifically ey's on firmer ground, but at the same time positing a physical cause to gender dysphoria logically entails a certain level of support for ideas which are typically seen as "not progressive". On the plus side, however, I have to give him points for recognizing that taking trans* identity seriously requires us to do away with "gender" as a meaningful attribute for categorizing people.