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.