J.K. Rowling on sex and trans issues

[thombergeron]

Again, "woman" is not a scientific term. There is no scientific definition of "woman."

"Female" is a scientific term denoting reproductive capacity. It is not a synonym for "woman" in the same way that "tectonic" is not a synonym for "craggy." We don't describe female trout as women trout, because trout cannot undertake the cultural role of women in human society. Human individuals with male reproductive organs, on the other hand, can and do undertake the cultural role of women.

[MrFanti]

Again, "woman" is not a scientific term. There is no scientific definition of "woman."

I think the confusion and arguments come from the use/misuse of the following:

-Woman
-Gender
-Identification
-DNA/Biological sex

Out of the above, only DNA/Biological sex is based on physical science.
The others are based on psychological science.

[diddyboponTOP]

Who determines what is "passable"?

Common sense?

[Stavros]

Again, "woman" is not a scientific term. There is no scientific definition of "woman."

"Female" is a scientific term denoting reproductive capacity. It is not a synonym for "woman" in the same way that "tectonic" is not a synonym for "craggy." We don't describe female trout as women trout, because trout cannot undertake the cultural role of women in human society. Human individuals with male reproductive organs, on the other hand, can and do undertake the cultural role of women.

"We don't describe female trout as women trout, because trout cannot undertake the cultural role of women in human society."
-This is what Gilbert Ryle would describe as a 'category mistake', but is an example of the nonsense many produce when making another failed attempt to unravel the lineages of language, science and gender, all mixed up as they have become.

A fetish for language at the expense of science, to confirm and re-confirm a bias regardless of facts. In what world, one wonders, is
'woman' a 'social construct' but 'female' is a scientific fact? The womb is not a social construct, neither is menstruation or ejaculation, my knees, or your penis. Unless, and until there is a reconciliation between science and language this debate is going to move along parallel lines, with two destinations unknown, but much anxiety and hurt along the way.

[Stavros]

The others are based on psychological science.

Psychology is not science, but an interpretation of human behaviour, sometimes using the techniques of science, sometimes of literary criticism, even history, sociology and anthropology and Art, and often producing garbage as a result, interesting though it sometimes is. Consider the multiple ways in which Freud's famous comment can be interpreted -Anatomy is Destiny.

[MrFanti]

Psychology is not science,

Not according to these experts - they state that it IS.
https://www.phoenix.edu/blog/is-psyc...alert-yes.html
https://www.apa.org/education-career/guide/science
https://www.edology.com/blog/psychol...ogy-a-science/

[Stavros]

Not according to these experts - they state that it IS.
https://www.phoenix.edu/blog/is-psyc...alert-yes.html
https://www.apa.org/education-career/guide/science
https://www.edology.com/blog/psychol...ogy-a-science/

Had a good laugh at Americans being paid to defend Psychology confirming they believe themselves to be scientists, what else can one expect?

Here is a good example of the desperation involved-
"Psychology refers to the study of the mind and human behaviour'
but in another link
"Psychologists examine the link between brain function and behaviour'-

We can agree the brain exists, but does the Mind exist? Science cannot prove that it does. So half the definition is speculation. The other half according to one of your links-
"Psychologists employ the scientific method — stating the question, offering a theory and then constructing rigorous laboratory or field experiments to test the hypothesis"
-Most of this is basic philosophy, as for 'field experiments' -what 'field experiments' are required to help someone with problems of self-esteem?

Good effort, but as I say, Psychology is an interesting way to think about life, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking it is anything other than a form of therapy that can be achieved with many means that do not require a degree or a statistical analysis of what motivates alcoholics.

[MrFanti]

Had a good laugh at Americans being paid to defend Psychology confirming they believe themselves to be scientists, what else can one expect?

Here is a good example of the desperation involved-
"Psychology refers to the study of the mind and human behaviour'
but in another link
"Psychologists examine the link between brain function and behaviour'-

We can agree the brain exists, but does the Mind exist? Science cannot prove that it does. So half the definition is speculation. The other half according to one of your links-
"Psychologists employ the scientific method — stating the question, offering a theory and then constructing rigorous laboratory or field experiments to test the hypothesis"
-Most of this is basic philosophy, as for 'field experiments' -what 'field experiments' are required to help someone with problems of self-esteem?

Good effort, but as I say, Psychology is an interesting way to think about life, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking it is anything other than a form of therapy that can be achieved with many means that do not require a degree or a statistical analysis of what motivates alcoholics.

Simple Yes/No question.
Are you a psychologist?

If no, then I would think that those who wrote the articles are more experts than you and I both combined.

[MrFanti]

Had a good laugh at Americans

Oh and while you're laughing....
Psychological Science in the European Union
https://www.psychologicalscience.org...european-union

Founding of a Scientific Psychology in Germany
https://history-of-psychology.readth...mans.html#id35

[Stavros]

Mr Fanti, you miss the key point of the argument, which has nothing to do with what some institution defines as science in order to grant itself some respectability, and most of all, a source of funding and jobs with benefits; or the fact that Psychology uses the techniques of science to make claims which can be made by literary criticism or just common sense.

You also ignore an entire tradition in European philosophy which has never been able to prove that the mind exists, just as science can make a connection between neural activity and our understanding of pain and pleasure, but the same science cannot explain why one person finds ecstasy in a piece of music another finds empty of all meaning.

Language, and again language both confirms and denies the facts of science. Consider some of the arguments in a recent book reviewed in this week's Times Literary Supplement 18 March 2022 (available online, if not in Greg Abbott's 'Science is Bullshit' State of Texas)-Claire Chambers Intact: A Defence of the Unmodified Body.

Though there are women who for various reasons don't menstruate, we can I hope agree that only one gender experiences it, and that science can tell us what is, why it is, and so forth. Now consider the language, which for the most part, in English, is negative, most commonly found in terms such as 'the curse'. For science, this is a strange term to use for a process which enables a woman to become pregnant and breed, perpetuating the species. How then did language evolve to treat so natural a condition as if there were something wrong with it?

One answer, supplied by anthropology, is that humans react negatively to the sight of blood, because it is associated with pain, injury and death, and in one sense of course, menstruation is a form of death -dead blood being shed to be replaced by new blood; blood that does not enable life to begin, replace with blood that does. Now consider the opposite, the positive language associated with white liquids, namely breast milk and semen, both of which are linked with life-affirming words and phrases, though few come as close as the French does, with Jouisssance, to linking ejaculation to pleasure so precisely.

Race is even more an explicit example of the rupture that can take place between language and science, not least because there was a time when science not only defined Race in terms of the shape of one's nose, or head, or the colouration of the skin denoting levels of intelligence, superiority and inferiority. It went as far as to claim science could prove that there is a 'criminal mind', with the inevitable result via Eugenics, that 'involuntary euthanasia' -to you and me also known as killing- was the preferred 'treatment' for 'criminals' with the also inevitable consequence that a substantial proportion of 'Negroes' were more liable to be 'criminal'.

CRT was not the first to do so, but has certainly established how language in the form of law and other forms of public discourse has been used to replace the science that has lost its ability to define 'race', and give it a precisely American context. You need only ask if the experience of being born Black in Nigeria presents the same problems of 'the Body in Society' as it does when that Black body is born in Louisiana. Then ask what the difference to that body is were it born in 1722, 1822, 1922 and 2022. I think you will agree the assessment in the American case, is shocking -or ought to be?

We are born with the bodies we have, and science can enable us to modify them, be it a 'nose job', tattoos, SRS and so on -Chambers is thus opposed to the use of Puberty Blockers in Trans-defined Children. But the 'matter of fact' factness of Science does not always result in a language that simply confirms it, and it is at this juncture that all our anxieties emerge, as your posts often show.

Psychology, in these contexts, is merely a way of using language to discuss assumptions about the way in which humans behave, think and even feel, but has failed constantly to offer a single durable explanation of what these phenomena are, or in trying to do so, has had to rely on the languages and disciplines that exist elsewhere, being a completely unoriginal way of doing things.

The most telling example of this takes place in therapy where the most successful therapist says almost nothing other than ask a few questions, all the work being done by the person in therapy, who need only tell the truth about what they think and feel, and is then invited by the Psychologist to do, or not do something about what the person just said. Imagine, men and women being paid -and in the US, paid substantial sums of money- persuading someone else to 'do all the work'.