Nature & Nurture
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
- Dr. Alex Byrne is a Professor of Philosophy at MIT and author of Trouble with Gender.
In this episode, we talk about the problematic concept of gender, which is often used interchangeably to mean sex, gender identity, gender role, gender norm, or gender stereotypes. Alex and I discuss each of these, and their precise definitions in philosophy, biology, or sociology in detail. We also discuss the problem of identity and categorization in philosophy of mind and language more broadly, as a source of some of the confusion. Lastly, we discuss the nuances of defining sex and gender in intersex and transgender populations, the essentialist nature of felt gender identity, the concept of transracialism, the ethics of social and medical gender transition in children, and answer the question: What is a woman?
00:18 Understanding the 'Trouble with Gender'
02:19 Exploring the History of Gender Philosophy
05:07 The Role of Language in Defining Gender
05:46 The Complexity of Gender Terminology
10:16 The Misinterpretation of Gender Concepts
22:22 The Absurdity of Precise Definitions
41:33 The Biological Definition of Sex
58:18 The Hypothetical Cat-Dog: A Thought Experiment of Social Perception
01:02:32 Gender, Sex, and the Complexity of Identity
01:03:35 The Practical Implications of Defining Gender
01:05:51 Transgender Identity and the Question of 'Passing'
01:20:21 The Philosophical Dilemma of Pronouns and Gender Identity
01:22:33 Transracialism and the Social Construct of Identity
01:46:13 The Controversy of Autogynephilia and Gender Identity
01:53:29 The Reception and Impact of Controversial Philosophical Ideas
1:12:54 changing self-perception over the body corrections do not mean changing it to actual identity, because we don't know whether this identity was developed naturally whether over inducement.
Love this conversation! W we have three hour podcasts on this topic. This podcast should be mandatory to listen to first.
Thank you both
"You promised me a kilo of gold but you've given me a kilo of wood."
"It's gold according to my definition. What's your problem?"
Sounds like a momentum problem.
The confusion between the words sex and gender is rather specific to the English language, where the word sex also means intercourse. I am from Sweden, and in Swedish, we don't have this confusion because we have different words for intercourse and biological sex. In academia, one distinguishes between sex, which one's reproductive role, and gender, which is a social construct that is built upon one's sex. It basically means gender stereotype. Sex can exist without gender because it is an objective reality. Gender, on the other hand, can not exist without sex. It is based on it. Clear and simple, when one is not English-speaking. 😊
The problem we are facing now is not that there are different understandings of sex and gender in philosophy, but the rampant intolerance against the views that differs from one's own. What happened to discussions? Where does this militant cancel culture come from? It is starting to resemble dictatorship a la Iran or communist Russia.
you can only say the catlike dog is a cat if you don't mind risking anaphylactic shock when someone asks you "do you have a dog".
What about my cat that thinks he is a dog, a trans-dog. If my trans-dog is not fed on time he barks at me.
There is a 17-year-old girl at a school in an outer eastern suburb of Melbourne in Australia, who identifies as a frog. She identifies as a frog in exactly the same way that some biological men now identify as a woman and vice versa. It’s no joke. She is very serious about it and very committed. Notwithstanding that she identifies as a frog, she is still a human being.
There’s no problem with anybody identifying as anything they want, but should not confuse their identifying with them actually being.
Ribbit!
The recent Swedish study on twins (monozygotic and dizygotic), which Alex Byrne refers to, is supposed to provide evidence that gender dysphoria is not caused by genetics. But he fails to mention that the authors suggest that a plausible hypothesis is that gender dysphoria is caused by sex dimorphic brain structures (which form in utero, in response to the hormonal environment). If that’s true, then there’s an innate cause to gender dysphoria. In other word: gender dysphoria is an innate condition.
And that’s the claim Byrne wants to deny. He wants to say that it’s socially caused or caused by the environment. Which is why he suggests that therapy should be the treatment, and not transitioning (gender affirming care). He recommends a kind of “conversion therapy” for trans people.
If you define your terms, and use terms that are not used in deliberately or unintentionally confusing ways, and you have enough terms to represent the distinctions you are making and need to make to make your point, it should not matter that much what terms you use. It is really convenient if we also use the same terms for the same things, but these words do not have sone kind of Platonic objective meaning. If someone defines gender as social and sex as biological then that is what they mean. They does not need to be a perfect binary distinction between the biological and the social. The circles of the Venn diagram may overlap. It does not matter if you refuse to make that distinction. There is no reason for others to use your preferred terms.
Third comment 37:44 this is a really good conversation!
35:35 Fuzzy Borders. Punk rock band name alert!
The race argument is real good.
A biological definition of "adult" is "sexually mature". A sociological definition might be 18, or, in the past sometimes somewhere between 12 and 16, or maybe 21. This is because with humans and their complex psyches, there's more than one kind of maturity. One might define that is capable of functioning independently in society. That can vary from culture to culture and can have a lot to do with training and expectations.
Everyone loves Margot Robbie.
Where would getting pregnant and having babies come into this convoluted discussion about womanhood. A woman will be a woman anywhere due to her reproductive organs. Been around the world and all women have that in common. Comparison using a career chosen by an actress is ridiculous. Not listening to another word of this mumbo jumbo.