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sundin13 on 30 August 2019
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o_O.Q said:
sundin13 said:

"Behavior and presentation" are certainly important components of maleness and femaleness, but remember, we are talking about both the biological and the societal aspects of maleness and femaleness. Neither gender nor sex is all encompassing. It is the sum of the two which produce the full picture of maleness and femaleness.

And yes, gender and sex can be both separate and still work together. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive so I'm not exactly sure where this disbelief is stemming from.

Let me step back and provide an example that is a little less politicized: Food. Everybody loves food, but the food we each like is determined by several different factors. There are biological factors such as taste buds and genetics, for example, to some people cilantro tastes like soap because of their genetics, which affects their taste in food ( https://www.britannica.com/story/why-does-cilantro-taste-like-soap-to-some-people ). However, there are also cultural factors. Different parts of the world considered different foods to be delicacies while others wouldn't eat those same dishes if you paid them too, because of what our society has defined to be normal and good food. You would not say that taste buds and cultural diet differences are the same thing, but you would say they work together to create an individual's taste in food.

This isn't unlike the difference between sex and gender. They are two distinct concepts, however, they do work together to produce the full view of maleness and femaleness. There is nothing in flux here, this is and has all been consistent.

As for whether a transgendered woman is a woman, lets make sure you understand the basic addition first before we move into algebra.

Note: I would like to quickly say that we are mostly talking about overall concepts of maleness and femaleness here, not the application onto the individual. One step at a time.

" Neither gender nor sex is all encompassing. It is the sum of the two which produce the full picture of maleness and femaleness."

so i'm going to ask this again but again I expect you to just ignore this question

does this mean therefore that you do not agree with the position that a man becomes a woman once he identifies as one?

"I'm not exactly sure where this disbelief is stemming from."

well because you've made the argument previously that they are not connected and now you've completely flipped on that position

"This isn't unlike the difference between sex and gender. They are two distinct concepts, however, they do work together to produce the full view of maleness and femaleness."

can you provide an example of how sex and gender work together to produce femaleness?

btw did you not say previously that sex is too complicated to be used for distinguishing between men and women?

"As for whether a transgendered woman is a woman, lets make sure you understand the basic addition first"

look, I've understood the concept long before I started talking to you, it just doesn't make sense and you're actually helping to show that

As previously stated, I don't believe it is best debate practice to get into complicated aspects of a discussion before the exceedingly simple is agreed upon. There isn't really any benefit in that, as it just instantly moves the discussion to a place where agreement is virtually impossible. Nothing that I have spoken of so far strictly applies to transgendered individuals, so there is no necessity in addressing transgenderism at this point in time. As such, I don't plan on addressing any of your questions relating specifically to transgenderism until we are able to agree upon the basics.

In regards to your assertion that I have switched positions: I have not. You simply struggle deeply with understanding these concepts and as such, you jump to a lot of conclusions that are not founded through what I am saying. This is a fault in your understanding, not a fault in the definitions behind sex and gender. I will ask you to respond to what I am saying and not what you think I might have said several months ago, as it seems this will be required to have a conversation that doesn't instantly devolve into hearsay and discussions of points I never made.

With that out of the way, I will address the one question that you did ask on the topic of what I said:

"Can you provide an example of how sex and gender work together to produce femaleness?"

Lets define "femaleness" as all of things associated with a female (biological and social and everything in between). When we think of an individual who holds these attributes of "femaleness" we may think of someone who is shorter and has breasts (generally biological characteristics) and wears dresses and has long hair (generally social (normative) characteristics). Both these biological characteristics and these social characters work together to produce the concept of "femaleness".