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[Egan_BW]

Any particular reason why? Seems like it could but does not necessarily fit in amongst a lot of other things which can change, personality stuff. Often due to trauma, but eh.
Since you believe that gender isn't really a physical difference in the brain, wouldn't it be in the realm of weird poorly understood brain stuff, like memory and consciousness?

[Strongpoint]

I meant that women who shave their legs do so not because they are female, but because they are women.

I see.

Yes, many women choose to express their gender by shaving their legs, wearing 'feminine' clothing, using makeup, and generally following socially constructed gender roles\stereotypes\norms for the gender "woman". But does it really means that gender itself is just a social construct?

[TD1]

Someone's 'true' gender can't be fixed. Gender is an amorphous construct which we apply to ourselves. You may as well say someone can't change nationality when they're adult.

Most adults have little inclination to do so, but that doesn't mean they can't.

All it takes is personal reevaluation. Which is why I view the tabulating of outward signs somewhat silly. An Italian does not need to have a moustache and drink wine, and nor would a metrosexual (imagining, for a moment, that to be a distinct gender) need to shave his legs to consider himself one.

Edit: I think I fell behind the conversation, heh.

[Great Order]

My personal view on this is there needs to be a proper separation out of gender roles and gender. I see gender as an immutable, likely neurological in origin, self-perception. A bit like the mental blueprint you have of your body, and when the body and the blueprint don't match it often causes distress.

Then gender roles are then the stuff that a society expects someone of a specific gender to do. Much more mutable and varies from culture to culture.

It feels like a lot of the issues come from people saying that gender is a social construct while simultaneously saying it's immutable. If it's a social construct, then it can be changed, but if it's not able to be changed then it's not a social construct.

[Strongpoint]

My personal view on this is there needs to be a proper separation out of gender roles and gender. I see gender as an immutable, likely neurological in origin, self-perception. A bit like the mental blueprint you have of your body, and when the body and the blueprint don't match it often causes distress.

Then gender roles are then the stuff that a society expects someone of a specific gender to do. Much more mutable and varies from culture to culture.

It feels like a lot of the issues come from people saying that gender is a social construct while simultaneously saying it's immutable. If it's a social construct, then it can be changed, but if it's not able to be changed then it's not a social construct.

It is quite close to my opinion. But here is a hypothetical for you (and anyone else who may be interested in answering such hypothetical).

Let's imagine some advanced alien civilization decides to play a cruel prank on me by cutting and pasting memories from my male cisgender brain to a blank brain of a human female. Will my gender stay male? And not only male but in the very same spot of the male-to-female gradient?

[Great Order]

If I'm honest, it's a bit of a nonsensical question because "you" are a product, not only of your psychology, but your neurology as well. The line delineating the two is blurry. Psychology influences neurology and neurology influences psychology.

If it's just the memories, there's a whole host of other things that'd need to be carried over to turn it from an inactive brain into a functioning one, they'd likely have just created a storage medium. Of course, we're jumping into hypotheticals that I don't think even top scientists could work out yet.

Now, let's say the brain isn't blank, they've taken a random woman, removed her memories, and dumped yours in their place. I'd have to imagine that, outside of the sheer confusion, she'd still be cisgendered. Really fucked up, probably incredibly confused as to her gender, but I suspect deep down she'd still be cis.

But again, this is hypotheticals we straight up lack the answer to.

[Strongpoint]

Hm, are you saying that gender is like an Operating System (or rather a part of it) which is independent of memories but needs time to form? And that merely copying memories into an empty brain will fail to produce a person because there is no OS in place which needs to be naturally developed? And that, unlike computers, hardware changes software, and software changes hardware and they can't be separated cleanly?

I like this perspective and it gives some food for thought.

[Starver]

I think the hypothetical just has too many other questions to it. Do you still see red as "red", rewired/imprinted into the new body's clump of neurons? It's got to be somewhere between having to relearn the whole IO and basically just being a vague impression that you used to be someone else (or was that just a dream?), but whether new!you carries with you any given amount of legacy whole-body identity is an open question.

And we're far from checking what does what, outside of purely fictional cases of regular body/mind-swapping such as Dollhouse, Freejack, etc, in which we only get what the writers want to give us. And those examples don't focus on crossing the gender-gap, possibly even mostly avoid it, though do at least seem to allow it but without the salaciousness of perhaps more 'specialist' fictions where they're probably making that the point.

(We don't get much in-depth insight into The Doctor in her Thirteenth incarnation, even. Personality changes, but then it did for every other, and how caterpillar/butterfly it is with basically melting down all the old cells and reforming them is something we can only presume. And, unfortunately, is just as fictional, with canon-inconsistencies on top.)

[Vector]

I have just seen a clip of a prominent American political commentator calling for "eradicating trangenderism from public life entirely" and I am both incredibly angry and wondering if anyone in the audience realized that he was effectively calling for genocide.

Yes, I think it's become pretty clear at this point what is going on.

A bill also just passed Tennessee's House of Representatives which allows county clerks to deny marriage licenses to same-sex, interfaith, and interracial couples.

[MorleyDev]

When they either forget not say the quiet part out loud, or no longer feel the need to hide it...

Thing is, even if you regard your brain/body not being matched as some form of 'mental disability', we already have legal and political agreement down in the books that society should accommodate others with mental and physical disabilities. There's already legal obligation to sure public buildings are wheel chair accessible, to not discriminate against people with Down's Syndrome. So even if you regard being transgender as some form of mental disability, then that doesn't change their being an obligation to accommodate, which means...allowing them to live as their 'preferred gender'.

Also mental disability is measured in distress and harm caused to the person with it, and treatment is about doing things to reduce or remove that distress. Since we already know 'conversion therapy' doesn't work for that and is instead just horribly abusive and cruel, that just leaves accommodation which is the approach proven to reduce the distress/harm.

So even by their professed 'logic', 'eradicating transgender' doesn't fit. Trying to present it in those terms is just a transparent attempt to mask their own hatred and prejudice, not that this wasn't already obvious.

[scriver]

Now we just need to get some Satanists in the clerky and start denying Christian weddings

[MrRoboto75]

When they either forget not say the quiet part out loud, or no longer feel the need to hide it...

Thing is, even if you regard your brain/body not being matched as some form of 'mental disability', we already have legal and political agreement down in the books that society should accommodate others with mental and physical disabilities. There's already legal obligation to sure public buildings are wheel chair accessible, to not discriminate against people with Down's Syndrome. So even if you regard being transgender as some form of mental disability, then that doesn't change their being an obligation to accommodate, which means...allowing them to live as their 'preferred gender'.

Also mental disability is measured in distress and harm caused to the person with it, and treatment is about doing things to reduce or remove that distress. Since we already know 'conversion therapy' doesn't work for that and is instead just horribly abusive and cruel, that just leaves accommodation which is the approach proven to reduce the distress/harm.

So even by their professed 'logic', 'eradicating transgender' doesn't fit. Trying to present it in those terms is just a transparent attempt to mask their own hatred and prejudice, not that this wasn't already obvious.

once trans people are "dealt with" disabled people aren't going to be that far away on the list of "undesirables" to be handled next.

[Great Order]

-snipped for Vec's sake-

With the whole federal marriage equality thingymabob, wouldn't that be explicitly overridden?

Or is this the Reps hoping for either SCOTUS to overturn it, or to be blocked and go "Well folks, *they* stopped us, better vote for us again so we can keep pushing this!"

[MrRoboto75]

Doesn't that just mean they need to respect marriage license (gay or otherwise) of other states, but you still can't become gay married in that state?

[Maximum Spin]

Doesn't that just mean they need to respect marriage license (gay or otherwise) of other states, but you still can't become gay married in that state?

The law actually has nothing to do with gay marriage or anything else.

It would also allow clerks to refuse to personally file straight marriages, same-race marriages, marriage between two Catholics, or anything else simply on the basis of not wanting to. And you can always find another clerk.

The law is stupid - if you say "I refuse to do this paperwork because it offends me", you should get fired - but there's no reason to be dishonest about it.