rationalskepticism.org

Beatsong wrote:My question is not whether such a connection exists, it's whether it is (a) purely an objective measurement by society after the fact, or (b) something which corresponds itself to some real subjective state.

The fact that we can measure things as being connected by probability of occurence, and sort them into categories of the most common connection and the less common connections, doesn't mean necessarily that the categories we so define are psychologically meaningful.

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The categorisation into two types came about by studying the number of times that each characteristic corresponds with other characteristics in the same individual. But even if we accept that such numbers cluster highly to certain correspondences, does that mean that the overall category we invent as a "norm" has a subjectively meaningful reality all its own, outside of the reality of each characteristic taken singly?

Or is it just an artificial construct of measurement, that some people have fooled themselves into thinking is real?

Is it a purely objective measurement by society or something which corresponds to some real subjective state? I'd say that it was most probably a combination of both of them. We define ourselves according to social categories and how others see us. So even if we start with a subjective belief that we are a "Group A Person"; to start with this category would not be discrete, and instead it would run continuously into Group B and C, etc, so some Group A's are better examples of the group than others who might be closer to the border between Group A and B. The complicating factor is that if we are "subjectively" feeling on the cusp of A and B, and society encourages us toward our expected group, then we'll behave more in line with that group.

There have been attempts to objectively define "gender" and identify it in society, but it all depends on what initial assumptions you make. Like with race, you can theoretically end up with 40+ categories of gender if you are too narrow in your categorisations. I'm not sure if this makes gender an "artificial construct", at least no more so than a country is an artificial construct.

Beatsong wrote:

Festeringbob wrote:the role of genes in the formulation of the mind is not properly elucidated yet, therefor at this time there is no definitive answer to your question of psychological gender being "real" or "innate" as opposed to "learnt" and "imposed", however the wonderful thing about nature is it's ineffable ability to fuck up, and as such we see all sorts of failures in biological systems which help us understand what is wrong with the damaged component (failure in the genes that are responsible for the production of melanin result in albinism for example)

particularly prudent to this case is the existence of gender identity disorder, which appears to be a failure in some mechanism that allows the mind to assume the correct psychological role, whilst no one as yet knows why this happens, it begs the question, how can this happen if gender is learnt?

How can there be a "correct psychological role" outside of society's judgment about what is "correct"?

"Correct" is not a description of innate reality, it's a value judgment about reality. The vast majority of sheep are white. But when we see a sheep that is black, we don't call it an "incorrect sheep". A farmer may judge it as being incorrect for his purposes, but that is an entirely different matter. In terms of innate reality, there are simply correspondences between things that happen often (like the other aspects of "sheepdom" and whiteness) and ones that happen less often.

Similarly, if a person is born with a penis, a total dislike of all sports and a deep desire to nurture young children (even supposing that we can know such things are "inborn"), what makes the correspondence between those physical and psychological factors "incorrect"? How can that be anything other than society's judgment that such things ought to correspond differently? And what is society's justification for that judgment?

Isn't there aa wierd kind of "is/ought" problem here? A leap from the observation that certain sets of characteristics cluster together the majority of the time, to a judgment that they ought to cluster together the rest of the time as well?

I agree. The issues with gender identity disorder are not a result of a conflict between the person's "natural" state and their "misfiring" resultant state. It's a conflict between society's beliefs about how sex and gender should be interchangeable, and the fact that some people's gender doesn't fall neatly in this pigeon hole. I'm not aware of the figures on GID, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't largely a problem in Western countries where there are strict expectations on how you should behave, whereas in other cultures there is a more realistic understanding of the variation in human behavior. In Samoa, for example, there is "male", "female" and a third option: Fa'afafine. This is when boys with clearly feminine behaviors (so males identifying with a feminine gender) are identified at an early age and essentially raised as females. Here I would imagine a very low level of GID since there is no room for mental distress as they are accepted as part of society.