Comments on: Identity and Essence

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 19:29:42 +0000

>>For example, if you define the male/female distinction as “has/lacks an externally visible penis greater than x centimeters”, the only trait that you’ll find common in all males and absent in all females is that same penis. Depends where you set the cutoff point, as the rabbi said to the bishop.

By: Jeremy Leader

Jeremy Leader — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 18:53:27 +0000

invisible adjunct, the question of whether sex traits “exist” or not is a little tricky. First, you have to decide whether “sex” exists. That is, can you divide all people into two groups, “male” and “female”, with every person fitting into exactly one group or the other? If so, how do you choose which group to classify someone in? Granted, any classification scheme is going to have a pretty easy time classifying most individuals, but any scheme I can think of ends up with a few tough cases. For example, if you use genetics to classify “male” and “female”, what do you do with individuals bearing various chromosomal abnormalities, such as XYY? Likewise, examining external genitalia runs into all sorts of edge cases: hermaphrodism, other deformities, and gender re-assignment surgery. I imagine there are lots of classification schemes that would more or less arbitrarily classify the ambiguous individuals, but I suspect that any traits not being used for classification are not going to neatly divide up with one sex all having one form of the trait, and the other sex having a different form. For example, if you define the male/female distinction as “has/lacks an externally visible penis greater than x centimeters”, the only trait that you’ll find common in all males and absent in all females is that same penis.

By: Invisible Adjunct

Invisible Adjunct — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 00:23:13 +0000

“(we can all agree on the male and female physical traits, yes?)” Actually, no, some people would not agree with this. At the extreme end of the social contsructivist spectrum, the sex/gender distinction (which was one of the major contributions of feminist theorists in the 70s and 80s) doesn’t go far enough: even to maintain the notion of two sexes is to construct a false binary. I agree that this is counterproductive. Very few people outside a select subgroup of academics actually believe that there are no sex traits. I don’t think such arguments do much to strengthen the appeal of feminism. But there is so much gender reaction out there that I don’t know how to parse the distinction without lending support to the “boys will be boys and girls will be mothers” crowd.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Tue, 15 Jul 2003 20:00:37 +0000

Regarding a previous question: Yes, you can have a human with an XY (male) genotype (What their genes are) and a female phenotype (sexual characterisitcs/parts). See: http://anatomy.med.unsw.edu.au/cbl/embryo/OMIMfind/gonad/OMIM-306100.htm There was also a fascinating article in Discover about this a couple of years ago.

By: JRoth

JRoth — Tue, 15 Jul 2003 19:59:14 +0000

I think skapusniak has nailed down the nugget of this discussion; therefore, I want to address another issue. One, I hasten to add, that has already been raised by invisible adjunct: the relationship between gender and identity and societal constructs. I understand and appreciate the reluctance to admit of inherent male and female identity traits (we can all agree on the male and female physical traits, yes?); it’s a slippery slope from “Many girls tend to play with dolls” to “All women should be legally required to bear and raise all the children they can.” But I think it’s useful to look at it this way: Starting with the concept that “gender” is a social construct, there’s also “sex,” which covers more innate characteristics. Gender traits are largely arbitrary across societies – whether it’s men or women who wear their hair long, or who expose their legs. Sex traits are less arbitrary (although far from universal) – men fight wars, women tend to infants. Now here’s my point – both of these groups are overlapping sets within and across individuals. I’m envisioning a diagram with 2 centers – male & female. Gender & sex traits are denoted with different colors, and plotted according to relative position. For any number of characteristics, any individual will look like a cloud, usually centered around one of the two points. The sex traits will usually cluster more tightly, while the gender ones will vary much more. There’s a fair amount of overlap in the sex traits – Joan of Arc and George Bernard Shaw are flipped on warrior tendencies – while there’s a huge overlap in gender traits – my sister the rugby player, your father the home cook. Maybe this is pointless, but the mental image is useful for me. The reason I bring it up is that asserting that there are no sex traits, only gender traits, is counterproductive. People sense (rightly, I think) that their identities are, in some ways at least, derived directly from their sex. Tell them that it’s society that makes a 8 month old boy choose a ball over a doll, and you’ve lost the argument – they won’t buy it. But if you insist that each individual can be all over this map, with broad social tendencies to gather at the respective centers, then you sound reasonable, and you’ve made an argument for tolerance and open-mindedness.

By: SKapusniak

SKapusniak — Tue, 15 Jul 2003 15:10:07 +0000

Thinking aloud… The dispute here is that Phelan views identity more in terms of binary yes/no answers, whilst Kieran’s question assumes more of a continuum (I least I that’s what’s going on). Phelan is effectively saying that, given a list of everything about him, some things you could take away or change and he would still consider the result to be ‘Phelan’, others if you took them away or changed them would cause the result to be ‘not-Phelan’. He has placed ‘being a man’ as one of the things that if removed would give the ‘not-Phelan’ outcome. He mentions some other things that wouldn’t have that result. It’s a very hard bright line. Either something on his list of traits would make him ‘not-Phelan’ if removed, or it wouldn’t. He has not commented directly on whether swapping his being ‘human’ with ‘not-human’ would also cause him to be ‘not-Phelan’. I rather suspect it would ;) Kieren however seems to be thinking in terms of ‘more-Phelan’ and ‘less-Phelan’, rather than ‘Phelan’ and ‘not-Phelan’. In this model it’s almost certain that swapping ‘being a man’ with ‘being a woman’ we get a result that is ‘more-Phelan’ than if we changed ‘being human’ to ‘being a canary’. However, that argument doesn’t make a lot of sense in the yes/no model, you’re either ‘Phelan’ or you ain’t and in that model either of the two operations result in the ‘not-Phelan’ outcome. I’m not sure which model works best for Holy Roman Emprerors…

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Tue, 15 Jul 2003 14:29:56 +0000

Byword, pg, etc—You’re right that philosophical considerations about the metaphysics of essence are beside Phelan’s point—we wouldn’t convince him that gay marriage was OK, even if he was reading this and accepted our points. I like thinking about metaphysics more than about how people rationalize their anti-gay prejudices. Mark—I think the name change may partly be due to the high correlation of name and gender. It would be awkward to go through life as a woman named “Matt” or “Mark.” Anecdotally, most TGs seem to choose names that share an initial with their old one. An interesting tidbit: One TG friend-of-a-friend obtained a new birth certificate with her new name. I don’t know whether that supports or opposes the idea that it’s a new person. The purpose wasn’t metaphysical—it allowed her to get legal ID with her new name on it, because she didn’t think it would be a good idea to out herself as TG every time she had to show her driver’s license.

By: Ruth Feingold

Ruth Feingold — Tue, 15 Jul 2003 13:58:58 +0000

“Consider, for example, that most transgender people take new names, and a name is a central symbol of identity” (Mark Kleiman, above) Yes—but many people also take new names when they enter religious orders (or get promoted within those religious orders—think of the Pope), go on the stage, get married, or enroll in a 7th-grade French class. You can certainly make an argument for each of these changes of condition being a form of change of identity (either all-inclusive, or situational), but does that mean that these particular identity changes are therefore essential?

By: dsquared

dsquared — Tue, 15 Jul 2003 12:08:11 +0000

Deirdre McCloskey certainly seemed to believe that being an economist was more fundmental to her than being a man … Meanwhile, I will quixotically assert that manhood and economisthood are mere incidents to my personality, but that it is essential to my being that I am 30 years old. It is absolutely fundamental to who I am.

By: David Weman

David Weman — Tue, 15 Jul 2003 10:53:41 +0000

Well, that’s true.

By: Erik

Erik — Tue, 15 Jul 2003 09:08:53 +0000

While a TG may contend that gender is essential, they’re not talking about their physical sex. Which comes around and bites things like laws restricting marriages to physical male/female unions in the, erm.

By: PG

PG — Tue, 15 Jul 2003 06:54:53 +0000

Much of this discussion seems way more complex than Phelan’s comment warrants. I immediately stereotyped him as the kind of guy whose sense of self is strongly bound with identifying as A MAN, and who therefore feels threatened by the gender ambiguities that tend to crop up with same-sex unions. I suspect that he would be horrified by Dan Savage’s boyfriend, who has taken on the “feminine” role of primary caretaker of their adopted children. The more secure people feel about their own identities, the less disturbed they are by ambiguity.

By: Mark Kleiman

Mark Kleiman — Tue, 15 Jul 2003 03:16:56 +0000

I have no reason to want to defend Eugene’s essentialist correspondent, but if I read him correctly he is not saying that being make is a more fundamental fact about him than being human, but that it is more fundamental than his age, profession, or fertility. “I happen to be 40 years old, happen to be an economist, and happen to be fertile, but I AM a man. I am not a human who happens to be a man. Being male is fundamental to who I am in a deeper way than any of these other characteristics.” “These other characteristics” must surely mean age, profession, and fertility status, not species. He’s saying, then, that he’d still be himself if he grew older, or became a lawyer, or became infertile, but that he would be another person if he became a woman. Well, that may not be right, but it certainly isn’t silly. Consider, for example, that most transgender people take new names, and a name is a central symbol of identity.

By: ByWord

ByWord — Tue, 15 Jul 2003 03:15:47 +0000

On the original topic, I think that arguing against this guy’s point based on questions of fertility and identity is beside the point. The bigger issue, of course, is as always that opponents of gay marriage need to show that it is demonstrably harmful to society, and that that harm outweighs the harm caused by giving the state a right to deny equal treatment to a group of its citizens. It’s important to keep the bigger picture in mind.

By: Neil

Neil — Tue, 15 Jul 2003 02:59:37 +0000

Lots of philosophers think that genotype fixes identity (Kripke seems to, and the entire debate about Parfit’s non-identity problem turns on this). And most of them assume that genotype determines sex – since sex is a question of chromosomes. But there is a good sense in which this is false. Genetically female rats injected with prenatal testosterone have male genitalia and behavior. The male economist could have been a girl, if his androgens had been neutralized prenatally.