I think in large part we're talking past each other on some things. I've known people in the past who had a genuine problem with being perceived as the opposite sex even though they weren't trying to 'present' that way at all. How would you explain that if it's so easy to tell when someone IS trying to present that way?
It's actually a confounding factor that people are now acutely aware of this issue. I would bet a lot more feminine men or masculine women are suspected of being trans, even though they're not, than actual trannies (who flaunt their freak flags) are actually 'fooling' anyone. Remember, too, that most human interactions are fleeting and most people aren't constantly scrutinizing everyone's sex.
A good example of how our impressions can often be wrong is your perception that Buck Angel is obese. Buck Angel is a ripped body builder who probably has less body fat than most of humanity. You say his gravelly voice is convincingly male and Dog L. says "[a]ll Buck has to do is open his mouth and I can tell he's trans." My own perception is that Buck sounds and looks like a gay man, although I'm also quite aware that many men sound that way who are neither gay nor trans.
I'm not really arguing that it's not pretty easy to spot a lot of trannies, just that that doesn't mean it's always easy. As for Blaire, I knew Blaire was trans but my impression was that if I hadn't known and wasn't thinking along those lines, I would have assumed female sex. You could call that being fooled, I suppose, only Blaire isn't ever really trying to fool anyone and most people aren't constantly on guard against being fooled that way, so really . . . I couldn't care less if I can't always tell beyond doubt what sex a person is.
I'm sorry it's taken me so long to make this reply - had company over the weekend.
Anyway, I'm also sorry to tell you I find your arguments unconvincing. A few years ago, trans activists made much of intersex/disorders of sexual development to justify the supposed reality of transgenderism. The problem with that argument was that virtually all people who claim transgender identity or seek trans medical care (cross-sex hormones, hormone suppression or surgeries) are perfectly normal specimens of human males or females, and intersex/DSD individuals actually have a sex, male or female, even if in these exceedingly rare instances, it might require a bit of medical sleuthing to figure out the sex of an infant with what amounted to birth defects of the genitalia.
It was John Money, the same guy who proposed so many ideas about gender being a social construct (and whose "medical care" of David Reimer was so catastrophic for David, his twin brother & their family) who proposed surgery on infants with supposedly ambiguous genitalia to conform the infant's appearance to one sex or the other. When the children who'd been subjected to Money's regimen grew up, they had numerous complaints, such as having their genitals conformed to the sex that didn't match their biology, as well as nerve damage that prevented sexual pleasure. In some cases, genitals that appear abnormal in infancy will become more normal looking with the addition of hormones in puberty.
Btw, sex hormones affect far more than genitals and visible secondary sex features like breasts, beards and body hair, but is key to brain maturation, and affect lung capacity, blood chemistry and volume, ratios of different muscle fibers, bone density, size & shape, fat distribution and more. Although I can't find the source at the moment, I recall reading that there are approx. 7000 features of human bodies that are affected by sex hormones.
Even in earlier centuries, when physical interventions were made that led to sterility and lack f sexual function, creating castrati for choirs or eunuchs for royal courts & harems, those men were still recognized as men, and referred to with male pronouns. Which brings us to language...
Language is another thing that suggests to me that there is not really any long history of human sex characteristics being on some kind of spectrum, as opposed to a binary. Take English, which is rare in that it doesn't assign gender to inanimate objects (tables, windows, scissors, etc.) as so many other languages do (and those genders are male & female, or male, female & neuter --neuter specifying not a mixture of sex characteristics, but no sex characteristics at all). The vocabulary of English is much larger than most languages, and yet our words for gendered humans (and animals and plants) fall into two categories - male and female. Even when we talk about people who in some way (pretty much behavioral) atypical for their sex, we use words related to the two sexes - tomboy, girly man. Tomboys are girls who like boyish pursuits like climbing trees or playing with toy trucks. They don't tend to grow up to have beards. Gay men and effeminate men don't tend to grow breasts (my experience is that they tend to be thin). Why would we have words for men (and animals) whose reproductive capacity has been destroyed, and words for having no sex characteristics (neuter), and yet we don't have words for humans, or animals, that have a mix of sex characteristics such that they don't easily fit into male or female? It's also interesting that, for body features males and females ave in common, the words are the same. Men have legs, women have legs, same for arms, lips, cheeks, feet, lungs, etc.
Biological sex is not only a human function. Sexual reproduction has been going on for at least 2 billion years, and is the main form of reproduction for almost every animal species and an overwhelming number of plant species, and even some microbes. In all the time that sexual reproduction has existed, there have only ever been 2 sexes required to create offspring, and there are no examples in biology of any reproduction requiring a sex other than male and female.
Unlike humans, animals and plants can't verbally ask a potential reproductive partner "are you male (or female)?" It has to be pretty obvious, or a species would die out. Even in the outlier case of cuttlefish, where non-alpha males can assume a female appearance (because cuttlefish have remarkable capacities to change appearance), they do so to get close enough to get an opportunity to stealth mate, and return to male appearance when they've had their opportunity.
One last thing, re Buck Angel. The images I'd see of Buck were recent videos of Buck speaking, wearing a shirt, and basically from the waist up. Buck has a bit of a waddle under the chin these days, and all these things contributed my getting an impression of overweight. Now that I've checked more images, I've seen the muscles. Even so, I stand by my position that Buck Angel only has a male appearance due to massive, ongoing medical intervention of a sort only available for a very short amount of the time that humanity has existed on earth.
I still get the impression we're somewhat at crossed purposes. You say "Anyway, I'm also sorry to tell you I find your arguments unconvincing" yet you didn't address any of my arguments in this reply. What you say is interesting, but it's all information that I already know and agree with so where's the disagreement?
Basically, the only thing I'm really arguing is that people CAN be wrong about a person's biological sex, even if infrequently and/or in brief encounters, whether they're trannies or not, and that a large number of trannies, if not most, WANT to be identified as trannies. They want to be CONSIDERED the opposite sex (or some weird non-binary gender) and treated that way, but they literally can't shut up about being trans. They're not trying to pass as Cisgendered males or females. They WANT people to know they're trannies.
I think in large part we're talking past each other on some things. I've known people in the past who had a genuine problem with being perceived as the opposite sex even though they weren't trying to 'present' that way at all. How would you explain that if it's so easy to tell when someone IS trying to present that way?
It's actually a confounding factor that people are now acutely aware of this issue. I would bet a lot more feminine men or masculine women are suspected of being trans, even though they're not, than actual trannies (who flaunt their freak flags) are actually 'fooling' anyone. Remember, too, that most human interactions are fleeting and most people aren't constantly scrutinizing everyone's sex.
A good example of how our impressions can often be wrong is your perception that Buck Angel is obese. Buck Angel is a ripped body builder who probably has less body fat than most of humanity. You say his gravelly voice is convincingly male and Dog L. says "[a]ll Buck has to do is open his mouth and I can tell he's trans." My own perception is that Buck sounds and looks like a gay man, although I'm also quite aware that many men sound that way who are neither gay nor trans.
I'm not really arguing that it's not pretty easy to spot a lot of trannies, just that that doesn't mean it's always easy. As for Blaire, I knew Blaire was trans but my impression was that if I hadn't known and wasn't thinking along those lines, I would have assumed female sex. You could call that being fooled, I suppose, only Blaire isn't ever really trying to fool anyone and most people aren't constantly on guard against being fooled that way, so really . . . I couldn't care less if I can't always tell beyond doubt what sex a person is.
I'm sorry it's taken me so long to make this reply - had company over the weekend.
Anyway, I'm also sorry to tell you I find your arguments unconvincing. A few years ago, trans activists made much of intersex/disorders of sexual development to justify the supposed reality of transgenderism. The problem with that argument was that virtually all people who claim transgender identity or seek trans medical care (cross-sex hormones, hormone suppression or surgeries) are perfectly normal specimens of human males or females, and intersex/DSD individuals actually have a sex, male or female, even if in these exceedingly rare instances, it might require a bit of medical sleuthing to figure out the sex of an infant with what amounted to birth defects of the genitalia.
It was John Money, the same guy who proposed so many ideas about gender being a social construct (and whose "medical care" of David Reimer was so catastrophic for David, his twin brother & their family) who proposed surgery on infants with supposedly ambiguous genitalia to conform the infant's appearance to one sex or the other. When the children who'd been subjected to Money's regimen grew up, they had numerous complaints, such as having their genitals conformed to the sex that didn't match their biology, as well as nerve damage that prevented sexual pleasure. In some cases, genitals that appear abnormal in infancy will become more normal looking with the addition of hormones in puberty.
Btw, sex hormones affect far more than genitals and visible secondary sex features like breasts, beards and body hair, but is key to brain maturation, and affect lung capacity, blood chemistry and volume, ratios of different muscle fibers, bone density, size & shape, fat distribution and more. Although I can't find the source at the moment, I recall reading that there are approx. 7000 features of human bodies that are affected by sex hormones.
Even in earlier centuries, when physical interventions were made that led to sterility and lack f sexual function, creating castrati for choirs or eunuchs for royal courts & harems, those men were still recognized as men, and referred to with male pronouns. Which brings us to language...
Language is another thing that suggests to me that there is not really any long history of human sex characteristics being on some kind of spectrum, as opposed to a binary. Take English, which is rare in that it doesn't assign gender to inanimate objects (tables, windows, scissors, etc.) as so many other languages do (and those genders are male & female, or male, female & neuter --neuter specifying not a mixture of sex characteristics, but no sex characteristics at all). The vocabulary of English is much larger than most languages, and yet our words for gendered humans (and animals and plants) fall into two categories - male and female. Even when we talk about people who in some way (pretty much behavioral) atypical for their sex, we use words related to the two sexes - tomboy, girly man. Tomboys are girls who like boyish pursuits like climbing trees or playing with toy trucks. They don't tend to grow up to have beards. Gay men and effeminate men don't tend to grow breasts (my experience is that they tend to be thin). Why would we have words for men (and animals) whose reproductive capacity has been destroyed, and words for having no sex characteristics (neuter), and yet we don't have words for humans, or animals, that have a mix of sex characteristics such that they don't easily fit into male or female? It's also interesting that, for body features males and females ave in common, the words are the same. Men have legs, women have legs, same for arms, lips, cheeks, feet, lungs, etc.
Biological sex is not only a human function. Sexual reproduction has been going on for at least 2 billion years, and is the main form of reproduction for almost every animal species and an overwhelming number of plant species, and even some microbes. In all the time that sexual reproduction has existed, there have only ever been 2 sexes required to create offspring, and there are no examples in biology of any reproduction requiring a sex other than male and female.
Unlike humans, animals and plants can't verbally ask a potential reproductive partner "are you male (or female)?" It has to be pretty obvious, or a species would die out. Even in the outlier case of cuttlefish, where non-alpha males can assume a female appearance (because cuttlefish have remarkable capacities to change appearance), they do so to get close enough to get an opportunity to stealth mate, and return to male appearance when they've had their opportunity.
One last thing, re Buck Angel. The images I'd see of Buck were recent videos of Buck speaking, wearing a shirt, and basically from the waist up. Buck has a bit of a waddle under the chin these days, and all these things contributed my getting an impression of overweight. Now that I've checked more images, I've seen the muscles. Even so, I stand by my position that Buck Angel only has a male appearance due to massive, ongoing medical intervention of a sort only available for a very short amount of the time that humanity has existed on earth.
I still get the impression we're somewhat at crossed purposes. You say "Anyway, I'm also sorry to tell you I find your arguments unconvincing" yet you didn't address any of my arguments in this reply. What you say is interesting, but it's all information that I already know and agree with so where's the disagreement?
Basically, the only thing I'm really arguing is that people CAN be wrong about a person's biological sex, even if infrequently and/or in brief encounters, whether they're trannies or not, and that a large number of trannies, if not most, WANT to be identified as trannies. They want to be CONSIDERED the opposite sex (or some weird non-binary gender) and treated that way, but they literally can't shut up about being trans. They're not trying to pass as Cisgendered males or females. They WANT people to know they're trannies.
That was definitely worth a laugh or two.