[Crossposted at Family Scholars Blog.]
Girgis, Anderson and George’s rebuttal to my earlier post (for convenience, I’ll call them “George,” after the most senior member of their team) was helpful to me, and clarified some of their arguments, for which I’m thankful. Nonetheless, it is no more persuasive than their original article.
I will attempt to explain my objection to their position again, drawing from from my now-improved understanding of their argument.
George’s argument is that there is something special about penis-in-vagina sex (which I will call PIV sex)1 that makes marriage uniquely possible for heterosexual couples. As I understand this part of their argument, it goes something like this:
1) Marriage must be a comprehensive union of body and mind.
2) A comprehensive union of body can only be achieved via penis-in-vagina sex.
2a) Penis-in-vagina sex is comprehensive because during such sex, male and female reproductive organs complete an otherwise incomplete reproductive system. This is true even if other parts of the reproductive system, such as the uterus, are missing.
2b) It doesn’t matter if one or both people having PIV sex are infertile, because the parts remain “oriented” towards their basic function of reproduction even if reproduction is physically impossible.
2c) Other forms of sex are mere pleasure, providing only individual benefits, and so cannot provide comprehensive physical unity.
3) Same-sex couples are incapable of penis-in-vagina sex, and so are incapable of marriage.
My previous response concentrated primarily on their requirement of PIV sex. My point was that there is nothing special about PIV sex that makes it the only physical act that can be part of a comprehensive union.
It’s true, of course, that PIV sex sometimes leads to reproduction, and this is the major distinction between PIV sex and other forms of sex. But as George repeatedly argues, reproduction is not necessary for marriage. (“…marriage is not a mere means, even to the great good of procreation. It is an end in itself, worthwhile for its own sake.”) So if non-reproductive heterosexual sex can seal a union, why can’t homosexual sex do the same?
George’s response, as I understand it, is twofold. First of all, homosexual sex doesn’t complete the separate parts of a male/female reproductive system, and therefore can’t provide the body aspect of comprehensive unity.
To that, I’d respond, sure it can! Anticipating this response, George wrote:
Pleasure cannot play this role for several reasons. The good must be truly common and for the couple as a whole, but pleasures (and, indeed, any psychological good) are private and benefit partners, if at all, only individually. The good must be bodily, but pleasures are aspects of experience. The good must be inherently valuable, but pleasures are not as such good in themselves—witness, for example, sadistic pleasures.
In their response, George mistakenly said I never responded to the first two sentences of the above. But I did, writing:
George’s reductive, simplistic view of sex — if it’s not coitus, then it has no content at all, beyond simple pleasure felt individually — has little relationship to the variety and value of sex as many couples actually experience it, and is thus deeply unsatisfying to anyone who thinks arguments should be based on reality. There are literally thousands of witness-participants (both hetero and homo) who have reported having deeper, more meaningful, and more useful sexual experiences than George’s argument credits.
George claims non-PIV sex within a committed relationship is not “truly common and for the couple as a whole.” That’s simply not true. George’s argument requires ignoring how sexual pleasure is actually experienced by committed couples in real life; George’s argument contradicts reality and cannot stand.
Sex for humans (and possibly for some other primates, like bonobo chimps) is not only a means of reproduction; it’s also a means of bonding. As such, sex in both heterosexual and homosexual couples can provide a meaningful physical union.
* * *
Much of George’s argument is spent explaining why, if forming a complete reproductive system is what’s special about PIV sex, infertile heterosexual couples are allowed to marry. George writes:
Any act of organic bodily union can seal a marriage, whether or not it causes conception. The nature of the spouses’ action now cannot depend on what happens hours later independently of their control—whether a sperm cell in fact penetrates an ovum.
But obviously, spouses can control in advance whether a sperm cell in fact penetrates an ovum, if they’re determined. For example, both partners could have had their respective tubes tied prior to getting married. Or the woman may have had a hysterectomy. In these cases, couples fully control whether pregnancy occurs, but no one would say that they are therefore not “real” marriages.
George argues that it doesn’t matter if the reproductive system is in fact not complete, because it is still “oriented” towards reproduction.
Consider digestion, the individual body’s process of nourishment. Different parts of that process—salivation, chewing, swallowing, stomach action, intestinal absorption of nutrients—are each in their own way oriented to the broader goal of nourishing the organism. But our salivation, chewing, swallowing, and stomach action remain oriented to that goal (and remain digestive acts) even if on some occasion our intestines do not or cannot finally absorb nutrients, and even if we know so before we eat.
The digestive system as George describes it has only one function (nourishment). As George describes the system of coitus, however, it clearly has two functions: reproduction, and facilitating comprehensive unity. (These functions are distinguished within George’s own argument, since George argues multiple times that unity occurs and is valuable regardless of conception). This is an essential distinction.
Sex in humans is less like the stomach and more like the human mouth; even if the digestive system isn’t functioning, we can still use the mouth for other functions, such as breathing. And just as a mouth is “oriented” towards both nourishment and breathing, sex between humans is oriented towards both reproduction and bonding.
So why should we believe that only PIV sex can facilitate comprehensive unions, and it does so even when the couple is infertile? George would say it’s because, even if the reproductive system is incomplete or blocked, only in PIV sex is a biological system’s purpose in any sense made whole. But George is mistaken, because our sexual systems, like our mouths, are oriented towards more than one purpose. The purpose of bonding, with all its attendant goods, is made whole by many kinds of sex, not only by PIV sex; when we bond with our spouse (of either sex) through sex, that too fulfills a function our sexual systems are biologically oriented towards. Comprehensive bodily unity is not a good that’s limited only to heterosexual couples.
* * *
Another difficulty I have with the “comprehensive unity” line of argument is that it’s a test never applied to heterosexual couples. Anticipating this argument, George points out that non-consummation is, in our legal tradition, grounds for annulment. But an annulment on grounds of non-consummation only happens when one or both spouses chooses to pursue it. It is voluntary and chosen by at least one member of the couple, and so is not comparable to a standard applied involuntarily by those outside the couple.
An annulment on grounds of non-consummation is not an instrument used by outsiders to the marriage to prevent two consenting, non-related adults from forming a family. It’s not a prior restraint on getting married; if a straight couple publicly declared their intent to never have PIV sex, that would not prevent them from getting legally married. If a man has lost his penis in an accident, and this is somehow known to authorities, there is still not a single state in our union in which he would be forbidden to marry.
(For that matter, although there has not yet been a test case as far as I know, the in-practice meaning of non-consummation may prove more ambiguous than this discussion assumes. I suspect that in states that recognize SSM, same-sex couples who have never had sex together could seek annulments on the grounds of lack of consummation.)
In short, the standard George proposes is not an objective standard applied to all couples equally. A test that appears designed to catch out same-sex couples, and which is never applied to opposite-sex couples, displays traits of unjust discrimination, rather than the traits of a neutral standard fairly applied.
* * *
Again, my thanks to Girgis, George and Anderson for their response. In my next post commenting on their argument, I will discuss what marriage is, and the problem of incestuous marriage.
POST-SCRIPT: I haven’t made any arguments based around the example of trans people and marriage, because I’m uncertain what GG & A think their policy preferences say about marriage prospects for trans people. (I have guesses, but not certainty.) But it’s a matter of interest to me and to many of my readers. So let me ask directly. If the authors of “What Is Marriage?” are reading, could you please tell us:
1) Do you think a couple consisting of a cis woman and a post-operative trans man can have a “real” marriage? (“Cis” means someone who is not transsexual; a “post-operative trans man” is a man who was born with a physically female body, but who lives his life as a man, and who has had sex reassignment surgery.)
2) Second example: Can a couple consisting of two woman, a cis woman and a pre-operative or non-operative trans woman, have a “real” marriage? (A “pre-operative or non-operative trans woman” is someone born with a physically male body, but who lives her life as a woman, and who has not had sex reassignment surgery.)
- I was persuaded to switch to this term after reading this post by Rob Tisinai. I’d highly recommend reading Rob’s entire series of posts responding to George et al. [↩]
Funny, nobody mentioned that PIV sex isn’t limited to heterosexual couples. My girlfriend is a trans woman, and we have practiced PIV sex before, because she has yet to have the surgery necessary to make her genitals match her gender.
Does that mean we have a special status as lesbians who have performed PIV sex? Or are we caught in a coitus limbo of sorts?
“George claims non-PIV sex within a committed relationship is not “truly common and for the couple as a whole.”
-Has he met any . . . erm. . . people lately? Can anybody really be that clueless or was this said in jest?
I need to tell this to my husband and we will laugh together.
Leah Jane, my guess is that George et al would resolve the contradiction by (wrongly) refusing to acknowledge that your girlfriend is a woman. :-(
But yes, I should have brought up the question of trans relationships, simply because it’s a question of interest that George nowhere addresses. I will edit the post to add a post-script, directly asking George et al what they think.
Thank you, Ampersand. I can’t say I’m looking forward to the answer, but I am definitely curious.
It seems to me that Girgis, Anderson & George is just an attempt to put an intellectual gloss on the tired, “marriage is solely about procreation, ” argument. The term, “comprehensive unity, ” is just so much philosophical/religious babble given without any real biological support.
Their argument is a faith based flim flam.
“And just as a mouth is “oriented” towards both nourishment and breathing, sex between humans is oriented towards both reproduction and bonding.”
If you add that the mouth is also “oriented” towards communication the analogy becomes even more apt. Indeed, by convention the most significant act of marriage is saying the words “I do.” (One might argue that it’s PIV intercourse instead but consider that whereas under canon law a marriage may indeed be annulled if not “consummated” it’s not really a marriage in the first place until the actual wedding… where that verbal communication actually distinguishes “consummation” from fornication.)
If you add even further that the mouth can also be “oriented” towards aggression (in the form of biting or yelling) as are the genitals (as in sexual assault) it becomes even further apt. Though not as welcomingly so.
—
As to whether PIV intercourse creates the simultaneous fulfillment George suggests, numerous studies, backed up by innumerable anecdotes going back to antiquity, suggest that the mutual communion he speaks of can take years for a couple to master and sometimes can’t be mastered at all.
This could all be resolved, of course, if marriage had only spiritual and theological significance the way, say, baptism does. Different faiths define baptism very differently. For instance Catholics and Presbyterians believe in small drops of water as soon after birth as possible. Baptists and, even more so, Plymouth Brethren, believe baptism is “official” only when one is old enough to competently testify to the experience of salvation, a.k.a. being “born again.” And obviously many faiths don’t do baptism at all. No secular issues arise from these different definitions, though, because baptism is not required for the state to issue a secular birth certificate.
The state does require marriage before it bestows secular benefits on a partnership. And that’s where George et al. lose the argument. For instance we already have religious definitions of marriage that, say, restrict marriage only to members of the same faith or only if the respective partners have never been married before. Yet the state will recognize a heterosexual marriage that, say, the Catholic Church actively teaches are instead instances of the mortal sins of fornication or adultery. Were civil marriage decoupled just a tiny bit further from religious marriage then George and his kind could cheerfully assert that gay married partners are going to roast in the same Hell Catholics say like serial marriage practitioners like Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani will roast in. And those of other faiths, or no faith at all, could go about their daily lives.
figleaf
You are far more patient than I would be in indulging their angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin bullshit, Barry. Really, if one has to resort to peepee-and-woowoo special-fuzzies to make an argument, perhaps one has crossed the line of seriousness into the land of nonsense. Here there be blowhards.
The National League of Major League Baseball is George’s “conjugal view” of baseball.
The American League of Major League Baseball is George’s “revisionist view” of baseball.
(The AL changed baseball to include the designated hitter).
Nobody credible makes the claim that the American League is not really baseball.
I find it hard to believe that anybody takes George seriously. Is it because he imitates the structure of a logical argument? Is it because he sounds more scholarly than the majority of anti-marriage equality shills? His argument is thinly veiled, poorly explained and logically faulty. Just like every other anti-marriage equality argument that isn’t, “Gay’s are bad! God says so!” At least those aren’t thinly veiled.
As apparently the words penis and vagina cause our heterosexual-supremacist compatriots to seize their pearls, I would like to suggest some alternatives:
When a man loves a woman, he inserts his talking snake into her lion’s den.
They enter a passionate embrace in which Solomon’s scepter enters Delilah’s delight.
The only true union of marriage must be sealed by the joining of a man’s Song of Songs and a woman’s Genesis.
And perhaps a few euphamisms for sex acts that do not seal marriage:
It’s a sin to eat Eve’s apple, even if she’s offering.
I came into him like Jesus came into Jerusalem: lowly, and riding upon an ass.
With lips and tongue, I quenched his flaming sword.
Bonus update:
All my dalliances with my partners are delightful, but like Salome, I enjoy getting head.
Second bonus update:
Like Moses, I stuck her with my staff, and her waters flowed forth.
Barry suggests this for coitus at a certain time of the month:
I lifted my rod and her red sea parted.
Must… stop… now…
I’m overly fond of , “His heat seeking man missile finding her hot buttered love muffin.” It’s all militaristic and softly romantic – the perfect combination.
But maybe that’s just me.
“physically male/female” is really gross terminology. That said, I’m not sure how much the question can really be improved, because of the need to frame trans bodies and sex into a framework comprehensible to George, et al.
I was bugged by that, too, when I wrote it. But as you said, it’s hard because I’m assuming an audience with a combination of right-wing views on gender and zero knowledge about trans issues. Plus, given the editorial preferences at FSB, I was trying to avoid using the words “penis” and “vagina” as much as possible. Still, maybe I should have used those words instead?
If anyone has a suggestion for the better way I can put it, I’d appreciate that — it’s not too late to edit the wording.
UPDATE: I changed the wording a little, to eliminate half the “physically male/female” terminologies. Still not sure how to reword the other half.
Well, the best would be something like “a man who was assigned female at birth”, which would probably provide some dissonance for the intended audience, but could be understood through context. But I don’t know if that’s going to work in this situation?
Amp wrote:
My operative status is no one’s business but mine and my spouse’s, but I’ll say that at some point in the past I had a penis and used it during PiV sex to help create our children. Three states and the federal government had no problem recognizing our marriage because, of course, they did not know that I was a woman.
[Edited to add: Also, we have had other kinds of sex, and those kinds of sex have certainly helped support and cement our union.]
I’ve no doubt that George et al would use the usual arguments to say that I am not a woman. So be it; repeating the same old arguments doesn’t make them right.
squirrel wrote:
I vastly prefer FAMAB to MtF. The latter foregrounds the incorrect assignment, while the former foregrounds the correct essential gender.
Oh, and on the arguments by George et al, where they play Twister in order to arrive at the conclusions their prejudices dictate: if I’m in the right mood it’s entertaining to watch, but otherwise it just clutters things up for those of us who prefer to stand upright and walk through the room.
Grace
I agree with everyone who’s saying that pleasure arising from non-PIV sex can be a common good for a couple. But I think we should also challenge George’s claim that PIV sex, because it can lead to reproduction, is “truly common and for the couple as a whole.” I’ve had lots of PIV sex with my wife, and the possibility of reproduction has, every single time, been a downside to choosing that type of sex. Were she to get pregnant despite our best efforts to stop it, that would be a bad thing for us in common and as a whole.
Yeah. I was thinking the same thing. But I haven’t read George’s piece in a while and couldn’t remember if they defined “common good” or not, so I left it be.
It doesn’t really matter, though, since George’s whole argument is faulty logic and internal inconsistency founded on questionable, at best, claims of fact and vaguely defined terms.
Jake Squid wrote:
So, you’re saying that “comprehensive unity” is the anti-SSM community’s “intelligent design”? Strange how fallacious pseudo-logic seems to be a recurring theme from this portion of the religio-political spectrum.
In addition to all the heterosexist and anti-trans creepiness, I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea that rape “provides comprehensive physical unity.” According to this obscenely twisted theory, no act of kindness or generosity or love, nothing I could ever do with words or hands or any tool, could ever help transform individuals into a family. In a word: Ick.
Every time I read about the George argument I just get to a point where I’m like – it’s obviously an exercise in creating a defnition that reaches the results you want. There is NO REASON for your definitions other than to lead to the conclusion you want. So what? So union is only from PIV, why? Because I define it that way. Well, ok then, fine, but that doesn’t mean that it has any validity outside of your own definitions, created to serve the purpose of making the result what you want it to be.
Anyone who thinks that sex, PIV or otherwise, does not provide a good to the couple as a couple, in the form of bonding and ratifying their intimacy and committment to each other, is so out of it as to not be relevant at all. Maybe that’s one reason there’s such a generational gap on these issues – the elder generation still sees sex as a duty of women to their husbands, which could not in any way benefit or create meaningful pleasure for both members of the couple if it doesn’t produce a kid.
I prefer to say sex personally, instead of gender (as in correct essential sex, or incorrect assigned sex).
People obviously assign a gender onto people too, but if you say “correct gender” amongst people who say gender is constructed – you’ll get told all about how you’re wrong for wanting to be a woman in order to wear dresses or pink. And how “obviously”, you’re not female, because you can’t ever be (surgery doesn’t do this* and more blablabla), and so not a woman, since only females are women.
*I agree, surgery doesn’t make trans women or men become “their real sex” (except legally, in most places that allow changing it), it merely confirms it and makes them (much) more at ease.
It will definitely be assumed that if you mention gender, gender identity or anything like that – it will be about gender roles, or turned into something about it.
Sex is constructed too (as in our definitions of it, the either/or parts of it, the definition difference between clitoris and penis depending on length alone, arbitrarily set of course, etc), but it won’t float to say it is, unless you can prove you have a diagnosed intersex condition.
So, in order to not give those ahem, people, ammunition, I always highly specify that it’s not gender – that this part of me (probably specific parts of the brain, dependent on in-utero hormones and genetics – but independent of the visible body) is “born this way” and was female from birth onward (ergo, I was born female, simply wrongly assigned). Sex identity is the better term imo.
If I say I was born a woman instead, well I’m in for a beating about how the concept of woman cannot be an identity, except by being raised as a girl (ie the identity of woman is about being oppressed for being female (from birth), end of – not about being certain ways, in as much as it does not compound the oppression). Instead I can say I’m female (due to that body-map brain-wiring-at-birth thing), and people see me as a woman (now), so I let them – like most people do.
Quite a minefield to navigate, but fun, like playing chess fun…with people who lose temper fast.
This is the only way to have sound arguments against those, but it lacks something to counter the “being raised as male -> male privilege -> male energy (disruptive of “real” women) -> being an asshole (by not accepting you being rejected from women’s space by them)” equation. I’m not too sure what to do about it.
This is the justification behind WBW/FAAB space.
If I could find something against the right wing’s anti-trans argument, it would be nice. Might punch a hole in their anti-SSM position.
Though since the Michfest and the right wing arguments are so darn similar, it wouldn’t surprise me that finding one gives me the other.
Bit of a derail, but I’d be more than happy to venture back on Topix or the likes (to combat the right wing nuttery about LGBT stuff), if I had a really solid argument.
This is the only way to have sound arguments against those, but it lacks something to counter the “being raised as male -> male privilege -> male energy (disruptive of “real” women) -> being an asshole (by not accepting you being rejected from women’s space by them)” equation. I’m not too sure what to do about it.
Well, the counter to that is that is to point out the distinction between internalized and external oppression, which is what’s being missed. You don’t need oppressive messages to be directed specifically at you for them to take their toll. When you’re female, you pick up on those messages in society that are coded female, even if everyone around you thinks that you’re male. The privilege bounces off, because it’s not really meant for you. The internalized messages stay, and do their damage. Being “raised as x” is a cis concept, and doesn’t reflect the realities of growing up trans.
WBW is busted as shit: it’s really women born cis, and they have no greater claim to ‘woman’ than any trans women out there. There’s just more of them.
It’s even more busted in CAFAB (the ‘C’ is for coercively) only spaces, where trans men are welcome (as long as they put up with being implicitly or explicitly mis- and ungendered), bringing actual male privilege along with them, but trans women are excluded because of the fictional male privilege they are believed to possess.
Emily said:
I sort of came to a disturbing realization this morning while this discussion was playing its merry way through my head:
George et al. keep going back to non-PIV sex being all about one-person’s-pleasure or something to that effect. And there are some really icky implicit assumptions in that.
1) It assumes that lesbian sex consists of “purely manual” interaction, meaning that one woman is “doing the work” while the other “gets pleasure”. The woman “doing the work” has to wait her turn to experience pleasure.
2) It assumes that gay sex consists of one man “suffering the indignity” of being the bottom, while the top “gets pleasure”. The man “suffering the indignity” has to wait his turn to experience pleasure.
3) It ignores the fact that in lesbian and gay sex (and, yea, even in hetero sex), there is more than one way to experience sexual interaction.
4) It also ignores the fact that the act of giving pleasure (i.e. “doing the work” or being the bottom) is, in itself, also pleasurable and bond-building.
So, when George et al. think of homosexual intercourse, I suspect they have this f**ked up view of what happens and what it means and then divorce all emotional significance from it while doing so. And that f**ked up view is what informs the whole insistence that PiV is somehow “more emotionally significant/bond-worthy” than non-PiV sexual interaction.
This does not coincide with my understanding of privilege? Part of privilege is in other people’s reactions, and while many of those reactions will be mitigated by cissexism and various other prejudices based on binary gender, sometimes those assumptions happen as part of systems that aren’t even interacting personally with the subject?
I have no problem acknowledging that FAMAB people experience what male privilege they receive in childhood very, very differently than cis males, and that they probably also experience some oppression as females, as well as mounds and mounds of horrible, terrible, stupid, aggressive cissexism.
I understand that “you at one point experienced some variety of male privilege so therefore I get to bash you with this stick for as long as I like” is a stupid and horrible argument that has been used for stupid and horrible purposes to deny trans women their membership in the category women. Among other things, the argument is internally inconsistent–there are FAFAB people who experience male privilege at times (e.g. women who cross-dressed to serve as civil war soldiers) and their interaction with male privilege is not considered to obviate their female identity.
But really, the systemic structures of oppression and privilege have not just a complicated and perhaps minimal effect, but none? That seems unlikely to me from what I’ve studied about gender constructions in other cultures, for instance. It seems sort of parallel to the insistence on the behalf of some gay activists that sexual orientation is entirely biological instead of an interaction between biology and culture. That might not be a fair comparison; it’s just what comes to mind.
I apologize if I have misread you.
I am not a trans woman, even though I have a few things in common with them. I can tell you some about how male privilege worked and didn’t work on me, because yeah, it gets complicated. That’s me though.
So I’m not equipped to talk about it, but here’s some people who are:
Little Light – Fair
Lisa Harney on socialization
OK. I’ll take a look at those pieces soon. Thanks for providing them.
I have read (in periodic bursts) a fair amount of Little Light’s and Lisa Harney’s writings in the past and generally understood them to be consistent with a view of socialization wrt privilege that was “complicated and partial” rather than “none” but I look forward to seeing what they’ve said here. (I may also be confusing their views with those of other people’s I’ve read.)
I think you’re right about their views on socialization actually. But I am not prepared to offer a more nuanced view myself, especially not in a public space, in a discussion with people who aren’t trans women. There is a nuanced discussion that can be had there, but it’s overwhelmingly had by people who will use it as a weapon, and who have no business discussing the topic in the first place. I get where you’re coming from, and I don’t suspect you of bad motives or anything here, this is just something of a hard limit of what I am willing to discuss.
I gotta say I think it’s a little callous to bring trans people into this argument only to make a rhetorical point.
I didn’t bring up trans people to make a rhetorical point. I brought up trans people because I wasn’t sure how trans people would fit into George’s scheme, and Leah Ann asked in comments, so I thought it made sense to just ask George et al directly. (Unfortunately, there has not yet been any response.)
No surprise, there. Trans people confound heteronormative essentialists, and they often prefer to pretend that we don’t exist at all, or if we do, we are aberrations, and thus can be safely disregarded and discarded.
But good on you for trying, Amp. I, for one, don’t mind being a member of a group whose existence confounds the expectations of narrow-minded people, and I don’t mind allies like you saying things like, “Okay, well and good, but here are these human beings over here. How do they fit into your assertions?”
Grace
When you bring up trans people and use terribly busted language like “physically female body” and then hinge your rhetorical point on a trans person’s GENITALS–it seems to me you aren’t acknowledging that the very people who are homophobically against SSM are often profoundly transphobic as well. There are lots of times when “what about trans people” when brought up by a “cis ally” (itself a term there is disagreement about among trans people) is good but this argument was so facile to debunk without being like “what about trans people and their genitals?” Again, I’m asking you to reconsider what you did here. That’s all.
Jay, could you clarify for me what rhetorical point you think I was making in the postscript? Because I’m honestly not seeing any point being made by the postscript, apart from asking for information.
And the postscript isn’t part of the debunking (keep in mind that the entire post was written and published without any reference to trans people, and the postscript was added later, in response to a comment here on “Alas”).
I do take your objection seriously, and think you may be right. Here are my thoughts:
It’s difficult to engage with George et al without everything hinging on genitals, because their entire argument is obsessed with genitals. It seems to be almost all they think about. So I’m not sure it would be possible to ask the question — “how do trans people fit into your argument” — of George et al without at least implicitly focusing on genitals.
But maybe it’s inherently tacky to even attempt to ask that question of people who 1) almost certainly don’t care about trans people whatsoever and 2) are totally focused on genitals. So maybe adding the post-script at all was a mistake. Or maybe I just screwed up the wording, and if I couldn’t find a good way of wording it, I shouldn’t ask at all. If that’s your argument, I can definitely see that you might be right. I never found a way to word it that felt “right” to me, and maybe I should have taken that unease as a sign not to post the postscript at all.
OTOH, I can also see Grace’s point.
In any case, the whole thing was based on the idea that they read and responded to my previous post on FSB, so maybe they’d do it again this time; it was an attempt to take advantage of a rare opportunity to ask a direct question of someone who’s usually beyond the range of our questioning. (Robert George is a member of the board of directors of the organization that owns FSB, so my theory is that a post on FSB is more likely to be read by him than a post on Alas.) Now I feel like the whole attempt was kind of moot, because (so far) they’ve chosen not to respond.
I don’t know if it’s tacky, but it’s certainly difficult, because you have to ask the question using only the vocabulary available to them, or define some new terms, briefly and easily, using only the vocabulary available to them. If you were hoping to BOTH ask the question of people who have no trans concepts in their vocabulary AND ask the question with enough nuance and sensitivity to make every trans linguist satisfied, then I would argue that you were dreaming an impossible dream.
I’m reminded of the time that, in a supposedly trans-safe space, I used the term “genderqueer”. The response I got from the person I was attempting to engage with, a trans woman, was, almost verbatim: “‘genderqueer’! Bwahahahahahahaha!”
I was being told that I was wrong, but being denied the vocabulary I was trying to use to make my points.
jayinchicago, I think I understand most of your concern, but I believe you’re essentially asking Amp to slice tomatoes with a sledgehammer, because the people he’s asking the question of aren’t going to let him use a knife, even if you would like him to be using a scalpel.
Grace