I almost said "Have a nice day, brothers and sisters", but that would probably offend somebody.

Yeah this term makes sense. Imo when a language changes, behavious follows along. I would just be very alerted and sensitive about it. If my concerns are correct, this is a trend, and many, really young and disturbed people might do something that they later regret. Check out youtube and type in transgender regret, you know what I mean. There are hundreds if not thousands of youtubers, which are actual people, who underwent this transition and regretted it.

Read my post again carefully. I don't think there is anything in there that could be even the slightest bit interpreted as being offended. It was explicitly a minor FYI. As evidence in this thread, a lot of people are ignorant about the basic terminology around trans people. Informing them about the correct terminology doesn't mean anyone is offended!

And thus why i say this lacks the typical intuitive nature that language typically evolves to address.

Even with your reply above I am not exactly sure what you are saying on how to address the person. What might be 'good', 'bad' or other?

Saying 'you can always just ask', is not a great solution. People tend to engage casually in conversation before getting too personal and feel uncomfortable. As a result of this thread I am more aware and would be more careful using something like biologically male around people i know to be more woke than I (no insult meant by woke in these usage. I am more woke than most of my friends) but i would continue to use it around casual friends who I would know would be lost with current terms.

I actually disagree, I don't think it is intuitive at all. If you say someone is a "biological male" it doesn't really imply anything about their gender identity. Can not someone who is biologically male be either cis or trans in terms of gender identity? I am biologically a male (i.e my sex at birth is male) and I identify a a male, but those are two different things.

I think having a separate word for trans vs cis which is about gender identity separate from their biological sex is important, and trying to put them both together into the one term meaning both is highly unintuitive. Which is probably why nobody actually uses "biowomen" to refer to cis women.

Good to understand thx.

Not intuitive at all for those who are not up on their latin, but now it makes sense.

if the biological male was also a transwoman you would use the transwoman terminology by default unless you were being insensitive.


So the point here is, if you do not assume malice or ill intent and someone said 'biological male' it would automatically exclude any gender based language that would differentiate the person which you would otherwise be using.


Whether you would use the term or not, or like it or not, there is only one person you could call a biological male (an not be insensitive) and that is someone whose biology AND gender align. In ALL other cases you would defer to their preferred pronouns or identification.

The whole point of this terminology is to be able to note that ones biological sex is NOT the same thing as their gender identity. To use "biological male" to refer only to someone who is BOTH has the biological sex of a male and the gender identity of a male isn't intuitive at all.

Consider something like this: "We should ban trans women from the Olympics because they are biologically male". I think that is intuitive enough, right? Your ignorant friends would know what I was talking about? However, in that sentence "biological male" is referring to their sex at birth, not there gender identity. So I think it is a mistake to think "biological male" is referring to someones gender identity as a male as well.

I understand that.

Do you accept that there are whole swaths or people across America and Canada (the world) who are not yet up to speed on the delineation between biological sex and gender? That these people can be well meaning but simply not exposed to this stuff yet (not woke).




I disagree and use my self as the case study. I did not use it the first time out of any desire to offend and do not think it should offend.

Do I accept, after taking some time that there is a better word? Have I become more woke and am fine with that? Sure.

But intuitively if someone unfamiliar with woke language was told that is a biological male standing beside a trans female I think they would know exactly what you mean at an intuitive level.




I am not arguing it is perfect. I agree cis is more appropriate.

You have given an example above of a sentence that makes intuitive sense.

I do not think that, that being true means this sentence would not make intuitive sense to a person unfamiliar with the more woke terms.

"that is a transwoman standing there on the right beside the biological male'. And i am quite sure if I used cis male with many of them they would be at a loss.

I do not think the person would be wondering if that biological male was a cis male or a transwoman and confused by it. I think they would know exactly what was meant even if they were not 'up' on terminology..

So both things can be 'true' and 'clear'.

Should people get upset when they hear someone say there's only two genders

Considering most people who say that do it to bother transpeople and are bigots, yes.

I think it would expose an intent to not be accommodating at a minimum.

So that begs the questions 'do people need to be accommodating of others'? No.

But i think it speaks to that person being intolerant when it otherwise causes them no harm.

Language evolves and changes whether we agree with it or not. Terminology expands to explain things not prior explained whether you want to or not.

The trans people are real. Gender has been split off from biological sex. So language has rightly followed in defining all that.

Refusing to use it and staying quiet is one thing, especially if you have no occasion to say it is one thing, and fine IMO. But going out of your way to say 'there are only two genders' seems a lot like this...

Obviously? As I've said, you've largely been mad at me for things I haven't said. I'm very aware that the general population is extremely unaware of many trans issues such as the basic terminology. But it goes much deeper than not knowing about "cis". People also aren't really aware of what it even means for gender identity to be separate from biological sex and struggle to empathize with someone who feels this way. They don't understand the feelings of rejection from family and school and society. They don't understand how isolating and harmful as a youth to be denied access to bathrooms consistent with your identity, to be forced not to play with your friends during gym class, to be denied access to certain type of medical care and so forth.

Collectively, all this ignorance in the general populace leads to the harmful enviroments and the high suicide ideation among trans youth (which the people who don't know what cis means may not even know is a thing), etc.

This is why I think it is important to begin by educating people. I'm very glad that now at least three people, one of which is you, now has either learned what cis means or is more comfortable using the term. That's a win! I'd encourage you to keep sharing in your personal life as well!

I don't think you did. I already said I wasn't offended either. I mainly thought you were just ignorant (and I don't even mean that condescendingly, I just mean you literally were not comfortable with the usage of that term at that time). The centering of the conversation on "offense" has been entirely you.

Yes, when you juxtapose two things like this it can be interpreted contextually, but that doesn't mean it is "intuitive" that "biological male" means someone whose gender identity is male, particularly because a trans woman would be biologically male as well. And the real issue is it cuts at directly one of those places of ignorance in the general population: the distinction between gender identity and biological sex. So when you use a word that points to biological sex explicitly to instead be also alluding to gender identity, you are setting everyone up to be further entrenched in the false conflation between these two things. And moreover, if they then go and read anything about trans issues they won't see the word used the way you use it and that is even more confusing!

I'd just quickly explain what cis meant to someone who didn't know in about one sentence and move on. Why is that bad?

I maintain that anyone aware enough and sensitive enough who knows that is a biological male is ALSO a transwoman would refer to the person as a transwoman, thus no confusion.

Those who would not and would use the term biological man for a trans woman are not playing game regardless.

So again the term biological male is self exclusionary for a trans woman who will automatically be identified as the latter.

Thus why in practice (even if not in technicality) it does only describe a cis male.


I said I would too if I thought they were open to it and wanted the lesson.

Sometimes however, especially in very casual passing people are not looking for an an education lesson and that is not because they are mean or bad people.

I could quite easily see me saying 'transwoman and cis male' to a friend and them saying 'wtf is cis male' and as i start to explain it them just saying 'oh you mean someone who has not transitioned. Someone who identifies by his biology. WTF did you not just say that to begin with?'. And then they are on to the next thing. It was never more than a passing thought.

And that is because that seems to them to make sense because when they grew up biology and gender were synonymous.

Not everyone it looking to be educated on every exchange, but if they are I am fine explaining it.

[

No. This is NOT what is done in practice. Let's be clear: Using "biological male" to refer to "cis males" is highly, highly nonstandard. It IS standard to say things like "transwomen are biological males who identify as females" or something like this, but I've never prior to you ever heard someone "in practice" say "biological male" when they were trying to exclusively describe only cis males. So you immediately start entrenching confusions when you use a nonstandard expression. Also just to note: I don't like "biological male" the way you use it, but that is still better than the original "bioman" which is truly a unique expression of yours.

Sure. However, your terminology seems destined to entrench this false conflation, not make clear why they are not synonymous. Because you are using a term about sex with "biological" to refer to something about gender identity, it further entrenches this. So it is doubly confusing.

All condescension or insults or meta-arguments aside, my genuine belief here is that you fell into a bit of a pattern of using the expression this way (which isn't a problem in and of itself!) and so it feels very normal to you because that's how you use it. But it isn't standard to everyone else and doesn't make anywhere near as much sense as you think it does. This happened to me the other day, I found out that I don't know how to pronounce antipodes (it is an-TIP-o-dees not anti-podes) after using it a lot in math, and my wrong way to pronounce it still feels way more natural but is apparently wrong.

If someone's threshold for getting upset is that low, it seems like they would end up a very angry person. While I get that it's not cool to say things like that to deliberately upset people, you don't necessarily have to give them the satisfaction of reacting. Otherwise anyone can just say "2 genders" and it's the equivalent of them flicking you in the nuts.

I will add one further ameliorating comment. As a mathematician, we often focus very precisely on the technical language of our field, because saying things very slightly differently can have dramatic consequences where a theorem is no longer true depending on the interpretation of a lightly ambiguous assumption, for instance. In general each term is given a very precise meaning. I think this is generally a good thing, but it would not be the first time in my life where, uh, how does one say, informing the audience of a terminological error is not as appreciated as I would imagine it would be I maintain that learning the basic terminology around trans issues in 2021 is important, but there that is as magnaminous as I am capable of being

Not to snipe too much but I'm on my phone. Are there non-biological males?

Well we have to agree to disagree then.

I maintain for people not in the woke loop cis is a non existent term to them in terms of explaining what the 'man' is. Literal zero.

I am saying TO THAT PERSON, they would understand what was meant by biological male in that context when juxtaposed against trans woman.

What I am not suggesting is they use any term commonly or frequently as this entire topic may be one they brush up against once in their adult life where they hear any such term.

But I maintain, that cis is a literal zero to them and THUS biological male would have value above zero and be more instructive. And in fact I am sure intuitively they would know exactly what you meant as their mind would never think 'hmmm does he mean transwoman or cis male'? It would mean only one thing to them which is a person whose biology and gender identification were both male as those people, i am referring to don't separate those things.

trans males.

and 'males' is enough. We truly do not need anything more. But if you in a conversation where some distinction is appropriate then pointing out one is a trans male and the other biological male (or better yet cis given the right audience) is appropriate.

No.

This is a really simplistic and bad take, my dude.

It's the same thing as white people saying don't get so upset about the n-word to black people in the past when black people were getting murdered for simply being black.

Transpeople have been killed in recent years just for being trans.

https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-...munity-in-2021

"I identify as an attack helicopter" "There's only two genders" normalizes discrimination against transpeople. Of course they should be upset as any group should when consequences could lead up to loss of life.

I don't think you believe that reply as we cannot tell others what should or should not upset them. That would be nonsensical as it would suggest we are robots and there is an agreed to list of things that 'can' or 'cannot' upset us.

You could say 'should I care if they get upset', and answer 'no'. But then begs some other questions that are more about you.

Haha. I think the people you're talking about who do it to troll, the target aren't actually trans folks, it's progressive activist.

Anyone offended by someone asserting that there are only two genders should never leave their house, and should avoid ALL social media. They should seal themselves in a "safe room" and listen to white noise all day.

Oops, hope nobody was offended by the phrase "white noise."