fallacious
/fə-lā′shəs/
adjective
- intended to deceive fallacious testimony
- containing or based on a fallacy an unsound argument
- based on an incorrect or misleading notion or information
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This most basically a 'genetic fallacy': judging data based on its source rather than its content.
In particular, this is out-group stereotyping. Other common forms of genetic fallacy are appeals to authority or tradition and ad hominem attacks on the speaker's reliability.
As is common, here it is part of a 'Bulverism': where one diagnoses someone's inability to understand, instead of indicating where the misunderstanding lies, insinuating there must be misunderstanding, without identifying any.
There is a particular obnoxious angle derived from identity politics here in that we have the automatic assumption that women have adequate empathy for men to weigh in on all of their problems, but men lack that same ability when it comes to women.
Good question, but there is no logical fallacy involved. The sentence is capable of being true or false, not in virtue of logic, but in virtue of facts. And, with the best of intention and without neat-picking, I tend to think it is very likely to be true - if you have not wondered why a certain beautiful woman goes out with a certain ugly man who is not only unattractive but also repugnant, you are not old enough.
Setting aside edge cases for the moment, let's consider the following statements:
No man understands girls' problems.
No man has sexual desire for men.
No dead person is bothered by pain.
The reason I think this question interesting is that it eventually asks what the word "understand" means: what does a person feel when he understands a situation?
When an object-word is understood, the listener's mind forms a mental image similar to the one which that word expresses. If that word is "fragrant" but the listener has no sense of smell, the listener will not understand it - i.e. he will not associate a noise with an olfactory sensation.
To understand how a steam engine works, a series of percepts are necessary, and mental images are the ultimate results.
It follows that mental images - feelings, sensations, desires, etc. - are most likely the ultimate results of understanding.
To understand another person's problem presupposes common feelings, and common feelings are the ultimate results. If a person has no sense of smell, he will never be offended by BO and will not understand why BO is a huge problem in the office. It follows that, if a person has no sense of smell, his opinion on BO is much less weighty than that of a person who can smell.
Similarly, the mother will never understand why the son is so attracted to a certain woman while the father virtually agrees with the son on every aspect. It follows that a mother's opinion on the son's girlfriend should not be taken seriously.
It follows that men's opinions on issues particular to women are very likely to be less credible than women's own opinions.
Being unable to understand does not necessarily imply lacking concerns for the sufferings of others. Civilized western men's attitudes towards women are nothing but admirable.
Being able to understand does not automatically imply compassion. An evil man is capable of exploiting your vulnerabilities for his sadistic pleasure; he may justify it by some karma yoga philosophy, which only reminds you of the kind of fine phrases used by a 20th-century saint to excuse himself for sleeping next to naked young girls.
I've been trying to give feminism an earnest shot by listening to some feminist arguments and discussions. The continuous logical fallacies push me away. I could maybe excuse the occasional fallacy here and there, but I'm not finding anything to stand on.
One argument I heard that I find particularly egregious is the idea that something cannot be true if it is unpleasant. As an example, I heard an argument like "Sex can't have evolved biologically because that supposes it is based on reproduction and that is not inclusive to LGBT. It proposes that LGBT is not the biological standard, and that is not nice."
The idea that something must be false because it has an unpleasant conclusion is so preposterous that it is beyond childish. If your doctor diagnoses you with cancer, you don't say, "I don't believe in cancer. There's no way cancer can be real because it is an unpleasant concept." Assuming unpleasant things don't exist is just such a childish and immature argument I can't take it seriously.
Nature is clearly filled to the brim with death and suffering. Assuming truth must be inoffensive and suitable to bourgeois sensibilities is preposterous beyond belief. I'm sure there are plenty of truths out there that you won't like, just like there will be plenty of truths out there that I won't like. It is super self-centered to think reality is going to bend to your particular tastes.
The common rebuttal to my saying cancer is real whether you like it or not is "How could you support cancer? Are you a monster?" Just because I think unpleasant things exist does not mean I'm happy about it. I'd be glad to live in a world where cancer does not exist, but there's a limit to my suspension of disbelief.
Another example was, "It can't be true that monogamy has evolved biologically because that is not inclusive of asexual or polyamorous!" Again, truth does not need to follow modern bourgeois sensitivities.
Please drop the fallacies. I'd be much more open to listening when it's not just fallacy after fallacy.
If someone's feeling brave, maybe recommend me something that is fallacy free.
A woman is an adult that identifies as female in gender.
A fallacy is an argument that is specious but persuasive. You have presented no substantial argument which often takes the form of first premise, second premise, conclusion. This language should probably be adjudged as a real definition, which is a summary of analysis which seeks to establish a relationship between words and characterize properties of real things. The terms in question in this topic are usually, 'woman', 'gender', and '(biological) sex'. In particular, the claim also invokes 'identify', which means that whether or not this definition is acceptable logically presumes certain semantic relationships among all four terms which include sexual, but much more importantly, psychological dimensions. Gender is a belief about how one's experience of the world and self-image aligns with one's biological inheritance.
While I'm not a philosopher of sexuality (SEP), anecdotally, the arguments I have seen roughly state this:
- A 'woman' is a term for a type of person.
- A person can have a 'gender' and a 'biological sex' that do not align according to a crisp, binary dichotomy of traditional male-female concepts such as 'intersex individuals' who may have reproductive organ systems of both 'biological men' and 'biological women' for instance.
- Even if an individual is either a 'biological male' or 'biological female' but doesn't have both reproductive systems, there is a psychological aspect to sexual identity in which one can 'identify' with various thoughts and impulses. For instance, a 'bisexual' or 'homosexual' person has 'sexual impulses' towards the same sex.
- Some people have atypical 'sexual impulses' that lie on a spectrum such as 'asexuality'.
- Much more important than 'sexual orientation', it is possible to have a 'biological male' who 'identifies' as a 'psychological female' not just in 'sexual impulses' towards men which might be 'homosexuality', but also in psychological ways that might be construed as 'womanhood' such as wanting to have female sexual organs, want to do activities that are typically construed as female in society, wanting relationship with women as a woman and not a man. This notion of 'womanhood' is often called 'female gender' as to distinguish the psychological and biological aspects of 'identity'.
- Such a person then might transition their 'biological sexuality' to conform with their 'psychological identity' which is often seen as more of construing 'personhood' than mere 'sexual orientation'.
According to the NIH's definition on gender:
Gender refers to socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and/or attributes that a given society associates with being a woman, man, girl, or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time.
Ultimately, "roles, behavior, and activities" is far broader than sexuality and biological sex. Emphasis on gender as distinct from sexuality and biological sex means that while sexuality may play a role in identity, that is, gender identity for many subsumes sexuality in a small way, the emphasis is often on the non-sexual aspect because skeptics of non-traditional gender identity attempt to conflate sexuality and gender to claim gender doesn't exist in it's own right. This is important in cultures that strictly prescribe and proscribe 'manly' and 'womanly' thoughts, behaviors, roles, etc. assigned to one's biological sex by society. For a misgendered person, this can be a source of extreme friction with society and lead to mental health issues ultimately, in the most severe cases, culminating in suicidal ideation and suicide.
Critics of this thinking (besides moral absolutists who point to religious doctrine and just utter "sin!" or "bad!" or "boo!") often try to construct an argument that such thinking offered above is some form of gender dysphoria. Such arguments, as I have seen them anecdotally, are often unsophisticated and don't understand the four D's used in abnormal psychology as a basis for justifying the application of the term 'mental illness'.
So, philosophically, what we have going on here is an argument between two sets of people who relatively affirm or disconfirm the statement you have presented that are looking to see the "illogic" in the other side's position. That back and forth is often colored by the degree of sophistication in terms of the processes of definition, logic, and argumentation. As such, the statement you provided is perfectly reasonable with a very flexible, nuanced vocabulary and not within a more rigid, simpler vocabulary. But on the face of it, this statement is not really so much an argument but a definition whose acceptance hinges on a much deeper analysis based on a worldview.
"A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman" is a definition, not an argument (it defines what "woman" means). So it cannot be fallacious. But it's circular*, which means it's not a very useful definition. Definitions are supposed to tell us what things mean, but this doesn't do that.
As an analogy, consider: "a flarposjprpahopg is anyone who identifies as a flarposjprpahopg". This provides no insight into what "flarposjprpahopg" means, other than it's something that it's someone can identify as.
*: One could argue, technically, it's not circular, because it's possible for someone to identify as a "woman" or a "flarposjprpahopg" regardless of what those words mean. But for it to make sense for someone to identify as such, one would need to know what the term means, which requires a definition. If the definition only entails identifying as such, it would not make sense to identify as such.
Definitions are not objective
If someone takes the above definition (or the definition of "A woman is an adult human female" that is typically used by anti-trans people, with "female" referring to sex), as an objective fact of reality, that would be fallacious, because definitions of words are subjective.*
The definitions we choose to use may have consequences for others, such as whether we are inclusive and considerate towards trans people, in the language we use and in the systems we've built around that language (e.g. gendered bathrooms and changing rooms and prisons), whether they're allowed to access scientifically-verified effective medical care, etc.
And yes, while the definitions we use are subjective, this wouldn't excuse someone choosing to not be a decent human being by using a definition that results in harm to others. On the contrary, it puts a lot more responsibility on each person, to choose a definition that doesn't result in harm, or that results in as little harm as possible.
*: Although one could also state a definition roughly (but not strictly speaking) as a fact, to say that's what the definition should be, to propagate that definition. This would not be fallacious.
Replacing "woman" with "female"
Yes, that could work, although arguably not as you did.
If we assume commonly-used (progressive and scientific) definitions of words, "female in gender" is somewhat nonsensical. "Female" (as a noun) refers to sex, and it doesn't make much sense to say "sex in gender". If you treat "female" as referring to gender (i.e. a woman), you'd be back to a circular definition.
We could, however, use a definition such as: "A woman is someone with an internal sense of being female". This would have woman (gender) reference female (sex), so it would therefore no longer be circular. It also seems to match the relation between gender and sex, as they're typically defined by pro-trans people and scientific organisations (e.g. the WHO).
Additionally, this definition would avoid the common confusion/ambiguity with what it means to "identify as" a woman. Pro-trans people typically mean this as having this internal sense of being female (and saying you're a woman is just communicating this internal sense to others), whereas anti-trans people typically take this to mean someone simply needs to say they are a woman on one occasion.
Note that having an "internal sense of being female" does not mean someone believes themselves to be biologically female nor to have genitalia that they don't have, but rather that they have a female brain, roughly speaking, along with the associated psychological traits and characteristics.