Postmodern Gender | Richard Dawkins

Postmodern Gender

#richarddawkins #gender #mattdiallhunty #transgender #genderidentity

This is round two of An Evening with Richard Dawkins & Matt Dillahunty. This event took place on November 5th 2017 at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto Canada. Enjoy! Presented by Pangburn Philosophy. This event was SOLD OUT!

[argfasdfgadfgasdfgsdfgsdfg]

1:29 "In no case are they denying the physical facts about biological sex" Dillahunty clearly never watched gender discussions on YouTube. There was just an article in "Scientific American" claiming that the notion that on average male atheletes being able to beat female athletes is just a 'social construct'. The article was taken down and the editor fired.

[gunkulator]

If Matt applied the same rigor and skepticism to gender claims as he does to God claims, he'd quickly discover the whole thing is built on a house of cards. Once simply defined, gender is now an entirely personal notion. What it means to one person can be completely different to another person and there are no methodologies to determine who is right. Of course that in and of itself would be fine but then those making the claims are also making demands that society accommodate these claims. Without evidence substantiating these claims, society has no basis to adjudicate any of them. And yes, for most people it is just harmless, fanciful self-notions but as with religion, it also opens the door for hucksters and other bad actors.

[gungaloscrungalo]

I see Matt as a strange reflection of Jordan Peterson on the gender thing.

Jordan's stance on the trans issue is based on physical, provable and observable factors taking presidence over, "I believe/feel this, therefore it's true and you should believe it too"... which makes his embrace of religous faith absolutely baffling to me.

Matt is the reverse. He is a big opponent of faith, and constantly argues against belief without evidence. Yet he sides with the "Gender is purely a social construct completely separate from bioligical sex, and saying you are transgender/non binary/gender fluid makes it so" side of this issue, despite it not making any sense.

[jujuandjesus]

People are working so hard not to understand something so simple, all to avoid thinking for one second.

[chrisburgess]

Disagree. Gender definitions are not just about identifying with certain roles in society, they also are about one sex trying to determine who they want to mate with. They also guide us in connecting to deep parts of ourselves. They are also fundamental parts of culture that most people don’t want to change.

We don’t want to work towards changing how we talk about it for the sake of a small number of people. Be respectful and compassionate towards those people, but don’t change a fundamental aspect of our culture and being.

[CyberChrist]

"Gender is a social construct" is a social construct.

[Topher]

If gender is merely a social construct then trying to identify as a woman or man is useless when you make it impossible to define what those genders are.

[Vicpoint]

Modern gender theory remains a wholly incoherent worldview. One in which people confuse gender itself with gender roles and norms (or appeal to circular reasoning). One in which they insist others are incorrect in using terms like "man" or "woman" while being unable to provide objective, workable definitions for these terms themselves. And one in which they often equate disagreement with hate, which is not only illogical but dangerous.

To further elaborate on people like Matt's confusion of gender with gender roles and norms, the reason this is unworkable with the rest of his worldview is that if someone were to identify as a woman while adhering more to the socially constructed expectations placed on men, he'd still call them a woman and we all know that. So clearly, this definition is unworkable, just an attempt to make this sound objective and scientific when it isn't.

[washedinhisblood.]

If sex and gender are not related. Why do you ientify as the opposite and demand to be recognized as such?

[at]

What a person wants to call themselves is one thing. That persons self perception does not obligate me to believe or participate in their perception.

[frankathl]

Neither speaker considers the fact that disagreements about meaning may have profound social and political consequences. If a lobby group succeeds in becoming powerful enough to bring about social and political change, then all of our lives are affected, possibly for the worse.

[thatstheway]

“I don’t get worked up about it.”

No matter what side you are on the transgenderism debate, I don’t know if there’s a more reasonable take I’ve ever heard.

The amount of time this topic gets is completely disproportionate relative to other topics such as nuclear war, climate change, poverty, access to clean drinking water, etc.

[pauls]

Shame that Dillahunty referred to Dawkins on the 'The Wire' channel' as a 'transsphobic bigot'. Dawkins clearly stated here that he is open to use the stated gender pronouns of any individual. He just believes that simple biology trumps Dillahunty's convoluted postmodern outlook. Dawkins simply takes the Ockham's razor approach. Outrageous of Dillahunty to speak like that. He seems not to understand what the word 'bigot' means here. He would go crazy on his of his shows if someone used language incorrectly like that to insult him.

[FrankCostanza]

Formulating my thoughts on transgenderism has been one of the biggest mental struggles I've had when it comes to social issues. On the one hand, I'm completely happy to address others in whatever manner they prefer to be addressed and support whatever decisions they make about how they want to live their lives. And I get the whole social construct nature of gender versus sex. But then I get confused a bit when it comes to surgical interventions to help someone appear more like the gender that they identify with. While I'm still happy to support decisions the people make for themselves in regards to surgery, it kind of stops being about gender roles for me after surgical intervention. At that point the term transsexual seems more appropriate

[gsp]

This is before Dillahunty started dating his transgender girlfriend, obviously today he would lose his mind if Dawkins said that today.

[lukeball]

If you feel that you identify with a certain gender role and you adopt that role by changing your looks and behaviour, you strengthen the traditional gender roles instead of weakening them. A masculine women is still a women, and a feminine man is still a man, you don't have to fit in to the traditional roles to be a man or a women.

[EasyAL_YT]

Gender is not linked to biology and is completely personal? fine.

Whats the new words describing the current understanding of gender (Man, Woman, Boy & Girl)?

Provide us with new words for each reality these words are describing:

Men (Adult Human Males)

Women (Adult Human Females)

Boys (Adolescent/Juvenile Human Males)

Girls (Adolescent/Juvenile Human Females)

Nothing will change if you succeed in hijacking the words... reality will remain.

We will just have new words to describe these realities (completely unnecessary ordeal as we already have terms to describe the "postmodern" idea of gender; such as personality traits).

Toilets and Sports can also be separated by sex + age seeing as gender will now have no meaning (which still excludes transpeople).

[pepenakamoto]

So gender is about what roles you chose to operate in society?
If a 35 years man identifies as a child?
If I choose to indentify as a God, or messiah should society treat me as such?
the big problem nowadays is that people think that just because something is a social construct it should be decimated. the implications of a society where anyone can identify as anything and demand that others respond appropriately is insanity.

[alekm]

Someone did a damn fine job brainwashing dillahunty. Congratulations, it truly is remarkable

[dnhg]

"Him" or "her" or any word isn't a "construct" in terms of constructing a philosophical idea – as deconstruction means to deconstruct a philosophical view – but these pronoun words just like any other word were made to describe what people saw in front of their eyes and then they started uttering certain words to name what they saw and experiences. Having that said, it shoulnd't be *confused* with making up, "constructing", an imaginary or philosophical idea.
In other words: Man and woman are words describing reality and he and she are their pronouns – everything else beyond that, namely the whole gender ideology, is nothing but a construct.