genderasfeelingsidenote.md

The Thought:

Actually this is just a side note.

Lately I am planning to write something to introduce my idea of gender abolishment, the reason why and how we could/should achieve it, its limitation and potential problems, and perhaps alternatives. In the process of exploring, I often stumble upon the metaphysics of gender. I have always think that gender is a social construct, something that is ultimately not intrinsic to the subject¹. It seems like this is a vital starting point for me. Because of this, I decided to explore a totally new approach on gender, that gender is not a social construct.

As I was writing this, I find that I lack the tools to talk about feelings and emotions in philosophy, so there might be problems that I do not notice when formulating the properties and qualities of feelings or emotions. The primitive tools I used in analysis is thus based only my naive intuitions. I might revise on this topic and might change my opinion after further study on the philosophy of feelings or emotion.

Back to the Beginning

My exploration on gender overall starts with the TERF, more particularly on this question:

What makes someone a particular gender, and distinct from the other particular gender ?

This particular question is not only meaningful in a metaphysical sense, it also seems that it has its own normative/political implications. How should people treat people with the same gender as them, and how should people treat people with different gender as them? The answer to the above questions varies greatly between different societies, but here are some examples that, at least, I have experienced or heard of:

1. Gender segregation

   it varies greatly from place to place, with some place are more significant than other.

   For example:Toilets, how I form queues in Primary school ("boys are in one row, girls are on the other")

2. Political community formation

   In a very naive sense, the feminist community was formed with the goal of ending woman's oppression. This seems to imply that:

   1. There exists people that has the "woman" gender
   2. They are under oppression

   Thus we need to fight for them publicly (eg: help gaining right etc).

3. Romantic/sexual preference

   We use the world "sexuality" to denote our preference on romantic partners or sex partners based on gender.

The above list are by no means the full extent of differentiating gender treatment nor does it means there are no overlapping cases in those three. However, I don't want to explore whether calling someone by a particular gender and its subsequent treatment can be separated or not (² it will be explored in the main one). The one i want to highlight is that people seems to treat people differently based on whether they are the same or different gender as them. In some sense, we could say that they act based on the labeling of gender.

Gender Realism

It is not surprising to say that these labeling and its subsequent treatment affects our life. And these effects sometimes harms us. Thus so, we need to seek a way to end these harmful effects of the gender system.

A particular problem I want to focus on is the exclusion of others from a particular gender. One infamous example of this is the exclusion of trans by "feminist" such as J.K.Rowling. Roughly put, the "legitimacy" of gender exclusion stems from the assuming that there is one quality/property (for example: womanness) that makes people from a particular gender (woman) that particular gender (woman), and hence, the people who doesn't possess such quality (womanness) are not that particular gender (woman). What, at least in this case, is "womanness" ? Is it the ability to menstruate ? Is it the experience of being under pressure by men's gaze from birth?

This "there is a thing called womanness that makes all woman woman" is called the gender realist approach. I can try to use a metaphor to explain this. On a road with countless pebble, there are pebbles that have a lot of differences, some are granite, some are basalt, limestone etc… They also comes in different shapes. Yet we all called them pebbles because there is a so called pebbleness: they are all small smooth round stone. With this view in the case of a particular gender, people who are that particular gender can be different, but they ultimately have some quality that is common in all of them, which makes them that gender.

Gender realism seems to gives us a very concrete ground for answering the question I raised from the very beginning: "What makes someone distinct from the other particular gender ?". Indeed, I think unless that particular quality is present in all beings, gender realism will leads to gender exclusion. However as we have seen from the above case on TERF, this might leads to problematic oppression and harm towards trans people. How do we deal with this ?

One approach is to give up gender realism and say that gender exclusion, the act of excluding someone to be that particular gender, is indeed harmful or at least unwanted. But I want to explore another approach in this note, what if there is a "fair" or more importantly non-harmful way of gender exclusion?

Gender feelings

One of my way to tackle this is to appeal to the subjectiveness of gender. What if a particular gender is itself a particular distinct feeling ? Basically I am exploring the possibility to interpret the nature of saying "I am X" (X is a particular gender) as just similar to saying "I am sad". There might be something called "gender feelings" that we can feel, and such makes us that particular gender. To put it simply, what makes woman woman, is that "she" feels "woman".

This is to appeal to some transgender experience I have heard of, when they say that they are like a "woman" trapped inside a "male" body. What makes them to have the claim to say so, and why should we treat them as woman ? My most intuitive answer would be they don't feel "like a woman". What they are experiencing is the "woman" feeling, which is what makes a person woman. When they say they feel like a woman, it is actually saying they are.

Gender exclusion is of course, still possible in this interpretation of gender. What makes a person not a particular gender (woman) is that person doesn't feel "that particular gender's feeling" ("woman"). But is this really a problem ? People who doesn't feel they are a particular gender should probably not get hurt when they are told that they are not that particular gender. Hence gender exclusion is not harmful under this form of gender realism. However there might be people who would arguably say that someone is not experiencing that feeling, but this, I think, is simply a weird accusation if we assume that our mind and thus emotions are inherently private, how can we ever know that someone is not experiencing that feeling ?

This leads to the distinction of gender expression and gender identity. While gender expressions(how we act according to this gender feeling) are taught by social factors and hence, in some sense, socially constructed. Gender identity equates to the feeling inside, and hence seems to leaves us the possibility that this feeling is not socially constructed as feeling such as happy, sad and angry seemingly aren't. When people are doing harmful gender exclusion under this theory, they are restricting expression (or having particular features) to a certain gender identity. They mistakenly think that there is a "correct" way for expressing this feeling, or worse, only people who have a particular feature can have this feeling.

Gender stereotype is the restriction of gender expression under this gender feeling. To liberate people from gender oppression (at least in terms of identity) would simply be the freedom of gender expression, to decouple what people think is the "supposed" way of how a "gender feeling" should act. Just as not everyone will laugh when they are happy nor will all of them cry when they are sad, not all woman has the ability to menstruate nor do all of them dress/act out the "feminine" stereotypes.

Attack: But I don't feel that way

People might object this theory by pointing out that they don't particularly feel this form of gender feelings but yet is still classified or treated as that particular gender. I think this objection is not valid. I think under this interpretation of gender identity, we may find that there are a lot more genderless/agender people from what we know of. The problem is that our current gender system forcefully assign everyone to a particular and restricting form of gender. It doesn't deny that there are people who actually feel and thus are that gender.

Confusing with gender dysphoria/euphoria

The above gender feeling I propose is not the same as gender dysphoria/euphoria. Gender dysphoria is the feeling of uncomfort, unhappiness or distress while gender feeling is another completely different type of feelings. While there are numerous type of gender dysphoria, a form of dysphoria namely social dysphoria, the mismatch between your perceived gender by others and your true gender feelings, can be explained simply as a discomfort from people denying your own feelings. This feeling of discomfort can also be parallel to everyday feelings as well, such as when someone is in extreme pain/sadness, if we outright say "Oh you actually loved it" or "Hey it wasn't that bad, quit whining it", there might be discomfort too. The same might be able to explain some forms of gender dysphoria. Perhaps this mechanism of denying everyday feelings is not strong enough to cause the extreme discomfort that gender dysphoria is. But I think there are some convincing reasons as to why this is a plausible explanation.

The discomfort of feelings getting denied varies greatly by the feelings getting denied. We might actually feel ok if our happiness is denied but feel severe discomfort when our pain and suffering got denied/ignored. Maybe gender feelings are the kind of feelings that will cause discomfort while being ignored (at least to a certain groups of people).

Another reason might be that since our political system are designed around gender, and how treatment varied based on the gender identity, getting denied might affect us more than other feelings such as sadness getting denied. And hence our distress on this denial are significantly stronger than other feelings getting denied.

There are also other kinds of gender dysphoria which I couldn't explore in this side note. Briefly put, perhaps another kind of dysphoria stems from not being able to express this feeling with the limited wording provided by our langauge/gender system.

Body dysphoria on the other hand, might need to be explored in a completely different paradigm (in the main project: on the subject of sex/gender distinction)

Problems

However there are some real concerns over this theory of gender which ultimately leads to me not endorsing it. Overall it has 3 problems:

1. Challenge from queerness³

Focusing on how different this gender feeling is, comparing with other emotions.

1. Representational Problem

   Since gender feeling is private, how do we represent our feelings ?

2. Political unusable

   If we can't represent our problem we can't actually act around it politically

Challenge from queerness

The gender feeling is very different than conventional feelings. What property does gender feelings hold ?

• Non-targeting

  There are non-targeting feelings such as happiness or sadness. They can be self contained, we don't need to be happy towards a particular subject. There are also targeting feelings such as hatred and love, which seemingly must be towards on something.

  Gender feelings as in this interpretation seems not to be targeting anything. Even when we are assuming other's gender, it is not that we are feeling gender, especially when we can assume people have a different gender than us. To explain it further, I feel that Mx.A is happy, doesn't mean I feel happiness, in fact I can actually feel sadness after knowing zie is happy. The feeling that someone else is happy are very different from feeling happiness by myself. Hence, when someone feel that another one is a particular gender, that is not the gender feeling in the above interpretation that is used to define their own identity but another different feeling/evaluation.

• Semi-permanent/stable

  Gender identity observed are usually stable. While genderfluid exists, people who are not genderfluid exists as well. Their gender identity is mostly stable through a long period of time. Comparing with other non-targeting feelings such as happiness, they are long lived. They are also much more stable and insensitive. Conventional emotions and feelings are sensitive towards the things that person experienced. I can be happy because there is a shinny sun in the morning and be sad in the afternoon because someone yelled at me in the street, and even be angry at the TV at night. However, gender is not like that at all, it is highly possible that my gender identity remain the same in a lot of different situations I experience, yet a person that remains happy all the time are highly unlikely.

• Grouping

  We typically don't form groups around feeling one feelings much. This maybe simply because I never heard of it. But we tends to form groups around gender.

These differences between everyday feelings and gender feeling does not pose a big threat to the above theory. One can assume that since gender is that different, we ought to treat it differently than other feelings. But ultimately they fundamentally share the same core. However, there are other problems that I think is detrimental to the above theory.

Representational problem

Recall that to remove gender stereotype, we need to decouple the restriction of how we ought to express our gender feeling. If such restriction is unwanted, and thus people are free to express their gender feeling in whatever way they want, each individual's has their own full authority on declaring their gender. Gender is only knowable by one self. Gender is private.

This privateness is what drawn us to the theory at the first place. Recall we are appealing to the subjectiveness of gender and through the full authority on declaring one own gender, we seemingly remove the harmfulness of gender realism(exclusion). But such privateness also make us incapable of representing our own feelings. If gender expression and gender feelings needs to be completely seperated, such that when one is feeling a particular gender could theoretically act whatever way they feel like (for example: dressing). We lack the way of knowing other feelings. A person with particular gender A can act exactly like a person with another particular gender B. They might dress like the same, have the same family role, or have the same social position, or even use the same word to express their own gender "men". But actually they are experiencing different gender feelings and hence they are not the same gender.

If so, the idea of same gender and different gender would collapse in a practical sense. Because epistemologically we are incapable of knowing whether someone has the same gender and different gender as us. We might share the same pronunciation, but the meaning and thus the feeling getting referenced are inherently yours only. It might be possible that all people have the same gender, or everyone has their own unique gender, just different/ the same expression from that feeling.

If we allow some expression to be couple with this gender feeling, then either we associate some gender with some very specific set of actions, such as how we dress, thus restricting ourselves or something that is incapable of denote clearly our feelings, such as pronunciation, spelling of alphabet etc.

Political unusable

If we have no way of knowing other's gender, and our expression, even the act of declaring our gender is impossible to communicate this form of identity, then this form of identity is unusable in a political sense.

Conclusion

Due to the problems presented above, I personally won't endorse this theory. While I personally lean towards the opposite of gender realism, the failure of this theory doesn't mean we should give up gender realism. There are other gender realism that I would like to explore. Perhaps at the end of the main project lol.

Footnotes

1. For more please reference Judith Butler's theory on gender performativity ↩

2. According to my tiny knowledge on Judith Butler: The differential treatment is what caused gender labeling to exist, not the other way around ↩

3. Please be aware that although I have used the word "queerness", it has nothing to do with gender queer. The reason I used the word is to acknowledge inspiration from J.L. Mackie argument against moral realism: argument from queerness ↩

這種“有一種叫女人性的東西，使得所有女人為之女人”被稱為性別實在主義定義女性的進路。我可以嘗試用一個關於鵝卵石的比喻來說明：在鋪滿無數鵝卵石的路上，鵝卵石的形狀千差萬別，有的是花崗岩，有的是玄武岩、石灰石等等……它們的形狀也各不相同。然而我們都叫它們作鵝卵石，是因為有一種所謂的「鵝卵石性」：它們都是光滑的小圓石。根據這種觀點，同樣地，每人可能會有所不同，但他們最終具有所有該性別的人共有的某些品質，使他們成為該性別。

性別實在主義似乎給了我們一個非常具體的框架去回答我從一開始就提出的問題：“是什麼使某人與其他特定性別不同？”。事實上，我認為除非所有人都具有這種特殊的性別屬性，否則性別實在主義將導致性別排斥。然而，正如我們從上面關於 TERF 的案例中看到般，這可能會導致對跨性別者的壓迫和傷害。我們該如何處理這些問題？

其中一個辦法是放棄性別實在主義，並說性別排斥，即將某人排除在特定性別之外的行為，確實是有害，或者至少不甚歡迎。但我想在這篇筆記中探索另一種方法：一種“公平”或不會傷害任何人的性別排斥

性別作為一種感受

我解決這個問題的方法之一是訴諸性別的主觀性。或者性別本身就是一種特定的感覺呢？我嘗試探討將“我是 X”（X 是某特定性別）呢句說話 類比為 “我很傷心”的可能性。我們可能會感覺到某種叫做“性別感受”的東西，這使我們成為某特定的性別。簡單地說，讓女人成為女人的，是“她”感覺“女人”。

這訴諸了我聽說過的一些跨性別經歷，當他們說自己就像一個困在“男性”身體裡的“女人”。是什麼讓他們有資格這麼說，我們為什麼要把他們當女人？我最直觀的回答是他們不應該說他們覺得自己“像個女人”。他們正在體驗的是“女人”的感覺，這本身就是使一個人成為女人的原因。當他們說自己感覺像一個女人時，實際上他們就是。

當然，在這種對性別的詮釋中，性別排斥仍然是可能的。使一個人不是某特定性別（女性）的原因是該人沒有感受到“特定性別的感覺”（“女性”）。但這會帶來問題嗎？不覺得自己屬於某性別的人在被告知他們不是該性別時應該是不會受到傷害的。因此，在這種性別實在主義下，性別排斥是無害的。然而，可能有人會說某人並非正在體驗那種感覺，但我認為，如果我們假設我們的思想和情感本質上是私人的，那麼這只是一個奇怪的指控，我們怎麼知道某人沒有體驗那種感覺？

這帶出了性別表達和性別認同的區分。性別表達（我們如何根據這種性別感覺行事）是由社會因素教導的，因此在某種意義上是社會建構的。性別認同等同於內心的感覺，因此似乎給我們留下了性別不是社會建構的可能性，因為快樂、悲傷和憤怒等感覺似乎不是。當人們根據這一理論進行有害的性別排斥時，他們將表達（或具有特定特徵）限制在某種性別認同上。他們錯誤地認為有一種“正確”的方式來表達這種性別感覺，或者更糟的是，只有具有特定特徵的人才能擁有這種感覺。

性別刻板印象便是對人有某種性別感覺時，該會有那一種表達方式的限制。要將人從性別（至少在身份方面）壓迫之下解放，便其實只是爭取性別表達的自由，將人們認為有該性別感覺是便該怎樣行動的“假設”脫鉤。就像不是每個人開心的時候都會笑，悲傷的時候也不是所有人都會哭一樣，並不是所有的女人都有月經的能力，也不是所有女人都穿著/表達出“女性化”這個刻板印象。

失敗的攻擊：但我沒有那種感覺

有人可能會用以下理由反對這一理論，指出他們並沒有特別感受到這種形式的性別感受，但仍被歸類或視為該特定性別。我認為這個攻擊是無效的。我認為在對這種解釋框架下，我們可能會發現其實實際這個世界存在比我們所知遠多的無性別者。問題其實反而出於我們現有的性別系統強行將每個人分配到特定且有限的性別之內。這並沒有與一些人確切感受到其「性別感覺」，然後使得他們是該性別這件事有所衝突

與性別不安(gender dysphoria)/欣快感(euphoria)混淆

我上面提出的性別感覺與性別焦慮/欣快不同。性別焦慮是不舒服、不快樂或痛苦的感覺，而性別感覺是另一種完全不同的感覺。雖然有許多型別的性別不安，但其中一種不安形式：社交性性別不安，即他人指控你是某種性別，而與您真實的性別感受不匹配，可以簡單地解釋為他人否認自己感受而造成的不適。這種不舒服的感覺也可能在日常生活發生，例如當某人極度痛苦/悲傷時，如果我們對他直說“哦，其實你看起來樂在其中”或“嘿，其實也不是太差，別抱怨了” ，他也可能會有不適。這同樣可以解釋這一種性別不安。也許這種否認日常生活感受的機制還不足以解釋性別焦慮症所帶來的極度不適。但我認為有兩個理由來說明為什麼這個機制能夠產生這種強大不適。

感覺不受承認的不適會因為該感覺自身是那一種而有很大差異。如果我們的快樂不受承認，我們實際上可能還會感覺勉強可以，但當我們的痛苦和苦難不被承認/忽視時，我們通常會感到更不適。也許性別感受是那種被忽視時會引起較強不適的感受（至少對某些人群而言）。

另一個原因可能是，由於我們的政治制度是圍繞性別而設計的，以及待遇會因為性別認同而有所不同，因此被拒絕可能比其他感覺（例如悲傷被拒絕）對我們的影響更大。因此，我們對這種否認的痛苦比其他被否認的感覺要強烈得多。

還有其他類型的性別不安，我無法在本附註中探討。簡而言之，也許另一種煩躁源於我們的語言/性別系統提供措辭實在有限，無法用來表達這種感覺。

另一方面，身體焦慮症可能需要在完全不同的框架下進行探索（將會在主要長文中：關於性別/性別區分的分段中探討）

理論問題

然而，這種對性別的詮釋是有一些致命性的問題，最終導致我沒有支持它。總體來說有3個問題：

1. Queerness challenge （奇怪挑戰）
   著焦於這種性別感覺對比其他感覺有多麼不同，與其他感受進行比較。
2. 表徵問題
   既然性別感受是私人的，我們如何表達我們的感受？
3. 政治上無用
   如果我們不能代表我們的性別，我們實際上就不能在政治上採取行動

奇怪挑戰

性別感覺與平時的感覺非常不同。性別感覺擁有什麼特性？

• 非針對性
  我們有非針對性的感覺，如快樂或悲傷。它們可以是獨立的，我們不需要對特定主題感到高興。還有一些有針對性的感情，比如仇恨和愛，似乎必須是針對某物。

  性別感受似乎並沒有針對任何事。即使我們假設其他人的性別，也不是我們感受到性別感覺自身，尤其是當我們可以假設人們的性別與我們不同時。進一步解釋一下，我覺得Mx.A很高興，並不代表我感到高興，實際上我可以在知道z他很高興後，我感到悲傷。覺得別人幸福和自己幸福的感覺完全不同。因此，當有人覺得另一個人是特定性別時，這不是上述對性別的詮釋中，用於定義自己身份的性別感覺，而是另一種不同的感覺/評價。

• 半永久性/穩定
  性別認同通常是穩定的。雖然存在性別流動，但性別不流動的人也存在。他們的性別認同在很長一段時間內大多是穩定的。與幸福等其他非針對性感覺相比，它們似乎很長。它們也更加穩定。傳統的情緒和感覺會隨人所經歷的事情而變。我可以因為早上有燦爛的陽光而高興，而在下午因為有人在街上對我大喊大叫而感到悲傷，甚至晚上對著電視生氣。然而，性別很多時候不是那樣，我的性別認同在我經歷許多不同情況下很大可能仍然保持不變，而一個一直保持快樂的人是極不可能的。

• 分組
  我們通常不會圍繞一種感覺來分組。這可能只是因為我見識少，沒有聽過什麼開心組。但我們傾向於圍繞性別形成群體。

日常感受和性別感受的這些差異對上述詮釋並沒有構成很大的威脅。有人會說正因性別如此不同，我們才會歷史上以不同於其他感覺的方式對待它。但最終它們從根本上共享相同的核心。但是，我認為還有其他問題不利於上述詮釋。

表徵問題

回想一下，為了消除性別刻板印象，我們需要解除對我們應該如何表達我們的性別感受的限制。如果這種限制是不需要的，人便可以自由地以任何他們想要的方式表達他們的性別感受（例如透過衣著）。於是每個人都會壟斷自己是什麼性別的發現權。性別只有自己一個人知道。性別是私密的。

這種私密性其實就是我探討這個理論的原因之一。一開始，我們強調性別的主觀性，並透過獨段宣告自己性別的話語權，我們似乎消除了性別實在主義（性別排斥）的禍害。但這種私密性也讓我們無法表達自己的感受。如果性別表達和性別感受需要完全分開，那麼當一個人感受到特定性別時，理論上可以自由表達他們的感覺（例如：穿搭任何衣服）。我們將缺乏瞭解他者感受的方法。一個特定性別A的人可以和另一個特定性別B的人一模一樣。他們可能穿得一樣，有相同的家庭角色，或有相同的社會地位，甚至用相同的詞來表達自己的性別”男人”。但實際上他們正在經歷不同的性別感受，因此他們不是同一個性別。

如果是這樣，同性和異性的想法在應用層面上就會崩潰。因為在知識論上，我們無法知道某人是否與我們具有相同的性別和不同的性別。我們可能有相同的發音，但意義（被引用的感覺）本質上只是你的。可能所有人都具有相同的性別，或者每個人都有自己獨特的性別，只是對那種感覺有不同/相同的表達方式。

如果我們放棄上述自由，允許一些行為只能夠被某種性別的人去表達，那麼我們要么將某種性別與某些非常具體的行為聯繫起來，例如我們如何穿衣，導致性別定型，要么就是將某些不能清楚地表示我們的情緒的東西與感覺聯繫，例如發音，字母的拼寫等，導致不能溝通

政治上不可用

如果我們無法知道別人的性別，甚至當我們說出我們正感受什麼性別感覺時，也不能夠表達出自己是否跟他人相同或不同性別時，那麼這種身份在政治意義上似乎完全沒有用。

結論

由於上述問題，我個人不會贊同這個理論。 雖然我個人傾向反對性別實在主義，但該理論的失敗並不意味著我們應該放棄性別實在主義。 我想繼續探索其他性別實在主義。 也許在長文的最後，哈哈。