Here is a young woman who is struggling with her identity: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nonbinary-gender-representation_n_61b8d864e4b06621e42b4b15; can anybody tell what she is actually struggling with? It almost seems like she gets her identity from her clothes rather than her having an identity that she expresses through how she dresses; how do you read it?

Warmly,

Lene


On 13-01-2022 01:23, Rachel Hayden wrote:
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Hello T.R. ~ 

Oh, taking estrogen along with testosterone blockers (and possibly progesterone) for a significant length of time will absolutely diminish muscle mass, especially upper body muscle mass, and add fat, along with a host of other changes no typical man would want, related I believe to what you refer to as 'sexy.' However, I share your concerns about unfair advantages from lingering muscle mass, along with bone mass, height, etc. in trans women, and I don't think it's okay to just say someone born male is a woman now and can compete with women, without serious examination of the issue, which I don't think has rightly been done. I personally think that raising these concerns is justified, and I have done so in other forums. I also share your concerns about a black-and-white mentality with regard to this issue. Of course, this also relates to issues of whether natal women or intersex women who have abnormally high levels of testosterone should compete with men, or vice-versa. 

I certainly don't have the answers, especially as a non-scientist. Fortunately, I find serious competition in sports kind of silly, so I have no skin in that particular game. My own wrists and arms are tiny compared to what they used to be, despite increased weight training, but for me it's all about the enjoyment. 

Best,
R

On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 2:56 PM T.R. Pickerill <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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As a former athlete I would agree that this is very unfair to the women, changing your ‘sexy’ does not change your bone or muscle structure. I really don't see why trans rights, which I support, has to be something that hurts or infringes on women's rights. No reason why a man can't transition to a female and still compete in men's sports. The political and social climate however seems to insist on all or nothing, nuclear option, you are either with us or you are against us mentality with very little room for nuance, gray zones or attention to fairness and decency.

On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 2:43 PM Nicholas Lattanzio <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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I second all of what Gregg said there. Not everyone may be ready for metamodernism, but you seem to be embodying it. Anything that you do in your life from a metamodern place of wisdom will be a tremendous accomplishment, and I hope you give yourself credit for that.


Regards,

Nicholas G. Lattanzio, Psy.D.

On Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 1:04 PM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

This is brilliant stuff, Rachel. Really. I mean I so appreciate your capacity to take these really complex, arcane academic ideas and internalize them and apply them to real issues in the real world with real consequences. Warms my heart.

 

And I love what you say here about your community and what kind of healthy leadership, vision and values is necessary to ensure, justice, dignity, and well-being with integrity.  

 

Best,

G

 

From: theory of knowledge society discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Rachel Hayden
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 1:52 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: TOK Postmodernism Is Not Inherently Anti-science

 

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.

Nicholas and Gregg ~ 

 

Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. 

 

I actually think I'd be terrible at writing a book about transgender science. This is because 1) I'm not trained as a scientist or clinician, and 2) I learned just enough about this issue to recognize that, while the specifics of the research may turn out to be wrong, there was enough convergent evidence to make a naturalistic case for some kind of neurobiological factor, and that I should proceed with transition on that basis. Having learned that, I also realized that this type of empirical knowledge couldn't tell me much about how to transition, a much more of an aspirational, developmental process which must include the Culture-Person plane of the ToK - finding a sort of "line of best fit" between biology, mind, culture, and the transcendent, similar I think to Gregg's wisdom stack. So I turned to John Vervaeke, who also pointed me toward L.A. Paul and Agnes Callard's work on transformation, which helped immensely in actualizing the real potential of becoming someone with a different set of values and salience landscape. Finding Gregg's work later helped to put all of my thoughts around this complex issue into a more organized format (go figure), which has become useful in guiding others toward greater reflectiveness.

 

I would like to write some sort of book around this topic, however, perhaps in conjunction with someone with a science background. What I would want to do is create a better model for gender transition than the "decadent Romantic" projections of some kind of hypersubjective self, currently in vogue in the trans community, and related to general confusion, anger, and mental distress in the trans population, not to mention this "trans-trender" issue. I'm envisioning something like a Hitchhiker's Guide to Your Gender. I think that concepts like opponent processing machinery between the selective constraints of culture and the enabling constraints of individual neurobiology/mental idiosyncrasy could be very useful for some, as they have been for me, if they were explained in accessible ways. Hopefully this would help people avoid simplistic ideological dead-ends, for example, the tedious binary debate around whether clothing has gender or not. Of course, UToK has a lot to offer in terms of structuring one's understanding (Tree of Knowledge, Experiential/Private/Public Selves, etc.).

 

Best,

R

 

 

On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 7:24 PM Nicholas Lattanzio <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

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I got way more than I thought I would response-wise here.

 

Lee and Gregg,

 

Lee, too your point, there are brute facts that are still not clearly understood and distinctions unmade with clashing social constructs (e.g., Columbus statues being taken down being fought over because two sides are asserting competing narratives as if they are brute facts). So for me personally Gregg, I agree with JUST and the ToK metamodernism but I can only accept it as a theory of ontology until it actually happens, and to me it's pretty clear we aren't there yet culturally if we have this much apperceive baggage attached to all our narratives. To me its literally that we  have not yet lost our ego on the culture plane, and non have truly transcended it until we all do. 

 

How we actually get there is a different discussion, and I like what Lee's doing and what Brandon N is doing. We are seeing the relative value of various theoretical systems with values and competing forces through that work (and I didn't mean to call you out in my OP Lee! I was moreso referencing undertones I've seen).

 

Rachel,

 

I hope you're doing some writing cuz you got some serious knowledge and being fortunate enough to possess information literacy, I appreciate the degree of brute facts you just dropped on us. That's the kind of stuff I want to know that helps me clinically work with my transgender clients. I need to know what's biological and what isn't because if anything is going to define any of my beliefs it's that, I can't hold someone responsible for their genes, after all. So please publish a book or something the market is raw and ready for a book like that! Or just write and send me info I can use, either is fine.😅

 

TR,

 

I'll have to read your response through a couple of times to better respond because you also pack a ton of knowledge into what you say. I'm just too disorganized of a thinker to really understand your writing style after just one pass.

Regards,

Nicholas G. Lattanzio, Psy.D.

 

On Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 6:07 PM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Thanks so much for this, Rachel.

 

Brilliantly stated.

 

Best,

Gregg

Sent from my iPad



On Jan 11, 2022, at 6:31 PM, Rachel Hayden <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

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I agree with Lee that the transgender issue often takes one side of the "brute facts" biology vs. social constructivist argument. This corresponds to the ToK's biological and culture/person planes of existence, and sort of a modernist vs. postmodernist cultural war. So you have binary biology (albeit with quirks), pitted against an understanding that various cultures across the world have exhibited what would be described as "transgender" by our culture, combined with a sort of critique of patriarchy, etc. 

 

What often gets left out in this is the animal/mental. I'm not a scientist, but in the interest of trying to understand how my own transgender nature came to be, I followed scientists like biopsychologist Dana Bevins, Alexandra Hall, Robert Sapolsky, and others. What I learned is that for transgender people, there are factors like genetic gender behavioral predispositions and non-interference of epigenetics which translate to changes in the brains of transgender people. Evidence for this includes genetic analyses, identical vs. fraternal twin studies, links between handedness and trans people, 2nd to 4th digit ratios, differences in sense of smell (prior to hormone treatment), and MRI studies. While there has been debate about MRI studies on the hypothalamic basal nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST), due to possible interference from hormone therapy (not sure where this debate ended up), differences in transgender brains have been noted in other areas, such as the putamen, corpus callosum, the insula, and the corticospinal tract.

 

I would hope that the inclusion of the mental plane would correspond to revised, somewhat metamodernist-linked understanding which could create some space around this and many issues. 

 

Best,

R

 

On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 2:15 PM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Love this conversation and I will not add much, but let me just make a note that is very relevant to UTOK:

 

JUST and the ToK System complete change this debate. That is, from a UTOK perspective, the modern versus postmodern debate about knowledge is woefully inadequate and poorly framed and unresolvable precisely because we were missing the necessary pieces.

 

JUST gives an ontology, a metatheory of how knowledge is socially constructed. That is completely novel, and if you do not have that, everything is confused. So JUST is a game changer when it comes to the social construction of knowledge, because it is an ontological theory of that knowledge construction.

 

Then, you get the ToK System advance, and that is a game changer also.

 

So, UTOK clearly gives a metamodern sensibility that includes and transcends via fundamentally new theoretical advances that allow us to clean up, clear up and grow up from the modern versus postmodern confusions regarding the nature of human knowledge. That is, if you aren’t looking at the modern versus postmodern issues via JUST and the ToK, you are not looking at them clearly.


Best,
Gregg

 

From: theory of knowledge society discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of lee simplyquality.org
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2022 2:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: TOK Postmodernism Is Not Inherently Anti-science

 

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Nik,

Thanks for this.

 

Here is my simplistic explanation of how I see postmodernism. (And yes, I am aware I included column “A” in the spreadsheet, and shared my ontology on this list).

 

When I was in grade school we learned that: 1) Christopher Columbus discovered America, 2) He was a hero for doing so, and 3) The world is a much better place as a result of his discovery. This is a (coherent) narrative that is comfortable for European Americans to hear. A valuable postmodern contribution is to recognize that this is only one of many possible narratives emerging from the interpretation of events, and this particular narrative is advanced by those in power as a way of maintaining power. All of this is true. I am critical of postmodernism whenever it suggests that “all we have is stories, these are all made up, go make up your own story, they all have equal veracity and value.” This is not true.

 

A key skill in navigating this territory is to keep in mind the distinction between “brut facts” and “Social Constructs”.

 

With respect to Columbus, the brute facts are: 1) A person know as Christopher Columbus existed at the time. 2) He was on one of three ships that travelled from Europe to Hispaniola in the year 1492. 3) This was a big deal to his European sponsors. 4) Colonization began soon after, 5) Perhaps millions of indigenous people died, 6) Many people in North America claim to own land, 7) Various history books tell selected portions of this story using various narrative themes.

 

Both brute facts (as described above) and a variety of social constructs (celebrating Columbus Day, various celebrations (and protests), many stories, books, and text books, …) exist.

 

This distinction between brute fact and social construct is in play now in transgender discussions.

Gregg was very helpful in reminding us that (the brute facts of sex) sex (at birth) is bi-modal, not binary.

Transgender advocates are correct in observing that many customs and traditions we associate with gender (e.g. pink is for girls, …) are social constructs, likely advanced by those in power to stay in power. The discussion gets heated when either the brute facts or the social constructs are denied or distorted. 

 

The birther theories (and now the “big lie”) are other examples of how narratives can be advanced by powerful people to gain power, test loyalty, or for some other personal gain. (And I hope it goes without saying that I don’t consider Trump to be a postmodern theorist.)

 

I hope this is clear, accurate, useful, and respectful.

 

Thanks,

 

Lee Beaumont

 

 

On Jan 11, 2022, at 12:01 PM, Nicholas Lattanzio <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

 

hat mode

 

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--
Lene Rachel Andersen
Futurist, economist, author & keynote speaker
President of Nordic Bildung and co-founder of the European Bildung Network
Full member of the Club of Rome
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