What is a Woman?

Malcolm and Simone debate how to define "woman" after he's asked in a trans community. Simone says it's whoever you perceive as female. Malcolm argues it's a social construct dependent on culture. He explains how polygamous and monogamous societies define it differently based on evolutionarily adaptive strategies.

Ultimately Malcolm concludes there's no universal truth, only answers contingent on the utility you're optimizing for. A culture seeking fertility may define womanhood differently than one focused on happiness. He cautions against governments enforcing subjective cultural norms on others, as with criminalizing misgendering. Overall they agree relativism is the only intellectually honest perspective.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] but what do I think is the true answer?

Malcolm: Because I think that there's no true answer can mean many different

Simone: things. There's your answer, the cultural relativistic one. Now you're saying there's a true answer.

Malcolm: Yeah. Okay. There's many different ways. So all the ways you could determine if someone was a woman, right? You could say, well, XX chromosome, XY chromosome, oh, they pass, oh, they self identify as a woman.

Malcolm: Oh, a woman is whatever would make them happiest if they were called the woman. Yeah. That's what they want to be called. Yeah. Yeah. A woman is whether they can have kids. There's many, many, many, many different ways. A

Simone: woman is a state of mind.

Malcolm: That you can determine this, right? And in different cultures.

Malcolm: Elevate different interpretations of gender above other interpretations of gender. So what's the right answer? Okay. Now, the true answer, the actual true answer, like if you're just stripping all of the tradition away.

Simone: Glad you're solving this problem all in one podcast.

Would you like to know more?[00:01:00]

Simone: Hey, hey Malcolm what, what is a woman?

Malcolm: So yeah, this is a spicy question, Simone. Yeah. I was in this Transmaxxing, I was, I was talking in the Transmaxxing discord with the, the Transmaxxing community for people who, aren't familiar with the trans vexing community they are individuals who transition.

Malcolm: Not because or at least they don't think that transitioning needs to be tied to gender dysphoria, but they think that it makes sense for some men to transition for social advantage. Yeah, so

Simone: basically transition for gain or gender euphoria, not just gender dysphoria.

Malcolm: Yeah, and I, I like it because I what I like about the community is they're expanding the concept, and they're passing off traditional trans communities.

Malcolm: Those are the two things I like. I don't, I don't know, am I terrible for, for having so much fun when like extremist progressive communities get pissed off at somebody just for asking questions they're not allowed to ask? Like, hey, I'm a guy and I feel pretty oppressed in society today. Am I allowed to transition?

Malcolm: No! Yes! The most transphobic question anyone can ask! [00:02:00] How dare you think about doing that? You're so privileged! So I, I do love that they're breaking down this, these, these things and they asked at the end of this, this thing, what is a woman? Cause you know, there's this video, what is a woman, which good video.

Malcolm: This has been recommended to us by smart people. And I think it shows real toxic parts of the trans movement, which let's be honest, has some real. Ooh, toxic parts. But I had never actually considered the question myself until it was proposed to me in the context of this group meeting. And so I had to come up with an answer on the spot and I was really satisfied with my answer, but it's not one that I had come up with before.

Malcolm: Oh, really? So Simone, first I want to hear if you, what your answer is unbiased by me to this question.

Simone: Right. So, to me. I mean, obviously, there's not a good answer for this, but for me, a woman is someone that I see on the street and I'm like, oh, look at that woman. So if you pass, whether it's intentional or [00:03:00] not, you're a woman or a man.

Simone: And there are many

Malcolm: men who just look extra girly. You just like extra girly are not trying to look extra girly.

Simone: Yeah. Yeah. Like there, there can be a, a natal man who just looks extremely femme, not intentionally. And I'm like, Oh, what a pretty girl. But same, same with, you know, natal women who just happened to look really boyish.

Simone: Like you, you are, you are what people interpret you to be.

Malcolm: Yes. So you judge womanhood as an eye of you as the perceiver, because your brain is categorizing everyone you see into either male or female and the way it handles that categorization. You say, because everyone's brain does this. I should be clear.

Malcolm: Even people who are like, I am the most gender understanding person in the world, they definitely have an assumption when they first see somebody of what gender that person identified. They'd be like, okay, I'm not sure. But what you're saying is. From your perspective, gender is whatever [00:04:00] your brain innately categorizes people as from your perspective.

Malcolm: Well, and, and this is, I

Simone: think this is, it works for me too because male and female traits. You know, hormonal levels, et cetera, are averages, right? And so there are, there are women who have way more testosterone, way more other like male traits than men. And there are men who have like way more female traits than women.

Simone: Even Spencer Greenberg like created this like quiz you can take. It sort of shows you cognitively where you trend gender wise toward like male or female.

Malcolm: Did

Simone: you do it? Yeah, I came off as like genderless, I think, just like neither but you would come off as probably hyper, hyper masculine because of sort of the the like dominant approach that you take to things.

Simone: But yeah, like my point though, is like. You know, even, even a, a natal male or female may be outside the averages for the, the gender they were born into or the sex they were born into. I,

Malcolm: I like your interpretation. I'll tell you what my answer was. All right. Yes. Because I think it's [00:05:00] actually the correct answer.

Malcolm: Oh, I said that the concept of man and woman is completely a social construct. No, hold on. Hold on. It is.

Malcolm: It changes depending on the cultural group you're looking at the question from. I mean, you're right. Different cultural groups have different answers to this question. Okay. Okay. You know, so like, if I'm from a conservative Muslim group, right, they famously, if somebody is born same sex attracted, They basically force them to gender transition.

Malcolm: Right, so it means you're a woman. And to them, yeah, that's a woman. If I was born same sex attracted, I would be a woman. So it's like your

Simone: sex is determined in that culture by who you're attracted to, not like the equipment

Malcolm: or your appearance. Determined by who you're attracted to, not by anything else. So I think a lot of people assume that all conservative cultures see things the same, and they really don't.

Malcolm: Yeah. There's many different conservative cultural traditions. Why does Muslim as a cultural group do this? We've talked about this before.[00:06:00] This is a common thing you see within polygynous societies. And it helps to deal with the fact that because many women often sort to one men in these societies, you get a lot of unpaired men.

Malcolm: Typically, the more unpaired men you have in a society, the more terrorism you have, the more social unrest you have. And so it makes sense for these societies to find ways to match these unpaired men and matching them with each other is a very convenient and intergenerationally durable solution to the problem.

Malcolm: There you go.

Simone: So, trans maxing before trans maxing. I'm not saying it's ethical.

Malcolm: I'm not saying it's an ethical solution. But this is where things get interesting. Is, cultural groups are going to have different answers to this question. And most of those answers are going to be determined By what led to intergenerational success of that cultural group, we just gave one evolutionary pressure for why a conservative Islamic cultures would have seen a woman as what you're attracted to.

Malcolm: Whereas you know, if you're talking about monogamous cultural groups, well, [00:07:00] typically fertility rate is higher by getting almost everyone to breed,

Simone: right? So it really depends on your

Malcolm: equipment and woman by who can have kids and who can get who pregnant. How you determine what a woman is, was in those cultural groups.

Malcolm: And I think it's very clear that, you know, that these non humanist cultural groups have one answer. These polygynous cultural groups have one answer and progressive cultural groups have a different answer. And all of these answers are valid within these cultural groups and should not be treated as invalid.

Malcolm: And this is why I have such. Enormous disdain for individuals like Dylan Mulvaney who has, this is the person who caused this , bud, like controversy, right? I think it was an absolutely warranted controversy because this individual has advocated to make it illegal and for legal punishments to be vented on individuals who misgender somebody.

Malcolm: And I'm like, I'm sorry. Wait, wait,

Simone: wait. So to, but to make it a crime to misgender someone. Yes, but what if someone's not passing, then they don't know if there's not like [00:08:00] an introduction of like, these are my

Malcolm: pronouns, Simone, these people don't care. They want to culturally dominated and culturally erase the groups that are different for them.

Malcolm: They do not care that different people are different from them. They do not respect the rights of any cultural group, but the progressive urban monoculture and they, Okay. I mean, this is a strategy that they can use to begin to disenfranchise anybody who holds really strongly to their cultural practices.

I was really shocked that the mainstream media, when they were recovering the bud light controversy, they made it sound like Dylan Mulvaney was just like a normal trans person. And that's the reason why people were freaking out the extent they went to, to hide what was really going on with. It was shocking to me, you know? If bud light had done a deal with buck angel, nobody would have freaked out, you know, Uh, the reason why people were freaking out is because Dylan Mulvaney is extremist activists who is goal is the cultural eraser [00:09:00] of groups, which she frames as being subhuman in their rights when contrasted with her, and that individuals who hold to their tradition than faced should be sent to jail for. Even slightly upsetting her or inconveniencing her. This was not a case of a reasonable, normal trans person who was put into an ad campaign.

Malcolm: I mean, it reminds me of the Romans when the Romans were like you know, and they, they would do this with Jewish populations, like, okay. Well, most other people are okay with sacrificing to the Roman emperor as a god. Why aren't you okay with sacrificing to the Roman emperor as a god? You know, they did this with Jews and Christians very frequently.

Malcolm: And of course, Jews and Christians are like, Yeah, but from our cultural perspective, that's blasphemy. Why can't you understand that? Why can't you just let us do things our way? The Romans like, Well, the emperor finds that very distasteful. It's very offensive to the emperor when you don't sacrifice to him.

Malcolm: I don't understand why you can't just bend [00:10:00] your... Your way of seeing the world in this one area right here. And it's like, well, if you saw it from their perspective, you would understand why they can't bend on that one perspective. And this is where we have really strong beliefs. Like I believe very strongly against Islamic cultural groups when they're like it should be illegal or an individual should be able to be punished for another cultural group.

Malcolm: For showing a depiction of my you know, Muhammad, I'm sorry. You, it makes sense to say that was in your culture. It's illegal to show depictions of Muhammad. Sure. Yeah, I get that. But when you try to impose that on other people, absolutely not. No, never in any cultural group, get to impose your value system on another cultural group in so far as it does not physically harm you.

Malcolm: You can say, well it offends me. It offends me when they misgender me. It offends me when they have a depiction of Muhammad. Or even, and I'm sorry I say this, it offends me when someone burns an American flag. Well, tough f*****g titties. You know, this, this, America [00:11:00] is defined by our diversity and by being a safe haven.

Malcolm: For different groups that are different and we need to have those multiple expressions defended independently. So yeah, I, I defend that across the board. And I, and I really see it when somebody feels so culturally empowered that they could begin to present an idea like that, like punishing people who are not of their culture simply because they were born into a different culture.

Malcolm: It is. It's just the worst. So I, I, one got, unfortunately my take on a very spicy topic out there. But also from like my cultural perspective from my cultural group, these people went through a lot of effort to transition. Like, it's not like they decide this on a whim, like the least I can do, especially if it hurts them.

Malcolm: Is you know, called them by their preferred title, in the same way that when I talk to a Catholic priest, I would call them father, right? And I think that these individuals should call them father. But I don't think it should be a f*****g legal mandate to call them father, because not doing so is [00:12:00] disrespectful.

Malcolm: Like, come on, you don't have to call other groups by other titles that they care about within their culture. But you do it because you're a nice person, who, you know, I, I call someone a doctor because I don't want to be a dick. Like, but I understand if some group was like, yeah, but we believe that all humans are born equal and you shouldn't elevate any person above any other person.

Malcolm: And that's why we never used the title doctor and I'd be like, fine. They shouldn't be like legally enforced to, and people should like deal with the fact that some cultures are just going to relate to that differently and, and, and not become, but anyway, so, so to the point here,

Simone: your cultural relativist when it comes

Malcolm: to, but what do I think is the true answer?

Malcolm: Because I think that there's no true answer can mean many different

Simone: things. There's your answer, the cultural relativistic one. Now you're saying there's a true answer.

Malcolm: Yeah. Okay. There's many different ways. So all the ways you could determine if someone was a woman, right? You could say, well, XX chromosome, XY chromosome, oh, they pass, oh, they self identify as a woman.

Malcolm: [00:13:00] Oh, a woman is whatever would make them happiest if they were called the woman. Yeah. That's what they want to be called. Yeah. Yeah. A woman is whether they can have kids. There's many, many, many, many different ways. A

Simone: woman is a state of mind.

Malcolm: That you can determine this, right? And in different cultures.

Malcolm: Elevate different interpretations of gender above other interpretations of gender. So what's the right answer? Okay. Now, the true answer, the actual true answer, like if you're just stripping all of the tradition away.

Simone: Glad you're solving this problem all in one podcast.

Malcolm: Is... All of these different cultural interpretations, none of them has primacy to any other.

Malcolm: You can, you can, you can give them primacy by giving them utility. So I can say, which cultural interpretation of womanhood is the most intergenerationally durable? Right? Like, which would allow your culture to outcompete other cultures? Well, there's different optimization functions there. As we mentioned, there's the muslim optimization function, and [00:14:00] the evangelical Christian.

Malcolm: So there's the monogamous optimization function, and the polygynous optimization function for that. Which are different. But the monogamous optimization function for that is definitely that a woman is whoever can have kids. Okay, well, but you could say, yeah, yeah, yeah, but well, what if I say that what I'm optimizing for is what makes people happiest?

Malcolm: Right. Well, progressives would say in the moment, and I agree in the moment, it is almost certainly true that a moment is identifying people who want to be identified as a woman, as a woman. However, I don't know if that is longitudinally happiness. Well, but

Simone: isn't that kind of a zero sum happiness though?

Simone: Because often making, you know, if someone is forced to, acknowledge a gender that's really hard for them to acknowledge or that makes them feel like

Malcolm: they're happiness of the individual who is being identified. I'm just saying this is what we're elevating. Okay. We're elevating this answer. Okay. Now I'd say that longitudinally is actually less clear to me.

Malcolm: A lot of the research done right now indicates that yes [00:15:00] trans people are much happier after they transition. However If they didn't know that transition was a possibility, would that still be true? Like if they lived in a society that was like no transition at all, would that still be true?

Malcolm: Also, we have to keep in mind that these, these results are coming through a filter. Like if you look at older results this is less true in some of the older studies on this. And I do know that if a researcher published something saying that people were less happy after they transitioned today, they would lose their tenure.

Malcolm: Anyone who doesn't think that is. living in an ideologically insane bubble. Like we have seen let's see if I can find the study, but recently, yeah, some studies that just were reporting data where like the, the people who published them were either punished or they were heavily censored and they had to be redacted.

Malcolm: It's sad that this is a state because it means for people like us who are trying to get at the truth, what actually makes people happier? We don't know. We do know that conservatives are happier on average. We do know that if you're depressed you're likely going to be better served by becoming a conservative, like, like a conservative Christian tradition.

Malcolm: And this is one of these things where it's like, okay, [00:16:00] well, so then people say, well, we get to do whatever makes every kid happiest. Right. That's true. Then we're giving, you know, the same sex attracted kids to the, the LGBT community and the gender dysphoric kids to the LGBT community. Are we giving the depressed kids to the Christian community?

Malcolm: Cause they seem to do better in that community. Like just statistically speaking. Right. Well, I think many people would be quite unhappy with that trade. And so it's, it's better than, you know, we'd leave this up to individual free will where, where that can be exercised. So what's the answer? Well, so the answer is this, it depends on what utility you are multiplying this by.

Malcolm: I think that the current evidence is that if you're optimizing for in the moment happiness, probably the progressives are right. If you're optimizing for intergenerational cultural durability. I think that monogamy monogamy like systems are the closest to right systems, so in that system, likely the evangelical Christians are right.

Malcolm: If you're optimizing for a, a truest understanding of reality, what you would say is... [00:17:00] Well, none of them matter. It matters what my cultural group is optimizing for. So our cultural group is optimizing for fertility rates, right? So what we would say is transition would only make sense for an individual if it was so distressing to them that they needed to transition to maximize their fertility rates, which would be true in almost no individual.

Simone: Well, but I, so I think what you're describing though is a world in which, for example, as long as one doesn't compromise one's fertility. So this might preclude one from hormonal transition, but not preclude one from, like, plastic surgery. Someone could still transition and then be what looks like a gay or lesbian relationship.

Simone: And this is what

Malcolm: we're, we're optimizing for within our culture. Yeah. And also keep in mind that our culture, because of the way we define this, Changes in its quote unquote upset acceptance of these different groups as a general fertility technologies are invented. So perfection of IVG perfection of artificial wombs [00:18:00] would make it that our culture might even.

Malcolm: Encourage gay relationships or, or transition everyone to like one gender. If it turns out one gender is more efficient than another gender in like economic situations. So that's a very interesting way of really, but that's how our gender, I'm saying this is not the truth. This is just how we have chosen to relate to it because our goal is to give our kids the truest understanding of reality.

Malcolm: We can while still maintaining intergenerational cultural fidelity and high fertility rates. Sure. But the actual true answer is. The question is rigged to the beginning, from the beginning, it only matters you can only come up with quote unquote correct answers when you know what you're optimizing for.

Malcolm: And then, yes, there are specific answers that come up with specific solutions, depending on what you're optimizing for.

Simone: Well, this has actually been pretty enlightening. Like, I agree. I agree. I think you've, you've figured it out. You solved gender. Now we just have to find a succinct way. I

Malcolm: solved gender.

Malcolm: You solved gender. A gender that will likely piss everyone off. We can

Simone: now just, the debate [00:19:00] can end. Finally, now we can look at focusing more on becoming an off planet species and getting us to Mars. Thank you. All right, good. Or just come up with some new like TV and movie series that are actually novel and not just a sequel anymore, please.

Malcolm: But, I'd love to

Malcolm: Yeah. I just wanted to double check that Dylan Mulvaney did say, yeah, cause it should be illegal for conservatives to use incorrect gender pronouns. And I think that this is also a really important part that, you know, we as a society need to know where to draw the lines and where we get into government mandated cultural genocide, where we get into my culture is ethically superior to other cultures, dominant large cultural groups in this country.

Malcolm: Both Muslims and Christians and Jews, and they are all wrong, and my culture is correct, because, and why do they think their culture is correct? Because they control power in the moment. And so they, like most cultural groups throughout history, who have controlled power in the moment, Think that they have the [00:20:00] right to culturally enforce their norms on other groups.

Malcolm: And to me, that is one of the highest forms of evil that any individual can engage with. And absolutely, yes, you should boycott a brand that is platforming any individual who's promoting that. Absolutely. It is one of the, genocide is one of the purest forms of evil. Cultural genocide. Attempting to erase other cultural groups or lauding your cultural power over other cultural groups.

Malcolm: And I'm not going to lie, Christian groups have done this when they've had power in the past. Totally. And when they take power again, if they do take power again in the future, our cultural group will fight them just as ardently as we are fighting the, the, the dominant cultural group in our society today.

Malcolm: Because our values do not change. We are not living in a moral nexus. You need to act on your own moral core. And this is something that I can say with a lot of confidence that it never turns out well when one cultural group thinks that they are [00:21:00] axiomatically better than their neighbors and that they have a right.

Malcolm: To enforce those value systems on their neighbors using a government's legal system.

Simone: Agreed. Well, this was fun. Thanks for enlightening me here. I will, I will shift my answer to your answer.

Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe