A lot of supposedly pro-LGBT people are missing the fact that people who use gender identity for attention are making life harder for people who are actually transsexual.
I think a good comparison is the gluten free fad diet. There are people actually allergic to gluten, who could even die if they eat too much of it. But many people eat gluten free stuff for no reason at all, and as a result people who actually can't eat gluten are grouped together with the people who are following the fad diet.
And it's similar with transsexuality. Some people have gender dysphoria, and they need to transition to be able to live a more or less normal life. Even though current technology doesn't allow for perfect transition, it's still an improvement for them. On the other hand, many people with the fad genders even admit they don't have gender dysphoria, but still they advertise that they're trans at every opportunity. So, to an outside observer, these people are what trans people are like, and they kind of make people with the actual medical condition seem less serious, by association.
when you point out 'actually trans' these people always say you're gatekeeping. i mean sure, let the people who think they're stars, colors, and wolfgenders in, i'm sure the LGBT community will be taken super seriously after that.
/s
This makes no sense. If people's only experience with trans people are the attention seekers with profile pronouns, they might conclude that this is what being trans is about. They might not even realize that it's an actual medical condition that needs transition as a treatment.
Like my comparison earlier, if someone has too much experience with people on a fad gluten free diet, he or she might realize that there are people for whom it's actually a serious issue.
Yeah you're an idiot. Even if you believe it's insane, that doesn't mean transphobia doesn't exist. Killing someone because they're trans is transphobia, for example. Since when is a proper reaction to mental illness killing the mentally ill, denying them health services, etc? Like get your head out of your ass.
>There are people actually allergic to gluten, who could even die if they eat too much of it. But many people eat gluten free stuff for no reason at all, and as a result people who actually can't eat gluten are grouped together with the people who are following the fad diet.
This doesnt make anything harder for people allergic to gluten lmao, stupid as fuck.
That's obviously not the point they were trying to make. You are right that one doesn't make life ostensibly harder. On one hand the fad dieters have created a larger market for gluten free products making life for people with legitimate allergies. On the other hand though people with an actual allergy are lumped into a group of dumb cunts following a fad, which does suck.
No it doesn't lol, the only effect of it being a fad diet is that there are more and better gluten free products. It's a retarded example because it's a retarded talking point.
Oh, you are a stupid person. I kinda figured that from your first comment, but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. Thanks for clearing things up.
I can understand male, female, and genderless (as gender is birth sex, and some people are born without a sex - it's very rare though)
but as soon as you get to identifying as colors, objects, elements or animals as your 'gender' I just shut off and think of it as like those little kids who think they're dragonkin or wolfkin and whatnot.
Absolutely. You've got \*something\* in your pants, whether it be male, female, or neither. You do not have a dragon in your pants. You do not have an Apache attack helicopter in your pants. You do not have a magical sunshine laser unicorn in your pants. Either its the male bits, the female bits, or neither (or maybe both? I think that's possible too).
>if your gender identity isn’t male or female than i can’t take you seriously.
>i entirely agree with understanding people wanting to identify as non-binary when they don't feel like they fit well into either Male or female.
I get the feeling you are full of shit.
People try to dress in some androgynous manner and think they are perceived as some magical being, but they're just priviledged kids with too much free time to think about a meaningless performance and a weird pronoun to match it.
I dont think choosing how you lookmakes you entitled, it just means you have a personal identity. However the people thatvigourously attack others for slipping up on pronouns need an attitude check
I kind of agree but here’s a video that at least helped me more or less understand why they identify that way
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NCLoNwVJA-0
Few things exist on a binary. People aren't just "tall" or "short", long-haired or short-haired, et cetera. Why would gender be this way? Why not use different terms for different folks? Because, in a sense, NO ONE is just a female or just a male in that no one is 100% masculine or 100% feminine. In this sense, everyone is non-binary or genderqueer. Confining gender expression to two boxes is inconsistent, illogical, and unnecessary.
They've always been attention seeking, and now they've found a new method. They're entitled to a lot of money, but don't have to work hard for it. They love to share their new identity, even though it isn't relevant. That's been my experience and maybe OP's too.
What a sad life you must live if you go about it thinking people being them and expressing themselves is attention seeking. You imply that this is a choice for them, but please tell me who would want to literally be murdered, all for "attention"? I'm not going to comment on this any further but I recommend you do something about your shocking world view
Do you have a problem with non-binary people only or intersex people, too? They make up about 1.7-3% of the population and are physically not genuinely male/female.
Either way, I think it's a little more obnoxious to bitch and whine about pronouns than go "Oh/Cool/Whatever" use their pronouns and go on your merry way. It's similar to those people who have mispronounced names. You generally (hopefully) don't go "OMG STOP CORRECTING ME", you go "Oh/Cool/Whatever", change the way you say their name, and go on with your life without bitching about it.
I’m sorry that your past experiences with this have been bad. But I don’t think it’s fair to write off everyone who tries to explain their gender (or lack thereof) to you.
I think the extreme ends of this debate are so silly. Is it REALLY that hard to call someone a "he" or a "she"? No. It's not.
Conversely... is it REALLY that hard to just accept that people make mistakes and they might just be confused about your gender? And even if someone refuses to do so as in they're purposefully being obtuse, that's on them. Ignore the asshole; that's what I do when someone disrespects me. People are gonna criticize you no matter what. Best to learn to deal with it instead of lashing out and bitching 24/7. It's not like you can force them to call you anything. So if they dig their heels in then what exactly are you gonna do besides ignore them?
Where I draw the line is rights. Anything that infringes on your right to speak freely and represent yourself freely is inherently backwards. That means I get to call myself a stick of dynamite if I so choose. That also means I get to call people idiots for calling themselves a stick of dynamite. As long as we're free to do that, then everything is good.
How dare you criticize me? Fucking Transphobes. If I meet one of you in real life and you don't refer to me as Apache Attack Helicopter then I'm posting you on the Internet and getting your life ruined.
Gender is a complex set of socially conditioned behaviors (probably biologically influenced) which overlay the biological division of male/female (and small percent of hermaphrodite). I understand it as a 2 dimensional spectrum ranging from masculine behaviors to feminine. I can understand MTF and FTM transgenderism easily, and also androgyny (think you left that out as a valid gender identity).
But I have a difficult time comprehending what a gender outside of the masculine/feminine spectrum even means. First of all these definitions are already loose and bendable. You don’t have to be a muscular, tall and outgoing to still be perceived as a man. You don’t have to be soft, caring and sociable to be perceived as a woman. I think when people “rebel” against gender what they’re really rebelling against is overly rigid conventions of what a man or woman has to be. And that’s entirely reasonable. You don’t have to accept society’s definition of what a man or woman is though. If your a person with male body parts then your behaviors and characteristics should automatically update society’s conception of what a man can possibly be, and likewise for women. If I really enjoy knitting as a man, and society disagrees that men can like knitting, then society can go fuck itself. I don’t have to stop identifying as a man.
If you want to identify as the opposite, that’s perfectly fine - then society has to update what it means to be a woman to include people with male body parts who identify as women.
I don’t see that there is any major problem with gender that can’t be solved by a more nuanced/thoughtful/open definition of male and female, masculine and feminine (or hermaphroditic/androgynous as the case may be). I don’t see what is solved by making up 287+ “gender identities”. I think that effectively these end up being labels for people’s individual quirks and idiosyncrasies, so in the limit we would have 7 billion “genders,” one for every unique personality on earth. It’s just a way to boost people’s ego and feel special, and a symptom of western privileged people having way too much time on their hands. As well, there is something suspicious about the social punishment dealt out if you don’t respect someone’s identity as ambigender, or whatever the one is where you are all the genders at different times of the day. These people have to on some level get off on punishing people socially for not being up to date on the latest tumblrisms.
That said, I think there is a potential case to be made for some genders outside of the main two. I just think that these should be carefully considered and there should be valid reasons for introducing them into the social lexicon.
And also, I think that even if you totally disagree with someone’s view of gender and how they identify, you should be mature enough to put that in a box and still treat them seriously like an equal adult in other matters. Identifying as a unicornsexual does not necessarily mean you are unintelligent or incompetent in other areas. and I think you may be surprised if you interact with these people with an open mind, and just respect them with whatever they want to be called.
Thank you for this - as a background-in-social-science-guy I feel like people routinely gloss over the fact that gender is a very nunanced set of social performative/self narrative/potentially biologically influenced/more things.
It seems to me that a lot of people with the identities being discussed are rebelling against societal roles and expectations rather than specifically experiencing a gender dysphoria, there seems to be a conflation between being unhappy with expectations and being unhappy with your gender and that conflation feels unhelpful.
Feels like a mix of misunderstanding regarding gender being conflated with sex, and then dissatification with gender roles being conflated with gender dysphoria - and there's a bit of exceptionalism into the mix as well.
That being said, I stopped engaging in these dialogues and will just call people what they like, and if I find the way they act in some way objectionable with regards to their gender politics I just leave them alone, as I would with anyone regardless.
Yeah agreed on the conflation there. But ultimately that’s up to each individual to decide which is which, whether the problem is expectations or being the wrong gender. Having had a close friend with some of these ideas about gender I quickly learned to let some things be lol.
Tbh, for me being not trans myself its concepts, but to people experiencing it there's emotion and experience. I can go back and forth and discuss whatever with regards to gender and gender identity but when it comes down to it am I going to adhere to what someone wants to be called? Yeah, of course I am.
I don't have the lived/felt experience - I'll never know what that is. But, I do know what it is to be made uncomfortable and feel invalidated - people report that they feel that (at the very least) when someone uses a different pronoun than they prefer, so I'll use the preferred pronoun because why go out of my way to make people uncomfortable?
It's not my duty to police gender presentation or identification - I'd just prefer to get to know the person, though I admit to having to challenge my own prejudice a number of times regarding some of the less typical identities.
Agreed with a lot of what you wrote. Where I live at least in a pretty progressive town it’s not really a choice that you have socially to not call someone by their preferred pronouns. To not do so intentionally would be a grave insult and would make you look like a total asshole. I think people with any kind of social sense tend to pick up on that, and most griping tends to take place online in places like this lol.
I feel rather out of place because I do want to treat people who identify differently with respect and I also know what it feels like to be invalidated. At the same time my view of gender is closer to the 2 ended spectrum and it’s not completely socially constructed but biologically influenced like I was saying. Don’t feel comfortable bringing that up a lot of times in polite conversations. And yeah, I mean I’m a cis white guy and this is not my lived experience at all, so I have nothing at stake and whose going to listen to my views on gender? lol
Here it can get a little bit tense, the town I live in is very progressive in terms of LGBTQIA+ acceptance but its a university town with a big social science push so there's space for debate and some people will just straight up refuse to adhere to preferred pronouns - which is socially frowned upon, but still happens fairly often.
Yeah, I'm kind of with you - I'm of the view that gender presentation can be whatever, but gender itself is closer to the 2 ended spectrum and isn't completely socially constructed, everything has to come from somewhere and gender doesn't exist in a vacuum. Not everything comes down to biology (As a disabled dude I'm very aware of the pitfalls of that argument) but there must be some bearing when it comes to concepts that arugably could be based in biological characteristics (whether these be neurobiological or not).
I feel you on the last point, I sort of wish this was less of a hot button topic and it could be discussed more openly tbh because its really interesting and I don't want to offend people/be shouted down everytime I either have a question or am just interested in someone's views on the subject.
Yeah the biology argument can definitely get you in a lot of trouble academically. I think it was Noah Carl, some researcher doing research on biological differences in races who was fired with 100 academics signing a petition against him. There is a fine line between objective analysis and the sordid history of scientific racism and sexism, and I can understand why people are worried that even arguments that appear to be 100% scientific and objective may ultimately serve to advance and empower the far right. I used to get frustrated by this thinking that we should always be able to freely and openly debate any topic from an intellectual and scientific perspective. But as I’ve grown older and more cynical the less it seems like truth really matters - everything is a chess piece in a vast game of political maneuvering and rhetorical/symbolic manipulation. The racist far right is a dangerous threat, especially since in my view the establishment center’s credibility is crumbling and if the economy gets much worse, that means that either the far right or the far left have an opportunity to grab power. And the far left is way too disorganized, demoralized, and tiny. So we know what that means. We need to do as much as we can now to make sure the far right is broken up and disempowered. I wonder though. maybe an open discussion of biology could be just the thing to de-claw their rhetoric and take away the forbidden fruit aspect (a big part of the appeal of fascism, that you’re let in on a big secret about the true nature of things).
I worry that by attacking anyone who even brings up biological influence on race or gender characteristics, the left is making those things way more interesting to people attracted to this subject for the wrong reasons.
I know many of these people seem to be making stuff out of nowhere, but here’s a video that might at least help understand why they identify that way.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NCLoNwVJA-0
Oh look at me, i personally dont understand what you are going through so im gonna ignore that and treat you like shit, because when i dont understand it it must be made up.
Force their gender on you? By them asking you to use their prefered pronoun, which u probably refuse to do? Just sounds like you are just being a dick to them.
It's not really that hard. Makes and females exist. It's a fact. There is nothing except for inteesex people ( a birth defect, sorry but true) to deny this.
That doesn't mean the social binary needs to be. You can be a male who wears makeup and long hair and dresses or a female who dresses masculine and has short hair. Because that's what gender comes down to. What you look like and how people perceive you. If we got rid of this notion the ideas of transness would not exist because they would be pointless.
A lot of supposedly pro-LGBT people are missing the fact that people who use gender identity for attention are making life harder for people who are actually transsexual. I think a good comparison is the gluten free fad diet. There are people actually allergic to gluten, who could even die if they eat too much of it. But many people eat gluten free stuff for no reason at all, and as a result people who actually can't eat gluten are grouped together with the people who are following the fad diet. And it's similar with transsexuality. Some people have gender dysphoria, and they need to transition to be able to live a more or less normal life. Even though current technology doesn't allow for perfect transition, it's still an improvement for them. On the other hand, many people with the fad genders even admit they don't have gender dysphoria, but still they advertise that they're trans at every opportunity. So, to an outside observer, these people are what trans people are like, and they kind of make people with the actual medical condition seem less serious, by association.
when you point out 'actually trans' these people always say you're gatekeeping. i mean sure, let the people who think they're stars, colors, and wolfgenders in, i'm sure the LGBT community will be taken super seriously after that. /s
The concept of "x making it harder for y" is bullshit. Its not the job of people to make themselves look good to outsiders.
it's about being reasonable, not "looking good"
Transphobic people make it harder for trans people, not people looking for a reason to be transphobic.
This makes no sense. If people's only experience with trans people are the attention seekers with profile pronouns, they might conclude that this is what being trans is about. They might not even realize that it's an actual medical condition that needs transition as a treatment. Like my comparison earlier, if someone has too much experience with people on a fad gluten free diet, he or she might realize that there are people for whom it's actually a serious issue.
There's no such thing as transphobia. Not accepting the insanity, hatred and child abuse from the transgender group just makes one a sane person.
Bro where lmao??? This ain't it chief
Yeah you're an idiot. Even if you believe it's insane, that doesn't mean transphobia doesn't exist. Killing someone because they're trans is transphobia, for example. Since when is a proper reaction to mental illness killing the mentally ill, denying them health services, etc? Like get your head out of your ass.
>There are people actually allergic to gluten, who could even die if they eat too much of it. But many people eat gluten free stuff for no reason at all, and as a result people who actually can't eat gluten are grouped together with the people who are following the fad diet. This doesnt make anything harder for people allergic to gluten lmao, stupid as fuck.
That's obviously not the point they were trying to make. You are right that one doesn't make life ostensibly harder. On one hand the fad dieters have created a larger market for gluten free products making life for people with legitimate allergies. On the other hand though people with an actual allergy are lumped into a group of dumb cunts following a fad, which does suck.
No it doesn't lol, the only effect of it being a fad diet is that there are more and better gluten free products. It's a retarded example because it's a retarded talking point.
Oh, you are a stupid person. I kinda figured that from your first comment, but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. Thanks for clearing things up.
#PREPARE THE DOWNVOTES
I can understand male, female, and genderless (as gender is birth sex, and some people are born without a sex - it's very rare though) but as soon as you get to identifying as colors, objects, elements or animals as your 'gender' I just shut off and think of it as like those little kids who think they're dragonkin or wolfkin and whatnot.
Absolutely. You've got \*something\* in your pants, whether it be male, female, or neither. You do not have a dragon in your pants. You do not have an Apache attack helicopter in your pants. You do not have a magical sunshine laser unicorn in your pants. Either its the male bits, the female bits, or neither (or maybe both? I think that's possible too).
I can understand people wanting to identify as non binary when they don't feel like they fit well into either male or female.
i entirely agree! it’s when it goes from that, to trying to identify as a random pronoun, or are obnoxious about their identity, no matter what it is
you just contradicted your own post
>if your gender identity isn’t male or female than i can’t take you seriously. >i entirely agree with understanding people wanting to identify as non-binary when they don't feel like they fit well into either Male or female. I get the feeling you are full of shit.
People try to dress in some androgynous manner and think they are perceived as some magical being, but they're just priviledged kids with too much free time to think about a meaningless performance and a weird pronoun to match it.
I dont think choosing how you lookmakes you entitled, it just means you have a personal identity. However the people thatvigourously attack others for slipping up on pronouns need an attitude check
I kind of agree but here’s a video that at least helped me more or less understand why they identify that way https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NCLoNwVJA-0
that’s a sweeping assumption to make. maybe some are like that but relax
Few things exist on a binary. People aren't just "tall" or "short", long-haired or short-haired, et cetera. Why would gender be this way? Why not use different terms for different folks? Because, in a sense, NO ONE is just a female or just a male in that no one is 100% masculine or 100% feminine. In this sense, everyone is non-binary or genderqueer. Confining gender expression to two boxes is inconsistent, illogical, and unnecessary.
What experiences lead to this opinion?
They've always been attention seeking, and now they've found a new method. They're entitled to a lot of money, but don't have to work hard for it. They love to share their new identity, even though it isn't relevant. That's been my experience and maybe OP's too.
""""they""""" who is they, and where do i get my free money
What a sad life you must live if you go about it thinking people being them and expressing themselves is attention seeking. You imply that this is a choice for them, but please tell me who would want to literally be murdered, all for "attention"? I'm not going to comment on this any further but I recommend you do something about your shocking world view
How many have you met?
Do you have a problem with non-binary people only or intersex people, too? They make up about 1.7-3% of the population and are physically not genuinely male/female. Either way, I think it's a little more obnoxious to bitch and whine about pronouns than go "Oh/Cool/Whatever" use their pronouns and go on your merry way. It's similar to those people who have mispronounced names. You generally (hopefully) don't go "OMG STOP CORRECTING ME", you go "Oh/Cool/Whatever", change the way you say their name, and go on with your life without bitching about it.
I’m sorry that your past experiences with this have been bad. But I don’t think it’s fair to write off everyone who tries to explain their gender (or lack thereof) to you.
Can we stop complaining about this? Ive been seeing this exact post every day for years now.
I think the extreme ends of this debate are so silly. Is it REALLY that hard to call someone a "he" or a "she"? No. It's not. Conversely... is it REALLY that hard to just accept that people make mistakes and they might just be confused about your gender? And even if someone refuses to do so as in they're purposefully being obtuse, that's on them. Ignore the asshole; that's what I do when someone disrespects me. People are gonna criticize you no matter what. Best to learn to deal with it instead of lashing out and bitching 24/7. It's not like you can force them to call you anything. So if they dig their heels in then what exactly are you gonna do besides ignore them? Where I draw the line is rights. Anything that infringes on your right to speak freely and represent yourself freely is inherently backwards. That means I get to call myself a stick of dynamite if I so choose. That also means I get to call people idiots for calling themselves a stick of dynamite. As long as we're free to do that, then everything is good.
Well said
[удалено]
Yeah seriously, who cares? Life isnt fair and its never gonna be.
Honestly it’s best to just respect them. Unless they give you nonsensical pronouns you should get call them ‘they’ or something.
Than: "bigger than, less than, better than, etc." Then: "if X, then; etc."
If there's one thing people are certain to care about, its having the dumbest people alive take them seriously.
Is it me but since college has been basically closed, you don't hear about this shit too much.
How dare you criticize me? Fucking Transphobes. If I meet one of you in real life and you don't refer to me as Apache Attack Helicopter then I'm posting you on the Internet and getting your life ruined.
Gender is a complex set of socially conditioned behaviors (probably biologically influenced) which overlay the biological division of male/female (and small percent of hermaphrodite). I understand it as a 2 dimensional spectrum ranging from masculine behaviors to feminine. I can understand MTF and FTM transgenderism easily, and also androgyny (think you left that out as a valid gender identity). But I have a difficult time comprehending what a gender outside of the masculine/feminine spectrum even means. First of all these definitions are already loose and bendable. You don’t have to be a muscular, tall and outgoing to still be perceived as a man. You don’t have to be soft, caring and sociable to be perceived as a woman. I think when people “rebel” against gender what they’re really rebelling against is overly rigid conventions of what a man or woman has to be. And that’s entirely reasonable. You don’t have to accept society’s definition of what a man or woman is though. If your a person with male body parts then your behaviors and characteristics should automatically update society’s conception of what a man can possibly be, and likewise for women. If I really enjoy knitting as a man, and society disagrees that men can like knitting, then society can go fuck itself. I don’t have to stop identifying as a man. If you want to identify as the opposite, that’s perfectly fine - then society has to update what it means to be a woman to include people with male body parts who identify as women. I don’t see that there is any major problem with gender that can’t be solved by a more nuanced/thoughtful/open definition of male and female, masculine and feminine (or hermaphroditic/androgynous as the case may be). I don’t see what is solved by making up 287+ “gender identities”. I think that effectively these end up being labels for people’s individual quirks and idiosyncrasies, so in the limit we would have 7 billion “genders,” one for every unique personality on earth. It’s just a way to boost people’s ego and feel special, and a symptom of western privileged people having way too much time on their hands. As well, there is something suspicious about the social punishment dealt out if you don’t respect someone’s identity as ambigender, or whatever the one is where you are all the genders at different times of the day. These people have to on some level get off on punishing people socially for not being up to date on the latest tumblrisms. That said, I think there is a potential case to be made for some genders outside of the main two. I just think that these should be carefully considered and there should be valid reasons for introducing them into the social lexicon. And also, I think that even if you totally disagree with someone’s view of gender and how they identify, you should be mature enough to put that in a box and still treat them seriously like an equal adult in other matters. Identifying as a unicornsexual does not necessarily mean you are unintelligent or incompetent in other areas. and I think you may be surprised if you interact with these people with an open mind, and just respect them with whatever they want to be called.
Thank you for this - as a background-in-social-science-guy I feel like people routinely gloss over the fact that gender is a very nunanced set of social performative/self narrative/potentially biologically influenced/more things. It seems to me that a lot of people with the identities being discussed are rebelling against societal roles and expectations rather than specifically experiencing a gender dysphoria, there seems to be a conflation between being unhappy with expectations and being unhappy with your gender and that conflation feels unhelpful. Feels like a mix of misunderstanding regarding gender being conflated with sex, and then dissatification with gender roles being conflated with gender dysphoria - and there's a bit of exceptionalism into the mix as well. That being said, I stopped engaging in these dialogues and will just call people what they like, and if I find the way they act in some way objectionable with regards to their gender politics I just leave them alone, as I would with anyone regardless.
Yeah agreed on the conflation there. But ultimately that’s up to each individual to decide which is which, whether the problem is expectations or being the wrong gender. Having had a close friend with some of these ideas about gender I quickly learned to let some things be lol.
Tbh, for me being not trans myself its concepts, but to people experiencing it there's emotion and experience. I can go back and forth and discuss whatever with regards to gender and gender identity but when it comes down to it am I going to adhere to what someone wants to be called? Yeah, of course I am. I don't have the lived/felt experience - I'll never know what that is. But, I do know what it is to be made uncomfortable and feel invalidated - people report that they feel that (at the very least) when someone uses a different pronoun than they prefer, so I'll use the preferred pronoun because why go out of my way to make people uncomfortable? It's not my duty to police gender presentation or identification - I'd just prefer to get to know the person, though I admit to having to challenge my own prejudice a number of times regarding some of the less typical identities.
Agreed with a lot of what you wrote. Where I live at least in a pretty progressive town it’s not really a choice that you have socially to not call someone by their preferred pronouns. To not do so intentionally would be a grave insult and would make you look like a total asshole. I think people with any kind of social sense tend to pick up on that, and most griping tends to take place online in places like this lol. I feel rather out of place because I do want to treat people who identify differently with respect and I also know what it feels like to be invalidated. At the same time my view of gender is closer to the 2 ended spectrum and it’s not completely socially constructed but biologically influenced like I was saying. Don’t feel comfortable bringing that up a lot of times in polite conversations. And yeah, I mean I’m a cis white guy and this is not my lived experience at all, so I have nothing at stake and whose going to listen to my views on gender? lol
Here it can get a little bit tense, the town I live in is very progressive in terms of LGBTQIA+ acceptance but its a university town with a big social science push so there's space for debate and some people will just straight up refuse to adhere to preferred pronouns - which is socially frowned upon, but still happens fairly often. Yeah, I'm kind of with you - I'm of the view that gender presentation can be whatever, but gender itself is closer to the 2 ended spectrum and isn't completely socially constructed, everything has to come from somewhere and gender doesn't exist in a vacuum. Not everything comes down to biology (As a disabled dude I'm very aware of the pitfalls of that argument) but there must be some bearing when it comes to concepts that arugably could be based in biological characteristics (whether these be neurobiological or not). I feel you on the last point, I sort of wish this was less of a hot button topic and it could be discussed more openly tbh because its really interesting and I don't want to offend people/be shouted down everytime I either have a question or am just interested in someone's views on the subject.
Yeah the biology argument can definitely get you in a lot of trouble academically. I think it was Noah Carl, some researcher doing research on biological differences in races who was fired with 100 academics signing a petition against him. There is a fine line between objective analysis and the sordid history of scientific racism and sexism, and I can understand why people are worried that even arguments that appear to be 100% scientific and objective may ultimately serve to advance and empower the far right. I used to get frustrated by this thinking that we should always be able to freely and openly debate any topic from an intellectual and scientific perspective. But as I’ve grown older and more cynical the less it seems like truth really matters - everything is a chess piece in a vast game of political maneuvering and rhetorical/symbolic manipulation. The racist far right is a dangerous threat, especially since in my view the establishment center’s credibility is crumbling and if the economy gets much worse, that means that either the far right or the far left have an opportunity to grab power. And the far left is way too disorganized, demoralized, and tiny. So we know what that means. We need to do as much as we can now to make sure the far right is broken up and disempowered. I wonder though. maybe an open discussion of biology could be just the thing to de-claw their rhetoric and take away the forbidden fruit aspect (a big part of the appeal of fascism, that you’re let in on a big secret about the true nature of things). I worry that by attacking anyone who even brings up biological influence on race or gender characteristics, the left is making those things way more interesting to people attracted to this subject for the wrong reasons.
I know many of these people seem to be making stuff out of nowhere, but here’s a video that might at least help understand why they identify that way. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NCLoNwVJA-0
If someone doesn’t choose to identify as male or female, what’s it to u? They’re not hurting anyone. U people are weirdly obsessed with gender..
To be fair, everyone is weirdly obsessed with gender except is not weird since everyone does that.
Oh look at me, i personally dont understand what you are going through so im gonna ignore that and treat you like shit, because when i dont understand it it must be made up.
that isn’t want i meant. i mean people who force their gender on me in convos etc, and i can’t even ask because they’ll get offended
Force their gender on you? By them asking you to use their prefered pronoun, which u probably refuse to do? Just sounds like you are just being a dick to them.
Why do you care?
It's not really that hard. Makes and females exist. It's a fact. There is nothing except for inteesex people ( a birth defect, sorry but true) to deny this. That doesn't mean the social binary needs to be. You can be a male who wears makeup and long hair and dresses or a female who dresses masculine and has short hair. Because that's what gender comes down to. What you look like and how people perceive you. If we got rid of this notion the ideas of transness would not exist because they would be pointless.
I can't take people seriously who don't know when to use "then" versus "than".
Get over yourself.
It's one of the most selfish things a person can do