The Kingfish posted:

Its the "identity" part of their gender identity that isn't valid. The traditional genders are rammed down our throats by culture and society until they are internalized as an essential parts of our personalities. Personal genders are invented by their.. adherents(?) as a form of self-expression.

That's why you can ignore personal gender pronounces in a way that you can't ignore traditional pronouns.

Cingulate posted:

I think that's maybe kind of rude, but I personally don't think it's really bad. Morphology is really hard and people are loving poo poo at learning it quickly, so if somebody is putting a non-significant effort into not misgendering you hard, that to me seems not wrong, even if they're not going with the particular form you've personally chosen.

The Kingfish posted:

Its only rude because xe people are looking to feel special.

You could use neutral "they" all day long in every conversation you have and nobody would even notice. Unless, that is, they were looking to be upset about it.

The Kingfish posted:

Its only rude because xe people are looking to feel special.

The Kingfish posted:

Its only rude because xe people are looking to feel special.

You could use neutral "they" all day long in every conversation you have and nobody would even notice. Unless, that is, they were looking to be upset about it.

jivjov posted:

People with "xe" as their pronoun are looking to feel normal.

The Kingfish posted:

Definitely not.

jivjov posted:

It's no different than a trans man wanting to use "he" as their pronoun of choice.

The Kingfish posted:

Its entirely different.

The Kingfish posted:

Its entirely different.

Cingulate posted:

Let's say I am just a naturally skeptical person. (I am.) I am skeptical about your explanation for the personal motivation of these people's actions. What evidence do you have that their motivation is truly wanting to feel "special", whatever that means?

The Kingfish posted:

Its different because transmen adopt he/his in order to better perform their new gender in a society that has preconceived notions about sex and gender.

The Kingfish posted:

Its different because transmen adopt he/his in order to better perform their new gender in a society that has preconceived notions about sex and gender.

Cingulate posted:

Let's say I am just a naturally skeptical person. (I am.) I am skeptical about your explanation for the personal motivation of these people's actions. What evidence do you have that their motivation is truly wanting to feel "special", whatever that means?

rudatron posted:

If you apply that same skepticism to trans people themselves, you end up having top reject pure self identification as valid - you don't need a water right case, you just need a reasonable doubt, which that frankly is.

All of these problems can be avoided by my perspective on this topic, which is that natural performance is gender, meaning your born sex is irrelevant, but your presentation is absolutely critical.

The Kingfish posted:

My evidence is that they chose to use a pronoun they made up for themselves instead of the non-binary pronoun we already have.

Brainiac Five posted:

How do you determine "natural performance"?

Brainiac Five posted:

This doesn't explain anything because this applies to someone adopting Spivak pronouns just as well- they are doing it in order to better perform their new gender in a society that has preconceived notions about sex and gender.

Cingulate posted:

Okay, that's not specific evidence. It doesn't match my epistemic standards - it doesn't satisfy my skepticism. Is that truly what you build your belief on in this situation? Cause it seems to me very weak evidence to build anything on.

rudatron posted:

Your behaviors that you default into, when you no one is looking ie- you're not being deceptive. Socially however, the onus is on you to present correctly, because what you communicate is more than what you say, but also how you look.

The Kingfish posted:

No it doesn't apply to personal pronouns because non-binary people aren't performing gender the same way that trans and cis people are.

The Kingfish posted:

No it doesn't apply to personal pronouns because non-binary people aren't performing gender the same way that trans and cis people are.

rudatron posted:

Your behaviors that you default into, when you no one is looking ie- you're not being deceptive. Socially however, the onus is on you to present correctly, because what you communicate is more than what you say, but also how you look.

SHISHKABOB posted:

Human behavior is in part a function of the societies that they live in. It's impossible to conceive of a human being's behavior who does not live in some kind of society.

The Kingfish posted:

I honestly wish you good luck finding strong evidence for any of this non-binary stuff. I can assure you that you won't find any for xe people one way or another.

Brainiac Five posted:

rudatron posted:

Not at all, behaviors are verifiable in a way in which feelings are not. So for example, the usual ring of tests you are required to do before your legal sex change, are designed to weed out people who are not committed, or mistaken. Yet functionally all it is measuring is your behavior. Additionally, it is both conceivably measurable, if you're asking to use deception and spend resources, but also a standard which can be relaxed because of practical concerns, the trade off being reliability. No such equivalence exists for your phenomenological feelings.

I also make no assumption of society being unchangeable. The argument there is one of standards and individual responsibility, not one of how dynamic those standards are.

rudatron posted:

Not at all, behaviors are verifiable in a way in which feelings are not. So for example, the usual ring of tests you are required to do before your legal sex change, are designed to weed out people who are not committed, or mistaken. Yet functionally all it is measuring is your behavior. Additionally, it is both conceivably measurable, if you're asking to use deception and spend resources, but also a standard which can be relaxed because of practical concerns, the trade off being reliability. No such equivalence exists for your phenomenological feelings.

I also make no assumption of society being unchangeable. The argument there is one of standards and individual responsibility, not one of how dynamic those standards are.

Troposphere posted:

The Kingfish posted:

Its only rude because xe people are looking to feel special.

rudatron posted:

I have not made, nor believe, the claims you are attributing to me here. 'Natural' in the way I used or meant 'honest', not 'intrinsic'. I am anti-essentialist. Gender is not intrinsic, it is performative, subject to already existing social norms, which change with place and time.

Do not place these beliefs into a category they do not belong in, read them as they are, and place you preconceived notions aside.

Brainiac Five posted:

This is smug and doesn't actually answer the question. If we don't know what "natural" behaviors are for women or men, the entire line of argumentation is moot because it's over something meaningless in the first place! So you do need to answer, at least tentatively, what a "natural" woman or man would behave like.

rudatron posted:

I have not made, nor believe, the claims you are attributing to me here. 'Natural' in the way I used or meant 'honest', not 'intrinsic'. I am anti-essentialist. Gender is not intrinsic, it is performative, subject to already existing social norms, which change with place and time.

Do not place these beliefs into a category they do not belong in, read them as they are, and place you preconceived notions aside.

Cingulate posted:

That's a reasonable definition of some form of insanity.
Sure, the full-blown psychotic or sociopath may be physically interacting with society, but they're not living in it.

I'm not saying I have good evidence either way. You're actually free to question my own evidence base for my own policies. But right now I'm asking about yours. How strong is your evidence you base your behavior on? How confident are you in it?

Brainiac Five posted:

Those are not natural behaviors as you have outlined them, they are performed behaviors. So they are irrelevant to what you have suggested should be the standard, and you are unable to measure behaviors without observing them and making them unnatural. In order to ensure that the people you are surveilling are unaware of your surveillance, you actually do need to peek inside people's heads, meaning you cannot do it and cannot be assured that behaviors are truly natural without telepathy. That is, "natural behaviors" as you outline them are inherently phenomenological. You can say that all we need is a reasonable standard, but that also means that social behaviors are totally unnatural, which is a disturbing conclusion to come to. Basically, what this sounds like is you coming up with something that sounds good without thinking through how it would work at all.

SwimmingSpider posted:

This thread is a never-ending cycle of cis people making statements about trans people, trans people explaining to the cis people why they're wrong and the cis people ignoring them and then saying the same thing they said before.

No one uses neo-pronouns to "feel special", at least not in the way goons tend to mean it (there's a lt to unpack there, but let's leave that for another time). They use them because those pronouns feel right for those individual people.

It's not a feeling that can be quantified but its there and it's valid.

SHISHKABOB posted:

I guess that would depend on the reasons for why they are not "living in" society. Those reasons could be related to the societies themselves, or they could be "natural" or physical reasons (brain tumor?).