Gender pronoun entitlement vs religious entitlement

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Gender pronoun entitlement vs religious entitlement

«‹›2 »

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Are there any studies on the effects of unisex bathrooms?

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 23:28

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 14, 2024 19:35

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

blowfish posted:

Yeah and?

Not being rude to marginalized people is good.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 00:01

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

The Kingfish posted:

Why? What if they are acting like idiots?

If a black person is rude, you call them a jerk, not a friend of the family. If a trans person is rude, you call them a jerk, not their dispreferred pronoun.

(I'm not saying the two are equivalent, but they're similar.)

That is, if you want to be rude, which you still probably shouldn't.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 02:27

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

SwimmingSpider posted:

People who use non-standard pronouns, no matter how esoteric, hurt absolutely no one by using them. Acknowledging those pronouns takes little to no effort and makes a world of difference to the people using them, so what's the point in refusing to?

I think there is however a difference between
- a member of a historically and currently marginalized group who is trying to not abide by a language they experience to co-constitute this marginalization
- a weird teenager who just wants to be special and insists on being called thyr

I guess the difference is not always, but usually, obvious, and #2 should be really rate either way.

I also, and I understand I'm saying this from a not particularly informed, and rather privileged, position, that pronouns aren't that important in the grand scheme of things.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 02:38

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

OwlFancier posted:

It demonstrably makes trans people less likely to kill themselves.

Source?

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 12:44

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

The nice thing about singular they is that it's under specified. It doesn't mean "neuter", it means "I don't know".
Currently it's super insulting to keep using it once you've been informed about what to use for a particular person, but I can imagine it taking over and becoming totally neutral so English loses gender marking on third person singular pronouns and the whole debate becomes moot. Not saying this will happen, but it is one possible future.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 20:10

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

OwlFancier posted:

It demonstrably makes trans people less likely to kill themselves. That's pretty important.

Also it serves to help destroy gender as a binary and prescriptive construct, same as gay acceptance seems to be destroying sexuality as a binary and prescriptive construct.

Cingulate posted:

Source?

Cause this thread moves way too fast.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 22:13

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

I'm really sure in a calmer mood, we'd quickly see blowfish and his detractors are much more in agreement than in disagreement, and about the remainder, a cool-header productive debate could be had.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 22:35

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

The Kingfish posted:

Exactly? Gender is a bad social construct, and personal genders do nothing to undermine gender as a force in our society. We should be working to abolish gender, not strengthen its grip.

And what policy on how to address/refer to the people in question does result from this?

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 22:40

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

blowfish posted:

I'm of the opinion that people doing or saying absurd things should be actively educated. Climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, neoliberals (neo liberals), lolbertarians, and xe people who think other people need to actually call them that.

One of these is not like the other:

blowfish posted:

Climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, neoliberals (neo liberals), lolbertarians, and xe people who think other people need to actually call them that

How? Well, they have a few millennia of being treated horribly for something they're most likely somehow born with to look back at. Now this doesn't make their position inherently more truthful, but it does, I think, license an extra serving of respect that the others do not inherently deserve.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 22:56

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Sulphuric rear end in a top hat posted:

Sounds like privilege to me.

Sorry, what are you saying?

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 23:06

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

The Kingfish posted:

Because I don't believe in using personal genders for the reasons already given.

The problem is, you're forced (by language) to use something. You don't have the option of simply not specifying it. So what do you pick, the one the other person considers insulting, or an alternative you consider ridiculous?

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 23:09

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Sulphuric rear end in a top hat posted:

The entitling one group to extra respect, based on how they were born, over another. That sounds like someone is being granted privilege.

No - everyone else has the privilege of not being persecuted and shamed over their sex/gender. What you do by not deliberately misgendering someone is trying to offer a really tiny slice of the privilege everyone else already has.

The Kingfish posted:

"they/their"

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.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 23:22

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

The Kingfish posted:

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

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?

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 23:30

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Kingfish:

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?

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 23:45

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

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.

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.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 23:54

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

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.

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.

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.

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?

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 00:27

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

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.

Natural behavior for women is to lay eggs. Natural behavior for men is to sing football chants. It's biology. Trust me, I'm a psychologist.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 00:41

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

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.

Pretty sure all of this is enormous simplifications.

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?).

Nobody knows. The biological bases of social and anti-social behavior are mostly not understood.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 00:45

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

OwlFancier posted:

No it isn't? Hermits do exist. They're certainly rare but human beings living with close to zero social contact is a thing that has happened, even from a young age.

A hermit is somebody who is "in" society - much more than, say, a pet cat in New York or an insane person in a mental hospital who is treated by 7 different people. A hermit is somebody whose interaction with society is to avoid it. He's not physically interacting with society, but his very being - even the name applied to it - is about how he stands with respect to society.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 01:19

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Nostalgia4Infinity posted:

I feel like this thread in a nutshell is:

"Show people basic respect by calling them whatever pronouns they want to use."

"LOL look at these zany words/weirdos "

On an endless loop.

It's not as simple - if Donald Trump demanded to be referred to as lordsir, pronoun wise, you'd flip him off. What is the difference between misgendering someone, and referring to Donald trump as "he" even after he has stated an explicit, and possibly even genuine, desire to be addressed as lordsir? There is one, but I hope this shows how it's not quite as simple as you're making it out to be.

I'm not saying it's complicated, but it's not as simple as what you're saying.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 12:08

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

blowfish posted:

It is very simple: it's different depending on how much I identify with the unperson in question

This is probably true, but that's a cause, not a reason. What would a reason be? You're a smart person, you can probably imagine some reasons somebody in favor of "pronoun respect" would bring forward for why they'd treat the Trump case differently than the trans case.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 12:29

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

blowfish posted:

Since I don't consider any socially constructed identities real, I don't care beyond "people are stupid and do retarded poo poo".

But you'll also probably admit this is not because they have zero reason, but because you're unwilling to engage.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 12:55

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

blowfish posted:

Unless those people want to implement their dumb poo poo in badly thought out policy I really don't want to. Too bad we're now at that point.

I really believe it can be helpful for all involved to find commonalities and actual differences. This includes the reasons here for treating the hypothetical Trump and misgendering cases differently.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 13:02

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

blowfish posted:

If something is supposed to be valid, it needs to be valid regardless of the suicide rate of people it applies to.

So do you think there are reasonable people who can think of a valid reason here?

Archonex posted:

Last I checked Trump didn't have a 50% suicide rate.

But hey, keep equivocating folks.

Literally nobody here is actually dong the equivocation you're perceiving.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 13:51

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Generally speaking, people are wrong all the time about their identity. Personal intuitions are really bad and basically never authoritative.

Example: I have often heard that many poorer Americans consider themselves, and actually act in many ways congruent with being, temporally inconvenienced millionaires. Now I am not saying this is somehow a great analogy for gender identity - the point is simply that people can in principle be very wrong about what they are, by very reasonable standards.

Now treating someone with respect probably always requires somehow acknowledging their self identity, and I guess it's very often absolutely essential to treating someone with basic human decency. But that is a normative statement, about what people morally deserve - not about what gives us an informed insight into what they are.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 16:03

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

blowfish posted:

Offense itself is not wrong. There will always be someone, somewhere offended about whatever you are saying. If what you are saying causes nobody offense, it is trivial and uninteresting.

Trans people being offended (attacked, marginalized) is so common and normalized that it's pretty trivial and uninteresting.

It's totally important to be able to offend those in comfortable positions - the established, the mighty. But that doesn't necessarily extend to offending those who're already constantly abused.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 16:06

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Nostalgic Cashew posted:

Could someone answer this? I think it would help a lot with my understanding. I get very confused when it's said that gender is an individually asserted part of identity, but other elements of identity do/don't deserve the same consideration by others.

I will try to give my own take once I'm back at a keyboard. But I probably don't have a particularly smart or representative view.

IMO it's very good you're asking for clarification on something you don't yet see though.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 16:10

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

OwlFancier posted:

You're correct, that is a very poor analogy. Because the response to it is "this identity is causing you to harm yourself and there are other ones available to you which fulfil your desire for self-value" which, despite much effort attempting to discover an alternative, has not been found to be true for trans people.

Why did you waste the time to write this even?

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 16:12

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

OwlFancier posted:

Because it's a poor analogy and equivocating the two is disingenuous.

Yes, that's what I'm asking you. I've said, here's something that is clearly not a good analogy. And you waste two posts on explaining why it's not a good analogy. You could have explained why trump deserves less respect than trans people in that time and done something much less useless.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 16:46

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

So why would anyone think there is a difference between those two cases:

- Donald Trump, having lost the election, with a very bruised ego, demands that from now on, everyone writing and talking to and about him must respect his personal identity, what he feels himself to be, by referring to him as lordsir.
- a person with severe and clinical gender dysphoria requests to be adressed as she or as xhir although they were born with XY chromosomes, has a penis, and is legally recognized as a male.

Now to a lot of people, this is a ridiculous proposition - possibly even insulting to trans people. To them, it is obviously clear where the difference is. Well, there is zero gain in yelling at people who do not see a difference here that they are wrong wrong wrong. This is not going to give anyone a proper reason for seeing a difference.
But I think a reasonable cause can be made. I'm not saying this is a really well thought out position, or even that it's necessarily mine. I'm also not particularly inclined to argue or defend it, I just want to present that it's totally possible to simply present one's reasons on this issue.

First, I will address a few possible reasons that I think are distractions.
- Trump is actually truly upset, and he does hate not being addressed as lordsir. In fact, Trump has been diagnosed with depression resulting from severe narcissistic injury.
- Correlations with reality. By all possible measures, Trump is just as much or more of a lordsir than our transgender example is a she or xhir. He even got a nobility title from somewhere, and a faux medieval castle, whereas "she" generally refers to people with two Xs and no penis, and "xhir" doesn't even exist. We don't have any strong, replicable evidence that transsexuality has a clear biological base yet, and Trump's personal delusion may well have been caused by an undiagnosed biological constellation.
- The intersection of these: personal choice. Trump decides he wants to be addressed so just as much as our trans person decides for themselves.

Here is the major difference I see. Donald Trump does not stand in a long and ongoing tradition of being injured over his identity. In fact, Trump stands in a long tradition of being rewarded for his identity. (Criminals also stand in a long tradition of being persecuted over their identities; but we think it only just to persecute them precisely to the degree with which the cause others harm, and our trans person does not cause anyone harm by asking for a specific pronoun.)
This aspect does in fact make a gigantic difference. It's the most important difference in the world. Consider free speech, or freedom of religion, or any other liberty. They're not important in themselves, as an abstract good, they're important in what they are for. The point of defending free speech is not to keep it legal to call Black people niggers, it is to keep it legal to criticize the government and not be tortured to death by the king's personal guard over it. The point of freedom of religion is not to allow schools to not teach evolution if it makes being a fundamentalist Christian a bit harder, but to prevent pogroms against Jews. The point of freedom of the press is not to instigate hatred of immigrants, but to keep venture capitalists and lobbyists at least a bit accountable instead of allowing them to sue you into oblivion and shut down your newspaper.

The point of respecting a trans person's wishes regarding their pronouns is to not stand in a long tradition of dismembering and defenestrating gay men and raping lesbian women. And it's a tradition - the Worst Tradition, in fact. If you call them a she, that's not somehow taking away an important, unique voice from the marketplace of ideas. Everyone else is still calling them a he or an it. Joining that chorus reinforces a tradition of violent intolerance. Disagreeing with it is taking a very minor stance against the Worst Tradition, or at least not joining this tradition. Because if you join in in the chorus, that's being part of all of society bearing down on that person. If you insult Trump, he has all of society his money can by to prop him up.

Corollary: what if Donald Trump turns out to be trans, and wishes to be addressed as a she? He still has his money and social support, right? Yes, but when you come down on that part of society which disrespects trans people, that part is not selectively calling Trump a he against his wishes, it's making it clear that the tradition of violating trans people's concerns is generally still going on. So even if Trump/Hitler/whoever were to turn out trans, we should still grudgingly respect his (her) wishes - not for his sake, but because the Worst Tradition really doesn't need even more support. It already has a hundred million people on its side.

The day persecution of trans people has become ancient history may be the day where it's cool to make a joke about them and we can all just laugh at it. (This may already be somewhere on the horizon with gays and Jews in some parts of the world.) Conversely, if people actually started being oppressed (that is, attacked not by individuals, but by society) for being Christians by the atheist mainstream, theirs would become a position deserving respect and protection.

Cingulate fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Mar 29, 2016

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 17:00

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

the trump tutelage posted:

Do you believe that society is only as happy as it's unhappiest individual, then? Where does the happiness and wellbeing of 0.5% factor in to the wellbeing of society as a whole?

What if I believe that society as a whole would be happier if there was less celebration of individuality and less weight placed on individual experience and subjective truth?

Then I'd say you should probably consider going to China.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 17:10

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Although it may be a great stress relief, ultimately, nobody is served well by yelling.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 17:16

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

jivjov posted:

Given than Amused to Death so far has not responded well to rational discourse, I figured that all caps might penetrate the thick wall of marginalization and bigotry that seems to serve them for a skull.

If nothing else, it serves to ensure that the argument cannot be made that my position was not seen or heard.

That is a thought much dumber than you.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 17:23

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

SedanChair posted:

The idiotic Trump comparison, like all other idiotic comparisons, has no body of clinical research behind it. You picked an example to deliberately show your willful and ongoing ignorance of trans issues.

What research specifically is behind your position, whatever it may be?
Also you didn't read the trump comparison posts.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 17:52

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

If you're convinced trans people should be addressed with pronouns of their choosing, the Trump analogy is not for you. It's for those who're not. If you think it's bad, you could try doing a better one though.

Or keep yelling I guess.

SedanChair posted:

You'll never know. I am the seal preventing you from attaining this knowledge. I'm drunk with power now.

I'm currently looking at the two relevant pieces in Ann Revs Clin Psych here - Gender Dysphoria in Adults, and Mental Health in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Youth - and they don't really immediately connect with your position for me. But maybe I'm missing something!

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 18:49

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Who What Now posted:

your analogy ... people aren't responding to it the way you want... Don't get pissy because you failed at getting through to people.

What?

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 19:04

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Archonex posted:

Look at the definition of what a transgender person is. You see how it mentions stuff like gender dysphoria, issues with the gender they've had to present to society, etc, etc?

What is biological predispositions here? Who is predisposed for what?

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 19:14

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Who What Now posted:

^^^^^^
What's tripping you up?

Stop acting like a victim for one. When you constantly make little jabs about what you write being "too triggering" and being banned for "triggering emotions" and poo poo it makes you look incredibly insincere (which I think you probably are, but for the sake of argument I'll assume you aren't).

To address your question, explain how you feel the two situations, "transracial identities" and transgendered identities, are related.

I'm perfectly happy with the response to the Trump thing for now. The relevant responses would come from Nostalgic Cashew, and possibly people like the trump tutelage, blowfish, Sulphuric rear end in a top hat, Commie NedFlanders.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 19:25

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 14, 2024 19:35

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Nostalgic Cashew posted:

I do have an intuitive feeling, but I am looking for a logical framework, if someone asks why they should do that (like my parents) I'd like to have some force of logic, and not feelings.

This is a super useful post. Thank you. I'll need to read up on intersectionality. This doesn't seem like a more/less oppressed question though, but that there is some threshold at which society should allow preferred nomenclature. This seems like a better framework, but still pretty arbitrary. Why is demi-wolf (or other animal identity) ridiculous? It seems like you might decide is not a sufficiently-oppressed group, but that doesn't make it ridiculous.

Thanks for this post.
I guess where I might be getting confused is the difference between oppression being group-based, with a historical basis attached, and the individual perspective of oppression/offence. I guess this goes back to the cosmic scale of oppression. For example, I could totally see that Trump would perceive he was being oppressed, and want his terms used. I'm struggling with oppression being some universal obvious thing (which groups are oppressed and how much) whereas we are appealing to feelings of groups in other contexts. I think I need to think on this further.

I fear in the end, there won't be a fully logically satisfying answer to this, in either direction. In the end, there's a bunch of gut involved.

There probably isn't an objectively true answer anyways.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 19:27

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Gender pronoun entitlement vs religious entitlement

«‹›2 »