Gender Roles

[Jarhyn]

"Take the fall. That hurt. Get indignant."

 

[Bomb#20]

"Newspeak... is a controlled language of simplified grammar and limited vocabulary designed to limit a person's ability for critical thinking." -wikipedia

... the attempt to control language away from such use as a singular strikes me as more fitting to the term. ...

It seems rather to be a controlling and limiting action to expect a pure binary with pronoun usage. It strikes me as an effort to make it impossible rather to think critically about the wide range of variations and exceptions that exist in biology, as an attempt to use language to prevent people from thinking about ambiguity and unimportance of genitals or gonads in addressing others.

The attempt to control language in such a way as to collapse sex together with the social construct of gender is pretty transparently more of the same, so as to bar people from thinking critically about the various expressions of humanity. ...

...
It certainly seems that Bomb's use in context is more similar to some imagined meaning such as "anything that makes use of language implies that the way I think might be wrong".

I'll note here that only one side here is making any unilateral attempt to restrict language use.
...

... The other thing we might contend with is whether it is "controlling language so as to bar critical thinking" when some party insists that "man == male; woman == female. Always", and especially with such ridiculous claims as "a brain is male if it is attached to a male body", which rather begs the question of what a "male" brain is.

To me it seems a pretty apparent attempt to bar critical thinking, WRT the doubt of whether that's true or not.

Likewise as discussed use of the to refer to a single person wherein sex/gender is unknown or unimportant, it seems to be an attempt to exclude from common language any ability to make an expression of when a specific person has an unknown, ambiguous, or unimportant configuration of sex or gender. ...

Jarhyn, your endless accusations that I'm trying to "control" and "restrict" language and "bar" critical thinking are completely deranged. You controlled my language use; I haven't controlled anyone's but my own. You are the one claiming a unilateral right to restrict others' language. You are the one making demands on others; all I'm doing is choosing for myself. I have not told anyone what words to use or what definitions to use and you bloody well know it. The reason you perceive me to be trying to control language is because you have somehow convinced yourself you have a right to be agreed with. As one of your allies said upthread, Emily does not have a right to have her opinions coddled. Well, shocking as it must be to your sense of self-righteous self-importance, neither do you. You are thinking just like a Christian who enthusiastically advertises his own religion but imagines he's being persecuted if non-Christians won't just shut up and keep our skepticism to ourselves. How I speak, what words I do or don't use, and what opinions I express about your language abuse and your Humpty Dumpty definitions, have no magical power to stop you or your ingroup from continuing to speak any way you please, or to bar you from thinking critically about any topic you please. "It does me no harm for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or none -- it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." It likewise does you no harm for your neighbor to say there are two genders, or one Jarhyn -- it neither picks your pocket nor breaks your ability to choose for yourself what words to say. If you want to see somebody who's barring you from thinking critically, look in a damn mirror.

... I also demand numerical ambiguity, and moreover I demand ambiguity over my ambiguity!

 

[Jarhyn]

"Take the fall. That hurt. Get indignant."

"Good! Now say it again: TAKE THE FALL! THAT HURT! GET INDIGNANT!"

 

[Janice Rael]

I want to define
The logic of all sex and gender laws
Let my handcuff clap on your wrist
I insist I'll be your chaperone
At the halfway home
I'm a full grown man
And I'm all afraid, but why


[a parody]

 

[Bomb#20]

"Take the fall. That hurt. Get indignant."

"Good! Now say it again: TAKE THE FALL! THAT HURT! GET INDIGNANT!"

Over on the far left edge of your keyboard you'll find a key that says "Caps Lock". If you press it at the beginning of your reply you won't forget to capitalize part of your post.

 

[Jarhyn]

The plain fact is that the world has been bathed in a form of NewSpeak for a very long time. I honestly don't fully know or really care where it started. I have my suspicions, which are already well belabored here, but it boils down to the European/"western" tradition of organizing language around a false binary for reasons generally related to the intents of the church.

The forced definitions of various conditions as "disorders" despite the subjective nature of what constitutes "proper" order goes hand in hand there.

It is newspeak, despite the fact that it is old, it is the attempt to control language so that conversations cannot be had, such as about people who have conditions that discuss how those differences are beneficial to both them as individuals and to the society and groups that host them.

With respect to "disorders", it is an attempt to control into existence an obligatorily negative connotation around the conditions this language is forced onto.

It is not "newspeak" nor "political" to expect a language to be able to handle the sum total of ideas surrounding the human condition, including the consideration of the whole effect of an atypical individual.

That said, I admit I make demands about how I am to be addressed, within reason, because the rule of this place is that we may make demands within reason here of how we are to be addressed, and those demands are to be respected.

This is a demand that I am entitled to make, and I will hold people to it except to the extent that their mistakes are clearly in good faith. Going out of one's way to gin up NEW ways to disrespect that falls far outside the boundary of good faith, and continuing to act like a victim of one's own behavior there is unbecoming.

As to my positions on language and usage, I am quite serious and hold my positions in good faith, though I have to ask why would it really matter if I didn't, so long as those positions are right? There is always an available answer to a correct position held in bad faith: to trace that position to the solution-in-good-faith, so as to invalidate the inappropriate conclusion.

I argue that the reality here is complicated, biology is messy, that man/woman aren't clearly defined and still wouldn't be even if they were "legally" re-defined to mean male/female, but that any attempt to do so would clearly be an attempt to use language in a way that would deprive people of the ability to express to themselves who they are.

Ultimately, I think that people should have the power to choose for themselves both whether they will be a "man" or a "woman" and to decide for themselves what those terms mean, and for every area of legal treatment around concepts of sex and gender a specific, well defined, measurable, clear, and narrow discriminator must be used. This already throws out such broad categories as sex or "gender", which fail for reasons of measurability or clarity or narrowness or specificity as the case may be.

Testosterone is specific, well defined, clear, measurable, and narrow, as are sperms. Those are perfectly acceptable to use in legal contexts and have nothing to do with gender roles or even genitals.

I would argue that someone who self-identifies as a "man", if they have the aforementioned lack of sperms or testosterone, ought have every right to access spaces legally partitioned for those who lack sperm and/or testosterone as the case may be. This is quite the inverse of "self-ID" that radical misandrists purport to oppose.

I think that in general, people who cleave to certain gender roles more completely would likely benefit further from hormonal control towards enhancing such outcomes, and that there is a complex interplay between the outcome and the impulse towards living out such roles, but the reality of whether these pan out is entirely dependent on results of the experiment.

I have gone off my HRT 3 times now and every time, I disliked the effect immensely. It's pretty clear to me that some individuals exist who are happier as eunuchs, and having observed a number of trans women, that there are individuals who would be happier on estrogen.

 

[Politesse]

The forced definitions of various conditions as "disorders" despite the subjective nature of what constitutes "proper" order goes hand in hand there.

It is newspeak, despite the fact that it is old, it is the attempt to control language so that conversations cannot be had, such as about people who have conditions that discuss how those differences are beneficial to both them as individuals and to the society and groups that host them.

With respect to "disorders", it is an attempt to control into existence an obligatorily negative connotation around the conditions this language is forced onto.

The full list of things that were called "disorders" over the course of the 18th/19th centuries is very... telling.

 

[bilby]

The plain fact is that the world has been bathed in a form of NewSpeak for a very long time.

Well, we know for a fact that it was commonplace in the late 1940s, because that's when 1984 was written.

Like all Sci-fi writers, Orwell was writing about his present day, for contemporary audiences. Sci-fi isn't about the future; It's a safe(r) way to talk about the problems of the present day.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

The plain fact is that the world has been bathed in a form of NewSpeak for a very long time.

Well, we know for a fact that it was commonplace in the late 1940s, because that's when 1984 was written.

Like all Sci-fi writers, Orwell was writing about his present day, for contemporary audiences. Sci-fi isn't about the future; It's a safe(r) way to talk about the problems of the present day.

That's what I find so comical about a certain poster's characterization of this issue as being relevant to what Orwell was writing about.

Especially since Orwell was writing about totalitarian states and not random people on the internet.

 

[Jarhyn]

The plain fact is that the world has been bathed in a form of NewSpeak for a very long time.

Well, we know for a fact that it was commonplace in the late 1940s, because that's when 1984 was written.

Like all Sci-fi writers, Orwell was writing about his present day, for contemporary audiences. Sci-fi isn't about the future; It's a safe(r) way to talk about the problems of the present day.

That's what I find so comical about a certain poster's characterization of this issue as being relevant to what Orwell was writing about.

Especially since Orwell was writing about totalitarian states and not random people on the internet.

I mean, to be fair, this issue is tangentially related to Orwell, but in the sense of people seeking to use government as a cudgel to define words in ways that prevent discussion of issues they find distasteful.

It's easy enough to recognize that nobody ought be forced to make some decision, or barred from making some decision, because of how they were born or something that only was true in the past, and that the few cubic inches of tissue that only have a gross mechanical function rather than an executive behavioral function ought not be factored into concerns around executive behavioral function, nor should any executive behavioral function allowed to some be barred to others.

That's the thing about gender roles: they ought be completely optional for everyone, if they are tolerated of anyone, by in large.

 

[Emily Lake]

Is it your position that the 14th amendment requires that ALL showers and spas in the US must be unisex facilities?
Is it your position that the 14th amendment requires that Title IX be completely dismantled and all sports must be mixed sex?

No.

But I do think that no one has the right to tell you what your gender identity must be,

At no point whatsoever have I even remotely suggested that anyone should have a right to tell someone else what their internal mystical soul sense ought to be. I do not care what anybody's professed gender identity is.

Look, let's get this crystal clear:

I do not care what anyone believes their gender identity to be. It is completely and utterly irrelevant to me. Anyone can choose to profess any gender identity they want. I view gender identity in exactly the same way I view souls - it's a completely unverifiable and subjective internal feeling about oneself that has zero impact to anyone else ever.

nor that it is ever legal to discriminate on the basis of sex. You're inventing the most sympathetic hypothetical you possibly can,

Lo, this is ridiculous. I'm not inventint anything, I'm noting the exact situations that are at the heart of this, the actual real-world situations that are actually happening in actuality for real people. Showers and similar spaces where people are nude. Prisons. Athletics. Hospitals, nursing homes, and similar facilities where intimate care is being delivered to incapacitated people. Rape and domestic violence shelters.

You think those are "invented" "hypotheticals"?

so that you don't have to look at thousands of much more likely scenarios that make you look more like a common bully. It's a tactic similar to when segregationists used to go, "so you think n----o gangs should just be allowed to freely patrol the streets of charming white suburbs murdering innocent children at will?" in defense of racialized housing covenants.

I occasionally advise a student club that advocates for Native American students. The membership is mostly Native, and it was always meant to be a place where Native students could meet, hang out, and talk about Indian stuff. This is fine and entirely legal. On the other hand, they cannot exclude non-Native students from the club, or kick someone out for being a "fake NDN" or "not NDN enough". That would be illegal as hell, and should be.

So you support the right of males to access nude or vulnerable females without the consent of those females, because refusing to allow males to override female boundaries should be illegal?

 

[Emily Lake]

There must however be a better solution than throwing fully "passing" trans women and people with partial androgen insensitivity - people who, from what I gather, even @Emily Lake would welcome in the women's

Let me be explicit.

If I were queen of the world, passing - actually passing not just imagined passing - would be sufficient for bathrooms. Everyone would have sufficient self-awareness and common sense to use whichever bathroom other people would assume they should use. The handful of actually legitimately truly androgynous people get to use whatever the hell they want.

That does not extend to other spaces. Prisons, showers, and similar venues where people are naked should require alteration of the genitalia. To be crass, no sausage & veg in female spaces, no roast beef in male spaces.

For intimate care, the same rules should apply for who is placed in which wing. But when it comes to the people providing the care, it's up to the patient or their health care proxy. And if they specify that they want a same-sex caregiver, that should mean actual real same sex, and if the patient feels that the person doesn't look enough like a female (or vice versa), that's their right. Thus, a female patient should be completely within their right to dismiss a transman from providing their care even though said transman is female. In that situation, I do not give a single crap about the feelings of the caregiver, I care only about the feelings of the patient.

When it comes to sports, neither passing nor surgery are sufficient. Males should not compete in female sports, regardless of how they feel about themselves, regardless of what surgeries they've had or how many hormones they take, or even if they look reasonably womanly. Lia Thomas should not be allowed to take part in female swim competitions, and I don't care at all if that hurts Thomas's feelings.

In reality, however, it seems that we can't have the common sense "use whatever you pass as" approach for bathrooms, because people like Eddie Izzard are quite adamant that they should be entitled to make women uncomfortable in order to force strangers to validate their transvestic feelings.


ETA: PAIS are male. CAIS are generally considered female, as they have developed a female reproductive phenotype.

 

[Emily Lake]

So you want all trans in the men's room. That inherently outs them and very well might be putting them in danger.

So you want all trans in the women's room? That still outs about 95% of them since they're obviously male, and it opens to door to any male who feels like it entering the women's room and putting women in danger.

I'm tired of this argument. So many people making this argument are talking out of both sides of their mouth, but want everyone else to just pretend that they're making sense.

If males are a danger to other males... why do you think that somehow males are NOT a danger to females?

"Oh no, if these males who don't feel like males are in the male space, males might hurt them! I know, let's put all of the males that don't feel like males in the female space, then the females can protect those males from other males. Sure, we can't actually tell what anyone feels like, but they *say* that they don't feel like males, and obviously it's impossible for a male to be at all wrong about that or to be deceptive. Seriously, who know what females feel like better than males? Besides, what could possibly go wrong? We all know that females make fantastic human shields to protect males from other males. And if some female get hurt, oh well, that's what they're there for, right?"

 

[Emily Lake]

I brought it up because you were claiming I support discrimination. I support equality of opportunity. Society used to be unequal, now it's unequal in the other direction.

Equality of opportunity for males to have access to naked or vulnerable females without their consent?

You still haven't provided any indication that it actually happens.

Wi Spa
Prisons in WA, NJ, NY, and IL
Evergreen College pool
NHS Inpatient wards
Rape Shelters in Scotland
IL High Schools

Is your head in the sand?

So you consider the mere presence of a penis to be harmful?

I consider the presence of an exposed penis without the consent of the women to whom it is exposed to be a violation of sexual boundaries.

I take it from your retreat to the motte that you are willing to concede that this does actually happen? Do you concede that this replacement of sex with gender identity grants males access to naked or vulnerable females without their consent? That's what you asked for. Are you satisfied that it does actually happen?

 

[Emily Lake]

The problem here is that the set of AFABs includes some who do not appear sufficiently female

I reject your linguistic assumption. Sex is not assigned at birth. Sex is recorded at birth, observed very early in the pregnancy via ultrasound, developed between the sixth and twelfth week of gestation, and is determined at conception.

 

[Emily Lake]

Oh so you're ok with trans people, in general, using pronouns then?

This is a silly statement. People can use whatever pronouns they wish for themselves. People can also use whatever pronouns they wish for other people. What they can't do is to dictate what pronouns other people use.

Eddie Izzard can call himself "she". Eddie Izzard can call me "he". Eddie Izzard cannot demand that I call him "she".

 

[Emily Lake]

I have my suspicions

You have a lot of suspicions, speculations, and imagined explanations for pretty much everything you disagree with.

You have precious little evidence to support any of your baseless assertions.

 

[Emily Lake]

With respect to "disorders", it is an attempt to control into existence an obligatorily negative connotation around the conditions this language is forced onto.

I'll be sure to let my neurologist know that the great and powerful oz Jarhyn has unilaterally declared, without one whit of knowledge or education on the topic, that my epilepsy is *not* a disorder at all.

 

[Jarhyn]

FSM help us... Epilepsy, yes even Epilepsy, is a condition, as is cancer, as is psychopathy.

"Disorder" is a subjective term. "Disorder" will never not be a subjective term, because what constitutes proper order is entirely subjective.

Talk about attempting to unilaterally decide things...

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem here is that the set of AFABs includes some who do not appear sufficiently female

I reject your linguistic assumption. Sex is not assigned at birth. Sex is recorded at birth, observed very early in the pregnancy via ultrasound, developed between the sixth and twelfth week of gestation, and is determined at conception.

The point of AFAB is to avoid any debate about what gender a trans person is.

And I note that you failed to address the actual point: what is a masculine-looking woman supposed to do? Many women feel my SIL doesn't pass as female--but she's in possession of a previously working (she's past menopause now) female reproductive system and has done nothing to appear male.

And you're also outing people into situations that might get them killed.

And you still have failed to demonstrate any actual harm apart from allegations of staring, something which can't be proven one way or the other. (And, for that matter, even if there was some looking that doesn't prove it's sexual in nature. Could just be envy.)