Non-binary identities are valid

[Belz...]

I don't think the "restroom issue" is really as intractable as people make out.

I didn't mean that it was; only that I have no idea what the best solution would be.

 

[angrysoba]

I didn't mean that it was; only that I have no idea what the best solution would be.

I've solved it.

 

[Belz...]

A 'random idiot' who is a prominent attorney with the ACLU, and has been instrumental in shaping ACLU policies.

As a computer programmer with 21 years of experience, do I also get to declare myself an authority in biology?

 

[Belz...]

In 99.7% of situations no one is asked to. The only times it is relevant is when people might think someone is trans, and they want to make clear they are not.

You'd think so. Except that since trans women are actual women, the only way to identify yourself as the non-trans kind of women is by using the other prefix. Why not just have trans women use the prefix and not both with the other 99.7%?

 

[TragicMonkey]

As a computer programmer with 21 years of experience, do I also get to declare myself an authority in biology?

--performed cellular mitosis continually for over twenty years with minimal supervision
--maintained multiple complex internal chemical systems
--operated a complex machine built from mostly organic parts

Could be on everybody's resume, really, but only I have the gumption to put it on there!

 

[Elaedith]

As a computer programmer with 21 years of experience, do I also get to declare myself an authority in biology?

If you are also a trans activist, apparently yes.

 

[xjx388]

Well, there's your problem. Unless you're 100% on board with everything your current interlocutor claims, you're a bigot.



What does that even mean? I'm a man and I have no idea what that 'feels internally' like. I'm a man because I've got all the objective characteristics of a man and have no dysphoria about it.

Yes, I’ve said as much myself. I don’t identify as a man, I just am a man because I have a penis, testicles, hairy chest, etc. I grok the idea that, for reasons not currently fully understood, some people have a dysphoria where their internal view of themselves doesn’t match their biological sex. But I understand that only in cases where the person says they feel like the opposite of their biological sex. I can’t wrap my head around people who say they are non-binary...a third sex. I mean, there objectively is no third sex. How can someone feel like something that doesn’t exist?

I think what they are feeling is a not so much a third sex but a heightened awareness of their internal feelings. I’m probably not explaining this right, but I can only go by what my karaoke friend “Max” feels. Basically, Max knows that their attraction to men is typically a female trait. Max also knows that they are what would be considered a “bear” in gay culture, which is a label for a big, burly man. Max played football in high school. Max also likes to dress in drag for Halloween. Max will sometimes wear typically female accessories. So Max has come to have an internal view of themselves as not really male and not really female. A little of both. Therefore Max doesn’t identify as male or female, just neither. Max also knows that people see them as very male and doesn’t give people grief about getting their pronouns wrong.

I get “neither/both,” because if I really sat here and thought about it (and I think this is true of all of us, to some extent, if we really thought about it), I’d realize that I have a lot of female traits. But I never really think about it; I’m just a dude. Max, for some reason does think about it at a lot.

What I don’t get is “other.” What is an “other” trait? I see an “other” identity and an insistence on novel pronouns as an expression of narcissism. That’s the only way my brain can process the idea. “Look how different I am and everybody better recognize my specialness!” I haven’t seen an argument anywhere else that has shown me, “Wow, xjx! You were very wrong about this.” It’s not from lack of trying to understand, that’s for sure.

 

[JoeMorgue]

"Male and female traits" is a can of worms though, one I didn't think we were, until transgenderism became the new thing, all that much in a hurry to open up again.

 

[xjx388]

"Male and female traits" is a can of worms though, one I didn't think we were, until transgenderism became the new thing, all that much in a hurry to open up again.

We can only speak of these traits as the ones society has traditionally assigned to the sexes. Men are strong, confident, breadwinners. Women are caring, weak, homemakers. Men dress one way, women dress another. Men don’t cry. Women have long hair.

Yes, I know that this has changed a lot recently, but probably not as much as we like to think.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Well as I said many, many versions of this thread ago and have said many times sense, the idea that we can get rid of outmoded male/female stereotypes by letting them be used ironically or counter-culturally is a fool's errand.

But this is all a red herring (this discussion being nothing but red herrings all the way down) since what male or female qualities a transperson has to have has never, and will never, be answered since that's not actually what is being argued or said.

"Pure self identity, even devoid of any context" is where we are being told we have to land and stay. Everything else is not the point.

 

[d4m10n]

"Male and female traits" is a can of worms though, one I didn't think we were, until transgenderism became the new thing, all that much in a hurry to open up again.

I think we're all relatively comfortable with traits like facial hair and breasts, which are typically associated with men and women, respectively. It's the social traits which make people nervous.

 

[Earthborn]

All of ONE additional pronoun isn't the same as dozens or hundreds. Stop taking the piss.

No one demands that you remember dozens or hundreds of possible pronouns. He, she and they are all you have to remember. Yes, other singular genderless pronouns have been proposed, and some people like using some of them, and if you can remember them for some of those people it would be very nice. But it is not a demand.

At least that's how it was understood until very, very recently.

Very, very recently... on a geological timescale I suppose. The term "gender" to refer to the social construct as opposed to "sex" as the biological characteristics has been the default definition in feminist writing since the 1960s.

As I said before, I don't "identify" as a man or a woman. I conclude that I'm a man because of objective, clear features of my body and biology.

And you experience no incongruity between your objective clear features of your body and biology and how you feel about your objective clear features of your body and biology. (Must be nice)
Seems like an important detail.

No, that is gender role, not gender.

The set of gender roles is not "gender role". It is "gender".

Why not just have trans women use the prefix and not both with the other 99.7%?

As a computer programmer with 21 years of experience, you should know this line does not parse.

 

[HansMustermann]

We can only speak of these traits as the ones society has traditionally assigned to the sexes. Men are strong, confident, breadwinners. Women are caring, weak, homemakers. Men dress one way, women dress another. Men don’t cry. Women have long hair.

Not really, no. The traits I'm more concerned about are stuff like people with XY chromosomes having just shy of 10% speed advantage in the 100m dash, or over 13% speed advantage in 50m freestyle swimming, very nearly 15% speed advantage in 4x100m relay swimming, etc, compared to people with XX chromosomes. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_swimming and the windows calculator )

As I was saying on page 15, in some athletics categories the olympic times for men and women don't even overlap. The LAST male contestant to cross the finish line, is well ahead of the FIRST woman. If you make both compete against each other, the former will win every single time, and the latter will lose every single time.

Nor does it cover the fact that if you basically tell every single schoolgirl that no matter how much she trains, she'll NEVER win an athletics event -- which would be the result if we just nix sex-based categories, just so some entitled twits don't boo-hoo feel sad about being reminded of those categories -- then there is absolutely no rational reason for any girl to start training for that. Basic game theory says that you should go by reward times chance of winning it, and in that case the chance is a flat 0%. There is absolutely no reason for a teenager to dream "I could be a champion too if I work hard", when the competition is so rigged against her that realistically she'll never qualify past the county level, no matter how hard she works.


Stuff like who wears a dress, or has long hair, don't even come close to being the same. Sure, wear a dress and makeup if you want. You might even look good in one. (I fancy I didn't look half bad, if I may say so myself.) Nobody gives a <bleep>. Stuff like trying to squeeze women out of athletics is on a whole different level, and dimorphism is not something that will change if culture changes. Much less just because some deranged activists say it doesn't matter.

And people equivocating between the two, as in pretending that really, the only thing different is how culture says you should dress or comb your hair, only serves those trying to sweep the real problems under the rug.

 

[JoeMorgue]

And my point is this is all a red herring since none of this has to do with transgenderism.

What qualities of the other gender; biological or social, does a person have to have to be transgender? None. The answer is none. Transgenderism is purely self defined and no other criteria are allowed.

So why are talking about it like its going to be a factor in whatever answer we get to?

It's like there is this list of weird, pointless side discussions we have to have over and over in this discussion.

We always have to have the big "No gender and sex are totally different" discussion and nothing ever comes of it because none of the criteria that hair split makes actually can be applied to transgender people because, as stated, the only criteria is pure self determination.

Then have the big "Social vs biological" thing and again none of that matters because no matter what side of that distinction they fall on they still can't applied to transgender people because, yet again, the only criteria is pure self determination.

 

[HansMustermann]

I would even agree if not for the fact that there is a very real push to the effect that if you identify as a woman, then you should be treated as a woman in everything, from sports to music awards to sleeping in the girls' dorm in boarding schools and college campuses to everything else. I mean, the link to someone influential arguing just that for sports is no further back than one page. Or even that, verily, the only way to be trans-friendly is to abolish such categories altogether. It's not a red herring if some people are arguing exactly that that's what transgenderism and transgender rights are about, and granting anything short of THAT is being some kind of bigot.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I would even agree if not for the fact that there is a very real push to the effect that if you identify as a woman, then you should be treated as a woman in everything, from sports to music awards to sleeping in the girls' dorm in boarding schools and college campuses to everything else. I mean, the link to someone influential arguing just that for sports is no further back than one page. It's not a red herring if some people are arguing exactly that that's what transgender rights is about, and anything short of it is being some kind of bigot.

That's my point though. If the argument being presented is that you're a female/woman in regards to everything, arguing distinctions about sex/gender and social/biological seems farcical, but it's the most output we see in these threads.

About 99% of the time, this discussion, everytime we have it is:

Actual transpeople: "I'm my identified sex/gender literally all the time in all possible scenarios. This is not negotiable position."
Transpeople defenders: *Deep dive nitpickings and hair splittings into distinction as to how we define this or that which were just declared pointless by the actual position of the topic of the conversation.*

 

[HansMustermann]

And my point is that whether a position or demand is actually reasonable to accept is entirely dependent on what the demand is and the context. Just someone saying it's all or nothing, doesn't actually mean it all is equally justified. There are shades of grey. Maybe not 50 of them, but there are.

E.g., if I say I'm wearing a lab coat to work because I identify as a surgeon, well, you have no real reason to deny me that, right? My attire doesn't harm anyone or anything, right? But if I were to actually practice surgery or prescribe drugs just because I identify as a surgeon, you may well have a very good reason to object to that.

And if I go, "no, it's all or nothing, you can either accept that I'm a surgeon in every way, or none at all", that would in fact make me the unreasonable idiot, not you if you want to go more fine-grained about it.

Same here, or on any other domain really. I don't give a flying f-bomb about whether someone wants to lump their reasonable demands together with their unreasonable ones as some package deal. I'm under no obligation to accept that they're all equal.

 

[xjx388]

Yeah, but when we are talking about transgender, we are still talking about a binary system. A natal male wants to be called “she” and viewed as a woman. I think that’s a whole ‘nother discussion. I do agree that a trans woman shouldn’t participate in female sports because they aren’t female, but that doesn’t really pertain here, does it?

The title of this thread is “Non-binary identities are valid.” Trans is not non-binary. What about third gender or genderless identities? Those are the people who want the weird pronouns and recognition of their “other” genderedness.

For my part, that’s the concept I can wrap my head around and, at this point, don’t accept as “valid” from a strict reality-based viewpoint.

 

[d4m10n]

I would even agree if not for the fact that there is a very real push to the effect that if you identify as a woman, then you should be treated as a woman in everything, from sports to music awards to sleeping in the girls' dorm in boarding schools and college campuses to everything else.

This thread is even weirder than that, though. People are arguing that men and women must be treated precisely the same in some contexts (e.g. awards shows) so as to avoid the discomfort of figuring out what to do with NB or third-gender competitors.

ETA: Ninja'd

 

[HansMustermann]

@xjx388

1. Well, same deal actually: depends on what they're asking for. It's been quite a variety of ideas of how far you need to bend backwards so they don't feel oppressed, and it's still not an all or nothing deal. Same as, really, everything else in life.

2. More to the point, that's also why it actually pertains here. You're right that it shouldn't, but it ended up being relevant anyway, because some of the third-gender activists are asking for basically the same thing: biological women should compete in everything against biological men. It's not coming at it from the angle of someone having a right to compete against the women if they identify as a woman for the whole hour it takes to compete in that event, but rather from the angle that we should abolish the categories altogether so some twit doesn't feel oppressed and discriminated against if he's not identifying as either. But the end result and problem is the same: let's squeeze the whole group that happened to be born with XX chromosomes out of sports, music, and everything else, by forcing them to compete against the gang with XY chromosomes.