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Moderated Using wrong pronouns= violence??

Darat said:
Like I say it's this Hercules56 person you need to argue with - they said that the OED was the "premier dictionary on English words" and provided a link to it. If they are wrong and it's not the "premier dictionary on English words" you should let them know.
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OED says a violent act upon a person or object always is physical.

So says Merriam-Webster and Britannica.
 
Hercules56 said:
Violence is a physical act. Therefore calling somebody the wrong pronoun or a jerk is not an act of violence.

Words, alone, are not an act of violence.

"behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something."

https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/223638?rskey=QAlkzM&result=1#eid
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In addition to Darats note, your cited source goes on:

You Own Damned Source said:
Improper treatment or use of a word or text; misinterpretation; misapplication; alteration of meaning or intention. Also: an instance of this.
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Hercules56 said:
OED says a violent act upon a person or object always is physical.

So says Merriam-Webster and Britannica.
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1
a
: the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy
b
: an instance of violent treatment or procedure
2
: injury by or as if by distortion, infringement, or profanation : OUTRAGE
3
a
: intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force
the violence of the storm
b
: vehement feeling or expression : FERVOR
also : an instance of such action or feeling
c
: a clashing or jarring quality : DISCORDANCE
4
: undue alteration (as of wording or sense in editing a text)
 
sarge said:
This can only be true when words can never constitute ‘violence’. Calling someone a jerk and intentionally using the wrong pronoun may have zero effect on the target of the words. Equally, there are contexts where such words may have serious effects on the target. Is that your point? That using the wrong pronouns should not be specifically addressed, when there are also other forms of dangerous speach?
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There are other forms of dangerous "speach". I referred to the legal concept of fighting words earlier. But words intended to incite violence are not themselves violence.

You might call someone a jerk to provoke a physical fight. Or you might call someone a jerk in the hope that the word itself will harm them in some way.

But can words do harm? Well, libel and slander can harm a person's reputation. And fraudulent claims can harm a person's economic interests.

And of course people can bring civil claims for "emotional harm" arising from being effectively libeled or slandered. I wouldn't be surprised if there are already such civil suits on the books, with judgements in the plaintiff's favor.

But is emotional harm akin to physical violence? I don't know.

Medicine understands impairment to the physical body. Bruises, lacerations, broken bones, damaged organs. We understand that the natural functioning of a healthy body can be disrupted by physical force. That a period of healing is necessary to restore the body's former functioning. In extreme cases, there can even be an irrevocable loss of some part of the body, or even the loss of the life that animates it. We all know how physical violence works.

Calling someone a jerk is not physical violence. Is it mental violence?

Medicine also understands impairment to the mind. I won't belabor the DSM here. I will say that it seems to me that a sustained program of verbal abuse could possibly provoke an emotional or mental breakdown, or even trigger some sort of psychosis. Especially if the victim sees no hope of escape, and has no way to relieve the pressure on their psyche.

Lock someone in a room, feed them slop, and roll a tape vilifying them for six hours out of every eight, and they'll go mad. That's a fairly contrived situation. A more "natural" occurrence is a spouse who subjects their partner to constant verbal and emotional abuse.

So at what point does being intentionally misgendered on a college campus pass from ordinary rudeness to actual violence resulting in actual harm? How would the harm be measured?

Hypothesis: If commonplace insults can be acts of violence, then we should expect to see many such allegations in the media, and many such cases in the court system. Bitch, ****, ******, faggot, scumbag, commie, pinko, fascist, nazi, hohol, vatnik, dickhead, limp-dick, fatso, Democrat, chud...

The human capacity for insult is as varied as it is endless. So where are the headlines proclaiming that Andy harmed Bob by calling him a faggot in the quad last week? Where are the court cases where Andy seeks to prove that Bob merits a criminal conviction, for the harm he allegedly caused by calling Andy a faggot?

So no, I don't think casually misgendering someone, even intentionally, even maliciously, can be considered an act of violence. A sustained program of verbal abuse might engender some civil liability for emotional distress, but that's still nothing like physical violence. A single punch thrown is already violence, is already a crime. A single epithet, intended to give offense, is not a crime. Certainly not a violent crime.

I think perhaps the worst thing about this guideline is that it encourages students to think of misgendering as a criminal offense, akin to actual violence. It encourages students to react as if criminally aggrieved, whenever someone says something rude to them.

I don't think this is a mindset we, as a society, should encourage. I don't think this is something we should normalize. It's no big deal as long as it's a fringe idea that has no real acceptance in popular culture. The authors of this guideline aren't trying to keep the idea fringe, though. If we want to keep this idea from becoming mainstream, we need to acknowledge acts - like the publication of this guideline - that tend to normalize it, and push back against them.

"It's no big deal," says the person who knows it's a bad idea but doesn't want to say so in plain language. "Why make a fuss?" And the answer to that is that it is a bad idea, and we make a fuss now to keep it marginalized, to stop it from becoming a big deal. We don't want to end up, ten years hence, in a society where someone can be brought up on criminal charges for misgendering.

Or do we? I suspect some of us do want exactly that. If so, I hope they will speak plainly about it.
 
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Hercules56 said:
OED says a violent act upon a person or object always is physical.
...snip....
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No it doesn't for example, it gives this meaning for the phrase "to do violence to" i.e. to do a violent (act) to:

to do violence to ....: to inflict harm, injury, or damage on; (also) to restrict, constrain, or alter unnaturally; to distort the meaning of.
 
Darat said:
No it doesn't for example, it gives this meaning for the phrase "to do violence to" i.e. to do a violent (act) to:

to do violence to ....: to inflict harm, injury, or damage on; (also) to restrict, constrain, or alter unnaturally; to distort the meaning of.
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"to distort the meaning of " refers to violence upon persons or objects???

Really Darat?????
 
Hercules56 said:
We are talking about acts upon a person or object.
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No, we are talking about what a word means. You are bending over backwards to pretend it has only one possible meaning. At this point, you couldn't possibly fail to understand this. I don't believe you anymore.
 
Thermal said:
No, we are talking about what a word means. You are bending over backwards to pretend it has only one possible meaning. At this point, you couldn't possibly fail to understand this. I don't believe you anymore.
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When it comes to violent ACTS upon persons or objects, the word always means physical acts.

According to the OED, Britannica and Merriam-Webster.
 
Okay, I'm done with that noise and, for the time being, I'm going to ignore the claim that transgender people are not a minority. The only other pertinent complaint is that not being able to intentionally or maliciously misgender people on a school campus will stifle academic discussion.

As I mentioned before, I don't see how that would be the case, as you don't need to intentionally or maliciously misgender anyone to discuss the pros and cons of using preferred pronouns. I'm not entirely sure how anyone reached that conclusion to begin with.
 
Upchurch said:
Okay, I'm done with that noise and, for the time being, I'm going to ignore the claim that transgender people are not a minority. The only other pertinent complaint is that not being able to intentionally or maliciously misgender people on a school campus will stifle academic discussion.

As I mentioned before, I don't see how that would be the case, as you don't need to intentionally or maliciously misgender anyone to discuss the pros and cons of using preferred pronouns. I'm not entirely sure how anyone reached that conclusion to begin with.
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By your logic, left-handed persons, blond haired persons, blue eyed persons, are also minorities. Do we REALLY want to go do down that road? I sure don't. Now back to the true meaning of "violence".
 
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Hercules56 said:
By your logic, left-handed persons, blond haired persons, blue eyed persons, are also minorities. Do we REALLY want to go do down that road? I sure don't.
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We have gone down that road. In the rare instances where straight, cis, white men with blonde hair and blue eyes get discriminated against, they are protected by the exact same policies.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
We have gone down that road. In the rare instances where straight, cis, white men with blonde hair and blue eyes get discriminated against, they are protected by the exact same policies.
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You're moving the goalposts. The stated definition of "minority" was:

"They aren't necessarily ethnic minorities, but they are a minority demographic."
 
Seems like just being decent would be a lot less work the putting this amount of baffling effort into coming up with excuses why I don't have to.
 
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