Moderated Using wrong pronouns= violence??

[tyr_13]

Judge all you want! I'm not going to agree (especially since you refuse to give an argument for "correct pronouns") but I also don't think you are harming or helping anyone thereby.

You simply reject the argument that the existence of butch women (and Bishōnen men) and transgender people means it's wrong to just insist your initial perception be given the overwhelming weight. Pretending this has been discussed just because you reject it is, well it isn't intellectually honest.

I'm well aware you disagree. It just doesn't matter. Like, at all. You know what I'm saying when I say that, which you claim to be your overriding concern.

Bzzzzzt. Can I quickly note the irony of trying to tell someone else what is happening in their own head, while arguing for uncritical acceptance of people's ability to introspect on the matter of gender?

It's not happening only 'in your own head'; I'm reading what you wrote.

Again, what you wrote means you actually do care about others being judged, otherwise what you said isn't sarcastic. More than that, you object a lot to the judgement with your above 'prove to me it's even wrong to misgender' argument.

The turd plating just isn't that elegant.

Nope, I have more constraints than that and I even spelled them out: "All that matters to me is that I can tell which pronouns are pointing to which nouns in any given flow of conversation."

ETA: I'll ask again about poor ignorant Carl, the proverbial freshman at CU Boulder. What is the best argument that he needs to update his heuristic for pronoun assignment, aside from "We will judge you morally inferior if you don't comply."

Right, because your perception is paramount over not just the subject, but the other people in the conversation.

Which ties nicely into the obvious reason Carl, who you think shouldn't adapt from the gendered language of livestock, should care; to give a flip about other people. Why make the change? To be respectful, polite, and kind to the people who get misgendered a lot. That's it. Basic empathy isn't enough for a lot of you, I know that already, but that doesn't mean it's a bad reason for Carl or anyone who doesn't give their own avoidance of having to give some actual thought to who is being talked about primary importance.

Hence 'don't be a jerk'.

Do you remember the name or author of any of the subsequent papers, or have a link, so I don't have to paw through each one? The first one I looked at didn't say anything about 94%.

I think it was the third of fourth paper that referenced it? Like I said, several are paywalled, but from what I could piece together the sample size of the one you referenced was just under 200, the upper bounds was 94%, and I couldn't tell if this was in the paper citing your paper, or from your paper, but that children's faces had a 40% accuracy rate with. I found that funny because that's worse than chance. I'll try again to dig it out.

EDIT: Found it. What's the Difference between Men and Women? Evidence from Facial Measurement which appears to be V.Bruce citing her own work.

Human subjects are able to identify the sex of faces with very high accuracy. Using photographs of adults in which hair was concealed by a swimming cap, subjects performed with 96% accuracy. Previous work has identified a number of dimensions on which the faces of men and women differ. An attempt to combine these dimensions into a single function to classify male and female faces reliably is described. Photographs were taken of 91 male and 88 female faces in full face and profile. These were measured in several ways: (i) simple distances between key points in the pictures; (ii) ratios and angles formed between key points in the pictures; (iii) three-dimensional (3-D) distances derived by combination of full-face and profile photographs. Discriminant function analysis showed that the best discriminators were derived from simple distance measurements in the full face (85% accuracy with 12 variables) and 3-D distances (85% accuracy with 6 variables). Combining measures taken from the picture plane with those derived in 3-D produced a discriminator approaching human performance (94% accuracy with 16 variables). Performance of the discriminant function was compared with that of human perceivers and found to be correlated, but far from perfectly. The difficulty of deriving a reliable function to distinguish between the sexes is discussed with reference to the development of automatic face-processing programs in machine vision. It is argued that such systems will need to incorporate an understanding of the stimuli if they are to be effective.

The method of using the text preview cut out "human performance (94% accuracy with 16 variables)" which is actually describing the accuracy of the discriminant function they created. Human accuracy was 96%. Or in other words around what Thermal guessed in isolation with confounding variables removed. Those variables might support true positives, or like my hair, lead to more false positives. Your cite doesn't appear to measure that, focusing very closely on measurements.

 

[Upchurch]

Your appeal to the evolutionary argument is interesting. It's hard to make an evolutionary argument against an erection at the prospect of a sexually compatible encounter. But here you are, dismissing the evolutionary argument for humans being innately adept at identifying such partners at a glance.

Look, I get it. I misread Paul’s post earlier. It’s embarrassing, but you just gotta suck it up, admit that you didn’t read very closely, and try again.

 

[arthwollipot]

For anyone reading along:

Suppose a cisgender male freshman shows up to the University of Colorado at Boulder from way out in sparsely populated SE corner of the state. He is laboring under the terrible misapprehension that whatever pronoun assignment rule we use for dogs, horses, and pigs is the same one we should use for human beings, who are also mammals after all. He thinks that pronouns are about sex, rather than self-perception or identity. Short of threatening to kick him out or pull his scholarship, how should we persuade him to adopt the newer, better rule which applies only to human beings?​

The advocates of "correct pronouns" have avoided answering this but I'm reposting just in case anyone wants to have a go at it. My prediction is that no one will try to persuade this poor freshman, because moral grandstanding takes so much less effort than moral suasion.

ETA: "Everybody has a right to their pronouns," is not an argument, but rather the conclusion which comes at the end of an argument.

We've got this entire thread, and several others, devoted to answering that question. Why do you think you need to ask it again?

 

[theprestige]

You simply reject the argument that the existence of butch women (and Bishōnen men) and transgender people means it's wrong to just insist your initial perception be given the overwhelming weight. Pretending this has been discussed just because you reject it is, well it isn't intellectually honest.

I'm well aware you disagree. It just doesn't matter. Like, at all. You know what I'm saying when I say that, which you claim to be your overriding concern.



It's not happening only 'in your own head'; I'm reading what you wrote.

Again, what you wrote means you actually do care about others being judged, otherwise what you said isn't sarcastic. More than that, you object a lot to the judgement with your above 'prove to me it's even wrong to misgender' argument.

The turd plating just isn't that elegant.



Right, because your perception is paramount over not just the subject, but the other people in the conversation.

Which ties nicely into the obvious reason Carl, who you think shouldn't adapt from the gendered language of livestock, should care; to give a flip about other people. Why make the change? To be respectful, polite, and kind to the people who get misgendered a lot. That's it. Basic empathy isn't enough for a lot of you, I know that already, but that doesn't mean it's a bad reason for Carl or anyone who doesn't give their own avoidance of having to give some actual thought to who is being talked about primary importance.

Hence 'don't be a jerk'.





I think it was the third of fourth paper that referenced it? Like I said, several are paywalled, but from what I could piece together the sample size of the one you referenced was just under 200, the upper bounds was 94%, and I couldn't tell if this was in the paper citing your paper, or from your paper, but that children's faces had a 40% accuracy rate with. I found that funny because that's worse than chance. I'll try again to dig it out.

Your argument would carry a lot more weight if this controversy were actually about androgynes fighting to have their biological sex recognized in third person pronouns.

 

[arthwollipot]

As we've covered, there are all sorts of non-physical violence. The thread is peppered with definitions and examples.

As for whether being a jerk is violence, the context matters. Is the jerk regularly bullying someone? Yes, that is violence.

You mean there's context and nuance? Horrors! The world has to be cleanly divided in to easy categories or I won't be able to cope. And civilisation will probably be destroyed or something.

 

[arthwollipot]

"but, his penis ..."
"HER penis you effing bigot."

About the only consolation in having to endure this utter crap is its comedy value, intentional or otherwise.

Some women have a penis. And whether they do or not is none of your business.

 

[arthwollipot]

You agree that we assign pronouns to animals on the basis of objective observation... but you assert that we ought to use pronouns for humans based on mind-reading.

No, there's your straw argument again.

I assert that we ought to use pronouns for humans, in situations where it matters, based on asking them which pronoun is correct. No "mind-reading" involved.

 

[arthwollipot]

On line, where everyone is anonymous, all we have is what you tell us.

Which is why I tell you.

<--

 

[arthwollipot]

What a ******* stupid ass thread.

If people could constrain themselves to just talking about pronouns, it'd be easier. I can see another thread split in our future.

 

[arthwollipot]

I'm not sure if "seriously" has a lot of place in any of these discussions. From the very first post, it should have been met with "Seriously? This is silly." Because using non-preferred pronouns is not something that any sane and rational person believes is violence.

Again, context matters. Using the incorrect (incorrect, not "non-preferred") pronouns can be a part of a pattern of bullying and harassment. Accidental and occasional misgendering is not violence, as I have repeated many times in this thread alone.

 

[tyr_13]

Your argument would carry a lot more weight if this controversy were actually about androgynes fighting to have their biological sex recognized in third person pronouns.

Only if you don't care about the others, which, well the entire reason is to care about others in general.

There isn't a real reason to separate out the impacted groups. The impact to each actually matters.

EDIT: That is, unless the impact to one group is seen as a mitigating factor rather than an aggravating factor. This is to say, it would make sense to do as you say if hurting transgender people was desirable.

 

[tyr_13]

Quick question; besides d4m10n who claims to not have any problem with people doing either, does anyone actually think it is respectful/polite/kind/etc to misgender people to their faces? Almost everyone else agrees that it's rude, right?

And likewise, no one is arguing to never make provisional calls on pronouns based on visual information (or even secondhand information)? And no one is arguing that accidental or occasional 'clarifying' misgendering is inherently bullying?

Hyperbole about 'hate crimes for just misgendering' and 'I'm only doing it to keep making my mortgage payments' aside, that's all pretty settled, right?

 

[arthwollipot]

Sex is very frequently an easy way to disambiguate, because in the overwhelming majority of cases, it's easily and quickly distinguishable. It may not be enough by itself, in a large group... but saying "the blond female in the red shirt" helps exclude the people not being referenced in a very efficient way.

Sometimes it isn't, and relying on easy heuristics can be hurtful. When repeated and deliberate despite someone making their pronouns known, it can form part of a pattern of bullying and harassment.

In the vast majority of cases, pronouns are about identification, not about personal identity. They're about the speaker using efficient means to disambiguate the object of discussion from others. Pronouns are indicators of apparent sex.

This contradicts everything that any trans person I know has ever said about pronouns. Pronouns, like a person's name, are about identity. Full stop. For verification of this fact, you only need to talk to some trans people. You don't choose what name to use to refer to a person, why should you choose the pronoun?

Would you like me to call you by your correct name, or just make one up for you based on what I think you look like? Why does it matter?

Our assessment of apparent sex isn't always going to be correct, but it's usually correct and it's useful. If a transgender person passes well, they will naturally get referred to by the pronoun they prefer - but that has nothing to do with their preference. It has to do with the speaker's perception.

Again, branding it as a preference instead of simply being a matter of right and wrong devalues it and admits for variation. It is not a preference. I don't prefer he/him, those pronouns are just the right ones. If you use "she" to refer to me, you're not going against my preference, you're just wrong.

Treating pronouns as a result of visual identification not only makes your feelings more important than their personhood, it opens you up to just getting it wrong. Sure, you probably won't be in most situations. But those situations where you are wrong really matter.

The reason you haven't found my arguments persuasive is that you are ideologically motivated to the contrary opinion. It's not based on fact. If it were based on fact, you would accept what trans people say about their own pronouns. You don't. My arguments are based on what trans people have actually said, which are actually fairly easy to verify on teh intarwebs. Here is literally the first result that I got when I googled "why are pronouns important":

Why pronouns matter (Queensland Human Rights Commission)

Pronouns are the words we use to refer to ourselves or other people. ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘you’, ‘she’, ‘he’, and ‘they’ are all pronouns.

When we use pronouns to refer to other people, they are usually gendered – she, her, he, him. We often make assumptions about the gender of another person, based on their name or their appearance, which can be harmful for trans, non-binary and gender diverse people. Some trans and gender diverse people avoid services such as healthcare altogether in fear that interactions with service providers will be disrespectful.

Making an effort to get pronouns right is about respect and inclusion. When someone tells you their pronouns, they are letting you know how they would like you to refer to them, without you having to make any assumptions.

Using someone’s correct pronouns is an important way to be inclusive and respectful of our LGBTIQ+ community.

Literally the first result in my google search is from an organisation dedicated to human rights. Your google search will obviously be different, but support for my position is not hard to find. But there are none so blind as those who will not see.

 

[arthwollipot]

And I think you'd say that the reason why biological sex is irrelevant and socially constructed gender isn't is because gender is (defined as) what people decide to engage with within society. Right?

I would not say that, no, because that is incoherent.

What I would say is this: In almost all examples of human interaction, what someone's biological sex is makes no difference. It is irrelevant. There are a very few circumstances, like for example in the case of sexually active relationships, where it does matter. Most of the time it does not.

If you treat someone differently depending on whether they are a man or a woman, then you are a misogynist or a misandrist.

 

[arthwollipot]

Gotta say, no matter where you stand in this hootinanny, posters are bringing their A-game for expressing their POVs.

Thank you. I think it's quite important and worth some of my time.

 

[arthwollipot]

You think people are as simple as "Males ware trousers and have short hair, Females ware dresses and have long hair"?

When I was growing up, in the 70s, my dad kept complaining when he saw someone with long hair that he couldn't tell whether they were a man or a woman.

And somehow, civilisation did not collapse.

 

[arthwollipot]

So how do you think humans tell the sexes apart?

Why do you think humans need to?

 

[Thermal]

Quick question; besides d4m10n who claims to not have any problem with people doing either, does anyone actually think it is respectful/polite/kind/etc to misgender people to their faces? Almost everyone else agrees that it's rude, right?

Very often it would be, yeah, especially with a trans person who is still wrestling with acceptance which, come on, is going to be the majority.

And likewise, no one is arguing to never make provisional calls on pronouns based on visual information (or even secondhand information)?

Keep.in mind, that was literally in the original article. Literally never to do so. So our battle lines got drawn around that idea early on.

But yeah, I'd hope that no one is making that argument now. Excusing one poster of course, who has gone silent after maintaining that very argument.

And no one is arguing that accidental or occasional 'clarifying' misgendering is inherently bullying?

Accidental anything should usually be fully excused, providing that the accident is not due to contemptuous indifference.

Hyperbole about 'hate crimes for just misgendering' and 'I'm only doing it to keep making my mortgage payments' aside, that's all pretty settled, right?

I'd like to think so, but I've been dissapointed before.

 

[Thermal]

Why do you think humans need to?

*Thermal glares pointedly while mashing index fingers against each other*

 

[arthwollipot]

Keep.in mind, that was literally in the original article. Literally never to do so. So our battle lines got drawn around that idea early on.

Personally, I'm a little more tolerant. I recognise that mistakes are made, and the consequences of that are minor. Never doing so is a good habit to get into though, because it's always better to not make mistakes where possible.