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Moderated Using wrong pronouns= violence??

arthwollipot said:
I'm being as persuasive as I know how to be. It is insufficient for some. I will never be able to convince them, because they will not ask themselves the question "what will it take to change your mind?"
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What it will take to change my mind it to produce an objectively verifiable way to determine whether a person is actually genuinely of the belief that they have the "wrong" sexed body. It must be reproducible and highly accurate, and avoid false positives.

What will 100% not be effective is to base your argument around "well, someone else said it so it's got to be true". People say a LOT of things, and there is no other situation in which I'm expected to override my perception of objective reality in order to affirm someone else's subjective beliefs. I don't see why this should be any different.
 
arthwollipot said:
Using correct pronouns for someone when not in their presence is simply good practice for when you are in their presence.
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So what? It's also "good practice" to use the religious titles of religious practitioners when you're not in their presence, so that you get it right when you are in their presence.

Convince me that I should refer to Beth as "Sister Beth" whether she's present or not, and whether I accept Beth's religious beliefs or not.
 
theprestige said:
I can, too. I think it's a totally reasonable response to being constantly accidentally misgendered.

But getting annoyed or frustrated about being accidentally misgendered all the time isn't the same as being driven to suicide over it.

Like that Bob Seger lyric in "Turn the Page", about getting harassed in bars because of his long hair - "is that a woman, or a man?" Dude's being intentionally misgendered by bigots because of his genderqueer hairstyle. He's clearly bothered enough about it to call it out in his contribution to the "touring in a rock band sucks" sub-genre. If he were bothered enough about it to seriously consider ending his life? You'd strongly urge him to seek mental health support. You'd tell him social engineering may or may not fix this problem in his lifetime, and meanwhile he needs to seek help for dealing with it.
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Most people on this thread don't seem concerned about accidentally misgendering someone. It's more the repeated deliberate misgendering that's the issue.

Anyway, this controversy would be a lot different if it were actually about people who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and their doctor has prescribed social transition as the current best medical procedure for mitigating suicidal ideation arising from dysphoric distress.
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Sure.

But we don't have universal access to healthcare in the U.S. In addition, we have placed consequences on seeking mental health treatment in this country.
For example, seeking or receiving treatment for depression, anxiety or any other mental health issues can bar you from military service. (Here's an article about a bill to change that: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/04/08/a-bill-to-allow-recruits-with-previous-mental-health-treatment-is-on-the-way/)

Mental health treatment is not "normalized" in the same way as going to a physician. Insurance copays are often higher, and there is still a stigma. So there are hurdles.

While I think there are a some who transition as a self-treatment who are misdiagnosing themselves, I think they are a minority. The real problems are that there are some things that relate to sex, not gender, and that it's difficult to provide some accommodations without also creating loopholes that can be abused.

If one side could recognize the legitimacy of the condition and the benefit of accommodation and the other could recognize and help address loopholes that can be abused, we would be having a different conversation.
 
TomB said:
If someone provides me with pronouns, I will try to use them. If they don't, I will default to the ones that seem appropriate to me. This is based on my perception, not particularly aligned with sex or gender in particular. If I perceive someone as a cis or trans woman, I'll use "she."
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I bet your perception is a lot more aligned with sex than you assume. Think about what goes into your perception that someone might be a transwoman, for example. It starts with your perceiving them as male, and then also perceiving that they're trying to evoke the social construct of womanhood. Or they're trying to to get you to perceive them as female, but didn't succeed.
 
theprestige said:
I bet your perception is a lot more aligned with sex than you assume. Think about what goes into your perception that someone might be a transwoman, for example. It starts with your perceiving them as male, and then also perceiving that they're trying to evoke the social construct of womanhood. Or they're trying to to get you to perceive them as female, but didn't succeed.
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You miss the point. It is possible to perceive more than one thing. Yes, I perceive they are male. But I also perceive that they are a trans woman. Since I perceive both, I can make a judgment as to what pronouns to use based on those perceptions.

Now, if it's Halloween and I see someone who is male dressed as a (female) cheerleader, I might make the judgment that they are a man in a Halloween costume and address them as "sir." But if I'm wrong, I'll apologize and use "ma'am" from there on out.

This contrasts with what I believe is your stance of using only your perception of sex and arthwollipot's stated practice of using gender neutral until receiving direct confirmation.

There are some special cases of note.
If you have known someone for a very long time as "John" and they just informed you that they are now "Jill" making the mental transition might be difficult. When you see them, you will still see and think of them as the same person and habitually refer to them with their old name and pronouns. This is probably especially true with a family member.

I read something a few days ago. I think is was a Quora question or something. (Somehow I got signed up to get these spam threads of quora questions in my email.) The question was (supposedly) from a parent who had supported her child's transition at the age of 18. But she still had pictures around the house and in photo albums from pre-transition. Her child came to her and said that those pictures were triggering and asked her to get rid of them or take them down. She didn't want to do that, because they represented memories from her own life, which included her child pre-transition. I'm not sure what I think of that. Maybe a compromise: display new pictures in the most prominent places, but she shouldn't have to erase a portion her life either.
 
TomB said:
You miss the point. It is possible to perceive more than one thing. Yes, I perceive they are male. But I also perceive that they are a trans woman. Since I perceive both, I can make a judgment as to what pronouns to use based on those perceptions.
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I take your point. I agree that it is possible to perceive many things. I believe most human interaction with the world around them is based on multiple concurrent perceptions.

I'm saying that your perception of whether a person is probably a he or a she is more closely tied to your perception of their sex than you assume.
 


I am going to clear out this thread again and put a lot of posts to AAH.

This thread is about pronouns not general.trand issues

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: jimbob
 
theprestige said:
I take your point. I agree that it is possible to perceive many things. I believe most human interaction with the world around them is based on multiple concurrent perceptions.

I'm saying that your perception of whether a person is probably a he or a she is more closely tied to your perception of their sex than you assume.
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I encounter extremely few trans people, so the issue doesn't come up that often.

When I encounter a new person, I don't go through a formal thought process. "Are they male? Are they trans?" These are just things that I recognize.

If I encounter, say a Blaire White and don't immediately clock her as trans, it is because she passes well enough that I clock her as female. I don't believe I would be using the wrong pronouns if I refer to her as "her."

But if I ran into (another YouTuber) Rose of Dawn, I would perceive both that she is biologically male and trans. I would also use "she/her" pronouns and feel it would feel correct.

My perception is multi-faceted.

If neither "he" nor "her" feels appropriate, I'd go to gender neutral. Someone androgenous, or the person who got into it with the GameStop clerk a couple years ago, for example. the former because there are a few (rare) cases where sex and gender are both truly ambiguous, so I just don't know. The latter because, while sex is obvious, the presentation looked more like a costume (think Ogre as a cheerleader in Revenge of the Nerds) but there was no accompanying Halloween/costume party context.

There's more that goes into it than just sex.
 
Pronouns are Rohypnol

Reposting Emily's link. Excellent view of what our reactions are by instinct vs what we are supposed to do.
This goes past what I would personally do should I be at a dinner or party or casual conversation with a group or probably many other places....but the effect is exactly what my instinct tells me...especially for someone my daughters age being told to ignore what they see and feel and cater to the male-bodied marginalized group that needs her to be kind. What happens when and/or if that 'caution' response is degraded?

They dull your defences. They change your inhibitions. They’re meant to. You’ve had a lifetime’s experience learning to be alert to ‘him’ and relax to ‘her’. For good reason. This instinctive response keeps you safe. It’s not even a conscious thing. It’s like your hairs standing on end. Your subconscious brain is helping you not get eaten by the sabre tooth tiger that your eyes haven’t noticed yet.

...They change our perception, lower our defences, make us react differently, alter the reality in front of us.
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It's hard to find an analogy for men because they just dont ever feel what we do but let me try:

Imagine what you think when you see someone toting a gun. In some areas of the country, this is no big deal. In others it gets a response of fear. Either way, you can aknowledge, openly, the presence of the gun- in friendship or fear or ambivalence. Your choice how you see it. Obvious.

Now imagine that society tried to tell you- and pass laws- that as long as the person wore an orange vest, then that meant the gun was not loaded, ever. It may not even exist. You should just pretend it isn't there.
Their pronoun is non-gun-toter because they want you to not see the gun. No danger, so just relax. Can you train your brain to disregard the sight of the gun? Maybe over time, you can. Some obviously do.

But it goes further in that the pronouns you use for the orange vest people can apply to anyone at all because in truth, the vest is not actually required, just the claim of wearing it. So now how do you know what is real or not? You want to do the right thing, but often it feels unnatural and you need to tamp down your instinct.
 
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d4m10n said:
Why should the freshman at CU Boulder stop assigning pronouns based on sex? Point me to an argument, something beyond "Be polite according to my new norm of politeness which we made up on Tumblr."
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Not only have you been given several pillars of argument, both direct and indirect, to your inane question, your position here is that one argument you acknowledge you were given is...what? Too good?

[channeling Joe Morgue]
The 'I'm totally neutral but only happen argue against and insult and tone police one side' is total BS. You know you're on one side. We know you're on one side. Have the **** to own it.
[/Joe Morgue]
 
tyr_13 said:
Not only have you been given several pillars of argument, both direct and indirect...
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No one here has even gone so far as to even argue that the process of social transition does more good than harm. All you've got is a raw assertion that these are the new norms and people need to get behind them or else face social backlash. It's Mean Girls meets Clueless, only less witty.

tyr_13 said:
your position here is that one argument you acknowledge you were given is...what?
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The argument from "this is how we do things here" works for literally anything. Good things, like ZakatWP. Bad things, like blasphemy laws. If you want people who are openly skeptical of your new pronoun heuristic to get on board, you're going to need something more than peer pressure.
 
In addition to female discretion and freedom to say what we feel, when needed or desired, there is another obvious harm of pronouns and it concerns affirmation of young persons- as young as 3 or 4.

We know that, if left alone, a majority of cross-gender tendencies in very young boys (choose your study for varying rates 65-90%) end up gay men, perfectly happy in healthy unaltered, unmedicated bodies. They are the proverbial feminine boys, perhaps bullied as 'sissy'.

Affirmation from youth, including enforcing pronouns, new names, new dress style, puts them on a path that drastically alters this number today- almost all go towards blockers, then to transition. The idea that at 18 they could choose it as adults negate the fact that they have had a lot of influence waaaay before then. And that means a lifetime of medical interventions. So that's another concern of it, but at the younger ages.
(the heterosexual ones are a different thing)

I think the whole 'use any pronoun anyone wants' thing needs a big rethink before we do a lot of harm to our youth.
 
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