Trausti
Illuminator
Yeah. If someone chooses "doctor" or "emperor" as their pronoun, that's their pronoun.
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"Misgendering" is now a federal offense
- Thread starter jt512
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Yeah. If someone chooses "doctor" or "emperor" as their pronoun, that's their pronoun.
No. It's not a slippery slope if it's already explicitly forbidden to question the policy. It's only slippery slope if it's not already the case, but it supposedly inevitably leads there.
It's like claiming in May 1982 that opposing Argentina is based on a slippery slope to where they attack the UK. It's bloody well not a slippery slope if it's already happening since last month
It's not forbidden to question the policy.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
Those are not pronouns. They are titles.
d4m10n
Penultimate Amazing
I see an obvious difference, which has already been mentioned upthread.
angrysoba
Philosophile
Yeah, I think I am more or less in the same boat.
If someone asked “can Colin call himself Sheila and wear a dress, make-up and high heels?” I would say sure, just because those things are stereotypically female (I.e socially constructed IOW gender) there is no reason to say no to that in a tolerant society. If they said “can Susan do tough stuff like play rugby, join the army, down pints of beer in the pub, shave her head, fart and tell boorish jokes” I’d say of course, and when’s she coming down the pub, she sounds like a right laugh.
In those cases we are talking about “gendered” behaviour, in the sense that they are bucking society’s unwritten rules. No problem.
It sounds to me that radical feminists have indeed fought for these types of emancipation from stodgy old conservatives.
Now, if asked then, can Sheila go into the ladies toilets with Susan, and join her rugby team and get put in the same jail cell, then the answer is…. Errrr…. Nah! I don’t think so.
I tend to think that while the term trans-exclusionary radical feminist has come to be thought of as a slur, it probably very accurately describes my position on this.
SpuriusMaximus
Penultimate Amazing
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That's not an analogy, as I was saying. Names are supposed to be different, to distinguish among different people. It's how names are supposed to work. It can in fact become a problem in meetings if 4 of your 12 programmer team are all called Christian or Kristian (both pronounced the same.) Or if, worse, we had two guys called "Thorsten Dörnbach" it would cause some major confusion in the daily meeting and result in solutions like, say, calling them Thorsten 1 and Thorsten 2.
Meanwhile, pronouns fundamentally don't fill the same role, nor have the same expectation. It's perfectly normal that "he" applies to 7 of your 12 programmer team, and "she" to the other 5. Nobody expects that when you say "he" it identifies specifically Thorsten but not Kristian.
Seeing no difference between the two is... uninformed, to say the least, for anyone who's not an alien hearing third hand about how human communication works.
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d4m10n
Penultimate Amazing
One of them is documented at birth. Both of them, if you're into pronouns referring to sex.
novaphile
Quester of Doglets
Fair enough.
And I'm certainly not comfortable with white knighting (especially if it is me doing it).
However, having read about entire classes of women being excluded, i.e. muslim women, I get twitchy.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
Well, for a start, I'm not, but again, I chose to be Andrew and not Andy. And some people change their name completely. I know one person who was documented at birth as Caroline but chose Beth when she was 14. Once you're an adult you can apply by deed poll to get it changed in law.
Name is a personal choice. So is pronoun.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Does that mean we should make it easier for them?
The number of people actually affected by allegedly being misgendered is also vanishingly small., so we can pretend it isn't a problem... amirite!!?
And here is where you simply miss the point entirely! THEY DON'T HAVE TO PASS ANY MORE!!! All they have to do is say the magic words "I identify as a women", and hey presto, you demand that I, and people who agree with me, treat them as actual women. Here are a few examples for you - people like you and thaiboxerken and plague311 call me a transphobe and a bigot because I don't accept people like these as women.
Don't you think those who are impacted most by "the bathroom problem" should have biggest say about it?
IMO, it should be entirely up to females to decide whether or not they want to accept fully intact biological males into their intimate safe spaces, but what I see here is a lot of male posters arrogantly deciding what is good for females, and demanding they should just suck it up! Well guess what... **** that completely!
Now, I have no wish to pre-empt the feelings and opinions of females, and I would even feel uncomfortable going into bat for them were it not for the fact that I have two daughters who have both been harassed by transwomen that have accosted them in public toilets. I have "equipped" them both with the necessary tools to defend themselves should it happen again, although that is unlikely now, because as I posted earlier, they simply choose not to use public facilities any more.
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d4m10n
Penultimate Amazing
Having changed my name, I'm well aware that there is legal process involved, along with documentation that you have to keep in a safe place for the sake of passports and whatnot. Is there any analogous process of gatekeeping and documentation for pronouns?
SpuriusMaximus
Penultimate Amazing
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Or not even bucking. We've had decades of coming up the idea of gender roles. Meaning it's just a ROLE prescribed by society. You CAN be a man who likes to wear a dress and get a nurse job, you're just playing a different role than what you're typecast as. No different from, say, casting Schwarzenegger in a comedy like "Kindergarten Cop", or Stalone in "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot". Or in less superstar terms, you CAN be a boy that plays with dolls, or a girl who likes to play Cowboys And Indians with the boys. Nothing wrong. You're just choosing another role.
The current "gender ideology" pretty much rolled back decades of that Anthropology progress. Now if you're a boy playing with dolls, it's not just that you chose another role, it must be that somehow you ARE a girl, and they must help you and encourage you to become one.
The "progressives" rolled that all back to Iran levels of progressive. Yeah, as I was saying before, one of the most accepting countries of a guy in women roles is... Iran. If you fully transition that is. But you can't buck gender roles if you don't
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Yeah, when people have a hard rule about who they can be in the room with, the only compromise is a room for one, which comes with its own problems, of infrastructure on the one hand, and of wounded pride on the other (which I kinda get but also. c'mon. The single-occupant unisex or family bathroom is not a colored sign. It's just not.)
But that is a problem for the Other Thread; in here it's names and pronouns, and I take it with exactly the same attitude as I take religious belief: I don't think you have to understand it or genuinely believe it to be polite about it. And I also believe if you want to talk about how dumb it seems to you, well away from those who are just going about their own day, that's 100% fine. (I have no objections to this thread, for instance.) And that if you do it AT people who don't want to debate it with you, or intentionally misgender them, it's pretty rude. YES EVEN if you think of it as a lie instead of a courtesy and you think people expecting you to lie is pretty rude. Unless you really are also the guy who says 'your haircut is terrible, your cooking bland, and you look like a slob in that suit,' with such charisma that people like you anyways - there are such people out there! It's a time and place kinda thing, imo.
Since their actions are criminal whether they are women or not, why is this such a sticking point for you? People who have just minded their own business don't need to answer for their crimes any more than I need to be seen as dangerous because women have poisoned people before.
"Yes yes, they illicitly filmed naked women, assaulted and raped women and underage boys, but THEN!! THEN they asked to be called MA'AM at the arraignment!"
Like, I'll buckle down with you debating how exactly to lock them up, but what name and pronoun to call them while you do it it just. So irrelevant to any of it.
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Oh, absolutely. It seems to me there's several overlapping camps, plus young people threading the line between exploring identity and commitment to the bit.
Thermal
August Member
I'm still admiring the irony on this one. It's like a SelfAwarewolves master class thesis.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Because its the thin end of the wedge.
If you allow this, that gives trans-radical activists a launching point to make more demands. Go back 20 years and ask yourself if you knew, knew of, or saw anyone..... anyone who self ID'd as a woman, made NO effort to pass as a woman, and demanded you to refer to them as "she". You might actually find some people referring to transsexuals (which is what they used to be called) as "she", but not because they felt obliged to so as not to offend them, but because they were bigots who were calling them "she" to mock, shame and belittle them.
As many have pointed out here, it used to be that transsexuals would routinely use women's bathroom facilities and it was wholly uncontroversial. Most women knew exactly who and what they were, and didn't mind. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case thanks to ******* trans-radical activists making more and more demands and kicking up a ruckus when women started pushing back - women who are now labelled TERFs, transphobes and bigots because they wouldn't just suck it up!
I don't see any reason why women in general, who have fought for 100+ years to make the gains they have in being treated as equals and breaking down the patriarchy by preventing males from treating them as property, should now have to give it all up and allow potential predators to gain access to their safe spaces, merely on the say-so of males self IDing as women by fiat.
Furthermore, anyone who tries to tell me that self ID males calling themselves women are no threat to females in bathrooms can just **** right off!! Both of my daughters' lived experience makes a lie of that, and gives me a lens through which to view the consequences it had on them!
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Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
Up until this business started any male discovered in the female toilet/shower/changing room was removed without question. All the women had to do was raise the alarm. If TRAs get their way any woman who is ogled, has an erection proudly displayed to her or is even molested by a male knows that all that male has to do is say "I'm a transwoman! I didn't touch her! She's just being transphobic!" and she's the one who might find herself being arrested for a hate crime. If you really don't see how that knowledge is going to discourage women - especially the large percentage of them who have been the victims of sexual violence or harrassment - from ever going into the female showers again I don't know what to tell you.
If TRAs get their way any male, even one with a big beard dressed in dirty overalls, will be able to enter any female space provided they are willing, if challenged, to utter the magic words. There will no longer be any such thing as female safe spaces. That is the sacrifice a tiny percentage of the human race are demanding 50% of it to make to spare their feelings. The same 50% who, I remind you again, have been quietly allowing respectful transwomen into their safe spaces for decades, whether they 'passed' or not.
Says the man who is going to be completely unaffected by it.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
Also known as the slippery slope.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
The slippery slope fallacy assumes without evidence that if we take a particular step which in itself doesn't cause a problem, it is nevertheless the first in a series of steps that will lead inevitably to some undesired outcome. This fallacy in reasoning is often called the “thin end of the wedge” argument.
Except its only a fallacy if two conditions are both true
a. there is no evidence
b. the first step in itself doesn't cause a problem
But at least in sports, we already see the evidence, and the first step was a problem
1. Initially:
Men were never allowed to compete in women's sports.
2. Thin end of the wedge:
Then in 1976 along came Renee Richards. He was allowed to compete as a woman because he had sex reassignment surgery... so as long has you had your meat and two veg cut-off, you were good to go, and she was give permission to compete in the Women's US Open.
3. The wedge is tapped in a little:
In 2003, under pressure from transwomen's advocates, the IOC allowed transgender athletes to compete in the women's events in the Olympics provided they met three conditions...
First, athletes must have undergone sex reassignment surgery, including changes in the external genitalia and gonadectomy.
Second, athletes must show legal recognition of their gender.
Third, athletes must have undergone hormone therapy for an appropriate time before participation, with two years being the suggested time.
4. The wedge starts getting driven in:
In 2015, under increasing pressure from transgender advocates, the IOC dropped the requirement for surgery. The new guidelines required only that transwoman athletes declare their gender and not change that assertion for four years, as well as demonstrate a testosterone level of less than 10 nanomoles per liter for at least one year prior to competition and throughout the period of eligibility. Athletes who transitioned from female to male were allowed to compete without restriction (NOTE: Right there is a direct acknowledgement of the advantage biological males have over females in sports.
5. The wedge is hammered much of the way in:
In November 2021 under relentless pressure from TRAs, all the pretense is dropped. The IOC issues a non-legally binding framework* that focuses on ten principles of inclusion:
a. Prevention of harm.
b. Non-discrimination.
c. Fairness.
d. No presumption of advantage.
e. Evidence-based approach.
f. Primacy of health and bodily autonomy.
g. Stakeholder-centered approach.
h. Right to privacy and periodic reviews.
For a start, c and d are mutually exclusive, and they go against the previous policy in No. 4 above
These guidelines have been described as loosening rules that impede transgender and intersex athlete's participation in Olympic sports, with enforcement of sport-specific rules governing inclusion.*
*NOTE: "non-legally binding framework", "enforcement of sport-specific rules governing inclusion" Translation: "We've thrown our hands up, put it in the too hard basket and are going to leave it up to individual sports"
6. The wedge will be driven home with a vengeance:
This is what will happen next... mark my words...
- Testosterone limitations will be further reduced so that they will be all but ineffective.
- Self ID is all that will be required for a male to compete in female events.
- Dissent will be silenced using suspension as punishment.
If you don't think this will happen, I have news for you. It already happened in the NCAA. Will Thomas was allowed to be on the UPenn Women's swim team (as Lia Thomas) with almost no restrictions. Actual women swimmers like Riley Gaines, Paula Scanlan (and others too afraid to speak out) were told they were to accept without question, the right of Thomas (a fully intact biological male) to be getting undressed and dressed in their changing rooms. They were threatened that if they complained to University about this, they would be forced to undertake "gender sensitivity training" (a euphemism for forced indoctrination) and if they dared to go public about it, their scholarships would be withdrawn.
Fairness in sport huh!
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