Non-binary identities are valid

[arthwollipot]

I disagree. If you have always experienced a state, and never not experienced anything but that state, how can you determine what sensations you feel come from that state and not from any other factor? Do strawberries taste the same to men as they do to women? How could you possibly know, unless you eat a strawberry while being one sex, then change sex and eat another strawberry?

Imagine you're playing the board game Clue (or Cluedo, for the internationals) but you always have to guess the same room, person, and weapon. You will never win the game because without the ability to change the variables you cannot isolate which one actually does what. You can theorize and guess, but you can't directly experience it.

For all you know, your "feeling of being male" is actually entirely due to being your blood type. Unless you can change your sex or blood type you can't disprove that, not even in the Billiard Room with any number of Wrenches.

This is not a bad argument, but I still don't think it's quite on the mark. I had to think pretty hard about it, though.

Here's how I know that what I feel is how it feels to be male. I try to picture myself as another gender. I imagine referring to myself as she/her. I imagine myself presenting as female. It doesn't work. Nothing that I can imagine in this experiment feels like it is really me. I don't get the same dissonance if I imagine myself as a different blood type.

 

[arthwollipot]

I'm pretty sure there are people seriously arguing that taking someone's genitals into account in a sexual liason is bigotry.

It is certainly something that trans and nonbinary people will want to have a conversation about before beginning any sexual relationship. It's nobody else's business.

 

[arthwollipot]

Begs the question that they're the wrong pronouns.

Begging no question as I was not referencing any specific example.

 

[theprestige]

This is not a bad argument, but I still don't think it's quite on the mark. I had to think pretty hard about it, though.

Here's how I know that what I feel is how it feels to be male. I try to picture myself as another gender. I imagine referring to myself as she/her. I imagine myself presenting as female. It doesn't work. Nothing that I can imagine in this experiment feels like it is really me. I don't get the same dissonance if I imagine myself as a different blood type.

You miss the point entirely.

How do you know that you have an accurate sense of "being female", and how do you know that is or isn't how you feel?

 

[theprestige]

It is certainly something that trans and nonbinary people will want to have a conversation about before beginning any sexual relationship. It's nobody else's business.

I'm pretty sure there are trans rights advocates arguing that no such conversation should be necessary, and that any partner who wants one is a bigot.

 

[theprestige]

Begging no question as I was not referencing any specific example.

Begging the question, as I'm referring to the general case. Pronouns are either linked to the facts of your born sex, or not. One or the other usage is right, the other is wrong.

So.

Which usage do you think is correct? Why?

 

[arthwollipot]

You miss the point entirely.

How do you know that you have an accurate sense of "being female", and how do you know that is or isn't how you feel?

No sense of being female sits right with me. However, when I think about how I feel as a male, that sits right. It's not something that can be quantified.

I'm pretty sure there are trans rights advocates arguing that no such conversation should be necessary, and that any partner who wants one is a bigot.

I think I'd need independent confirmation of this. Not that I don't think there are occasional examples somewhere in the world, but I would very much think that they are the exception rather than the rule.

Begging the question, as I'm referring to the general case. Pronouns are either linked to the facts of your born sex, or not. One or the other usage is right, the other is wrong.

So.

Which usage do you think is correct? Why?

I think it's pretty clear that I think that pronouns should not be linked to a person's genitals, which as I have said before are nobody else's business. In fact I think I have made this so clear in the past that I have to wonder why you need to ask the question now.

 

[Roboramma]

Because you said the highlighted:

That is true because we as a society removed the stigma of being left-handed. It wasn't so long ago (my father's generation) that left handed kids were still forced in school to write with their right hands.

If we can stop forcing people to write with their non-dominant hand, we can stop forcing them to use the wrong pronouns.

Which presupposes that you're right about what the "wrong pronouns" are.

When theprestige pointed that out, you said "Begging no question as I was not referencing any specific example."

He was simply pointing out that one of the issues of debate is how to determine which pronouns are right and which are wrong, but you seem to think that's been settled.

 

[gnome]

I'm pretty sure there are trans rights advocates arguing that no such conversation should be necessary, and that any partner who wants one is a bigot.

I'm pretty sure it's almost always possible to find someone to match any straw man. Is it significant?

The discussion usually isn't over what someone somewhere might argue. It's over what someone right here IS arguing.

 

[theprestige]

I think I'd need independent confirmation of this. Not that I don't think there are occasional examples somewhere in the world, but I would very much think that they are the exception rather than the rule.

I'm pretty sure it's almost always possible to find someone to match any straw man. Is it significant?

What evidence will you accept? Public statements by a member of a prominent advocacy group?

 

[theprestige]

No sense of being female sits right with me. However, when I think about how I feel as a male, that sits right. It's not something that can be quantified.

I agree it can't be quantified.

But I'm talking about the other side of the coin. I'm not asking you how you know you're comfortable being male. I'm asking how any born male can know that what they feel is actually female.

Or, since you've examined several senses of being female, and found that none of them sit right with you: How do you know that any of the senses of being female you've examined are anything like the actual experience of being female?

Or put it the other way around: How does any female know what you feel like, being male, and that they have the same feelings you do?

 

[d4m10n]

An appropriate analogy only if you are considering someone's genitals...

Bit of a leap there. Suppose someone says "I am not male; I am not female; I am nonbinary. " Does this tell you anything about their genitals?

 

[Belz...]

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?

There are people who think they are Napoleon, or who have limbs they think should be removed, etc. There's no limit to what mental states can give, as an impression.

Rather, my point was that nobody "feels like a man" or a woman. We conclude that we are one of them because of characteristics that are observable to us AND to others. It's not about our internal feelings.

 

[Belz...]

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.

Of course it is. If someone picks "xe", and I use "they", they'll call me a bigot for misgendering them and denying the validity of their experience, whatever the **** that means. And under some proposed laws, I could face fines or prison times if I don't yield.

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.

That doesn't mean that people in general understood it that way. "Gender" has always been directly linked to sex. Adult human male makes you a man, for instance. The definition you refer to is not commonly used.

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 it isn't. My gender has nothing to do with my feelings. That's my point. Having dysphoria doesn't change objective reality.

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

You are incorrect.

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

In what programming language do you think that line would be compiled? Why did you bring up my experience in an unrelated field?

Instead, did you or did you not understand my point? Or were you just lashing out? The point is that there is no reason to ask 99.7% of the population to use "cis-" when it works fine to just use "trans-" for 0.3%.

 

[HansMustermann]

Sure. But you do know what it feels like to be male. In fact, that's the only thing (meaning gender) that you can know how to be, unless you have some magical insight into the feelings of other people. Me too.

But acknowledging this does not preclude also acknowledging that some other people don't have this strong knowledge of being male, or female. You say "I am one". A nonbinary person might say "I am not one", and that's okay.

Here's something else that I gradually came to get, though.

If I identify as, say, a programmer, or as the guy who took a hex editor to Fallout 3 and wrote the first tutorial on how to make a non-replacer mod, or (as I keep saying on the forum) as an ass hole, that's just something I think I am. It's just what my mental model of the world is like.

I don't need every single living person within hearing distance to actively validate it. I don't need everyone -- or indeed ANYone -- to keep acknowledging me as Mr Ass Hole or Mr Programmer.

In fact, even if someone were to actively go, "nope, that's not a programmer", well, I know I am, that guy is crazy and that's that. I'm no less a programmer if that guy doesn't believe it. I might get hurt if the guy doing my code review went "that's not something any real programmer would do", but anyone else, I don't really give a flip.

Ditto on the question of gender. I've been a boy, and I've been a girl, and I've been neither, and it's just who I think I am (at the moment.) I don't have a problem whether anyone actually believes it or not. I don't even feel a need to mention it in any conversation except when it actually has a bearing on what is being discussed. Like this one. I don't bring it up when people are, say, discussing general relativity. I don't start threads asking for people to tell me that yeah, it's valid for me to put on a skirt and cute blouse and refer to myself as a 'she'.

So what I'm saying is that when someone says that they identify as X, but really it's so devastating when everyone doesn't validate it... yeah, I can't help think, "do you REALLY?"

In effect, all they just told me is that they have a bad cognitive dissonance exercise. That discomfort when your model is being challenged? Yeah, cognitive dissonance does that. It means that you just really really want to BELIEVE X, but don't really have a good reason to, and all the reason in the world not to.

 

[xjx388]

So what I'm saying is that when someone says that they identify as X, but really it's so devastating when everyone doesn't validate it... yeah, I can't help think, "do you REALLY?"

It's an attention getting exercise in narcissism, pure and simple.

 

[theprestige]

Bit of a leap there. Suppose someone says "I am not male; I am not female; I am nonbinary. " Does this tell you anything about their genitals?

When you think about it, the only time gender identity should matter is when genitals are (directly or indirectly) involved. And then, it matters to the other person.

Physical ability, such as for sport or combat? It doesn't matter so much what your self-identity is. What matters is that other people can observe that you're a man and shouldn't be playing women's basketball.

Sexual attraction? It doesn't matter so much what your self-identity is. What matters is whether your partner is actually attracted to your observable primary and secondary sexual characteristics.

Getting a job as a receptionist? Your gender identity shouldn't matter at all to anyone. Getting a job as a CEO? Your gender identity shouldn't matter at all to anyone.

There are probably very few situations where your genitals aren't relevant but your gender is.

A lot of social progress in the West, over the past hundred years or so, has been about eliminating gender discrimination in every situation where genitals aren't relavant.

---

I should say, genitals are an effect. I'm using them here as a proxy for their cause: The male/female genetic binary that produces distinct genitalia and a ton of other significant differentiating characteristics between the two sexes.

Does it matter that you're a man? Sometimes. My argument is that in pretty much every context where it actually matters that you're a man, it's up to other people to decide if you're a man or not. Just like it's not up to you to decide whether you can fit in that dress, or whether you're under the weight limit for that chair, or whether you're tall enough to ride that ride.

 

[Belz...]

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.*

Thing is, we really don't disagree on the fundamentals. The crux of the disagreements is one of definitions; but the 'other side' is arguing based on that definition being Y while everybody else understands it to be X. They have to argue for the definition to change before they can argue based on that definition.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Thing is, we really don't disagree on the fundamentals. The crux of the disagreements is one of definitions; but the 'other side' is arguing based on that definition being Y while everybody else understands it to be X. They have to argue for the definition to change before they can argue based on that definition.

Well yeah that's what I've been saying. One side is going "I have five fingers" and the other side is going "No I have four fingers and a thumb" but we never address the obvious fact that everyone knows and can tell that the real and only issue is we aren't using the same definition of "finger" and yet all we do in this discussion is have everyone count their fingers again and get the same answer.

Because one side has made even asking the question "Is a thumb a finger or not?" (either overall or in some scenarios) offensive and a direct attack on them. So instead we hairsplit the difference between a finger and a digit over and over as if the answer is going to be in there somewhere.

 

[gnome]

What evidence will you accept? Public statements by a member of a prominent advocacy group?

It depends what you're trying to argue.

If your point is, "someone will always still be complaining" then that's true, but I'm not sure if it adds anything useful.