Non-binary identities are valid

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HansMustermann said:
I'll disagree, actually. What someone's internal model is and how well it works for actually describing the reality they're trying to work with, well, that's their business. I dunno about you, but I don't really care if it's valid or not, or even what it actually is. In a sense, it being valid or not isn't even the right question. If it works for them, good for them.

But that's kinda the keyword: it's THEIR business, not mine.

It only becomes my problem when it turns into demands that everyone else must meet, in order for them to pretend that reality fits their model.
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I'll add a couple of personal anecdotes to illustrate this :)

On the one hand... I persistently and consistently think that I'm about 4 inches taller than I am in reality. I frequently find myself surprised that I can't reach a shelf, because my brain is quite convinced that I should be able to. It's been that way since I reached adulthood, and it will not go away.

In a sense, this would be a bit of body dysmorphia, which is conceptually similar to gender dysphoria, but with a very different focus. But... I am well aware that my brain is a liar. My brain is wrong. My brain, and it's stupid ideas about my existence in this world, don't matter to reality. No matter how hard my brain wails and carries on, I'm not 4 inches taller than I actually am. And I'm okay with that. Thus, it doesn't rise to the level of being a disorder.

On the other hand... my best friend has always viewed herself as a redhead, and thinks of herself as a redhead. She dyes her hair to somewhere between a strawberry blonde and a light copper. In reality, however, her hair is blonde, and quite light at that. But if you mention her being blonde, or refer to her as blonde... she absolutely loses her ****. She actually breaks down and cries, and gets angry about it.

I'd say she also has a bit of body (or hair) dysmorphia. And because of the level of emotional impact it has on her, I'd even arm-chair-psychology that as being a disorder. Luckily, it's one easily treated as hair dye is ubiquitous and easy to do in your own home.

On the gripping hand... at the end of the day, no matter what our internal views of ourselves have to say about it... I'm short and my best friend is blonde.
 
arthwollipot said:
I think you've grabbed the wrong end of the stick on this one.

If I say that my pronouns are he/him and yet you consistently refer to me as she/her, then you are "forcing" that pronoun on me against my will.
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Nobody would be forcing you to use any pronoun that you don't want. The mods would definitely not tell you to put "she" in your bio instead, you and anyone else is clearly free to use "he" instead as much as you want. Again, a refusal to obey your command is not the same as you being forced to do anything, it's the absence of you forcing someone else to do something.

Tell me, if I told you that I was Napoleon, would your refusal to dress up in a French uniform and invade Russia on my behalf constitute you forcing me to do something, or would it constitute the absence of me forcing you to do something?
 
Emily's Cat said:
On the other hand... my best friend has always viewed herself as a redhead, and thinks of herself as a redhead. She dyes her hair to somewhere between a strawberry blonde and a light copper. In reality, however, her hair is blonde, and quite light at that. But if you mention her being blonde, or refer to her as blonde... she absolutely loses her ****. She actually breaks down and cries, and gets angry about it.
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I'm going to speculate here that she is responding to the common (thankfully becoming less common) "dumb blonde" stereotype, and not wanting to be seen as that. Regardless, it's clear that she sees not being blonde as an important part of her identity, and she takes steps to make sure that she does not present as a blonde. It would be cruel to repeatedly "mis-colour" her despite knowing how she feels about it.

This might be an analogy for something.
 
caveman1917 said:
Nobody would be forcing you to use any pronoun that you don't want. The mods would definitely not tell you to put "she" in your bio instead, you and anyone else is clearly free to use "he" instead as much as you want. Again, a refusal to obey your command is not the same as you being forced to do anything, it's the absence of you forcing someone else to do something.

Tell me, if I told you that I was Napoleon, would your refusal to dress up in a French uniform and invade Russia on my behalf constitute you forcing me to do something, or would it constitute the absence of me forcing you to do something?
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Nope, you've still got the wrong end of the stick. I put "forcing" into quotes for a reason. You're not forcing me to behave in certain ways by using the wrong pronouns, but you are forcing me to hear you do it. You're pushing your "pronoun agenda" on me :rolleyes: wow that's a terrible term but I can't think of a better way to describe it.

Also, I think you're grabbing the wrong end of another stick by framing it as a "command" rather than a request.
 
d4m10n said:
Apologies, I didn't realize we were on 9-5 behaviour here.

*backs away slowly*
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I just don't think it's a subject that would be commonly brought up in most peoples' day-to-day. Of course it's on the table in a discussion specifically focused on sexuality or anatomy. Outside of a few specific social contexts, I don't think most people would engage in such a discussion very commonly.
 
arthwollipot said:
And they have no relevance outside of a sexual relationship and should not be brought into conversations that have nothing to do with sexual activity.
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At the risk of getting yeeted into the moderated thread again: Again, that is false, and is currently used to mislead (maybe not by you, or not intentionally, but still is) in a very misogynistic direction. Sexual dimorphism covers a lot more characteristics than what your genitals are, and influences a lot of stuff that you do outside of bedroom just as well. Just because it has "sexual" in the name, doesn't mean it's about having sex. It's about being different by sex, no matter what the f-word your identity may be.

It includes stuff like women actually having higher muscle endurance than men, although men have higher strength and generally a higher percentage of the body mass being muscles. There are skeletal differences, the most obvious being the pelvis, which directly affect athletics performance.

It even affects wiring to such non-obvious extents as that a heart attack is felt in the center-left chest by men, but generally in the stomach by women. It's something that is sadly not all that well known, and that lack of knowledge results in quite a few more dead women per year than should be the case.

It affects stuff like metabolism, to the extent that if you're a man, alcohol gets metabolized into getting fat, while for women it actually has a negative energy balance. Although you'll destroy your liver and die faster as a woman.

Hell, to get into stuff that you should probably already know about, even the actual sexual characteristics like having big breasts can actually get into the way of using a longsword, as Skal demonstrated on his channel some time ago.

Now I'm not saying that an average should affect the employment of individuals, since that's a fallacy in its own right, but (again, at the risk of getting yeeted into the other thread again) it IS for example a reason to keep sports segregated.

But even more importantly, just saying that the only sexual dimorphism that matters is mattering in the bedroom, is plain old wrong. And ignorant. And it doesn't do anyone any real good to keep propagating the ignorance.
 
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arthwollipot said:
I just don't think it's a subject that would be commonly brought up in most peoples' day-to-day. Of course it's on the table in a discussion specifically focused on sexuality or anatomy.
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Is there some good reason not to discuss anatomy, sexuality, or excretory functions frankly and without shame?

(Outside of office hours, that is.)
 
caveman1917 said:
Nobody would be forcing you to use any pronoun that you don't want. The mods would definitely not tell you to put "she" in your bio instead, you and anyone else is clearly free to use "he" instead as much as you want. Again, a refusal to obey your command is not the same as you being forced to do anything, it's the absence of you forcing someone else to do something.

Tell me, if I told you that I was Napoleon, would your refusal to dress up in a French uniform and invade Russia on my behalf constitute you forcing me to do something, or would it constitute the absence of me forcing you to do something?
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Assuming from you're name that you're male, how would you feel if someone called you "Miss" and insisted on using female pronouns when referring to you?
How would you feel if even after you told them to cut it out they continued to do so in an obviously condescending manner?

Are they forcing you to do anything? No. But they are being a grade A jackass.
 
arthwollipot said:
And they have no relevance outside of a sexual relationship and should not be brought into conversations that have nothing to do with sexual activity.
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Not so. Sex-based traits have relevance in conversations outside of sexual activity. There are a couple important places where we segregate by sex, that should be considered in terms of biological sex, not gender self-identity.

That, not the bedroom, is the real significance of "genitals" in this discussion.

Though I do think the bedroom is a great place to illustrate the binary nature of biological sex, and the shortcomings of insisting that gender identity is entirely in the head of the self-identifying individual.
 
arthwollipot said:
See my most recent post, directly above yours.
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And I'm saying that it's still wrong, when it boils down to just saying the same, plus just giving a token nod to some unspecified, presumably easily handwaved away social contexts.

In reality, it affects a lot of contexts that SHOULD be discussed a lot more. Because dismissing them occasionally results in stuff like military equipment for women that you can't pee out of. (Without stripping off a fair amount of it.)

Or here's one that does get discussed around water coolers, although most people don't seem to know why: biological women are actually wired to prefer a slightly higher temperature than biological men.(*) So all those thermostat wars? Yeah, maybe people should have discussed that issue more outside of the bedroom.


(*) How the category wired to be more sensitive to cold ended up wearing less clothing, is another discussion for another time ;)
 
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d4m10n said:
Looking forward to the campaign for quintgender acceptance. With any luck, our pronoun badges will be easily reprogrammable by then.
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By then our pronoun badges will be automatically linked to the ultranet of things, and receive up-to-the-minute adjustments based on the latest census data, facial recognition, and mining our social media presence.
 
LondonJohn said:
I'll give you a small hint: sexual attraction is based entirely upon biological sex (including presentation which implies a particular biological sex). It has nothing whatsoever per se to do with gender identity.
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So, you're not saying that anything was wrong in that post, just that it's an issue that's not relevant to the discussion of gender identity?

That implies that there are some issues (like the one brought up in theprestige's post) where the important factor is biological sex. There are perhaps other issues where the important factor is gender identity. What features distinguish between those cases?
 
Irony said:
Assuming from you're name that you're male, how would you feel if someone called you "Miss" and insisted on using female pronouns when referring to you?
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Dunno about him, but I already wrote that it actually happened, and I don't give a flip.

And it happened a lot more back when I was cross-dressing, lemme tell you. You kids these days don't know how good you have it. *shakes his cane at the young 'uns on his lawn* Back in my day, people didn't fall over themselves to accommodate that kind of thing. Why, these days, some people seem to feel a need to practically get apologetic and guilt-ridden for being cis or straight. Back then I straight-up got hauled to the principal for demanding that I take a medical examination as a girl, or that I play basketball as a girl in PE instead of football like the boys.

(If it makes any difference, though, it wasn't competitive or anything. Just go play something when the PE teacher can't be assed to do anything else. Plus, hey, I was young and dumb. Nowadays I'm... err... no longer young.)

Still didn't give a crap.

And then there was this time at physics camp when I got asked why I'm in some girls' bedroom after midnight. (We were just playing cards, incidentally.) Let's just say that my having a padded bra on just opened a whole new direction for that discussion.

Repeat after me: didn't give a crap.

Irony said:
How would you feel if even after you told them to cut it out they continued to do so in an obviously condescending manner?
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That's already begging the question that it's condescending. Which I see done a lot in this kind of thready. There's this premise that everyone owes you to bend over backwards to meet your demands, and if they don't, it OBVIOUSLY has to be just them being hostile in some way.

Mind you, if they insist on calling me a woman, I might start flirting with them. I'm not gay, mind you, but I'm not above using it to troll. In fact I'm pretty much troll enough to be legally entitled to declare a bridge as my place of residence :p

Irony said:
Are they forcing you to do anything? No. But they are being a grade A jackass.
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I'll take "jackass" over "bigot" and other similar. Sure, I'm a grade-A jackass.

In fact, I self-identify as a bellend. (Means dick-head for you metric non-brits.) Shouldn't you be supportive of my penile-cranial dysphoria? :p

Just kidding, of course. I actually identify as an ass hole.
 
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HansMustermann said:
In reality, it affects a lot of contexts that SHOULD be discussed a lot more. Because dismissing them occasionally results in stuff like military equipment for women that you can't pee out of. (Without stripping off a fair amount of it.)
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Yes, you're right, and in hindsight I probably shouldn't have used such absolutist language.
 
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