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Moderated Using wrong pronouns= violence??

Emily's Cat said:
Serious question: If a male grows out their hair, puts on make-up, and wears a dress, do you actually find yourself convinced that they are genuinely female?
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Depends. Are they transgender, or are they a drag queen?

If they are transgender, then they are female for all intents and purposes. If they are a drag queen, then they are female for the purposes of a stage performance, and may cease to be female once the performance is over.
 
mumblethrax said:
Sometimes they pass, sometimes they don't. Sometimes I'm not sure. I just about never care.

I'm still unclear on the relevance.
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There is no relevance. "Passing" is a desired goal for some, but certainly not all, transgender people. Some people feel that it's important to appear in all ways as their gender identity. Others have no interest in hiding the fact that they are transgender, and wear their trans identity with pride.
 
lionking said:
This isn’t the response (I’m still looking) but this is from a group of experts, not a self-promoter like Steve Novella.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bies.202200173
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Nobody except a small group of extremists has ever argued in favour of "denying biological sex". Which is precisely why trans women can - and do - father children, and why trans men can - and do - give birth to children.

I suspect that one of the reasons why anti-trans activists pursue this line is that they either cannot or do not understand the duality of meaning of the terms "male" and "female". On one level these terms refer to biology. But on another level, they're used as colloquial proxies for gender - owing to the historic unbroken link between sex and gender (a link which is now acknowledge by mainstream medical science as broken). And it's strictly in the sense of this second, colloquial definition that it's possible to posit - correctly - that it can indeed be deemed offensive to (eg) refer to a trans man as "female". There are other related complicating factors, including for example passports of most English-speaking countries, in which the identity page states "Sex", followed by "Male" or "Female". It's already been (correctly) deemed fair, proportionate and appropriate for trans people to be able to change this descriptor to match their trans gender.
 
theprestige said:
I ask you, out of politeness and courtesy, to let me use the pronouns that best match your sex as I perceive it. Will you gainsay my perception? Will you play the" no, why should I?" card?
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I've told you what my pronouns are. As it turns out, they happen to match my gender presentation. So please, yes, use the pronouns that match my sex as you perceive it.

Don't assume that you can do that for everybody though.
 
Let's just for a moment and for the sake of argument forget about the word "violence". Just temporarily. Can we all agree that deliberately and persistently misgendering someone can be a form of harassment?
 
arthwollipot said:
Certain medical situations, in which it is directly relevant. If someone is presenting with a urinary tract infection, for example, it might be helpful for a medical professional to know what kind of urinary tract they have.
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Indeed. Whereas if they have a broken ankle or they've suffered a head injury.... less so (though personally, I'd be in favour of all clinicians knowing any patient's biological sex, and using their professional judgement to decide whether or not it was relevant to their treatment and prognosis).
 
lobosrul5 said:
What are the consequences at CU Boulder? Being told your rude perhaps. If there are others please note them, and give examples.
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I suspect that if any particular zealot insists on doubling down all the way to the bottom - and disregarding an escalating system of guidance and warnings along the way - their jobs might end up at threat.

Regarding this topic, it's perhaps worth pointing out that in the Forstater employment tribunal here in UK, the judge who determined Forstater's anti-trans views to be a "protected belief" also specifically noted that this wouldn't give Forstater (or anyone else) the right under employment law to discriminate against any particular trans person/people. In other words, it's OK to pronounce "I think all transgender people are mentally ill", but you're on a fast track to a firing if you say to a co-worker "I think you're mentally ill because you say you are transgender".
 
Hercules56 said:
I am not concerned by the thin-skinned snowflakery of the European Union. Hopefully the next generation over there will man up.
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arthwollipot said:
This says a lot, really.
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More than intended, I think.

Unless "Man up" refers to literally obtaining male anatomy, it's almost like there's a social component of maleness.
 
Emily's Cat said:
They start out insisting that sex is bimodal, not binary. This is incorrect... from the very simple premise of mathematics. In order for a bimodal distribution to exist, the element on the x-axis has to be quantifiably measurable.
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Statistical confidence resulting from multivariate analysis.

This betrays a lack of familiarity with the tools of science.
 
arthwollipot said:
If it's done once, by accident or ignorance, sure. No problem.

If it is done persistently and deliberately, as a means of denying someone's identity, that's a different story.

I am struggling to understand why this distinction is problematic.
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Because you misspelled "ignored".

"I understand why this distinction is ignored."

Does that help?
 
theprestige said:
Why should a person's preferred pronouns trump an observer's preferred pronouns?



Pronouns are all about the observer, after all.
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According to your claim about yourself it is not something that has any importance for you, but it does for the other person. This all goes back to whether you want to be a nice person or not.
 
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