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Moderated Using wrong pronouns= violence??

Shalamar said:
Conservatives have a current hate-on for trans folks, and they need something to be outraged over.
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No. That is wilful conflating of concern about youth irreversibly harming their bodies and minds with adults engaging in lawful (but awful) cosmetic surgery and drug therapy.
 
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mumblethrax said:
What? Cosmetic surgery wasn't even mentioned.
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I edited to make clearer. Republicans are legislating against affirmative programs for minors. I happen to agree with that legislation after doing due diligence of scores of hours of podcasts etc listening to all the arguments I can find, and having had a brother who wanted to be a woman.
Pronouns are the gateway linguistic drug for this misguided post modern experiment.
 
Samson said:
I edited to make clearer. Republicans are legislating against affirmative programs for minors. I happen to agree with that legislation after doing due diligence of scores of hours of podcasts etc listening to all the arguments I can find, and having had a brother who wanted to be a woman.
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Ok. What the **** does any of that have to do with anything? We're talking about college students.

Pronouns are the gateway linguistic drug for this misguided post modern experiment.
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That's highly implausible.
 
First, I don't understand for the life of me why adults would hit each other in an argument. That level of immaturity is astounding. If the shoe fits anyone, I don't want to know.

Second, seems to me that there's a line between 'provocation' and 'perceived insults'. It might be a blurry line but outside of the blurry middle of this continuum, the two terms are being conflated here.
 
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mumblethrax said:
Ok. What the **** does any of that have to do with anything? We're talking about college students.


That's highly implausible.
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Pronouns anywhere become pronouns everywhere.
Dangerous for reasons listed in my last few posts.
 
mumblethrax said:
Which is why we probably should [not] characterize innocuous speech as "dangerous". That's seldom a prelude to protecting free speech.
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Is "violent" preferable to "dangerous" when talking about something as (in)consequential as gendered pronouns?

I really don't care if you folks refer to me as he or she or they unless you're talking about something where that would be particularly confusing, e.g. "Her children took care to make her feel special on Fathers' Day." Why should we all care so much how we are being gendered? The link in the OP makes it sound profoundly important, but doesn't say why this ought to be so.
 
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d4m10n said:
Is "violent" preferable to "dangerous" when talking about something as (in)consequential as gendered pronouns?
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Probably, if only because we don't have a history of criminalizing "violent" speech (possibly because it just doesn't really make sense).. "Dangerous" speech...well, that's the pretext for just about every suppression of free speech in history (or at least, since we've recognized the concept).

I really don't care if you folks refer to me as he or she or they unless you're talking about something where that would be particularly confusing, e.g. "Her children took care to make her feel special on Fathers' Day." Why should we all care so much how we are being gendered? The link in the OP makes it sound profoundly important, but doesn't say why this ought to be so.
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I generally think people engage in some unsupportable linguistic relativism around this topic. You can't literally erase someone by using the wrong pronouns, and you can't make someone think of themselves as transgender with pronouns. Language just doesn't have that kind of power.
 
mumblethrax said:
Probably, if only because we don't have a history of criminalizing "violent" speech (possibly because it just doesn't really make sense).. "Dangerous" speech...well, that's the pretext for just about every suppression of free speech in history (or at least, since we've recognized the concept).


I generally think people engage in some unsupportable linguistic relativism around this topic. You can't literally erase someone by using the wrong pronouns, and you can't make someone think of themselves as transgender with pronouns. Language just doesn't have that kind of power.
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Yet I argue it has malevolent power for school kids.
 
Samson said:
Yet I argue it has malevolent power for school kids.
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It is traditional in skeptical circles to link one's arguments back to some actual scientific findings. Your hypothesis that pronouns are a sort of gateway drug is intriguing, but it may as well be sci-fi at this point.
 
d4m10n said:
It is traditional in skeptical circles to link one's arguments back to some actual scientific findings. Your hypothesis that pronouns are a sort of gateway drug is intriguing, but it may as well be sci-fi at this point.
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It is what Scott Newgent claims and the way he topples the dominos a useful argument. Remember he/they was a woman and now fiercely opposed to the whole thing.
 
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With the start of Pride Month (U.S.), I have a bad feeling about this. I know some people that usually get involved in events but they are talking about skipping them this year due to the increased potential for violence. I have attended the local big fair on occasion but am likely to skip it myself.
 
Hercules56 said:
This really is an attack on speech in a way that is totally out of control. Speech that makes people offended or uncomfortable may not be right, but it is certainly not an act of violence.

This needs to stop.
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So, I'm guessing your intent in this initial post was to demonstrate an even more out of control statement? Since a little minimal guide to pronouns that casually mentions "...but can also be considered an act of violence." is an "attack on speech"?

Whose speech is actually being attacked by this little article? Is this article putting people in jail? Beating them with...erm...pixels until they can't talk?

Sheesh. We've had who-knows how long of right-wing nutjobs saying LGBT people are literally responsible for wildfires and hurricanes. "Can be considered an act of violence" barely makes the hyperbole meter twitch. If at all...I'm sure a lot of the angry right-wingers would beat up or just flat out shoot someone who called them the wrong gender.
 
Cat Not Included said:
So, I'm guessing your intent in this initial post was to demonstrate an even more out of control statement? Since a little minimal guide to pronouns that casually mentions "...but can also be considered an act of violence." is an "attack on speech"?

Whose speech is actually being attacked by this little article? Is this article putting people in jail? Beating them with...erm...pixels until they can't talk?

Sheesh. We've had who-knows how long of right-wing nutjobs saying LGBT people are literally responsible for wildfires and hurricanes. "Can be considered an act of violence" barely makes the hyperbole meter twitch. If at all...I'm sure a lot of the angry right-wingers would beat up or just flat out shoot someone who called them the wrong gender.
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Calling a mere insult a literal act of "violence" is definitely a form of censorship. Its goal is to shut people up, and if they don't shut up, justify violence against them. If incorrect pronouns literally equal violence than physical force in self defense is justified.
 
Cat Not Included said:
Sheesh. We've had who-knows how long of right-wing nutjobs saying LGBT people are literally responsible for wildfires and hurricanes. "Can be considered an act of violence" barely makes the hyperbole meter twitch.
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If the views expressed in the link were a fringe position, I would agree with you. The problem is that it's not a fringe position. It's the default position within universities.
 
At the risk of Arguing By Dictionary, I think that part of the issue here is in the definition of the word "violence". Some dictionaries (Merriam-Webster) define violence as "the use of physical force to harm or injure". By that definition, no, deliberately misgendering someone is not "violence". Other dictionaries (Cambridge) define it as "actions or words intended to hurt people". By that definition, it is.

Regardless, I think that the greater part of the issue is intent. I would say that deliberately misgendering someone, especially after you have already been corrected, is certainly an aggressive act, and may fall under some definitions of violence. Its intent can only be to hurt, disparage or disrespect. At the very least it ignores someone's stated wishes and devalues them. I'd be okay if someone called that "violence", though I think "aggression" is probably better, as it is less likely to provoke a reaction like the OP, where "violence" is defined as inherently physical in nature.

Misgendering someone out of ignorance about their gender status, or simply making a mistake, is neither violent nor aggressive.

Sorry if this is going over ground that someone else has covered. I'm going to catch up on the rest of the thread now.
 
Hercules56 said:
Barbara refers to herself as a "she".

Mike does not believe that he is indeed a woman but is instead a man dressed as a woman, so he refers to Barbara as "he".

Mike has therefore committed an act of oppression and violence against Barbara??? An act of violence that justifies physical self-defense???

******* ridiculous.
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For what reason is Mike misgendering her? Because depending on why he chooses to do that, it could indeed be an aggressive act.

Not all aggressive acts justify a physical force response, by the way.
 
ahhell said:
On the other hand, I almost never use a gendered pronoun to address someone within in earshot, so who cares? Its an insult on the order of mispronouncing someone's name.
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Again, it depends why you're mispronouncing it. If it's just because you don't know, then yeah, that's not an aggressive act. But if you're deliberately doing it despite knowing the correct pronunciation?
 
arthwollipot said:
At the risk of Arguing By Dictionary, I think that part of the issue here is in the definition of the word "violence". Some dictionaries (Merriam-Webster) define violence as "the use of physical force to harm or injure". By that definition, no, deliberately misgendering someone is not "violence". Other dictionaries (Cambridge) define it as "actions or words intended to hurt people". By that definition, it is.
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What about "this thread is making me violently ill"?
 
Donal said:
I'm confused. This isn't in the student handbook. It's not in any bylaws or anything. It's essentially a blog post for a student group that is trying to discuss misgendering people.

At worst, it seems a well-meaning person with no actual authority made a poor choice of words in a document of no consequence.

Is that the controversey?
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Yep. For some, that's enough.
 
arthwollipot said:
For what reason is Mike misgendering her? Because depending on why he chooses to do that, it could indeed be an aggressive act.

Not all aggressive acts justify a physical force response, by the way.
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Aggression is not synonymous with violence or oppression.
 
Thermal said:
In fairness, if some avocado toast muncher referred to me as zim or xe, imma slap a bitch.
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And here we have the first reference to neopronouns in the thread. I'll say here what I've said before:

The number of people who insist on a neopronoun is vanishingly small. It was a neat concept that was tried, but that never really caught on. Where gender is ambiguous, almost nobody will complain if you simply use the singular "they".
 
arthwollipot said:
And here we have the first reference to neopronouns in the thread. I'll say here what I've said before:

The number of people who insist on a neopronoun is vanishingly small. It was a neat concept that was tried, but that never really caught on. Where gender is ambiguous, almost nobody will complain if you simply use the singular "they".
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The OP article recommended the use of neopronouns. Which sound kind of Matrix-esque in the abstract.

Most of the time I've heard "they" applied in this forum, it was by a member who knew damn right well that the other was a guy, and it appeared to be a catty emasculation. So it kind of leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
 
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Thermal said:
The OP article recommended the use of neopronouns. Which sound kind of Matrix-esque in the abstract.

Most of the time I've heard "they" applied in this forum, it was by a member who knew damn right well that the other was a guy, and it appeared to be a catty emasculation. So it kind of leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
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On the other hand, I know several people who use they/them. One of them, I changed their nappies when they were a baby, so I know for a fact what's between their legs. It doesn't matter. They/them is the commonly used gender-neutral pronoun. Like I said, neopronouns have been suggested - going back to the 60s from memory - but they have never caught on.
 
Hercules56 said:
Calling a mere insult a literal act of "violence" is definitely a form of censorship. Its goal is to shut people up, and if they don't shut up, justify violence against them.If incorrect pronouns literally equal violence than physical force in self defense is justified.
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How do you know that’s the goal?

Even if you’re correct about that…that’s not a form of censorship.

If an honest-to-goodness neo-Nazi says he’s going to burn all the Jewish gender ideology books when he’s in control, that’s not a form of censorship.

This stuff is elementary for anyone with a genuine sense of the importance of free speech. Get a grip.
 
Hercules56 said:
Calling a mere insult a literal act of "violence" is definitely a form of censorship. Its goal is to shut people up, and if they don't shut up, justify violence against them. If incorrect pronouns literally equal violence than physical force in self defense is justified.
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Exactly. And people who kill themselves due to relentless verbal bullying are the enemies of free speech, so who cares if they die?
Those who wish to 'just say harmless words' day in day out should be free and unobstructed to do so.

Wait.... that also means that those who wish to shout over and insult right wing speakers at universities should also be completely free to do so right? After all, it's just words.
 
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