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2nd August 2017, 06:34 AM | #161 |
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2nd August 2017, 06:55 AM | #162 |
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2nd August 2017, 07:12 AM | #163 |
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2nd August 2017, 07:13 AM | #164 | ||
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Originally Posted by ponderingturtle
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So I see your point.
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2nd August 2017, 07:15 AM | #165 |
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It seems like you're dancing around the issue. When I point out that the logic you're using would mean that we should never challenge other people's religious beliefs, you wonder why I bring it up. When I explain why by going back to your original comment, suddenly you forget about my point and ask me to get back on topic.
Does your logic apply to all beliefs or no? Is it rude and, I've heard, dehumanising to tell a theist that you think their god doesn't exist? |
2nd August 2017, 07:21 AM | #166 |
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Depends on the chair, I am sure you can find chairs and houses that the chair is legitimately worth more.
As for it being a house, of course it isn't. The law is only in new york city and you are simply not going to be able to buy a house in NYC for $125000, so why even bring that up?
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2nd August 2017, 07:24 AM | #167 |
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2nd August 2017, 07:26 AM | #168 |
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I don't know the financial circumstances of this fellow who gave birth the other day, but I wonder if he's eligible for the WIC program. Should he be? That program is only available to women. Maybe we need to end this unconstitutional discrimination.
(For those unfamiliar, the WIC program is meant to ensure that poor children can get good nutrition. That begins in the womb. It provides food money to pregnant women, and to caregivers of small children. There is no provision in the law for pregnant men.) |
2nd August 2017, 07:31 AM | #169 |
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We're not talking about challenging beliefs or being forced to believe something that you don't.
We're talking about simply affording someone a little respect and consideration. That's it. I'll put it to you another way, since you want to drag creationism and religion into the discussion. I'm a foul-mouthed atheist. Close friends of mine are devout Christians. Not bible-thumping evangelicals, but Christians nonetheless. One of these friends is offended by cursing. Personally, I think it's a silly thing to be offended over. But out respect for my friend, I do not curse when I am in her presence. Now I suppose I could make a principled stand and challenge her beliefs every time I feel like cursing, but I find it easier to just be respectful. There's more important things in life than being right all the time. |
2nd August 2017, 07:36 AM | #170 |
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While I am firmly in the camp of calling people whatever they prefer and leaving it at that, I'm also in agreement that the stated penalty for "harassment" is too steep if it is applied uniformly every time someone says the wrong thing. But is it? Is it a minimum penalty? Would the person in question think it harassment if it's a misunderstanding? Would a case ever occur here? Would it not make a difference whether one misunderstands a situation or whether one, as the original poster implies he would, insists on it on the basis of some perceived notion of rightness and truth that overrides the ideas of others?
We're in a very abstract territory here, it seems. We're all presented at times with situations that make us uncomfortable, about which we would at least secretly want to make nasty comments. Sometimes those comments may be warranted, and sometimes not. Sometimes we understand what's going on and sometimes we don't. Both times, I think, it's likely they can be omitted without hardship. Why should one actually give a damn? If a person with a vagina wants to be called a man, how can you know what's going on in that mind, or that blood stream? Why not just do it? You can spout off about it later at the pub, and feel righteous amid all the laughs and snickers. |
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2nd August 2017, 07:37 AM | #171 |
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Yes, that is exactly what we're talking about. The belief that one is one gender and not the other.
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2nd August 2017, 07:39 AM | #172 |
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2nd August 2017, 07:43 AM | #173 |
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There is no Antimemetics Division. |
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2nd August 2017, 07:44 AM | #174 |
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There is no Antimemetics Division. |
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2nd August 2017, 08:03 AM | #175 |
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2nd August 2017, 08:04 AM | #176 |
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I'm not even sure what those are, nor whether there are laws and rules of terminology involved. I would, however, generally say that unless someone's peculiarity impinges on your life in some way, it's prudent to guess that there is something about it that you may not understand, and shut up about it.
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Like many humorless and indignant people, he is hard on everybody but himself, and does not perceive it when he fails his own ideal (Molière) A pedant is a man who studies a vacuum through instruments that allow him to draw cross-sections of the details (John Ciardi) |
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2nd August 2017, 08:06 AM | #177 |
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2nd August 2017, 08:06 AM | #178 |
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The link to the law was posted. Hell misgendering someone accidentally would not even fall under it. It is like how asking a coworker on a date is not sexual harassment. But constantly asking them and pressuring them to go out with you is.
And the penalty is the maximum, the jury can award less of course. But people need a straw law to pretend it is crazy. |
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2nd August 2017, 08:08 AM | #179 |
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2nd August 2017, 08:08 AM | #180 |
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2nd August 2017, 08:09 AM | #181 |
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2nd August 2017, 08:11 AM | #182 |
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Well, if someone who's white as snow pretends to be black, and I tell them that they're speaking nonsense, am I being rude? Should I shut up and cater to that belief/claim? How about people who say they're polar bears?
At what point do we start valuing objective reality over belief? |
2nd August 2017, 08:17 AM | #183 |
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2nd August 2017, 08:25 AM | #184 |
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2nd August 2017, 08:41 AM | #185 |
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Obviously you don't.
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Just because you don't know what you're saying, doesn't mean others don't know what you're saying. |
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2nd August 2017, 08:45 AM | #186 |
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Of course not. And again, that's not what's being discussed. The OP wasn't lamenting over unintentional slips. Quite the opposite, actually.
And the regulation over which so much hand-wringing has occurred makes the distinction pretty clear:
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If your coworker Bob decides to transition to become Roberta, and requests that you respect that, I don't think she is going to get offended if you unintentionally call her Bob a few times until you get used to it. But if you get up in her grill over how gender should be defined every time she asks that you call her Roberta, then yeah, you are being a bigot and dehumanizing her. |
2nd August 2017, 08:49 AM | #187 |
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"I disagree with you, therefore I'm right."
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No, I know what a woman is, and it has nothing to do with feeling.
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2nd August 2017, 08:50 AM | #188 |
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There is a transwoman student in the department at the college where I teach. I don't know what she has or has not had done (I think she's around 25), but she is pretty convincingly "she", although it can be sometimes disconcerting when she is dressed in more masculine clothing or heard speaking. I was not sure for some time, due to the ambiguity and general "nonconformity".
Since she has a typically female name now, I am sure that many people who encounter her do not know that it was not the name she was given at birth. If I were to refer to her in speaking as "him/he", I could well be outing her to people to whom she would prefer not to be outed. You talk about objective reality, but the objective reality is that at some point in time this individual chose to go forward presenting to the world and to their self in the form of a woman. I'm not sure what you gain by "challenging" that. Do you hope to convince her to return to presenting as male? If she suddenly throws down her bra and takes the scissors to her hair, does that make the world a better place? |
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2nd August 2017, 08:51 AM | #189 |
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2nd August 2017, 08:52 AM | #190 |
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But you already did provide a reasonable definition and already said you provide one of the key elements to them that make them a woman! You know that being 'female' is not all there is to being a 'woman'. What is there to being a woman? In the societal context, which is exactly the context we're talking about right now, women wear dresses. Do all women wear dresses? Do women wear dresses all the time? No, so are they not women when they are not 'checking the box'? They can have children, except when they can't. They can wear makeup, expect when they don't. The definitions of genders are almost entirely societal constructs, expectations, and treatments. They have few if any hard ties to biological 'truth'. We no longer demand that men and women conform to these in order to be 'really men or women'. It's almost like the definitions of genders are more fluid mentally and socially than those asserting 'biological fact means I know this other person's gender more than they do and can tell them that politely.' Any given factor that one might use to say 'this is really a woman' can be absent in other women who are not trans, and we'd still call them women. A woman lives as and is treated as a woman. A man lives as and is treated as a man. Sorry, but that's the way words work sometimes. Your desire for it to not be circular is misplaced in societal constructs. |
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2nd August 2017, 08:53 AM | #191 |
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Circled nothing is still nothing. "Nothing will stop the U.S. from being a world leader, not even a handful of adults who want their kids to take science lessons from a book that mentions unicorns six times." -UNLoVedRebel Mumpsimus: a stubborn person who insists on making an error in spite of being shown that it is wrong |
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2nd August 2017, 08:54 AM | #192 |
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Of course when one points out a general rule that applies to 99.7% of the population, some wise guy will point out that it isn't 100%, as if it matters to what the first person said.
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2nd August 2017, 08:55 AM | #193 |
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2nd August 2017, 08:57 AM | #194 |
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Circled nothing is still nothing. "Nothing will stop the U.S. from being a world leader, not even a handful of adults who want their kids to take science lessons from a book that mentions unicorns six times." -UNLoVedRebel Mumpsimus: a stubborn person who insists on making an error in spite of being shown that it is wrong |
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2nd August 2017, 08:59 AM | #195 |
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When you're not arguing in good faith by using BS arguments, you're not showing that the other person is doing the same. Your posts reflect on you, not me.
And you have no idea whether I argue in good faith. I know I am. You think I'm not because I disagree with you, and no one could possibly reach a conclusion different from yours and be honest at the same time. |
2nd August 2017, 08:59 AM | #196 |
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The issue goes beyond politeness and social roles. I have no problem being polite and calling people what they prefer to be called.
But what we are talking about in the present case is a person who was born female-sexed but actually is male-gnedered. Thats what a Transman is, yes? The underlying idea is that this person is well and truly a male and we in society should respect his dignity as a male. But then, this man goes and has a baby. How are we supposed to reconcile this? Are we supposed to suddenly think: "Well of course, some men can have babies, NBD." This idea goes against everything we understand about biology and gender. The current generation of humans is going to have a really hard time actually considering someone to be a man if that man has given birth. For me, personally, if I knew and interacted with such a person, I'd remain polite. But I can't help but think that such a situation undermines the fight for acceptance of trans people in larger society. It just furthers the notion that trans people are actually suffering from a mental illness. Maybe a few generations down, men having babies will be NBD, but in current society it's going to be an issue. |
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2nd August 2017, 09:01 AM | #197 |
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Sure. Is there any controversy about the the idea that transmen are not unambiguously biologically male? I would think that's pretty well covered by the "trans" part.
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I think a pretty good trans-inclusive definition of "woman" would go something like "an adult, human female, or someone who exhibits the gender attributes (especially gender identity) traditionally associated with adult, human females". That's non-circular and does not evacuate the word of all meaning. |
2nd August 2017, 09:01 AM | #198 |
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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2nd August 2017, 09:03 AM | #199 |
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It is a mental disorder. But there's nothing wrong with that. Plenty of people suffer from such disorders. Hell, as far as I know, I probably suffer from OCD myself. I know a few people with anxiety problems. We do support people with such disorders in various ways such as medication or, in the case of trans people and should they want to, transition.
But the risk in public opinion you allude to is not that they have a mental disorder, but that the entire idea of transgenderism is a hoax. Such a thing would be far more damaging to trans people than pronouns. |
2nd August 2017, 09:20 AM | #200 |
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As I already said in the post you quoted, the main difference is that I know what a woman is in context, and your BS argument doesn't. It in fact denies such a context by assertion. That's why you are not arguing in good faith. All your criticisms of the form of my argument apply at least as well to yours. The conclusions of my argument have the benefit of being true though.
If you think my argument is BS because it echoed your form, then the mirror argument served well to show your argument by your own standards is BS. No, Zigg, it actually isn't, no matter how many times you've also fallen into that 'childish' trap too. Again, context matters. |
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