Sorry for the mini-hijack but I don't think you can talk about "trans" (why the foreshortening?) without "nonbinary" anymore.
I think they're corrosive and destructive; they adulterate the real issues around authentically transgendered people with their attention needs and if the Democrats run on bathrooms they're going to lose big.
Sorry for the mini-hijack but I don't think you can talk about "trans" (why the foreshortening?) without "nonbinary" anymore.
I think they're corrosive and destructive; they adulterate the real issues around authentically transgendered people with their attention needs and if the Democrats run on bathrooms they're going to lose big.
We are living through an epistemological crisis on many fronts. Postmodernism left good people inhibited from even the most uncontroversial value judgments, the best lack all conviction; opinion and fact have merged. The deprecation of expertise, the uncritical acceptance of preposterous absurdities, a cowed press. We're in a lot of trouble.
And nothing signifies that trouble more than the claim that gender is just "society's little boxes." Even flowers have genders.
"And nothing signifies that trouble more than the claim that gender is just "society's little boxes." Even flowers have genders."
We've gone back and forth a few times on the difference between sex and gender so I'll just remind you that flowers have *sexes* (or sexed parts) not genders. When people say gender is a social construct, at least as "gender" is used in these discussions nowadays, they're correct.
I can see you want to fight this semantic battle 😁, but I don't think this is the hill to die on. The obfuscators thrive on imprecision. Indeed, it's the only tool they have to hide how ludicrous their ideas are. Being able to point out that while gender is a social construct, sex isn't (nor are they completely separate, almost all animal species exhibit gendered behaviour), makes it harder for them not to reckon with the argument.
I'm not sure if I direct quite so much of my ire at non binary people as you do. The most vicious and disingenuous people I come across are trans activists. Though we completely agree that whoever is most to blame, they're doing real harm to genuine issues faced by genuine transgender people.
So many social justice movements at the moment seem to hold the people they're supposed to be "uplifting" in utter disdain.
No Steve I don't want to fight any semantic battle on those two words. I just have a different lifelong understanding: gender as all matters—biological and psychological— of male and female and sex as a reproductive or recreational activity that humans usually perform in a horizontal position. But, agreed, this is not the hill I want to die on either.
The singular they, OTOH, I will resist to my dying day.
But I need less conflict in my life, not more, and aside from "they" and the nasty people and their screams of victimhood, I don't have a dog in this fight.
"I just have a different lifelong understanding: gender as all matters—biological and psychological"
Yeah, I get that. For pretty much any time until the past 10 years, it was perfectly safe (though not technically accurate) to use the words sex and gender interchangeably.
But today, this is the kind of semantic misstep that will be used to distract from the point. There are all sorts of issues today where linguistic precision is so important because the postmodernists love confusing/redefining words to hide the ridiculousness of their arguments.
Sorry for the mini-hijack but I don't think you can talk about "trans" (why the foreshortening?) without "nonbinary" anymore.
I think they're corrosive and destructive; they adulterate the real issues around authentically transgendered people with their attention needs and if the Democrats run on bathrooms they're going to lose big.
We are living through an epistemological crisis on many fronts. Postmodernism left good people inhibited from even the most uncontroversial value judgments, the best lack all conviction; opinion and fact have merged. The deprecation of expertise, the uncritical acceptance of preposterous absurdities, a cowed press. We're in a lot of trouble.
And nothing signifies that trouble more than the claim that gender is just "society's little boxes." Even flowers have genders.
"And nothing signifies that trouble more than the claim that gender is just "society's little boxes." Even flowers have genders."
We've gone back and forth a few times on the difference between sex and gender so I'll just remind you that flowers have *sexes* (or sexed parts) not genders. When people say gender is a social construct, at least as "gender" is used in these discussions nowadays, they're correct.
I can see you want to fight this semantic battle 😁, but I don't think this is the hill to die on. The obfuscators thrive on imprecision. Indeed, it's the only tool they have to hide how ludicrous their ideas are. Being able to point out that while gender is a social construct, sex isn't (nor are they completely separate, almost all animal species exhibit gendered behaviour), makes it harder for them not to reckon with the argument.
I'm not sure if I direct quite so much of my ire at non binary people as you do. The most vicious and disingenuous people I come across are trans activists. Though we completely agree that whoever is most to blame, they're doing real harm to genuine issues faced by genuine transgender people.
So many social justice movements at the moment seem to hold the people they're supposed to be "uplifting" in utter disdain.
No Steve I don't want to fight any semantic battle on those two words. I just have a different lifelong understanding: gender as all matters—biological and psychological— of male and female and sex as a reproductive or recreational activity that humans usually perform in a horizontal position. But, agreed, this is not the hill I want to die on either.
The singular they, OTOH, I will resist to my dying day.
But I need less conflict in my life, not more, and aside from "they" and the nasty people and their screams of victimhood, I don't have a dog in this fight.
"I just have a different lifelong understanding: gender as all matters—biological and psychological"
Yeah, I get that. For pretty much any time until the past 10 years, it was perfectly safe (though not technically accurate) to use the words sex and gender interchangeably.
But today, this is the kind of semantic misstep that will be used to distract from the point. There are all sorts of issues today where linguistic precision is so important because the postmodernists love confusing/redefining words to hide the ridiculousness of their arguments.