67IsTheNew69
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User ID: 4109
I think most people are just reacting to the social-media clips, but https://youtube.com/watch?v=9t8qVtCm3Js&t=320s is the original video of the incident. (The video is a compilation of various street fights in Birmingham; this particular incident starts at about 5:20 and continues for about four minutes.)
67IsTheNew69
18d ago
It does seem almost criminal that nearly all American students are exposed to Shakespeare, but hardly any of them end up with the skills necessary to understand what the text of his plays actually says.
67IsTheNew69
22d ago
Gender ideology holds that these definitions, and the boundaries of what's acceptable, are obvious and self-evident. They're just what Good People believe, and if you don't believe them you're a Bad Person.
In practice this means that they're set by the people who have enough persuasiveness/social power/etc to successfully ostracize the people who don't believe in them. To the extent that gender ideology internally acknowledges these people at all, it mostly credits them in the same way you'd credit a mathematician with "discovering" or "communicating" some inherent property of numbers that was true even before the mathematician published the proof.
I think that both "you can identify as a cat" and "you can't identify as a cat" are within gender ideology's Overton window at the moment. I lean "can't" at the moment, but it's better to avoid committing to that in case new obviously self-evident truths get discovered in the future.
67IsTheNew69
22d ago
I played through Wanderstop, the "cozy game" from the writer of The Stanley Parable.
The gameplay's pretty fun, in a boring cozy-game kind of way, and the writing has a lot of good moments, but ultimately the overall story kind of failed to land with me. I'm not sure whether the
67IsTheNew69
22d ago
To be Jesus: Jesus needs to actually be the religious figure he is depicted as in the Bible. (Or, I guess it's possible that Jesus was just an ordinary guy, but reincarnation is possible more generally.)
To be Black: The definition is usually something like "My ancestors were born in Africa [during some specific time period]", but it is more difficult to nail down, and different people often mean slightly different things.
To be a cat: Some people do accept that you can be a cat in the same purely-internal-identity way that you can be a woman. Other people would draw a line based on genetics or physiology in a way that's acceptable to do for species but not gender.
67IsTheNew69
22d ago
You say that race and nationality incorporate physical traits. Are you claiming that gender does not?
Yes. Gender ideology axiomatically defines "gender" as not requiring any physical traits. Some physical traits are typical of some genders, but they're not a requirement.
(FWIW I think nationality is often primarily a historical question, along the lines of "what country were you born in" or "what country has granted you citizenship", which is also something that "gender" is defined as not being.)
67IsTheNew69
22d ago
Sexuality is definitely another one of those unobservable things that you have to take people's word on.
On the other hand, weight is straightforwardly an observable physical trait, and age is a straightforward historical claim (the date on which you were born). Race and nationality are social constructs that are hard to pin down, but generally people agree that they involve some combination of physical and historical traits.
"Racial identity" does exist, but it is not considered very useful most of the time; it's mainly used as a tiebreaker when the physical/historical facts don't fit nearly into the categories. A lot of gender ideology boils down to a values claim that "gender identity" is a much more important concept that everyone should care about.
67IsTheNew69
22d ago
So it seems there is nothing to distinguish trans people from those who self-report as being Jesus; or who self-report as having been abducted by aliens; or who self-report as having been spoken to directly by some deity; etc. Agreed?
These other claims all, to varying degrees, depend on external facts to be true. For example by asserting you've been abducted by aliens, you're asserting that aliens exist.
Gender ideology views gender claims as being more similar to someone saying "I had a dream about aliens last night." If you're talking to some weirdo who's never had a dream before, you may need to convince them that it's possible, but to most people it's obvious that the claim is both plausible and not really possible to disprove.
67IsTheNew69
23d ago
What's the evidence that "gender" exists in the way you have defined it? Is there any evidence other than self-reporting?
There have been relatively low-quality MRI studies that attempt to draw physical evidence of the concept of gender identity, but mostly it is by definition a self-reported trait, so the fact that people are self-reporting it is the evidence.
A common argument is to ask the person you're arguing with, "If you woke up this morning and found you had been transformed into a stereotypical example of the opposite gender, how would you feel about that?"
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If you would prefer that to your current body, this means that you are transgender.
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If you would feel negatively about this change, this demonstrates that you have an innate gender identity, and it's at least possible to imagine your body not being aligned with that identity. It just so happens that your body happens to be aligned with your gender identity. Lucky you!
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If you would genuinely feel ambivalent (are you sure you're not repressing anything?), then... okay, that probably exists and is a valid category of gender identity. But lots of other people do have strong feelings about that, and gender ideology is the most inclusive way to support those people.
67IsTheNew69
23d ago
(1) Yes.
(2) Yes.
(3) Yes, with the caveat:
straight men or lesbian women who refuse to date this person would be considered "transphobic."
This works similarly to anti-discrimination law. You're allowed to refuse to date any individual, but you aren't allowed to refuse to date people because they're transgender (or, more broadly, because you do not accept their gender identity). You can express preferences based on gender identity, and you can sometimes get away with expressing preferences based on physical traits, but you can't express preferences based on transgender status or things that obviously correlate with it (like "gender assigned at birth").
(You can't even express preferences in favor of them, that's called being a "chaser".)
67IsTheNew69
23d ago
Gender ideology is a big-tent movement, and many of its members can be pretty slippery about assigning concrete meanings and labels to things, so it's going to be difficult to make a specific set of claims that "those who adhere to gender ideology" believe.
With that being said, I think the main way your explanation differs from the usual story is that "sex" is not considered a category that exists. Each person has a "gender", which is an innate property that's not externally observable. Then they have several externally observable traits, things like what kinds of clothes they wear or what kind of genitals they have. Society generally has associations with which traits correspond to which genders (e.g. sundresses are typically worn by women), but it's not necessary for a person's traits to align with their gender (e.g. putting on pants does not cause you to cease to be a woman).
Taken to the extreme, it's not necessary for any of a person's externally observable traits to align with their gender. While many people feel an innate, personal sense of despair when their externally observable traits do not match their gender identity (according to their/society's general associations between traits and genders) and they should be given the resources and medical care to bring their traits into alignment with their gender identity if they wish, that's a purely personal decision on their part. It's important for everyone's gender identity to be respected regardless of the traits they have.
"Externally observable traits" here is a term I made up. The term used most often is "gender expression", which refers to the traits that other people can actually observe in practice, which is what matters most of the time. But things like "the feelings caused by the hormones in your body" are also usually considered to be something external to your gender identity, such that you might want to bring them into alignment but are not required to. (Things like the Y chromosome are not considered relevant here because they aren't easily observable. It's nice if you happen to get a bunch of traits that all align with your gender identity, but the "how" of that doesn't matter much.)
Not really; the original video seems to be from a guy who was wandering around filming a bunch of street fights and arrests, and he was focused on a different arrest until roughly the start of the social-media clip.
You can hear someone yelling something like "Move away!", but it's not clear how the confrontation started.
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