This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I think they would come up with the impression that you hadn't really thought things through carefully. That's the most charitable interpretation. A less charitable interpretation would be that you were aware your generalization was limited, but you knew that inserting a qualifier would make your argument a good deal weaker. Because to do so would be to implicitly concede that there may be circumstances under which it's okay (or even preferable) to NOT indulge a trans person's desires in terms of name, pronouns etc. So instead you just hoped nobody would notice.
In any event, my question stands: Under what circumstances is it NOT clearly correct to call someone by their chosen name?
I don't believe there are any such circumstances, unless you contrive a situation where their "desire in terms of name, pronouns, etc." is unrelated to their actual transness (e.g. a trans man happens to currently be impersonating a specific biological man for nefarious purposes).
A variety of unrelated ones, much as there's a variety of unrelated reasons why you wouldn't feed the apparent starving beggar.
Ok, let's see if I understand your argument correctly:
Your position is that:
Generally speaking, it's clearly correct that people should be called by the name they prefer, although there are various exceptions to this principle which you decline to describe or enumerate.
A trans person being treated by society as their preferred gender is analogous to calling a person by their preferred name.
Therefore, generally speaking, a trans person should be treated by society as their preferred gender.
Do I understand your position correctly?
Well, I don't think it's fair to say I "decline" to describe the "various exceptions" when I outlined a few examples of what that might look like. I do decline to attempt to enumerate them exhaustively, because I think they look more like a literally infinite number of possible context-specific scenarios than like a list of simple rules.
And I'm a little uncomfortable with the "therefore" which gives the whole the appearance of some sort of logical deduction. I brought up the way we treat non-gender-related chosen names as an analogy for how I think we should think of trans people's chosen genders. I do not claim that you can rigorously derive trans rights from the practice of chosen names on its own; it's merely a good reference point for how I, as a pro-trans person, think of the former, which is what the OP was attempting to grok.
As @Jiro pointed out, names are typically just arbitrary in the sense that they don't imply anything factual about the person being named. In situations where names do imply something factual, suddenly situations start to arise where it's NOT clearly correct to call a person by their chosen name.
In any event, since your argument apparently does not rest on that analogy, and since it apparently did not help me to understand your position, please just lay out your argument for why trans people should be treated by society as their preferred gender without reference to your name analogy.
TIA.
But trans activists' whole thing is to alter cultural and linguistic norms so that "she/her" or "woman" no longer imply anything factual about people's reproductive organs. We want a world where everyone knows that some "women" have penises rather than vaginas. There is no deceptive intent, as there would be in the Michael Jordan example. Moreover, until the linguistic expectation that a "man" necessarily has a penis becomes as universally quaint as using "gay" to mean happy, which I grant might take some decades yet to filter through from the wokest Blue hubs, I am generally in favour of trans people actively making their transness transparent in any context to which sex is relevant. And frankly, so many trans people are (physically or digitally) bedecked in pins and pride flags that we're a solid chunk of the way there already.
Well, my main reason isn't so much a positive argument as the root preference-utilitarian claim that it is generally morally good to treat people the way they wish to be treated, and that any exceptions to this require a proactive case for why normal rules of courtesy should be suspended. Going along with trans people's preferences constitutes being nice to them; misgendering them constitutes being mean to them. I believe in being nice to people unless there are overwhelming reasons not to, and I've never seen a conservative make a convincing case as to why trans people, as a bloc, should constitute such an exception. (They occasionally make cogent utilitarian arguments about specific situations; I can respect the opposition's view re: the convicted-rapist problem, for example. But that would only justify making exceptions to the general refer-to-trans-people-as-their-preferred-gender rule in those highly specific contexts; it is not an argument for ignoring them all the time.)
Well, suppose for the sake of argument that pro trans people got their way and "woman" and "man" get redefined. And suppose further that a couple of new words come out, let's say "X24" and "X25" which mean basically what man and woman previously meant. And the new words become so commonplace that you might hear a Christian Pastor say something like "This X24 and X25 will make a great husband and wife" Or you might see a sign at nightclub: "Free admission to X25s!!" In your view, would trans activists be okay with this situation?
Ok, so if a worker is having a conversation in the office and refers to "Bruce Jenner" and uses the word "he" to refer to this person, can we agree that it would not be "nice" -- and in fact it would be "mean" -- to criticize, shame, discipline or otherwise sanction this worker. Because it's better to treat the worker the way he wishes to be treated and Bruce Jenner (or whatever you want to call him) is not in the room to be offended?
Well, not as such, but neither would many old-school feminists. I suppose an unstated background assumption of my worldview, here, is that generally speaking it is bad to treat human beings differently due to their biological sex except in contexts where genitalia are directly relevant, eg sex itself. In this trans activist's optimal scenario, therefore, the widespread adoption of trans-style definitions of "man" and "woman" should be part and parcel of (indeed, it should be a footnote to!) a gradual shift into of a properly non-sexist, indeed a properly sex-blind society, a culture where, by default, nobody cares what you've got in your pants any more than they care about the shape of your earlobes. (With any luck, this shift will be expedited by a Singularity that makes old-school physical bodies themselves optional, but we'll see.)
Accordingly, I would regard a widespread adoption of 'X24' and 'X25' as unfortunate because it would constitute a backslide in that respect, not so much because of how it would reflect on trans issues in particular. Outside of a dating context, "this person has a vagina" should not be a fact on the forefront of anyone's mind any more than "this person is Asian" or "this person is left-handed"; it is deeply unpleasant that our culture trains people to mentally divide human beings into Vagina-Havers and Penis-Havers as the two foremost boxes, with anything else as parallel subcategories. Introducing new euphemisms for Penis-Havers and Vagina-Havers would reopen that Pandora's-box and risk reintroducing all those petty, demeaning sex-based biases to people's default way of perceiving the world around them.
Broadly, yes; I'm rather big on free speech. By the same token, of course, if there are people in that office who disagree with the worker on how it is appropriate to refer to Jenner, I do think they retain a right to criticize him however they like. But certainly I don't think the worker should get disciplined for it, whether by the employer or by the state.
Right, so when you said the following, it was not entirely accurate:
The real goal is to have a world where, generally speaking, people DON'T distinguish between men and women as those terms were traditionally defined, but instead distinguish between men and women based on the new definitions: A man is someone who self-reports to be a man and a woman is someone who self-reports to be a woman.
Agreed?
Well according to the principle of "treat people how they want to be treated," it would be inappropriate for anyone to criticize this worker who referred to Bruce Jenner as a "he." Agreed?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link