Did you read the discussion being had before posting this, or did you see that one line and figure it would be fun to scold me?
If DeSantis wins
- Thread starter CastletonSnob
- Start date
Repeated insistence doesn't make your superficial approach to identity any more compelling.
I know that was your intention; the fact you chose the distorted, mutable image rather than the actual object as definitive of "identity" is precisely the issue.
Distinguishing and associating are not simply a result of superficial external perceptions, divorced from the characteristics of the object itself-- they are ultimately derived from the traits and characteristics of the object.
So the process of 'identifying' someone or something requires an external observer and their interpretation. Yet, the only tenable and reliable basis for it rests in the characteristics of the object, not solely the eye of the beholder. Rely solely on the latter and ignore the former, and you'll constantly be making unworkable assumptions and foolish mistakes.
Again, completely at odds with what you said before, that men and women need not act or look according to the stereotypes and expectations of their sexes, and that they would remain men and women.
Now you're pushing a standard by which if someone is biologically male, and identifies as a male, but presents according to modern stereotypes of femininity and is mistaken for a woman by an observer-- that's now their identity! To hell with their actual characteristics, eh?
Congratulations on completely missing the point.
More baseless appeal to the majority. Fuck-all people would agree that if someone's sex and gender are both male, they should be termed with the female pronouns if they happen to look feminine. Your approach is not the majority approach-- get over that particular delusion.
Even you yourself have already contradicted this statement earlier in this thread.
Using a single superficial example as illustrative of an entire demographic, and basing your appearance expectations on that one example, is insulting drivel.
You know as well as I do that it would be easy enough to find dozens of examples of people who look totally male/female (according to our current ideas and expectations) and yet were not assigned that sex at birth.
Then, what the hell was your point?
The polls say what I say.
Do the definitions for pronouns specifically state (and only state) that they are sex-based? Yes or No.
Are you talking about the very few intersex people or people that are definitely male/female and can completely pass as the opposite sex? There's tons of physical traits directly governed by sex and you can't change them all.
Someone with those physical characteristics associated with people of Asian descent isn't necessarily Asian. As I already said.
Bollocks.
No.
Every physical trait used by doctors to assign sex at birth, and used by you to assume pronouns, is changeable. Every one.
And I'm saying that there are plenty of people assigned one sex at birth, who then carry more/all the appearance-based traits of the opposite sex later in life-- whether they identify differently or not. You would not be able to tell, judging solely on current stereotypes and associations.
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I can tell the difference between a Chinese person and a Native American. And Native Americans are technically Asian.
The polls do say it.
But they do specify sex...
Then why does Caitlyn Jenner have male features?
The latter. Still catching up though I'd largely tuned out.
Will never miss an opportunity to remind people the self is a fiction, and that there is no essential youness or soul. Especially after a drink or 6.
Carry on with your argument on, er, whatever this thread is now about.
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Objective reality is unknowable. All human knowledge exists through the filter of people's perspectives. The thing we can know is that which we perceive. That is why people care so much about these perceptions, more than they care about truth.
Men and women need not act according to the stereotypes and expectations of their sexes, they remain men and women, BUT (and this may seem pretty obvious) their behavior effects the way others see them. That is the entire purpose of identifying as anything, to try and impact others' perspectives. To say "I identify as a man" is to say "I want others to see me as a man." That effect is independent of what you are essentially, you can identify with things you aren't, and identifying as that thing doesn't change who you are. Nor does other people seeing you as something make you that thing, another person seeing you as a woman doesn't make you a woman. Identity isn't your essence, it is the way in which you are distinguished from others, and that distinguishing need not be based in anything objective.
Missed point yet again.
Lol, no. Unless you want to argue every human is African because of distant descent.
There is no "technically" because race isn't a formal scientific classification. It's an informal grouping.
Nope. Insisting something doesn't make it true.
Nope. Insisting something doesn't make it true.
Irrelevant deflective blather, not addressing the point.
This is sophist nonsense. Objective truth is unknowable in the Platonic sense that we're all gazing at shadows on the cave wall, and the wheelie bin I'm looking at could possibly actually be a flying meatball. And yet, we also have the ability to judge and measure our shared reality, in ways that reach conclusions that are more reliable than just reckoning it on sheer superficiality from the perspective of a single external observer.
Obviously. Yet you're not merely arguing that this surface-level stuff changes the perspective of others. You're saying that it determines the object's identity. So if the observer sees a rectangular cuboid from a certain angle and concludes its a perfect cube, then cube is what it is. That's beyond perception. It's making claims about the nature of the object that go further than available perception warrants.
Yep. But you're not talking about identifying as something-- you're talking about superficial appearance-based traits. A man can identify as a man and present in a feminine way.
This is a muddle of contradiction. First you say people seeing you as something doesn't make you that thing-- yet earlier you argued that external perception is interchangeable with identity.
I never argued identity was "essence" or any such vague guff. Identity is composed of distinguishing traits-- and that relies on external observations and comparisons to exist, yet it /must/ be based on the the traits of the object, else the observer is simply incapable of making a relevant comparison in the first place and is not drawing a conclusion about the object at all.
This isn't a contradiction. You are not your identity. Your identity is distinguishing traits associated with you, which may or may not who you actually are, and which can change depending on others' perspectives.
Hmm-- a somewhat broader/vaguer rewording of your position.
But no, the contradiction remains. If external perception is interchangeable with identity as you claimed, then an observer perceiving you as something-- male, female, gay, straight, Caucasian, Asian etc-- would mean those things were your identity.
We here all perceive you as a terrible arguer and a complete hypocrite of a Christian. Does that make you those things?
Again, what point? I can differentiate between Asians and Native Americans because they have unique features. And you say that isn't possible.
The polls do, it's an objective fact.
Again, objective fact.
You can't change every male or female feature. Again, objective fact.
No, it just makes me identified as those things.
Let me put it this way: imagine you are a person of average height with two distinct sets of friends. One friend group is all professional basketball players, so within that group, you are identified as the short person. The other friend ground is all jockeys, so within that group, you are identified as the tall person. Your height remains unchanged, your identity changed dramatically. Your identity can flip to a complete opposite based on the social perspective around you.
The point that has already been explicitly laid out: that these features may be associated with descent, but they are not definitive of any actual biological category-- because race is not a formal category. And you can guess and you can assume based on superficial features, but you simply will not always be right.
Bollocks.
So, all you can provide is a single, informal definition from Google, and even that doesn't say what you said.
Indeed-- but this is yet another shifted goalpost. You can change every single feature that doctors use to assign sex at birth, and every single feature that you use to assume pronouns.
So, you've established that in closed groups that have extremely unrepresentative demographics, the average can shift and distinguishing features-- solely useful within that closed group, and useless outside of them-- shift along with them.
That doesn't demonstrate your point: their identity hasn't become particularly tall or short, and 'the tall one'/'the short one' is only being used as a shorthand for '[...] in comparison with the unrepresentative group here'. That's no more indicative of 'identity' than 'the guy standing next to the other guy'.
Let me put another example forward. A gay man is out to his close friendship group, but it's not the first thing he talks about, so his new workmates don't yet know-- and because he acts in traditionally masculine ways, they've generally assumed he's straight. If we were to go by your standard, this man shifts from being gay to straight and back again depending on who he's around-- unless you want to argue sexuality isn't a part of someone's identity, or something absurd like that.
Sexuality isn't part of someone's identity in many contexts. If people at work don't even know that man's sexuality, why do you expect that would be an identifying trait for him? If asked, do you really think people would pick this imaginary person out as "the straight guy" in their minds? Or just not identify him with sexuality?
You don't need a sexual identity.
What person that has narrow eyes isn't Asian?
That's the polls...
Oxford definition is informal? Also, it does say what I said. The definitions for man, boy, male (which are all used in the "he" definition) directly relate to sex like below:
The goalpost you created, not me. I said there's tons of specific attributes that relate to sex for several posts (I explained a few subtle ones that people subconsciously notice in detail), and you can't change them all. You have had this constant hangup up on 'sex at birth' and continue to. I never have, I don't care about sex at birth (it's just a method to determine sex), and I don't understand why you keep bringing it up. You keep playing this sex at birth "card" as if it means anything.
"Identity" does not simply mean "what distinguishes you from others in your immediate vicinity or context"-- Else where someone is standing or what they're wearing would be their identity.