Funny events in anti-woke world

Cheetodust

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I know I shouldn't give trolls attention, but this is just fucking ridiculous.
"Was Eliot Rogers a misogynist? Who knows?"
"Was Dylan Roof a racist? Hard to tell."
"Are trans people killing Christians? Absofuckinglutely and we should be scared.
 

Kwak

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The other thing here, you talk of paying special attention to what people say about themselves, taking that very seriously, but my god, people say insanely stupid things about themselves all the time. People's self-perception is more often than not highly distorted, and in almost any other situation we would take the perspective of an outside observer as more objective than the person describing themselves.
So what, submit yourself for committee approval to determine if they decree that how you claim to feel is officially deemed to be valid?

- I have a headache.

-It is the measured opinion of this committee that you do not, indeed, "have a headache", and your request for 200mg of paracetamol is therefore denied.
 
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Silvanus

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Investigating that would be considering what that actually means and why. What does it mean to feel like the opposite sex? And investigating would mean accepting more than one possible conclusion. Blind affirmation is not open to that. Hence, the question I've asked here longer than Matt Walsh has made it a thing: what is a woman? If you are to take someone physically male claiming they are actually a woman as a serious claim with their wellbeing as a priority, you have to consider that question. How can you consider a claim with no definition for a word? And that's where we're at currently, there is no accepted definition for the word, because their cannot be.
No, stop just there. Nobody is claiming the terms have no meaning. The idea is that the terms have meanings which are less rigid than the ones that have been attributed. You can have definitions without having a set of absolutist criteria. That's actually usually how notions of identity work.

"Investigation" encourages the person to explore which of these identities fits them best. The opposite of this-- blind adherence to one option-- is what you yourself endorse: telling people they must be one (because it happens to fit a morphological category).

Edit: in fact, the ones closest to arguing the terms have "no meaning" are the gender-critical extremists, claiming gender isn't a thing and that physical sex is the only true differentiation.
 

tstorm823

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So what, submit yourself for committee approval to determine if they decree that how you claim to feel is officially deemed to be valid?

- I have a headache.

-It is the measured opinion of this committee that you do not, indeed, "have a headache", and your request for 200mg of paracetamol is therefore denied.
99% of the medical conditions you could have inserted into this analogy would be tested for, even the psychological ones, rather than just taking the patient's word for it.
No, stop just there. Nobody is claiming the terms have no meaning. The idea is that the terms have meanings which are less rigid than the ones that have been attributed. You can have definitions without having a set of absolutist criteria. That's actually usually how notions of identity work.
Ask a trans advocate what a woman is. The only allowable definition is "anyone who identifies as a woman". That's not "less rigid", that's non-existent.

The way notions of identity work are by distinguishing yourself from other people. It is some combination of what makes you like other people, e.g. "I can identify with that person", and what makes you stand out, e.g. "we identified the suspect out of a group of people". To identify as something, that thing has to have a meaning, not only for you but for other people. Identities are inherently relative to other people. If the definition of your identity is so vague as to be totally incomparable to the experience of others, it can't give structure or meaning to your life. And then to completely structure your life around something like that, to build this identity fully into every social interaction, without ever being able to properly explain why, is to build on a foundation of nothing. Even an explanation as simple as "it's just what I like" would be sufficient to make some human connections, but an undefinable unexplainable feeling of what you are is just empty. It's a void of meaning. It tells me nothing about you, it tells you nothing about me, it tells you nothing about yourself.

If someone comes to me and says they are a trans-man, am I to assume that I identify with or understand them in ways that I could not if they were just a woman? Do they think they understand me better than they would if I was a woman? I don't think any of that is true or expected. So then what is that identity signifying?
 

Silvanus

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Ask a trans advocate what a woman is. The only allowable definition is "anyone who identifies as a woman". That's not "less rigid", that's non-existent.
Do you think you might want to let them speak for themselves? You've got a very poor track record of accurately reporting what your opponents believe, or listening to what they say when asked what they believe.

The way notions of identity work are by distinguishing yourself from other people. It is some combination of what makes you like other people, e.g. "I can identify with that person", and what makes you stand out, e.g. "we identified the suspect out of a group of people". To identify as something, that thing has to have a meaning, not only for you but for other people. Identities are inherently relative to other people. If the definition of your identity is so vague as to be totally incomparable to the experience of others, it can't give structure or meaning to your life.
Identities don't solely or necessarily exist to "give structure or meaning to your life". They can also exist as simple descriptors. And identifying oneself in a certain way to others isn't always about structure or meaning either; it can be pure utility.

And then to completely structure your life around something like that, to build this identity fully into every social interaction, without ever being able to properly explain why, is to build on a foundation of nothing.
Trans people do this no more than cis people. You're just exaggerating it's focus for one group to give a false impression of the unreasonable.

Even an explanation as simple as "it's just what I like" would be sufficient to make some human connections, but an undefinable unexplainable feeling of what you are is just empty. It's a void of meaning. It tells me nothing about you, it tells you nothing about me, it tells you nothing about yourself.
You're the one stripping all meaning from the term, here, and then decrying how the term has become meaningless.

For instance, I can tell you my gender is male. Ok? I'm a "trans advocate", if you want to call it that.

Male gender has meaning and associations. Most trans people will agree-- it's the gender-critical that don't agree with that, who tend to be on the opposite end of the argument. I'm telling you I'm of male gender, and I'm telling you male gender has meanings and associations that I identity with.

And your response to me thus far has been to insist I don't think it has any meaning (despite what I'm directly telling you), and then to subsequently insist that because it has no meaning-- which I don't agree with-- therefore my idea of self-identity is also meaningless.

Ya see the bloody problem here? You're stubbornly ascribing beliefs to your opponents again.

If someone comes to me and says they are a trans-man, am I to assume that I identify with or understand them in ways that I could not if they were just a woman? Do they think they understand me better than they would if I was a woman? I don't think any of that is true or expected. So then what is that identity signifying?
If someone says to you they're a (cis) man, are you to assume you identify or understand them in ways you couldn't it you were a woman?

These questions apply equally across the board, cis, trans and NB. And yet they only become this odd sticking point when someone wants to whine about trans people.
 

tstorm823

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Trans people do this no more than cis people. You're just exaggerating it's focus for one group to give a false impression of the unreasonable.
I'm speaking of one group because that's the topic of conversation. You are correct, this is not a trans specific problem. The epidemic of despair in modern society is not limited by gender identities.
For instance, I can tell you my gender is male. Ok? I'm a "trans advocate", if you want to call it that.
That's not answering the question. What is a male, and why are you one?
 

Silvanus

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I'm speaking of one group because that's the topic of conversation. You are correct, this is not a trans specific problem. The epidemic of despair in modern society is not limited by gender identities.
If you've only been interacting with people who base their entire identity around their gender, then you've been living in a wildly unrepresentative little pool.

But I suspect this is just more hyperbole, and that most people don't despair about this half as much as you seem to despair on their behalf.

That's not answering the question. What is a male, and why are you one?
I'll provide a definition in just a minute, if I can get a quick commitment from you.

When I do, will you actually accept what I understand as male, and that its a part of my sense of identity? Will you refrain from contradicting every element based on your understanding of the term, and then proceeding to insist it's meaningless and therefore my sense of identity is bunk?

Because if you want to genuinely ask about someone else's sense of identity, you have to be willing to accept the answer. And if you're going to push your own conception onto me, then you're not engaging in a way that's worth either of our time.
 
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Satinavian

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I'm telling you I'm of male gender, and I'm telling you male gender has meanings and associations that I identity with.
Honestly, as a certain kind of agender person i simply don't get this at all and would prefer people to not use gender as a standin for whatever they associate with it. Chances are it gets lost in communication.

There are way too many people around assuming a shared understanding about masculinity/femininity and most of them are both wrong and cis.

For me trans and cis pretty much look the same. People with some very clear idea about what gender is supposed to represent and a firm understanding based on it to which gender they belong. Can't grasp either. Also certainly don't see any reason to treat them differently.
 
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The Rogue Wolf

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The other thing here, you talk of paying special attention to what people say about themselves, taking that very seriously, but my god, people say insanely stupid things about themselves all the time. People's self-perception is more often than not highly distorted, and in almost any other situation we would take the perspective of an outside observer as more objective than the person describing themselves.
Example: You keep telling us how very, very smart you are, but we all call you a clown. Perhaps your self-perception is distorted, and you actually are a clown?
 

Silvanus

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Honestly, as a certain kind of agender person i simply don't get this at all and would prefer people to not use gender as a standin for whatever they associate with it. Chances are it gets lost in communication.
Undoubtedly quite a lot does indeed get lost in communication (and often through presumption). But I imagine a lot more would get lost in communication if we insisted on jettisoning descriptive terms of self-identification that most people feel affinity for and hold associations with. Descriptive terms exist to simplify this mess and communicate a bulk of info quickly, even if not always with full accuracy. The trick to avoiding miscommunication is not to get rid of descriptive terms, but to recognise their flexibility.

There are way too many people around assuming a shared understanding about masculinity/femininity and most of them are both wrong and cis.
Hence the need to recognise that these terms are not rigid, can be flexible or fluid.

For me trans and cis pretty much look the same. People with some very clear idea about what gender is supposed to represent and a firm understanding based on it to which gender they belong. Can't grasp either. Also certainly don't see any reason to treat them differently.
I can't grasp monosexuality, honestly, but my personal ability to grasp it never seemed necessary to recognise that its real for other people.
 

Satinavian

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I can't grasp monosexuality, honestly, but my personal ability to grasp it never seemed necessary to recognise that its real for other people.
Oh certainly.
If i didn't recognize that gender is real for many other people, i wouldn't call myself agender.
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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Best thing a nominally cis person can do is fuck around with their gender a bit. Either they realize they aren't actually cis, or more likely, they unlock cis+ and continue to be cis without all the weird hang ups and insecurities.
 

tstorm823

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I'll provide a definition in just a minute, if I can get a quick commitment from you.

When I do, will you actually accept what I understand as male, and that its a part of my sense of identity? Will you refrain from contradicting every element based on your understanding of the term, and then proceeding to insist it's meaningless and therefore my sense of identity is bunk?

Because if you want to genuinely ask about someone else's sense of identity, you have to be willing to accept the answer. And if you're going to push your own conception onto me, then you're not engaging in a way that's worth either of our time.
I mean, that's an easy commitment. So long as your answer isn't a circular definition, I can probably commit now to the response "Thank you. Do you see how by your understanding some people who describe themselves as male would not qualify?"
 

Silvanus

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I mean, that's an easy commitment. So long as your answer isn't a circular definition, I can probably commit now to the response "Thank you. Do you see how by your understanding some people who describe themselves as male would not qualify?"
It's an easy commitment indeed, but it's one that's at odds with your approach to several people thus far.

So: I identify as a man (or in British English, a 'bloke' or 'guv'nor'). As I understand it: it's a gender identity which, in homo sapiens, is usually-- but not exclusively-- associated with the male physical sex. Traditionally in my society, 'masculine' traits include self-sufficiency; protectiveness; physical strength; assertiveness; and spatial awareness-- though only the last one of those is very applicable to me, and it's highly likely that most are largely culturally ingrained rather than innate (though there may also be formative-psychological aspects to them unrelated to culture, and/or hormonal elements to one or two). Other cultural artefacts include traditionally 'male' clothes such as trousers and suits over skirts and dresses; generally shorter hair; and low-key slovenliness. That last one is definitely me. I generally abide by gender-normative clothing, hair, and other elements of presentation because they simply feel more comfortable to me.

Not a single element of this definition is required, and much is cultural. This is not to say the definition simply doesn't exist or that the term is not defined, for one simple reason: definitions do not need solid and immutable criteria in order to be definitions.
 

Trunkage

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You haven't been paying attention then.

Let me explain a little about myself and my experiences growing up. I'm autistic, I'm a sensitive sort, I was shy as a kid, I always felt like I got along better with girls than boys more often and I liked things like romance stories and wasn't very competitive. It is chillingly easy for me to see how someone online would hear stuff like that and convince me that these are traits signifying a "female gender" and that me, with my rigid, autistic way of thinking, would buy into that.

There are no cultural limits being put on this movement and any attempts to do so are shouted down and labeled transphobic. Eventually this stuff is going to pile up and if the people that are part of the community don't do something to restrain what's happening then it's all going to result in one gigantic shit storm that will rebound and hurt even more people. Do something!
Progressives are NOT Conservatives. Just because that's what a Conservative would absolutely do, does not mean that's what Progressives would do

YOU get to choose which gender you're in. Not someone else, even your parents
 

Gergar12

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I can not believe schoolchildren in the US must be protected by heavy Level III "bulletproof armor" to stop the 5.56 bullets most school shooters use. By the way Level IIIA will only stop handgun bullets. Also, Level III bulletproof armor is expensive, and did I mention it's likely heavy AF?
 

Silvanus

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Here we have the Republican take on free school meals for underprivileged kids: it's not the state's problem, it's the parents' fault... "if the kids are choosing to eat in the first place".