Poll: Gender recognition offence

[RedRockRun]

Unless someone has a big sign on them that states their preferred gender and underneath is a doctor's note certifying that person to have actual gender dysphoria disorder, I'm referring to that person by old fashioned pronouns. I know people who suffer from that disorder, and they don't deserve to be dragged down by the fake drama queens of Tumblr who don't get enough attention in 9th grade.

 

[Tanis]

If it smells like a duck.
If it looks like a duck.
If it quacks like a duck.
If it dresses like a duck.
If it has feathers like a duck.
If it does duck-like things like a duck.

Then it's a duck, unless I'm told otherwise.
Then it's a unicorn or a geese or a purple rabbit, or however it wants to be called.

But don't dare give me any limp because I wasn't 'sensitive enough' to read your mind or see your bumper sticker.
When that happens, I'm calling you duck because you CHOOSE to go quackers on me for no reason other than you're a donkey.

 

[elvor0]

Okay, I'm going to zip up my flame suit, pop some med-x and hurl myself headlong into the fire:

whole lot of off topic

Does any of that relate to this thread though? I don't think we're talking about people who identify as bats, just the usual male-female thing.

Not really, OP was talking about non-binary genderism, not just male/female.

I find it difficult to understand how I should find out that someone who has the physical aspects of a woman Is gender fluid/non-binary.

Op is talking about extreme views/reactions on that matter. I'm addressing the extreme and my own struggles to understand the vast majority of that area. First bit is more sexuality which is /kind of/ off topic I'll admit, but it ties into my struggling getting my head round it and the two are inexorably linked.

You can stick to male/female, I'm just moving to different areas of the scope the OP is talking about, as I /personally/ find male/female quite acceptable and have had no problems in my admittedly few encounters with those that defined themselves as the opposite gender in a purely binary matter. People want to stick to just male/female discussion that's fine, but I feel the OP most definitely encompasses my post too.

Male/Female/Other is not the same as Male/Female/Dogkin. If you want to pretend otherwise, you're going to be totally alone in that.

You're just being way too obvious. Why not back off on this, and try again with a more subtle pitch for bigotry?

Way to miss the point. If you'd actually read my post instead of insisting that I'm being bigoted in an attempt to stick your own blinkered narrative, you'd notice that I said "This stuff harms people with actual gender issues". OP stated non binary gender. He didn't stick limits on it. I fucking hate trying to talk about this stuff, I can't ask questions or be a little bit off the beaten bath or I get labelled a fucking bigot. "He's asking difficult questions. OH WELL HE MUST BE A BIGOT!" Are you that short sighted that you think someone trying to dig and ask questions must be bigoted? Being accepting of something, doesn't mean I'm going to just accept it at face value.

And I already said that I'm quite happy and accepting of the notion of male/female transgenderism, and can easily understand it. Hence why I'm not talking about it because I don't need or want to.

I was talking about the stuff that I was in order to highlight just how ridiculous it was and why it harms those with actual gender issues, because its basically gender hipsterism. As a result of those fucking asinine things popping out of the wood work, it makes it difficult to take the issue seriously for those who otherwise might, as that insanity is always hanging over the issue. I was also seeking answers on my own problems understanding the spectrum of asexuality. But y'know whatever, bigoted people ask questions in an attempt to understand and enlighten themselves, right? You people are the worst, you don't want to engage in discussion, you just want to pat each other on the back, and shut down anyone who attempts to ask harder questions by accusing them of non existent prejudices.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Why do I have a feeling you do not in fact have a PhD in gender psychology.

I'm willing to bet your teacher didn't either, but I've at least written on the subject.

True, but having two sets of objects that are of equal distance from a subject with subjects from one group consistently moving towards one type of object while those of another groups consistently move towards the other does show something instinctual, not that they will move towards an object, but WHICH object they will move towards.

No it doesn't.

Observing something does not magically grant knowledge of why it happens, and let's just say those particular "observations" are universally dodgy as fuck.

I recall a similar experiment done specifically to illustrate the problem with these kinds of experiments, where grad students were told they were taking part in a sexual difference experiment involving children's response to particular sex-appropriate toys (they were unaware in this case of actually being the subjects). They were tasked with holding the toys and moving them to attract the baby's attention. Whether intentional or otherwise, researchers found the movement of the toys was far more vigorous when the grad students understood the toys to be gender appropriate. In other words, the belief that they were taking part in a study with the goal of "discovering" gender differences lead them, without realizing, to try and produce the result they expected.

Again, an isolated observation, but it illustrates something very important about science. Almost all experiments confirm their hypotheses. A single experiment basically illustrates nothing, not until a detailed understanding can be exhibited not just of whether something allegedly happens but also the precise mechanism why, and that is completely absent in this case.

You're right, gender is complicated. Which is something gender ideologues should learn, since the reason we're seeing the sudden rise in fake genders is because they think that anyone who doesn't conform 100% to stereotypes is something other then a man or woman.

You do realize that your insistence that "man" and "woman" are "real" genders could equally be read as ideological?

Plus it would also beg the question that, if it's a social construct, why is it one found in every society regardless of how many thousands or tens of thousands of years separated said societies?

It isn't. Certainly not in the same form.

Almost all societies have a social category of sex, which generally has its foundations in a logic about reproduction (although it is very seldom reducible purely to reproduction and is very seldom the same logic about reproduction, there are cultures in which people don't believe that sexual intercourse is the source of pregnancy, for example). In remarkably few is sex taken to socially mean the same thing as it means in the West.

Let me give a really basic example. The association of female and male with pink and blue respectively. Serious research has been performed attempting to suggest that gender colour preference is an "instinctive" (in the sense you're misusing the term) tendency held over from sexually differentiated hunter gatherer roles, in which women were required to respond more strongly to red spectrum colours in order to pick out brightly coloured berries.

Sounds legit right? Except that a mere glance at the historical record would show that a century and a half ago years ago, gender colour preference in the English speaking world was inverted. Pink, like all red spectrum colours, was seen to have implications of activity and virility and was therefore strongly associated with maleness. Indeed, this whole flintstonian model of men as "natural" hunters and women as "natural" gatherers is completely up in the air when it comes to early humans, particularly since the whole anthropological model of hunter and gather as separate roles has been found to be extremely flawed even in the case of most modern societies.

Almost all of the "instinctive behaviours" turned up by sexual difference research could be shown false by the most casual foray into the anthropological or historical record. That so few people bother to do so is testament to what an intellectual wasteland sexual difference research is as a discipline.

So what you're saying is because something we have as a society observed since... well we can't really say since historical records don't go that far back, is something you could more easily defend as made up in comparison to something we have literally no evidence even exists and is at best a hypothetical temporary state which we grow out of faster then we learn to walk or talk?

Except we can still observe, and the reality is a lot less simple than you suggest.

My biology professor, on the other hand, did, though the open warfare between biology and psychology (and the rest of sociology for that matter) is one that isn't a secret to anyone in academia, though it's a bit of a one sided fight since only one side has hard evidence instead of educated guesses on the matter (and even then "educated" may be a stretch in some cases, such as the entire field of gender studies in its totality).

He or she should probably have just stuck to teaching you biology.

There is no "open warfare", what there is is a perfectly justifiable resistance to the flawed conclusions put forward by the kind of simplistic reductionism certain biologists or psychologists are prone to peddling. I've met people working in the field of biology whose understanding of sex possesses a depth and complexity which puts my own understanding to shame (which is, I presume, why they were employed in that discipline). I owe a great deal of my knowledge and understanding to those people.

None of them simply engaged in sociological or psychological research and then claimed retrospectively that it was "biological" without providing any evidence beyond a grandiose claim that all psychological or sociological conclusions must be reducible to biology (because.. reasons). They didn't try to claim that because women observably like to buy shoes they must be "biologically programmed" to buy shoes or that Jimmy Choo must have existed in the ancestral environment. Like good biologists, they looked at biological processes as nothing more than biological processes and sought to understand their functioning from the ground up, not from the top down, you know, gathering "hard evidence" instead of making "educated guesses".

And if a teacher actually taught you that biology and sociology are "in open warfare" then you've basically lost the right to complain about ideology in education, because it's very clear your own education was ideologically compromised. If biology and psychology are so fundamentally different, why can't you tell the difference between their methodologies? Why is it that you don't even notice when a biologist is asking a sociological question instead of a biological one?

 

[Padwolf]

There's nothing wrong with trans or anyone else. I'll call people what they want to be called by and if they correct me, then I can apologise and call them by the correct name/whatever. The problem is when tumblrinas start insulting others for being "cis". Hell, that term has become a slur towards anyone who just wants to be male or female. It's fecking stupid.

However, if you ask me to call you by the name of "otherkin" that is when I'm going to laugh at you.

 

[Something Amyss]

The problem is when tumblrinas start insulting others for being "cis". Hell, that term has become a slur towards anyone who just wants to be male or female. It's fecking stupid.

I'm curious as to how many times you've actually personally experienced this, rather than heard it as an anecdote.

Despite being trans myself, and having a trans SO who is a "Tumblrina," I'm yet to see much in the way of serious comments to that end. It seems more like people trying to distill a large and diverse site into the essence of [things I hate]. And people do the same about women, Padwolf.

 

[MrFalconfly]

If it smells like a duck.
If it looks like a duck.
If it quacks like a duck.
If it dresses like a duck.
If it has feathers like a duck.
If it does duck-like things like a duck.

Then it's a duck, unless I'm told otherwise.
Then it's a unicorn or a geese or a purple rabbit, or however it wants to be called.

But don't dare give me any limp because I wasn't 'sensitive enough' to read your mind or see your bumper sticker.
When that happens, I'm calling you duck because you CHOOSE to go quackers on me for no reason other than you're a donkey.

That's more or less it.

Initial gender identification is visual in nature, which means that if certain criteria (like beard, or boobs, just to name a few examples) are fulfilled then we'll probably go with the gender that normally (probably about 99% of the times) fit with those physical criteria.

We aren't psychic, so it'd be a bit churlish to get pissed off for someones lack of ability to read minds.

 

[Padwolf]

The problem is when tumblrinas start insulting others for being "cis". Hell, that term has become a slur towards anyone who just wants to be male or female. It's fecking stupid.

I'm curious as to how many times you've actually personally experienced this, rather than heard it as an anecdote.

Despite being trans myself, and having a trans SO who is a "Tumblrina," I'm yet to see much in the way of serious comments to that end. It seems more like people trying to distill a large and diverse site into the essence of [things I hate]. And people do the same about women, Padwolf.

I've been called "cis scum" before a few times, merely for calling someone a "he" or "she" before knowing they were transgendered. I've also seen someone on here calling others "cis scum" here and there and genuinely meaning it. Oh, and I know not ALL people on tumblr are tumblrinas. I'm refer to the people who claim that there is no LGBT literature in the world and things like that or claim that everything should have a trigger warning. Of which there are many. Hell, there is one on my facebook. Being a woman myself, I do understand. But I have been called "cis scum" before. I KNOW not all transgender people are the same, and I wouldn't put them all into a category. Sorry if I caused any offence, it wasn't meant to

 

[Something Amyss]

Oh, and I know not ALL people on tumblr are tumblrinas.

And not all people who want equal rights for women are feminazis. Still, that's how the term ends up being used in common parlance. It, similarly, s a snarl word.

And my SO is within the exact group usually accused of being Tumblrinas. I don't take offense on behalf of others, but this is exactly the problem.

 

[Arctic Werewolf]

That's a cop-out. If you are the man of science you claim to be, then you know one hundred percent certainty is effectively impossible, because the most a scientist can say is, "I have not yet seen the case that contradicts our belief, but it may yet exist;" meaning the possibility you demand be eliminated never can. Frankly, I think your application of the principle is hypocritical, because your denouncement of creationism could be responded to with exactly the same sentiment--"It's possible you don't know something that proves God made the universe in seven days, so as long as that possibility exists, I don't want to be complicit in enabling scientific propaganda"--so I think if you want to be considered honest, then the burden is on you to prove transgenderism is a disease by identifying its psychopathology or finding peer-reviewed and generally accepted studies that do so for you.

I have a question from the perspective of someone who is no scientist. Just by the nature of what transgenderism is, how could it possibly not be a disorder, mental or otherwise? I am using wikipedia for my definition so feel free to refer me to a better one. It states "Transgender people experience a mismatch between their gender identity or gender expression and their assigned sex." Born in the wrong body, basically. Well how the hell is that not a disorder? Are we saying they were supposed to be born in the wrong body? If you say "yes" I think my head will explode lol.

Anyone feel free to weigh in.

 

[Ishigami]

What? OP If you try hard enough I think you will come up with an even more convoluted way to ask a simple question.

I don't give a shit. If she looks like women I will address her as such until she corrects me.
Same for men.
In general I don?t give a shit about your gender or sexuality nor am I psychic but I got eyes and in 98% of cases I?m right, those 2% can correct me and if they feel offended then so fucking what?

 

[JimB]

I have a question from the perspective of someone who is no scientist. Just by the nature of what transgenderism is, how could it possibly not be a disorder, mental or otherwise?

The term "mental disorder" is one that has a strict definition in medical and diagnostic parlance: it is a psychological syndrome or pattern which occurs in an individual, and causes distress via a painful symptom or disability, or it increases the risk of death, disability, or pain. The definition specifically excludes social reactions to the patient, so transgenderism doesn't qualify as a disorder because it is not always inherently painful or likely to lead a patient to self-harm. It certainly can qualify--that's what the term "gender dysphoria" is meant to describe--but on its own, a trangendered person who is allowed to express their gender without pushback from society and who does so in ways that don't demonstrate a decreased capacity to make competent judgments cannot be said to be suffering from a mental disorder.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

*scratches head at poll*

The poll is missing an option.

Where is the
"If someone has the physical features and external care of their sex it is not wrong to call them such:
> Yes, unless they correct you"
option?

Here's a radical notion, why don't we just treat people like how we'd like to be treated? If someone repeatedly misgenders you for some dumb reason, you'd be annoyed too, right? Just how like if someone deliberately mispronounces your name even when you correct them several times it starts to grate on the nerves.

So when someone corrects you, it'd just common courtesy to refer to them how they'd want to be referred to. You're free to think of them however you want to (There are no thought police, thank god), but at the very least when you speak or act, treat them how they'd like to be treated. It's not that hard.

Yes, there was some adjustment when my transgender buddy was starting to transition and he still looked kinda female, and I DID botch a lot of pronouns. But eventually I got used to it and now the only time I eve mess up is right I'm talking about an event in his past and I get mixed up. Once you've gotten used to it for one person, it's not that hard to make the shift to others.

Hell, I hang out with a friend who happens to cross-dress sometimes (He's not transgender, he just like to dress female sometimes), and he prefers to be called "she" while dressed as a woman. So I use "she" in that instance. I know he's still a guy under that, but that doesn't stop me from using the preferred pronoun. It's honestly not that difficult.

I've been called "cis scum" before a few times, merely for calling someone a "he" or "she" before knowing they were transgendered.

Then they're assholes. Humans aren't freakin' psychic. I think everyone's allowed at least one "oops" per person.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

The whole thing is pretty much impossible to wrap your head around if you don't identify similarly. If someone who identifies as a "Xe" or whatever flips out at you for calling them the wrong pronoun before they tell you, they're essentially getting mad at you for not being able to read their mind. So no, you wouldn't be a dick in that situation.

Whatever your logic or rhetoric on the subject is, the end result is that someone identifying as something isn't inherently hurting anybody. It's not even a matter of being right or wrong, it's just about basic social awareness and conflict resolution. In a scenario where both parties are socially competent, that would be recognized as an honest unawareness, they'd tell you "For future reference, I'm ____" you'd go "ok" and everyone is cool.

Nobody wants to be subjected to a diatribe about how they should do prerequisite reading before addressing you, or your contentious philosophy of why they're living their life wrong. Everyone has their own problems, and nobody else has to put up with yours. Making it a point to be shitty is a surefire way to not be liked or respected.

 

[Arctic Werewolf]

The term "mental disorder" is one that has a strict definition in medical and diagnostic parlance: it is a psychological syndrome or pattern which occurs in an individual, and causes distress via a painful symptom or disability, or it increases the risk of death, disability, or pain. The definition specifically excludes social reactions to the patient, so transgenderism doesn't qualify as a disorder because it is not always inherently painful or likely to lead a patient to self-harm. It certainly can qualify--that's what the term "gender dysphoria" is meant to describe--but on its own, a trangendered person who is allowed to express their gender without pushback from society and who does so in ways that don't demonstrate a decreased capacity to make competent judgments cannot be said to be suffering from a mental disorder.

I guess I thought a body/brain mismatch was inherently painful. How many trans individuals prefer to have a different physical body than the sex they identify with mentally? How common is that? I was born with a male body but I identify as a female but I prefer to have a male body?

 

[JimB]

I guess I thought a body/brain mismatch was inherently painful.

No more than wanting to lose weight is inherently anorexic. There are degrees of discomfort and degrees of adroitness in expressing and managing that discomfort.

How many trans individuals prefer to have a different physical body than the sex they identify with mentally? How common is that?

I'll have to direct you to Google for that one. Those are not numbers I possess.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

It is ridiculous to call a person "them" or "they" at first sight. Sorry, I will never do so.

If that transgender / transvestite / etc. person simply corrects me if I'm mistaken I will apologise and ask him / her how they would like to be adressed. Understanding comes mutually, the end.

 

[BarkBarker]

If you look it, I likely will go from that and adjust based on further observations among other things. If like many you are a one off stranger in my life who I won't be getting to know, I go off what I see. I've called a woman a man once by accident cos her skin seemed so damaged it was hard to get an idea and she was muscular and I swear to god she had a 5 o clock shadow on her. Said sorry, like goes on, if you look like something the initial is to say what it looks like. Hell my mother said as a kid I saw a small person going to work and said out loud "why is that child wearing a suit", often it is just say what you see.

 

[Arctic Werewolf]

I guess I thought a body/brain mismatch was inherently painful.

No more than wanting to lose weight is inherently anorexic. There are degrees of discomfort and degrees of adroitness in expressing and managing that discomfort.

OK, that makes sense. When you're failing to manage it well personally it becomes the disorder "gender dysphoria". But if it's not fucking up your life in that way, causing pain and negative patterns, then it's not a disorder. I probably have all sorts of issues and bad patterns that aren't really disorders.

Maybe a brain/body mismatch just sounds really serious, and that's why I had trouble understanding how it could not be considered a disorder. But these things aren't disorders when you're handling them like an ace and they don't cause you excessive pain. Got it.

 

[Erttheking]

I call people what they want to be called. It's an incredibly simple system that's served me well. If someone wants to be called her but I call that person he, that's just me being a twat. Am I proving anything? No. I'm just making someone uncomfortable.