The issue I have with pronouns

[DrugsBunny]

1 hour ago, Thought Art said:

@DrugsBunny Thank for sharing. 

You should be careful with this type of thinking though. What you are saying IS ideological. 

*sigh* My dude you're making me feel so alone in having this apparently and surprisingly uncommon ability to decipher the not-so-subtle difference between ideological interpretation and unbiased objectivity.

I'm at work right now, but I'll still grace you with my infallible corrections while I debase my integrity as an employee by addressing this unfortunate haplessness. 

The reason it's not ideological to say that the terms "man" or "woman" provide no linguistic utility towards descriptions specifically of sex (distinct from gender) is because these terms are simultaneously used towards describing gender, which as a matter of incontestable fact, obfuscates the otherwise clear meanings of "man" and "woman".

In terms of what is or is not ideological, the preceding remarks are the only claims I have made in that respect. Of course nothing about that is ideological. Seems that you simply regard me as an ideologue and reject any objective statement I make due to your own biases. 

1 hour ago, Thought Art said:

@DrugsBunny I will try to continue to reply to your response later as it was rather dense. 

The lack of self-awareness has me in stitches. ??

Here's the main difference between us. If I deem something to be irredeemably stupid, I will let it be known unabashedly that your perspective warrants no respect and my use of language will accurately reflect the sentiment, whereas with you, you'll express the same sentiment, as you have here in calling me dense, but you won't commit to the tonal implications of your debasing remarks. Instead you'll pussyfoot behind this subdued personability of forced etiquette that serves as plausible deniability from the abrasiveness of your words.

I will at least afford you the upfront courtesy of a genuine demeanor that sincerely reflects my regard for you and your perspective, so as not to obscure the potentially unflattering temperament my words may incidentally evoke. As far as I'm concerned, your backhanded condescension is far more of an affront to rational sensibilities than my upfront condescension should ever be considered.

The truth is, the merit behind my expressed argument was apparently beyond your comprehension, which is surprising to me but perhaps it shouldn't be. Being one of Leo's moderators is kinda like being a US police officer; you can't be a complete imbecile, but if you're too intelligent you will be intentionally disqualified from eligibility.

[Leo Gura]

@DrugsBunny Notice that your tone here has become hostile and obnoxious lately. Watch yourself. Make your points without personal attacks or you will be kicked out of here.

Edited April 25, 2023 by Leo Gura

[DrugsBunny]

@Leo Gura What a reach. Yeah I'd be in a hurry to get rid of me also if I had to oppose someone as objectively on point. Can I ask what precisely you take issue with? I genuinely don't see anything too abrasive here.

[Thought Art]

@DrugsBunny I was just saying you wrote something well thought out and information dense. Not an insult.

[Thought Art]

@Danioover9000 I am not Asexual. 

Probably a bit Bi..

[DrugsBunny]

3 minutes ago, Thought Art said:

@DrugsBunny I was just saying you wrote something well thought out and information dense. Not an insult.

Lmao, alright I'll take the L on that one. "It was rather dense." You have to admit that definitely invites me to jump the gun there.

[Thought Art]

@DrugsBunny I understand what you mean haha . It's all love.

Edited April 25, 2023 by Thought Art

[Israfil]

5 hours ago, Jannes said:

It shows that there are some people who connect womanly with traditional female physical attributes but that doesn't mean it's the case for everybody in society because trans people make up a very small amount in society. 

So there could very well be people who just by identifying with a different gender then their biological one and are happy with that. The fact that some people can't do that doesn't mean there arent people who can do that. 

My point is that people that identify with something are equating their own self-perception with some set of characteristics that the thing that they identify with has. Even in the case you mention, there is a connection between self-perception and those certain attributes that lead to this whole phenomenon. Even if I say I am a "feminine man" I am still stating the connection between my self-perception as a male, and therefore a bearer of male attributes, and my self-perception as feminine, as in displaying feminine attributes.

If man or woman refers to "someone who identifies as such", I would simply kick this pebble down the road. I would identify as someone who identifies as something. And that something would be "someone who identifies as man/woman". So the only way "identifying as man" has any meaning is if man has a set of characteristics that can be identified with in the first place. My point is not the inability of identifying with a stereotype, but the necessity of positing what is that you're identifying with before identification can even occur, therefore, a concept of womanhood or manhood is required for you to compare yourself to, and therefore identify (to see identity, to see equivalence, to see "equalness") with.

[Yimpa]

On 4/23/2023 at 0:45 PM, Jannes said:

The problem would only be perfectly solved if everybody took pronouns seriously or if nobody took pronouns seriously. 

I don’t take it seriously. I’m LGBT, but I don’t announce it outwardly. I was assigned male at birth, but I use he/they pronouns. Hell, call me a female and it won’t really matter to me. 

[Carl-Richard]

13 hours ago, DrugsBunny said:

Of course you can refer to people as men or women by appearance, I'm only saying that doing so would be your interpretation of their gender expression, not their sex. Nothing I said has been invalidated.

What about genitalia? Is that gender expression?

[Yimpa]

3 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

What about genitalia? Is that gender expression?

They both start with “g”, so clearly.

*facepalm*

[DrugsBunny]

10 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

What about genitalia? Is that gender expression?

You seem to have discarded the original context of the argument you were responding to, all while capturing the misguided adoration of our uninformed friend @Yimpa no less. Such a silly place this forum can be.

7 hours ago, Yimpa said:

They both start with “g”, so clearly.

*facepalm*

I see your facepalm bid and raise you one fervent *eye-roll* and a prolonged *sigh* of impatience.

@Carl-Richard Before I explain the subtle contextual shift that led to this confusion, I'll also point out that it's unlikely you'd see a person's genitals as part of their "immediate appearance" (in your words, which were edited after I responded). At least I would hope not.

Remember the initial argument you responded to was my position that there is no linguistic necessity in using the words "man" or "woman" to identify physical sex (anatomy). My only position is that no linguistic utility would be lost by reserving "man" or "woman" solely for gender expression, so it would be hypothetically ideal that we use these terms as such. You asserted your inclination to call someone a man based on their appearance, to which I responded within the confines of the hypothetical idealization I had presented, which seems to be the source of the confusion. You'll see in my original remark I had already stated that we still use the terms "man" and "woman" in regards to sex (ie. genitals), although it would be ideal for this inclination to go out vouge. 

So long as the distinction between sex and gender is acknowledged (which thanks to the low IQ of conservatives this isn't always a given), it would undeniably be more efficient to reserve these terms solely for gender, instead of having two subtly distinct definitions for "man" or "woman", because "male"/"female" can independently suffice for sex. In such a context where we reserve the ideal terms solely for gender, any appearance based inclinations to identify someone as a "man" could have, by definition, only taken place on a gender related basis.

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, DrugsBunny said:

I'll also point out that it's unlikely you'd see a person's genitals as part of their "immediate appearance" (in your words, which were edited after I responded). At least I would hope not.

You're placing a kind of teatime social situation frame on the whole thing. When I'm talking about immediate appearance, I'm talking about what you will see when looking at a person period (with or without clothes, it doesn't matter). There are times where you will see people naked, and that factors into you thinking they're a man/woman or not.

 

2 hours ago, DrugsBunny said:

My only position is that no linguistic utility would be lost by reserving "man" or "woman" solely for gender expression, so it would be hypothetically ideal that we use these terms as such.

There is utility lost, because female genitals tend to go together with other female things, and we call that statistically likely combination of things "woman". That is why I say the words don't fit neatly into either a social or biological category. If you see a pretty person in a dress with makeup and with curves, you will probably think it's a woman. If you happen to find out they have female genitals, you would again probably think it's a woman. If you're really concerned about linguistic utility, you should find a new name for the purely social genders.

Edited April 26, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

@DrugsBunny

If you want a practical example of the utility in action, I will use pickup as an example (people seem to be familiar with that here):

You say to your buddies "I want to find me a woman tonight!", and they know exactly what you mean. Now, what does that entail? It entails going up to somebody who looks like a woman, talking to them and then sleeping with them. So you do that: you talk to someone who looks like a woman, you take them home and you think "ah, I found myself a woman tonight ". But then you find out they don't have female genitalia, which surprises you. "Oh, I didn't find myself a woman after all " It's painfully simple, but this is what we're dealing with.

Edited April 26, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Jannes]

19 hours ago, Israfil said:

My point is that people that identify with something are equating their own self-perception with some set of characteristics that the thing that they identify with has. Even in the case you mention, there is a connection between self-perception and those certain attributes that lead to this whole phenomenon. Even if I say I am a "feminine man" I am still stating the connection between my self-perception as a male, and therefore a bearer of male attributes, and my self-perception as feminine, as in displaying feminine attributes.

If man or woman refers to "someone who identifies as such", I would simply kick this pebble down the road. I would identify as someone who identifies as something. And that something would be "someone who identifies as man/woman". So the only way "identifying as man" has any meaning is if man has a set of characteristics that can be identified with in the first place. My point is not the inability of identifying with a stereotype, but the necessity of positing what is that you're identifying with before identification can even occur, therefore, a concept of womanhood or manhood is required for you to compare yourself to, and therefore identify (to see identity, to see equivalence, to see "equalness") with.

Yes I agree but it doesn't have to be physical. Some people see manly hood or womanly hood in the physical appearance and other more in character traits. A biological men and friend of mine identifies as female now. She says that she doesn't need to change her body as that is not what's important to be a women for her. 

So to come back to a comment earlier from you:

"You can talk about expanding the perception of a woman to include people who transition, i.e. identify with the set of "womanly" characteristics and seek physical and behavior changes to externally reflect those characteristics, but you cannot say that the mere identification turns that person into a woman. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any trans people. They would simply identify as a woman and that feeling would be enough. The whole point of transition is the presentation to self and to others of the archetypical gender characteristics that are perceived as man and woman by the individual in question and society in general."

So yeah there are some people who change their gender just by identifying with a different one. Some people need extra surgery, others don't. 

 

[DrugsBunny]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

@DrugsBunny

If you want a practical example of the utility in action, I will use pickup as an example (people seem to be familiar with that here):

You say to your buddies "I want to find me a woman tonight!", and they know exactly what you mean. Now, what does that entail? It entails going up to somebody who looks like a woman, talking to them and then sleeping with them. So you do that: you talk to someone who looks like a woman, you take her home and you think "ah, I found myself a woman tonight ". But then you find out they don't have female genitalia, which surprises you. "Oh, I didn't seem to find myself a woman after all " It's painfully simple, but this is what we're dealing with.

In this instance it would simply be a woman with male genitals. I understand why this seems to be an affront to linguistics, but under my hypothetical idealization, this scenario would not be such an offense to modern sensibilities. 

I will make a concession however, because I stated that no linguistic utility would be lost, but that would depend on subjective moral inclinations towards trans inclusion, which from a utilitarian standpoint is the objectively correct inclination, although most people aren't necessarily inclined morally to defer to such inclusion.

For this oversight I will afford @Thought Art some contrition, as I was unsympathetically and brazenly self-assured in rejecting the ideological undertones of such a statement. Understand that I intentionally use lofty expressions of self-assuredness to bolster the perceived authority of what I deem to be crucially important social leanings. As I see it, situations like this warrant additional effort in framing the opposing perspective as utterly devoid of credibility, hence the tone I had taken above. When the rare instance of my concession is necessary, this approach of calculated condescension backfires of course. I'm only invested in social outcomes that are best for everybody, and my tone is a calculated effort to most effectively persuade people to my perspective. ???

[Danioover9000]

@Thought Art

On 2023-04-26 at 0:24 AM, Thought Art said:

@Danioover9000 I am not Asexual. 

Probably a bit Bi..

   I see. Which one do you prefer more, men or women?

[Thought Art]

@Danioover9000 lol

[Israfil]

5 hours ago, Jannes said:

Yes I agree but it doesn't have to be physical. Some people see manly hood or womanly hood in the physical appearance and other more in character traits. A biological men and friend of mine identifies as female now. She says that she doesn't need to change her body as that is not what's important to be a women for her. 

 

I agree. And the argument I posed didn't say that identification requires necessarily physical qualities, you can identify with the whole spectrum of stereotypes of either gender. I stated that if mere identification wasn't enough, there wouldn't be any trans people that changed themselves to feel that they're being authentic. I wouldn't say that identification necessarily entails the display and performance of those stereotypes, but the correlation is high.

5 hours ago, Jannes said:

So yeah there are some people who change their gender just by identifying with a different one. Some people need extra surgery, others don't. 

 

  People that don't change anything in themselves when gender identification occurs, already see themselves displaying or having the characteristics they perceive as part of that gender. If you conceptually that such and such should be a part of your gender identity but you don't have that characteristic, you would either defy this norm or comply with it, assuming no further revision in your perception of this concept.

[Carl-Richard]

9 hours ago, DrugsBunny said:

In this instance it would simply be a woman with male genitals. I understand why this seems to be an affront to linguistics, but under my hypothetical idealization, this scenario would not be such an offense to modern sensibilities. 

I will make a concession however, because I stated that no linguistic utility would be lost, but that would depend on subjective moral inclinations towards trans inclusion, which from a utilitarian standpoint is the objectively correct inclination, although most people aren't necessarily inclined morally to defer to such inclusion.

Ok. But pure linguistic utility aside, if we look at social utility and within our current society, I think respecting people's preferred pronouns is sufficient. You're not going to change your intuitive understanding of the words man/woman unless you undergo severe re-conditioning, which factors into the utility calculation. But yes, you can still consciously choose to call somebody by their preferred pronouns, and sometimes that is the intuitive response (as with the Ben Shapiro example).

Edited April 27, 2023 by Carl-Richard