(May 16, 2016 at 1:34 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: My point is that all sides need to move beyond rigid ideological agendas and irrational fears.

Well you could start by showing a modicum of respect and not referring to trans people as their birth gender. This is extremely hurtful and harmful in the way of all forms of prejudice. That is because you are treating them as people who you think they are, not what they actually are. By using the wrong pronoun you are not allowing trans people to be themselves.

@ Everyone else who supports transgender people

Thank you.

I love you all.

Why shouldn't it be? It's a pretty hot button issue in 'Murrica.

(May 18, 2016 at 2:06 am)Mathilda Wrote:

(May 16, 2016 at 1:34 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: My point is that all sides need to move beyond rigid ideological agendas and irrational fears.

Well you could start by showing a modicum of respect and not referring to trans people as their birth gender. This is extremely hurtful and harmful in the way of all forms of prejudice. That is because you are treating them as people who you think they are, not what they actually are. By using the wrong pronoun you are not allowing trans people to be themselves.

This is exactly the point which highlights whether or not someone understands the issue. Not long ago, I didn't understand. I wasn't nasty to anyone, nor did I expect them to do anything differently on my account; I became friends with two transgender people and got on fine with them. I was friendly and supportive. I didn't have to understand to do that.

Now I've looked into it properly, and I do understand. I was ignorant and misinformed, for most of my life, on this issue. Don't assume you know these people better than they know themselves. Talk to them, listen to them, and do research.

(May 18, 2016 at 3:55 am)SteelCurtain Wrote: Why shouldn't it be? It's a pretty hot button issue in 'Murrica.

It's quite important over here as well, but everything's been pretty much covered.  There was a couple days of inactivity in the thread at one point and I thought it had died.  

(May 18, 2016 at 2:06 am)Mathilda Wrote:

(May 16, 2016 at 1:34 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: My point is that all sides need to move beyond rigid ideological agendas and irrational fears.

Well you could start by showing a modicum of respect and not referring to trans people as their birth gender. This is extremely hurtful and harmful in the way of all forms of prejudice. That is because you are treating them as people who you think they are, not what they actually are. By using the wrong pronoun you are not allowing trans people to be themselves.

At one time sex and gender were synonyms for an objective biological feature. Then at the insistence of critical theory proponents, with whom I normally disagree, the meaning of gender was shifted to refer to the subjective social constructs associated with biological sex. This move was not problematic since it allowed people to discuss the subjective associations of otherwise asexual things with traditional notions of masculinity or femininity. For example, how did the color pink came to be associated with femininity? In other words, the shift added clarity. The shift in meaning you are asking society to embrace not only reduces clarity of expression, it undermines any distinction between objective reality and subjective experience. For example, the phrase you used, "allowing trans people to be themselves," is ontologically ambiguous. It does not clarify if "be themselves" refers to something they believe about themselves or their objective identifying features. If you were mugged, you would not identify your attacker by recounting anything about how the mugger feels about him or herself.

If a specific individual in private conversation wishes to be referred to in specific manner, like using only their last name, the pronoun of their choice or title, I am happy to oblige upon being informed of their preference. Until then I will use the most common conventions. I cannot read minds and neither can you. Your insistence that I speak according to your ideological preferences as part of a general conversation is nothing short of totalitarian.

BTW, the post you quoted does not contain a single personal pronoun.

(May 18, 2016 at 1:15 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: At one time sex and gender were synonyms for an objective biological feature.

Well, at one time the sun and the moon were considered gods. It's a fact, but that doesn't mean they are. Fact is, medicine and psychology are relatively new scientific fields. It's hardly a century that germs were discovered to be the reason for many illnesses and it's not even 80 years since we can fight them effectively. Psychology is a field that was born only in the late 19th century and developed relatively slowly since then, since societies were opposed to many of it's findings. It's hardly 50 years since being gay has been decriminalized.

Sorry, but the argument of something has been considered to be a certain way, doesn't hold water.

At one time, homosexuality was considered a mental illness. At one time, we believed you could use the bumps and ridges on someone's cranium to tell their personality or their likelihood to be a criminal. At one time physicians didn't believe in the germ theory. At one time, psychiatrists thought that an effective cure for mental illness was to be showered with icy-cold blasts of water for hours at a time.

It's a good thing we know more, and are learning more about how wrong we were, isn't it.

Abaris and FNF, you both completely missed the point. Everyone knows that language is dynamic. The issue at hand is whether the terms being used contribute to clarity or undermine it.