Things we are uncomfortable talking about can be things we need to talk about

[AutumnParticipant]

It doesn’t matter if it’s humans messing with nature. Our nature is amenable to it because it doesn’t know male or female along the strict binary that humans like to use to describe reproduction. It isn’t a strict binary.

[AutumnParticipant]

Look, if we reduce ourselves down to our sex chromosomes, we can bucket them into Xs and Ys. To that extent, the binary makes sense. As a loose categorization, it’s useful. But for humans, at the level of sex chromosomes, we don’t need the Y. And of the Y, we apparently didn’t need a fair bit of the genetic material it contained as Y chromosomes have been truncating for millennia. Not just truncating, but mutating in other ways too. There isn’t a singular Y chromosome. There are many configurations that are categorized as Y (no clue how many known Y haplogroups there are).

Without the Y, would we last as a species? With medical intervention, maybe. Without, no. But it’s not the Y itself we need; it’s the machinery for making and delivering sperm cells. So now we’re talking about gametes, organs, and organisms. And in humans, there are definitely sexualized differences. But are they a strict binary? Not really. They are a clumsy binary that requires a lot of rounding things off at the edges. There are a lot of reused/ repurposed parts between the sexes. There are a whole lot of traits that exist along gamuts. There are tissues that could present phenotypically male or female based off of different hormone exposure. It’s not a very clean division between male and female. So why can’t we just stop acting like it is? At any level? Because nature doesn’t give a fuck. This firm delineation is something that’s only useful to humans to describe a natural phenomenon in terms that are more clear, simple, and concise than the messiness of the phenomenon itself.

At no point am I denying the validity of some form of binary aspect to human reproduction and biology. It is meaningful. Just, can we stop making it into something it isn’t?

[_Robert_Participant]

What this and so many issues boil down to is that the typical religious conservative person is simply a stupid asshole and there are just so many of them with big fucking mouths.

LGBTQ rights are chipping away their ability to make easy and instant assumptions about someone based on appearance. Now they have to think a little bit and they hate that. They can point to their handbook for idiots and show us God doesn’t like it…a man should lay with a woman, and she should just shut the fuck up….yada yada yada.

And here we are trying to have a factual conversation, but all this is immaterial to our highest court that is owned by people who believe Moses parted the seas.

 

[UnseenParticipant]

@autumn

I take your point that nature doesn’t care if we intervene, but it’s still an intervention, and we can discuss, perhaps, whether such interventions are natural . Nature doesn’t care or else the machinery of evolution wouldn’t work. Nature only says “You can’t do that” if a mutation actually turns out to be totally unworkable and causes the death of the subject.

The problem is that female parthenogenesis will produce only female children, right?

Male parthenogenesis technology is a bit behind female parthenogenesis. Still, it doesn’t seem to have any insurmountable obstacles in its path and it has the advantage that it will produce female kids as well as males.

The male version would allow, for example, two gay men to have a child without having to do an adoption or having to find a cooperative female to give them a newborn or for a hetero couple with a problem conceiving (doesn’t matter which one) to have a baby with only the father’s DNA. However, it also offers the prospect of producing a Y chromosome to combine with the female’s egg for in vitro reproduction.

[AutumnParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

@autumn I take your point that nature doesn’t care if we intervene, but it’s still an intervention, and we can discuss, perhaps, whether such interventions are natural . Nature doesn’t care or else the machinery of evolution wouldn’t work. Nature only says “You can’t do that” if a mutation actually turns out to be totally unworkable and causes the death of the subject.

I agree. My underlying point is just that I think humans should stop trying to project patterns on both our biology and society that largely aren’t there in reality. The reality at the macro level of being a human being when it comes to sex and gender has messiness to it. At the collective species/ societal level it has messiness to it. At the microscopic genetic and hormonal level it has messiness to it. It’s fine for it to be messy. It feels like the whole desire to see more rigid binaries doesn’t stem from a desire to get closer to reality, but rather a desire to cling to a comforting sense of order coupled with a fear of losing entrenched social norms.

The problem is that female parthenogenesis will produce only female children, right?

I suppose. Genetically we don’t really need the Y. Just, for impregnation without medical intervention, it definitely plays a part. Also, I’d never advocate for some sort of male genocide.

Male parthenogenesis technology is a bit behind female parthenogenesis. Still, it doesn’t seem to have any insurmountable obstacles in its path and it has the advantage that it will produce female kids as well as males. The male version would allow, for example, two gay men to have a child without having to do an adoption or having to find a cooperative female to give them a newborn or for a hetero couple with a problem conceiving (doesn’t matter which one) to have a baby with only the father’s DNA. However, it also offers the prospect of producing a Y chromosome to combine with the female’s egg for in vitro reproduction.

It would be interesting if human reproduction went that way in the future. By that I mean sexual intercourse was for fun, bonding, and emotional health, and reproduction was an intentional and controlled process where partners combine genetic material without regard for sex or gender. Mind you, we’d end up in a eugenics debate really fast if we got that methodical about reproduction.

[AutumnParticipant]

_Robert_ wrote:

LGBTQ rights are chipping away their ability to make easy and instant assumptions about someone based on appearance. Now they have to think a little bit and they hate that. They can point to their handbook for idiots and show us God doesn’t like it…a man should lay with a woman, and she should just shut the fuck up….yada yada yada.

Agreed. And also chipping away at the idea that their books are an unwavering source of truth and guidance. These are people who think that all of western society is formed out of (Judeo-)Christian morality despite how much our moral frameworks had to evolve in spite of their religious mores to get where we are now. Religion is a product that solves the problem of sin. Sin is that which can’t be readily accounted for in their religion. When the percentage of queer people who don’t accept that our existences are sinful remains a single digit percentage of the congregation, it’s not that difficult to create a moral divide for a large in group you can more readily control with your moral narrative at the expense of a relatively small out group that challenges your narrative.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

The reason why LGBTQ (and other rights issues)  are such explosive issues now is because of haters who want to keep raising the anger levels and blame libtards for everything… because they need an enemy to motivate them. So “woke culture” is triggering these conservative snowflakes? No, sorry, Trump and neo-right gang are stealing political power, largely by pandering to white, ignorant, reactive, self-righteous fools that think they’re being replaced and their world is about to end unless they use all the power and hate they can muster against progressives.

Sure, they think wokes, SJWs, progressives, libtards, whatever, are responsible for everything that’s wrong with “My ‘Murica, let’s take it back and MAGA”. So would slacking off on the defense of gender atypicals by allowing them to use their own pronouns actually make any difference? Christ, many of them think Antifa is responsible for Jan 6. They’re batshit crazy, and we need bigger, long term solutions to fight that kind of crazy, not just run swinging into their hysterically driven games, misinformation, and delusions that have been invented or capitalized on by power hungry politicians and profit-hungry, conservative media.

How much damage are liberals doing by actually caring so much about other people, other than giving hateful, power-mongering politicians and their ignorant, hateful minions justifications to act so destructively? Destruction has been in the cards ever since big money got into politics, and since one party in particular has shamelessly figured out how to rig the system to their favor. They’re taking over now, without any true concern even for the people they’re fooling and will also screw one day.

Come on, XX, XY, other “scientific facts of life” are just side issues compared to fighting politicians willing to snow Americans in any way they can for the sake of their own power. The more compassionate party that’s *really* losing now is up against a machine that *really* wants all the power, and is willing to shed blood for it. Pronouns are just molehills in this context. Click-bait, even. If compassion and democracy are failing here, then we need to find better ways to sell them to people who’ve allowed themselves to succumb to learned helplessness.

[UnseenParticipant]

@popebeanie

There is much truth in your post above… AND YET, changes come when it’s time for the change to take hold. There came the day, for example, when the majority of Americans realized that gay marriage wasn’t the end of the world and that a heterosexual couple wanting to marry had nothing to fear from same sex couples coupling up in the same way.

Unfortunately, the pronouns issue, for example, hasn’t reached that stage yet. It’s meeting lots of resistance mostly due, I think, to it being foisted on a public that isn’t ready to even think about many of the issues involved. And criminalizing or firing or shunning (etc.) those who aren’t ready to join in will only increase resistance.

Elections have consequence. Just look at the many changes resulting from voting Trump in. We now have a Supreme Court that terminated Roe v. Wade and doesn’t recognize a right to privacy as a constitutional right, which puts a lot of other rights we thought we had into severe doubt. The right to practice contraception, the right to marry someone of the same gender, the right to practice non-procreative sex in the bedroom, voting rights, Miranda rights(?), maybe even the right to marry outside our own race. A lot of these issues are being handed to the state legislatures where in many states a bunch of MAGA whackadoodles are in charge and are poised to drag us back to the days of Leave It To Beaver.

The public’s mind won’t be changed over pronouns by the midterm elections this fall and won’t even be changed enough to make a difference even before 2024. Thing happen when they are ready to happen and forcing the issue can have the exact opposite of the effect intended.

 

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by  Unseen.

[UnseenParticipant]

@One and All

My pronouns are “Your Majesty” and “His Majesty.” Or just “The One Who Can’t Be Seen.”

It is now your job to always use those pronouns when you talk to or about me.

[AutumnParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

@One and All My pronouns are “Your Majesty” and “His Majesty.” Or just “The One Who Can’t Be Seen.” It is now your job to always use those pronouns when you talk to or about me.

i) Anyone can reading can tell this is a disingenuous statement.

ii) Those aren’t actually pronouns. I mean, grammatically, they won’t function as pronouns (though there are three pronouns inside of your pronouns). Pronoun sets have a subjective/ objective/ and possessive form. Your Majesty’s don’t.

iii) It falls well outside the scope of what the issue is with pronouns as experienced by transgender people: gendered language. The overwhelming majority of people are fine with he, she, or they. A small number prefer to not be referred to with pronouns. A small number use neo-pronouns that are gender-neutral and actually fill the role of subjective/ objective/ possessive. Even in the case of people who use neo-pronouns, many also use ‘they’ in many contexts for simplicity.

On Twitter and TikTok I am sure we can find some rare exceptions to these cases, but on such social media platforms we’ve also found a bizarre number of people eating laundry detergent for fun, so… you know, the internet.

iv) It’s not going to fall under and discriminatory statute or policy to not use your declared pronouns. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll help your Majesty out. What do I think of Unseen’s last post in this thread? Well, I think he’s deliberately misunderstanding the issue at hand so he can be dismissive of something he doesn’t understand well. I’ve now intentionally misgendered you several times. Report me to the mods. Make a human rights complaint. Do what you will. See how far the complaint goes—see how far you can take it, and then we’ll see how much it is my job to acquiesce.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Autumn wrote:

I’ll help your Majesty out. What do I think of Unseen’s last post in this thread? Well, I think he’s deliberately misunderstanding the issue at hand so he can be dismissive of something he doesn’t understand well. I’ve now intentionally misgendered you several times.

I often think of how to rewrite what I wrote the day before, which goes for my previous post. Keeping it as short as possible:

• Mocking other people wrt their use of pronouns is just one example of one side using bullying techniques, similar to name-calling
• The idea that Libs should pull back to stem the above, specific schoolyard power play, imo, centers too much on just one example of many arrogant, hate-driven, bullyish behaviors against the majority of Americans who are actually trying to care more about each other
• My conclusion is that we need to reframe the amalgam of these distracting issues in our own, effective way, without playing their game, as Hillary tried to do with her idiotic “basket of deplorables” comment that backfired on her; while focusing more on the larger threat to liberal democracy

The neo-right, and especially its leaders loyal to His Majesty Trump and conservative media have taken this road of inciting populist hate and culture wars while simultaneously stealing power in all three branches of government, with irreversible consequences for the time being. This is nothing less than bloodthirsty arrogance, American majority be damned, abusing the original intent of the electoral college and decimating our balance of powers.

I personally don’t see any hope in winning this cultural and political war, by just chipping away at the many small battles that the neo-right have designed and rally around. This is an all out war on democracy itself, by pushing states rights (including the electoral college imbalance) beyond the scope of original intent in the constitution, by money-soaked politicians defining good vs evil for their own, self-serving perpetuation of power.

The cultural war over pronouns is just one click-bait distraction from a much bigger, existential challenge we face, which even a neo-right population can’t see coming, whom will also eventually suffer after putting themselves in the hands of power hungry politicians.

Sorry to interrupt, @unseen. I should say no more about this until I can suggest potentially actionable, larger strategies to fight our existential-laden war over democracy. I think you’re correct about how pushing the pronoun battle motivates the neo-right… but it’s one battle among a myriad of other battles.

[AutumnParticipant]

PopeBeanie wrote:

 

• My conclusion is that we need to reframe these issues in our own, effective way, without playing their game, as Hillary tried to do with her idiotic “basket of deplorables” comment that backfired on her

The ‘our’ is a difficult issue. If we talk about issues trans and gender non-conforming people face, we represent less than one percent of the population according to most figures. So the conversion from that minuscule ‘our’ to an ‘our’ with some power to effect change is huge uphill battle. And in order to fight that battle, reason is absolutely secondary to addressing emotional barriers to change. So imagine what it’s like when your very existence becomes an ad nauseum process of managing other people’s emotions just so you can have the same basic rights as them?

Even without the numbers, we still see issues. There are far more Black, Indigenous, and Racialized people in places like Canada and the US, but still pushing back on a status quo steeped in inequality is agonizingly slow. Women represent half the population and still, progress is slow. Even when your rights are secured on paper, it’s still painfully slow. It’s not because there is some rational debate that hasn’t been resolved. It’s likely becomes of some sort of defect in our collective consciousness and individual cognitive function.

My closest answer to all this shit is to find some measure of seclusion. The less I have to deal with other people, the better my life gets. Sadly, I’m not without needs for a social existence, even as a fairly extreme introvert, but the very fact that I can seclude myself is considered a privilege—one many aren’t afforded. Strange world. We make like so much harder on humanity than it needs to be, and the list of ‘reasons’ why is incomprehensibly long.

[AutumnParticipant]

PopeBeanie wrote:

While I think you’re still correct about how pushing the pronoun battle motivates the neo-right… among a conflagration of other battles.

Probably not. I’ve been in this for a long time. The more likely scenario is certain groups need targets, so they will search until they find them. The motive and outrage precede the issue itself.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Autumn I agree, as I also see most of what Unseen is pointing out. Maybe I’m too caught up on avoiding these smaller battles while a whole bunch of cultural and political battles are at large, with their general theme being their abuse of power while their grabs for even more power are so successful and threatening.

I’m ok with people calling themselves what they want, and I’m not ok with people bullying them in response. But reaction against fluid pronouns is just one of many neo-right invented ways to incite the right and mock the left.

I’ll interrupt this topic less, and focus instead on “bigger pictures” in a different topic.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by  PopeBeanie. Reason: I'm consistently guilty of clumsily re-editing my posts over too long a period of time, avoiding several edit log entries, and it throws readers/responders off. I'll fix that! I only now realized I can just write my post on a different AZ page invisible to others, then just copy it to the permanent reply

[AutumnParticipant]

Avoiding ‘smaller battles’ is a luxury.

When federal legislation was proposed in Canada to included gender identity and expression as a protected characteristic. All the legislation did was add ‘gender identity and expression’ to certain established basic rights and protections to ensure that transgender people’s rights matched those of cisgender people.

This became dubbed ‘the bathroom bill’ even though it made no mention of bathrooms had had zero impact on what bathrooms a person chose to use (there were no actual laws on this). We didn’t choose to start some fight about bathrooms. It was a fight that was brought to us over a basic bodily function.

The first few iterations of that legislation died on the oder paper and had to be reintroduced eventually as a government bill (the previous versions were private members’ bills). The bathroom issue was being raised erroneously again, but it was losing traction. A large portion of the public was kind of getting over it and only Conservatives could really play to that issue. Along comes Peterson with a rant, and suddenly the issue of pronouns and compelled speech explodes onto the scene. Not just that, but postmodern neo-Marxism. But again, the law wasn’t about pronouns and much of what Peterson said wasn’t really true. And also again, this is a fight that was brought to us.

This is not to suggest transgender people never faced issues over gendered language and bathrooms prior to this. It’s just that the thrust of the trans rights movment wasn’t about these things. They were tiny parts of the whole. But then someone comes along and picks at the threads of the movement and tries to unravelling based on what gets a reaction. Now conservatives are up in arms about pronouns and, reflexively, progressives are up in arms about conservatives being up in arms about pronouns and now it’s gone from a relatively obscure issue to a full blown wedge issue. And trans people are the ones left holding the bag because it’s made out like we’re rabid lunatics frothing at the mouth about pronouns when y’all were the ones that wanted to blow this issue up. And we can’t walk away from it either becasue it’s our lives. And if we deign to talk about our rights issues in other areas, it’s just a matter of time before some yokel tries to drag it back to pronouns or some other tangent.

[Author]

Posts