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[Orange Wizard]

something something tumblr something sjw something _ptw something

_{i'm kind of interested to see what people have to say but if i start posting my opinions please remind me to shut up}

[Helgoland]

As I said in the OP, I won't join in myself, so I think staying dispassionate won't be too much of a problem - especially since I really don't have any strong opinions on the subject.

I guess I'll leave this open at least until it's picked up some steam - there's no need to nip this in the bud, I think.

[Arx]

I can't think of any good reason for Helgo not to run this thread.

I am concerned about the record of this topic, but Toady hasn't said anything on the issue beyond that a strict OP and rules are necessary.

Finally, so this post isn't entirely meta-discussion, gender is useful insofar as it allows the species to continue. Otherwise I subscribe to the "people" labeling system.

[Ghills]

People need to handle this like duck typing. When interacting with other people, you don't need to make sure that they're of type Boy or type Girl or whatever. It doesn't matter. Just make sure they have implementations of the methods you expect to call, and that these work in the way that your own behavior expects. For example, unless you intend to call thisGuy.fuck(me), you probably don't care whether it relies on Genitalia.penis or Genitalia.vagina, or indeed any other module. Moreover, construct your error handlers in a reasonable fashion - instead of throwing up a giant red warning and crashing the program (that is, your relationship with somebody), try to handle things a bit more gracefully. And keep in mind that you're the one throwing the error - you're not a standards organization, so you just kind of have to live with how everybody else does their thing.

Now, you can certainly implement your own methods and have them check particular attributes. If you want your makeFriends() method to ensure your target has no trans variable set to True, fine, although it's generally poor design and I'll call you kind of an asshole. But that's your own particular implementation, and not the way the entire system ought to work.

I make this post fully aware of the risk that the thread will be locked. I choose to be optimistic.

I love this.

Re: Gender roles and transgender
Historically, I think gender perceptions were often about responsibilities.  Successful family life required an earlier division of labor, just like running a country required an earlier division of labor, and so a person's gender informed what they were expected to do for the survival of the family/city/whatever. 

Modern US/EU society doesn't have that.  People are much closer to self-sufficient.  But the cultural weight and pressure to conform is still just as powerful as when communities depended on everyone doing their job right.  So we have all this cultural pressure for conformity without any real impetus or reason.  And the pressure is worsened by wider media consumption; before mass media, people only saw how their family/village/city acted. Now, everyone sees the homogenized image of TV and movie stars.  It's a toxic stew of mistaking why we have the roles we have and slimming down the number of available role models.  No wonder people feel alienated from parts of their identity - the ideal isn't anything like them, there's no reason to conform except for the sake of conformity, and their extended family, who would have been relatively like them and also their role models for most of history, often don't live near them. 

TL;DR Modern gender roles are a horrible mess all the way down. We'll have new ones in a generation or 2, but that's not soon enough for all the people growing up now.

[Helgoland]

Hey, no quoting! This instance wasn't really bad, but finem respice and all that...

[TempAcc]

In all honesty the LGBT community has affected society's views of transgendered people very negatively. Both of my actual transgendered friends (as in, people who actualy have gender dysphoria, and had it for most of their lives, and are actualy transitioning, and are definitely not the kind of person who just read a tumblr article and now want to wear skirts and dye their armpit hair or something) feel that way. They frequently tell me how they'd rather just not be a part of LGBT thing mostly because it just warps society's views of them even further.

A large part of the american and european LGBT community just try to fit everyone under the same umbrella of "queerness", and disregard that being transgender has absolutely nothing to do with sexual orientation, and under some warped concept of "pride", often forcefuly "out"  people with gender dysphoria, which ALWAYS ends up causing more harm then good, which can be pretty dangerous in some societies (IE Iran, Turkey, etc). One of them lives in Sweden, which is very open to LGBT issues and gender dysphoria, but often tell me she wishes to not be associated with LGBT groups because they refuse to understand that they might be causing more harm then good, and if you actualy tell them that you do not need their help and do not want to be associated with them, you often get treated like some sort of bigot and sometimes even harassed by them for "not valueing what they've done for transgender people".

In all honesty, I'm bisexual and I dont want to be a part of, or be associated with any LGBT movements in the americas or europe, because I think they're embarassing and I think the sea of tears they've made over the "bisexual visibility" activism thing is hilarious and nobody should really care about it, and I think its hilarious when people absolutely feel the need to tell you about their sexuality.

[Criptfeind]

Edit: Thinking about this, post is pretty self defeating, I'm going to put it in a PM instead.

[mainiac]

I dont really see that in the US.  The only resentment I see is younger queer folk getting ticked off at the older generation which tends to be gay-male dominated.

[i2amroy]

This type of quoting fine? I mean it's what I tend to do with people that don't want to be quoted after all.

And really if we're going to follow the same trends that have happened involving racism, etc. we're only going to be seeing very small steps on this issue for about another 25-30 years, at which point we're going to see massive change because that's finally the point when the congress majority will shift to be mostly people who were raised to be accepting of LGBT people. (Though who knows, maybe we'll find out that their upbringing in the time of social change will make our current/next set of congressmen/women more accepting of those who are different and we'll get our changes early).

[SomeStupidGuy]

This is likely to be a mess, but good luck to y'all I guess.
PTW.

[4maskwolf]

i2amroy: You could also do what I did there, which is what we do on the mafia forums to address people without quoting them directly (since sometimes we're on a device that makes quoting specific portions of something a pain in the ass, like this iPad).

[LordBucket]

If I correctly understand the intent for this thread, we are to post entirely self contained posts that make no references, be they direct or indirect, to any other post, and the subject matter is to be gender.

Hmm, ok.


Gender is a thing.

*angry reaction from some readers*

Well, ok...it might be inconvenient sometimes. If you prefer the aesthetic of viewing a change-process as a unified, single phenomenon rather than examining its components, I won't argue against that.

*what is bucket even talking about reaction from some readers*

Oh, right...when I think "gender" I tend to have different mental associations with the concept than most of you. Ok. You want to talk exclusively about...well, what exactly? "Gender" means different things to different people. To some it's exclusively biological reality. To others, it's various social constructs. To others it's a number of things depending on context. TO me personally it's a basic conceptual "force" or "phenomenon that has application for things like biology. For example, when I say "attraction" I might be talking about gravity, or magnets, or two people who like each other or any of a number of things. The concept "attraction" is a very general thing that is relevant in my areas. My concept of "gender" is similar.

Which, incidentally is the source of a lot of unpleasantness had between me and others on this thread when discussing gender. Frequently we're talking about different things. I apologize for that. Imagine if somebody were to say "like attracts like" meaning that people tend to be attracted to people who who like themselves, and somebody were to respond "what are you talking about? Opposite poles attract, similar poles repel!" talking about magnets. Both people are talking about "attraction" but the context changes things.

So when we say "gender" it's helpful for us to be talking about the same thing. Except that we're not actually talking with each other in this thread, we're talking, well..at each other, I suppose.

So, gender. It's a thing.

*skeptical, but not angry reaction from some readers this time*

Barring technolgical input and unusual cases, the typical biological reproductive process in humans involves male insemination, female impregnation and female internal carrying of fetus.

*reaction from some readers: how DARE you say "typical!" How DARE you imply that there's a "normal" way for this to happen and that anything else is unworthy!!! GRROWRRR! ANGER!!!*

...whoa. Let's relax, please. I'm not attempting to make value judgements here. I acknowledge that the system is somewhat arbitrary. Yes, there are people born with multiple genetalia. Yes, when it comes to seahorses the seahorses who produce the eggs are not the ones who carry them to term. I'm not suggesting this is "inferior" and that we need to go on a crusade to purge the unrighteous. I'm sorry if you have unpleasant personal experiences...but I just have to wonder if you have such a horrible emotional reaction to simple statements like the above, it's possible you might be the problem here, not the people pointing out the obvious.


Moving on.

Societies, tend to develop cultural patterns relating to gender.

*Some people in the audience start munching popcorn*

Well, everyone agrees on this, right? Societies do do this. How anyone feels about any specific part of the patterns is up for debate, but it does happen. I think having someone run into the room and ask you to kill some innocent bug or spider is not part of the typical experience of american females, for example. Whereas this is a thing that happens not infrequently to guys. Some women expect this. You're male. It's your role to kill spiders. Well, no...sorry, I don't like killing things. I'm not going to kill the spider. I'll put him in a jar and take him outside, but I'm not going to kill him just because you expect it.

Ahh, enlightenment.

You see, very often it's that simple. If you're not happy with the gender roles assigned to you by society, consider refusing them. Just do it without the anger and resentment. If I take a spider outside instead of killing it, I'm not usually looked down on for it. People don't shun me for failing to live up to my assigned gender role. Whereas if I were to freak out at every girl who asks me to kill something and deliver an angry rant about gender roles and inequality...yeah, I'd become a social pariah pretty quickly.

So don't do that. Do you own thing. Act like it's ok. It probably is. People pick up on how you feel about things. If you're a guy and you feel like going out wearing a dress is weird and not ok, people will pick up on that and think the same. If you feel like it's completely normal, people are less likely to react to it. If you're a girl and you feel like asking the boy you like to the dance is weird and not ok, well...actually that's just your problem. I doubt many people would have a problem with it even if you did think it was weird. Point being, some things you can change and maybe some you can't. Ask yourself honestly whether the problems you have are created by others or by yourself. Maybe it was somebody else who taught you that whatever it is you want to be or do somehow isn't ok, but if you believed them, own up to it.

Gender has implications in regards to biology. Sometimes these implications might be inconvenient.

Gender has implications in regards to society. Sometimes these implications might be inconvenient.

Don't worry so much about those two right now. Between VR and nanobots and manufactured body parts, a lot of those walls are going to start coming down in the next few years or decades. Be patient.

But the technology isn't likely to change how you feel about gender. That's up to you. Be at peace with yourself. Maybe you can't make other people be at peace with you, but you're not responsible for them. Take care of you. If you believe that what you are and what you want to be is ok, it will be easier for everyone else to believe it too.

[Ghills]

Hey, no quoting! This instance wasn't really bad, but finem respice and all that...

The problem is that, unlike physical conversations, it's very difficult to know who someone is responding to without quotes.  No quoting = conversation devolves into people talking past each other.  Conversations need to be a back and forth of ideas. Quoting promotes that by making it easy to track threads of conversation.   Every single thread I've seen that tried to not use quotes devolved into monologues shouted past other posters.

Quoting doesn't prohibit that. People can still be pompous windbags if they want to. But it makes the conversation more coherent by default.

Re: Public Sexuality
Totally agree. Why do people assume that others are interested in who they like to sleep with? Friends are one thing, but do we seriously need to promote the idea that people are solely defined by who they think is sexy?  Seems backwards to me. 

[4maskwolf]

I think that there are some instances where not acting according to societies norms will make you a social pariah whether you speak out against it or not.  This is particularly true in regards to sexuality: a male with limited sexual drive is, at least where I live, often considered "bizarre" or "abnormal", perhaps even "unmanly", and conversely a women who expresses her sexuality is often considered a "slut".  These people aren't outwardly speaking out against the "evils of society", but they are made laughingstock and social pariahs fairly quickly.

[ggamer]

this'll be the only post I make in the topic

I don't know anybody with gender issues or whatever. I can literally make no statement on the topic because I have no idea what the topic is supposed to cover. My current position is a staunch "apathy," which is probably disagreeable but it's where i'll stand until it becomes relevant to me or someone I know.

also, helgo, i appreciate the effort but good golly miss molly this is a forum not a collection of manifestos, the name forum literally implies discussion. You're not gonna be able to stop flame wars by stopping discussion, and if you don't think that people can nut up and have a conversation about this controversial topic without going at each other's throats then you shouldn't have started the topic in the first place.

in any case, this is an interesting thread, i'll look every now and again to see what people are talking about.