Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Cathar]

That's the first time I've ever heard of 'butch' being used as a gender pronoun or identity. As a description of physique (or a nickname), yes, but not gender.

Butch and Femme are used as descriptive for gender roles in lesbian relationship. Butches emulate men, long story short.
Studies and testimony show that butches show in average more masculine traits than the average man, including violence and territoriality. Back in the 80, having butches fight violently for a femme was a common occurence in lesbian communities.

It is a descriptive of a role in a specific relationship, it is not a gender omfg. They are women, who identify as women and who have a vagina. There is not a shred of confusion about that

[Reelya]

(1) No it isn't, we have it over here as well. Otherwise, I suppose you might be right. Perhaps I was too hasty.

We also have stupid right-wing politicians and police brutality against black people over here. That doesn't stop those things being USA politics relevant things however. Gender non-binary is a universal thing, right, but so are many things. It's when politicians start joining the fray and when laws start getting passed about it that it becomes a politics issue, which is why I didn't bring up the "concept in general" but focused instead on a specific law in New York.

Personally I'm opposed to the idea that custom genders can be legislated. The same with "pronouns", as in that dispute in Canada about the law making it a crime not to use someone's preferred pronouns.

Who actually gets to decide whether my pronouns are real or not? I'm trans-kawaii-neko (trans-cat but specifically an anime cat) and my pronouns are nyaa/nyuu/nyore. Is there going to be some tribunal that determines whether my preferred mode of address is a joke or not?

[Cathar]

Who actually gets to decide whether my pronouns are real or not? I'm trans-kawaii-neko (trans-cat but specifically an anime cat) and my pronouns are nyaa/nyuu/nyore. Is there going to be some tribunal that determines whether my preferred mode of address is a joke or not?

Social consensus. Gender is a social construct. Like the rule of law or taxes. It's man made, doesn't means you can change it at will.

[Reelya]

Social consensus is a valid answer, however what I was talking about is the passing of laws that mandate that you must do certain things, like use particular pronouns. The legal system requires specific rules to be in place, which override the process of social consensus.

[smjjames]

That's the first time I've ever heard of 'butch' being used as a gender pronoun or identity. As a description of physique (or a nickname), yes, but not gender.

Butch and Femme are used as descriptive for gender roles in lesbian relationship. Butches emulate men, long story short.
Studies and testimony show that butches show in average more masculine traits than the average man, including violence and territoriality. Back in the 80, having butches fight violently for a femme was a common occurence in lesbian communities.

Huh? You're going to have to link to proven studies on that because while there is nothing stopping a woman from being as mean or as violent or assholey as the next guy, I'm just being like 'Really?? More masculine traits than the average man?'. Maybe they are just in the same not-average zone as men showing the same range of masculine traits.

Fighting over mates is nothing new though, still doesn't make domestic violence okay.

Who actually gets to decide whether my pronouns are real or not? I'm trans-kawaii-neko (trans-cat but specifically an anime cat) and my pronouns are nyaa/nyuu/nyore. Is there going to be some tribunal that determines whether my preferred mode of address is a joke or not?

Social consensus. Gender is a social construct. Like the rule of law or taxes. It's man made, doesn't means you can change it at will.

What about all those other terms, like those used in other languages in cultural context? I have a feeling that the legislation was for document purposes so that they can have an option besides male/female.

[Karnewarrior]

Who actually gets to decide whether my pronouns are real or not? I'm trans-kawaii-neko (trans-cat but specifically an anime cat) and my pronouns are nyaa/nyuu/nyore. Is there going to be some tribunal that determines whether my preferred mode of address is a joke or not?

Can I be trans-racist and have my pronouns all be mutations of the N-bomb? I'd like to see some technicolor heads pop because of that one.

Social consensus. Gender is a social construct. Like the rule of law or taxes. It's man made, doesn't means you can change it at will.

For real though, this. Part of the introduction of a new idea to society is proving it's worth. In a sense, conservatives are like the immune cells of the body, hunting down and destroying potentially dangerous material. Like immune cells, they also target a lot of non-dangerous stuff, sometimes to a problematic degree, but in general if an idea is actually decent the conservatives have difficulty holding it back and so it becomes a societal thing.

Thus far they haven't even convinced me, and I'm about as left-leaning as you can get on the conservative spectrum, according to the political tests I've taken.

[hector13]

Given who the conservatives in America have as the leader of their party, I’m not sure the immune system analogy is apt.

[Reelya]

I think it's too simplistic to say that the GOP primary process necessarily gave you the "head of the conservatives" any more than the Democratic Party process necessarily gives you the top-socialist, or even the spokesperson for everything "liberal".

I'd wager that the bulk of people who flooded out to vote for Trump aren't actually that well versed in conservative politics.

[smjjames]

Who actually gets to decide whether my pronouns are real or not? I'm trans-kawaii-neko (trans-cat but specifically an anime cat) and my pronouns are nyaa/nyuu/nyore. Is there going to be some tribunal that determines whether my preferred mode of address is a joke or not?

Can I be trans-racist and have my pronouns all be mutations of the N-bomb? I'd like to see some technicolor heads pop because of that one.

Social consensus. Gender is a social construct. Like the rule of law or taxes. It's man made, doesn't means you can change it at will.

For real though, this. Part of the introduction of a new idea to society is proving it's worth. In a sense, conservatives are like the immune cells of the body, hunting down and destroying potentially dangerous material. Like immune cells, they also target a lot of non-dangerous stuff, sometimes to a problematic degree, but in general if an idea is actually decent the conservatives have difficulty holding it back and so it becomes a societal thing.

Thus far they haven't even convinced me, and I'm about as left-leaning as you can get on the conservative spectrum, according to the political tests I've taken.

Who gets to determine whether an idea is decent? Liberals? Conservatives? God? Aliens from Alpha Centauri IV? I get what you're saying with the analogy, but if conservatives had their way (the Republicans were kind of the liberal party and Democrats were kind of the conservative one back then, until the parties flipped into their current roles), the Civil Rights period would have never had the progress it did. I can't prove that it never would have happened, but just something to consider.

Given who the conservatives in America have as the leader of their party, I’m not sure the immune system analogy is apt.

+1 with the immune system analogy being flawed. I was going to retort with the fact that the immune system can also destroy the body (auto-immune diseases for example), but I saw that Karne mentioned that.

[Cathar]

Usually academia would have it's own immune system incorporated into it's process of production of knowledge, in the form of the peer review system. But in the field of gender studies, it is completely broken, as the peer focus only on the mastery of the lingua of the field without any metric to judge the validity of the propositions. A couple of social scientists have proposed 20 fake articles, among which one of them made the proposition that men should self insert with sex toys to fight against their latent homophobia. Of those twenty, 14 of them past the peer review system and were published.

I don't know if conservatives are a good immune system, but we got to find something for real.

[Egan_BW]

These are supposed to be Conservatives? They certainly aren't very good at conserving the environment, or holding corporations back from ruining everything.

America doesn't have Conservatives or Liberals, just Neoliberals, religious fanatics, and that strange yet common breed who manage to combine the two.
(In terms of politicians, at least. You can meet plenty of genuine liberals or conservatives here, they just don't have any power except to vote for blue or vote for red.)

[Reelya]

Well, it's hard to say what life without conservatives or without liberals at all would be like, since proving a negative is hard.

But we can see what places with no liberals in power are like (pretty bad) and we can look at universities which have next to zero conservative professors, and they're the same ones that have gone off the deep end in other ways. Lord of the Flies sorts of ways.

It's not necessarily about conservative or liberals as reductionist labels, it's just that any ideology needs people to step back and say "hang on, this is just stupid". Otherwise you end up with an ideological thought-bubble that rapidly veers away into la-la land. (A lack of competing doctrines creates a type of power vacuum and an intense competition to take control of the movement, which manifests through more and more extreme versions of the ideology to one-up the competing factions. Conservatism collapsing would be the *worst possible* outcome for anyone committed to liberalism. Taking control of the liberal movement would be the new route to power).

"liberal" as in mainstream liberal only exists because other doctrines are pushing back against it, and tempering the more out-there ideas, forcing liberal to remain sensible to be competitive. Take away those external pressures and the balance will be far off from what it is now. Any one doctrine unconstrained by competition from rival doctrines rapidly mutates to be unrecognizable.

[smjjames]

Usually academia would have it's own immune system incorporated into it's process of production of knowledge, in the form of the peer review system. But in the field of gender studies, it is completely broken, as the peer focus only on the mastery of the lingua of the field without any metric to judge the validity of the propositions. A couple of social scientists have proposed 20 fake articles, among which one of them made the proposition that men should self insert with sex toys to fight against their latent homophobia. Of those twenty, 14 of them past the peer review system and were published.

Point taken, it's just that what you described from the study doesn't pass the BS test.

Well, it's hard to say what life without conservatives or without liberals at all would be like, since proving a negative is hard.

But we can see what places with no liberals in power are like (pretty bad) and we can look at universities which have next to zero conservative professors, and they're the same ones that have gone off the deep end in other ways.

I think we can all agree that the extremes generally end up being not so great, but sometimes it seems like conservatives (and liberals too actually at times, though it feels like conservatives tend to do it more, but that may just be bias on my part and both sides do it about equally) just want to run off with the ball and dive off the deep end rather than find a happy medium.

[wierd]

The term "conservative" has been morphed, as the "cultural norms" they want to preserve are NOT the ones people normally think about.

Instead of the more expected package of:

Religious faith
Family structure and values
National identity
(and)
Protection of personal assets


you end up with this package instead:

Shameless exploitation of the faith of others for personal gain
Retaining/using as many mistresses/lovers as one wants, but pretending to be chaste in public (which includes alt-sexual things too.)
National Identity (as a tool to manipulate others)
Excessive accumulation of personal wealth as a measure of individual value
(and)
"Damn you all, and damn the future, I got mine!"


In short, it is what happens when you have a strong demographic that WANTS the former set, along side a well-entrenched and highly socially connected group of sociopaths that exploit that desire to remain in power.

Such sociopaths are strongly attracted to such positions (as it titillates their urges toward superiority over others, and is directly reinforcing of that world view) and are natural master manipulators.

I could wax philosophical all damn day about why I absolutely *HATE* career politicians as a thing-- but I will spare everyone the mental headache.  Needless to say, I feel that society is better off not enabling that endemic class of human in the populace to gain and hold such positions of power over it, and the allowance of career politicians is like a fucking neon sign with lights beaming down from heaven on a dark night, with "Self-aggrandizement, power tripping, and affirmation of your obviously naturally superior status!" on a golden platter, being presented to such people.  I would rather have the dysfunction of people that have limited experience helming a powerful nation than career sociopaths in charge, deciding things for me, and getting a boner when doing it.

That is not to say I really want either one of those things.  I would rather that the selection process weed out people clearly not fit for office (like trump!), but still otherwise not a career politician being pushed to office by public sentiment, rather than the "We must maintain our hegemony, Our legacy, OUR POWER!" crop that gets decided for us each election cycle during the primaries.

Just my .02$

[Egan_BW]

Well, it's hard to say what life without conservatives or without liberals at all would be like, since proving a negative is hard.

But we can see what places with no liberals in power are like (pretty bad) and we can look at universities which have next to zero conservative professors, and they're the same ones that have gone off the deep end in other ways. Lord of the Flies sorts of ways.

It's not necessarily about conservative or liberals as reductionist labels, it's just that any ideology needs people to step back and say "hang on, this is just stupid". Otherwise you end up with an ideological thought-bubble that rapidly veers away into la-la land.

"liberal" as in mainstream liberal only exists because other doctrines are pushing back against it, and tempering the more out-there ideas, forcing liberal to remain sensible to be competitive. Take away those external pressures and the balance will be far off from what it is now. Any one doctrine unconstrained by competition from rival doctrines rapidly mutates to be unrecognizable.

You do need elements of both ways of thinking if you want a sane government. And tribalism is actively harmful to that, because it encourages people to not actually think about their ideas. Splitting things up into "the liberal party" and "the conservative party" just ensures that neither party is actually liberal or conservative.