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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   37972 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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Wasn't it only a few months ago we were told this was an insane conspiracy theory and only a few weirdos would ever try to abolish "mother"?

To be clear, nobody actually wants to abolish the words "mother" or "woman." They want to use them in what they assert is "correct" manner, i.e. to refer to parents or people who personally identify as women, irrespective of sex. Conversely, terms like "birthing parent" and "people with uteruses" are used specifically because they include trans men, and are intended to be used only in contexts in which those characteristics are relevant.

For example, "Birthing Parent's Day" is mostly a GC meme. Trans activists are, to the best of my knowledge, not particularly interested in renaming Mother's and Father's day, because they still see "Mother" and "Father" as totally valid terms as long as they're used in a manner consistent with self-ID and not with biological sex. Trans men who have given birth would, for the most part, rather be honored on Father's Day than on a renamed Mother's Day, and vice-versa for trans women.

If you ignore the ideological aspect and the silliness of the phrasing, there's a certain set-theoretic elegance to it.

To be clear, nobody actually wants to abolish the words "mother" or "woman." They want to use them in what they assert is "correct" manner, i.e. to refer to parents or people who personally identify as women, irrespective of sex.

By the way in Hegelian jargon it is exactly what is meant by abolish, which just a translation of the word aufheben. The idea is that we are not abolishing the thing, we are just "enriching" and "transforming" the meaning of contradictions in binaries such as man/woman. This is the idea behind other leftist/social justice utopian thinking: we want to abolish the police by resolving contradictions and making police unnecessary under proper Social Justice. We want to abolish private property, because under communism there is no longer need for such a thing.

If you ignore the ideological aspect and the silliness of the phrasing, there's a certain set-theoretic elegance to it.

If you ignore ideological aspects, then we would not be here in the first place. There is no set-theoretic elegance to confuse meaning of words such as using the same word of "woman" for both a female member of homo sapiens and some invented concept of self-ID gender: you would use a different string for such a thing, let's say "transwoman"? The same with regards to removing the word "breast" as a female organ with milk ducts from our vocabulary altogether just because someone's ideology is offended by it. I don't see any elegance in removing valid concepts that describe biological reality, just deliberate confusion.

I've heard this a lot, sometimes phrased as something like "well, 'birthing person' or 'menstruator' are more precise and accurate terms than 'mother' or 'woman', because #notallwomen menstruate, and some people who menstruate don't self-identify as women".

On the one hand, yes, strictly speaking I suppose the term "menstruator" is more "precise" than "woman". On the other hand, don't bullshit me - you're not promoting the use of this term because it's more precise or accurate than the previous standard. There are plenty of factually accurate assertions which have been known to drive trans activists into violent rages and/or floods of tears. A trans woman can't complain that it's extremely dysphoria-inducing to be described as "male", or for it to be pointed out that trans women are just as likely to be violent as cis men - and then turn around and say "we're just trying to use more accurate and precise language!"

It's also not even clear that this sort of precision is worth chasing. Just consider how many more people there are who speak English as a second language than are trans (this has already potentially caused questions about the UK census)

Put aside that. It is just ugly brutalizing language.

In my last job, the head of marketing was trying to get us to put our preferred pronouns in our email signatures (something which is very much not common practice in this country). I was very opposed and told her so, pointing out that there were (to my knowledge) no trans or non-binary people on staff, but plenty of first-generation Polish, Romanian and Brazilian migrants, for the majority of whom the concept of "preferred pronouns" is alien, and who would most likely feel confused and excluded by such a policy. I argued that it seemed like very skewed priorities indeed, to roll out a policy with the goal of making hypothetical future employees feel more included - at the cost of making current staff members feel more excluded.

You know, the traditional answer to this is probably putting the appropriate honorific with your name in the signature. It (in most cases) answers what pronouns you prefer, and although English is my native tongue, in the foreign languages I've studied, honorifics generally show up pretty quickly, for uses like how to refer your teacher.

Sincerely,

Mr. Vexillologist

So we're right back to Chesterton's fence/jugaad, as usual.

If the only options on the table were he/him and she/her (Incidentally, why isn't possesive specified? A sufficiently gender dysphoric person could feel she/them/his is the only accurate way to refer to them. His feelings would be hard argue against, in a society in which primacy is placed upon self-ID. She would have an easy way to articulate his desires.), but it would just be a longer way of saying man or woman.

Once he/them, she/them, they/them, he/her, they/her, she/him, they/him enter the mix, depending on how much declension the native language of the foreigner has, the ESL-er get comfused and make more mistakes.

Never mind the ESL-er, I can’t make hide nor hair of mixed pronouns, and I’ve spoken English all my life. What does “she/them” even actually do for anyone, other than get her them outsized attention? Neopronouns I at least sort of understand, even if I find them ridiculous and annoying. But mixing and matching? That’s just obnoxious.

At least one explanation I've seen that it tries to convey that it's ok to use both she/her and they/them. Presumably there's a bunch of potential ways it's used.

My brother's girlfriend was using she/them for awhile, and I asked exactly this question. Her response was something to the effect that she was trying to convey that, while she was certainly a woman, she wasn't like a woman-woman. (Perform your own diagnosis of notlikeothergirls.jpeg/pickme/internalised misogyny here.) More specifically, she hoped that if she was in a foreign country with more rigid gender roles, that introducing herself with mixed pronouns would help to convey the idea that she doesn't fully adhere to certain expectations of how women are supposed to behave.

I pointed out that the people in said countries aren't going to give a shit about how she "identifies", and will simply clock her as female and treat her accordingly. Progressive Anglophone nations are literally the only parts of the world in which "I identify as X" is even understood by a meaningful proportion of the population, never mind respected. She seemed to sort of recognise that I had a point, if begrudgingly.

This conversation was probably two years ago. My brother said she isn't really insistent on the mixed pronouns and never demands that people refer to her as such in conversation. It literally only comes up when prompted for her pronouns on a social media or professional network.

notlikeothergirls.jpeg/pickme

Still don't understand these two memes. I see them everywhere and I still just don't get it.

Even worse, pronouns are for when you talk about someone, not to them, so they really make no sense. They're for identification of a third party between you and someone else, the third party's feelings about what you call them are largely irrelevant because they're generally not even present when pronouns are used.

This seems completely backwards to me. Preferred pronouns are if anything more useful when interacting between cultures because I often don't know what the implied gender of foreign names is. Sure it's also useful if gender-non-conforming people prefer "they" or not, but that's certainly not what I'm learning from the gender labels in my work directory info.

If I'm a native English speaker who is familiar with the "preferred pronouns" convention and what it entails, if I receive an email from someone from a foreign culture and I'm uncertain of whether they're a man or a woman, their choice to include their preferred pronouns in their email signature will absolutely be helpful. Even if I'm a native English speaker who was never formally trained about preferred pronouns and what they entail, I'll probably be able to infer from context.

By contrast, if I'm a Romanian or Pole who only very recently migrated to an Anglophone country, who has a very weak grasp of the English language, is wholly unfamiliar with woke shibboleths, and who has just received an email from someone whose gender he is uncertain of - I struggle to imagine that that person including their preferred pronouns in their email signature would be terribly enlightening. In that person's position, I would likely assume that "Preferred pronouns: they/them" is just a component of that person's job title, or one of their professional qualifications, or a means by which to contact them (you know, the only stuff that we thought was appropriate to include in a professional email signature before ~10 years ago, and which is still the case outside of the Anglosphere).

Your argument, about the implied gender of foreign names, builds the case for traditional pronouns, not preferred pronouns.

I think it depends on if you're operating in a mostly text or a mostly in person environment.

In person, "traditional pronouns" are probably best. Over text and when people from many cultures are interacting, preferred pronouns probably work best.

What exactly is the difference between stating your "traditional" and "preferred" pronouns in your email signature? A traditional pronoun set matches your original name just as well as your preferred pronoun set matches your original or newly chosen name.

Is it just the slash mark between nominative and accusative?

Traditional pronouns align with biological sex. Preferred pronouns may not, leading to a surprise when "she" turns out to be a man in a dress.

You said token_progressive's argument about gendered names was building the case for traditional pronouns, when it does not. A gendered name does not have to correspond to biological sex. It does, however, most often correspond to gender presentation, so if you see a dress, you won't be confused on whether Masha is a male or female name. Not so if you only encounter the person online. That's the context where pronouns in bio are useful.

This seems completely backwards to me. Preferred pronouns are if anything more useful when interacting between cultures because I often don't know what the implied gender of foreign names is.

This would only be useful for someone for whom getting a 3rd party's gender correct when referring to them with pronouns is a meaningful priority. For many non-native English or other similar language speakers, that's just not all that important, in part because their own native language lacks gender for those pronouns. E.g. my Korean-born parents, to this day, 30+ years after immigrating to the USA, freely use female pronouns to refer to straightforward run-of-the-mill cis males and vice versa, only caring to correct themselves if it's pointed out, and considering it mainly as a trivial verbal typo that they can't be arsed to discriminate between the gendered pronouns.

So if you already have a team that's full of people who have bought into the notion that getting someone's pronouns correct ("correct" can refer either to their self-ID or to what the speaker perceives as their gender or any other criterion by which we can determine that the pronoun's gender is consistent with the person's gender) is a priority worth pursuing, then having a standard of everyone sharing their pronouns first certainly could be more useful to first-generation foreign employees; however, it seems that first-generation foreign employees often tend not to prioritize such things as much as native-born employees.

So you use 'they' until the person you're interacting with reveals themselves. Teams texts, a Skype call, or a company headshot usually takes care of this.

I work with a lot of fellow, foreign employees, and I swear that there has never been any enduring confusion over somebody's gender or sex. Yes, an odd-to-my-ears name occasionally stumps me, and this is often rectified within 24-48 hours just by inference, without anybody prompting for pronouns or confirming genitals. Furthermore, most of the people I'm interacting with do not have not have these models for novel gender theory born from the West. They work for a US company, so on some level they 'get' why it's being asked (because despite DEI and inclusions practices, everybody is bowing down to American corporate culture), but I have a hard time imagining them getting utility from this on a more fundamental level.

On paper, I get the argument you're making. In my reality, 99% of the company folk I see with pronouns in their signatures or profiles visibly match their birth sex. There is no confusion or ambiguity regarding who or what they are. And this generalizes across all the Americans, Indians, Koreans, Serbians, and more that I see listed in my recent Teams history.

The one time I have ever experienced a 'pronoun snag' was with a goateed male with a generic dude name like 'Doug', and even he preferred the ambiguous 'they'. I believe that this entire concotion of modern gender theory fused with HR nannying is for his benefit, not poor people across the pond struggling with language barriers.

The only context I can imagine not knowing the sex of one of your colleagues being a problem is if you've been emailing someone back and forth and you agree to meet in person: "I'll meet you just outside the conference room at 3pm", and you don't know who to look for. But this can easily be rectified by:

  • A blanket policy of including the person's staff photo in their email signature, which many companies already have
  • A staff directory which includes staff photos, which many companies already have
  • The person telling you who to look for: "I'll meet you just outside the conference room at 3pm, I'll be wearing a red scarf." (which they would probably do anyway even if their name was unambiguously gendered and their staff photo was in their email signature)

It’s sad that “Progressive Policies R the Real Exclusionary Ones” is the only card to play in such situations, unless one wants to risk getting /r/byebyejob’d.

And your standing would had been so much weaker without the presence of your Brazilian migrant colleagues for the usual ipdol reasons.

When we spoke, it wasn't the only argument I made, but I did suspect that the "fifty Stalins" one would have the greatest impact.

Push this hard enough and sometimes you can get to the true justification (before your ignominious exit): it's the trans/NB people they care about, not anyone else.

They don't want them abolished they just want them replaced.

and are intended to be used only in contexts in which those characteristics are relevant.

I think this is actually, factually, wrong in the real world. It is used in all contexts because it is (incorrectly) seen as less offensive to call a woman a chestfeeder than to remind a man that he doesn't have breasts, and cannot breastfeed. Plus, when you're printing pamphlets, you don't print out one for the normies and one for the weirdos, you set your standards of language and then you print one pamphlet, and those are the words everyone sees.

By the way, this is similar to how Pride and Juneteenth are being used to unseat the 4th of July here in America. I'm not happy about it, and I won't be lied to about it happening in front of me.

I don’t think Juneteenth is unseating 4th of July. I think it’s unseating Father’s Day, cue jokes about blacks needing something to celebrate too, but Juneteenth isn’t a July 4 tier holiday and the two are in close proximity in a way it’s not near July 4.

That first year Juneteenth was a federal holiday, it was the exact same day as Father's Day. It's like the feds were daring us to notice.

Yes, the feds purposefully enforced the emancipation proclamation on June 19th in order to overlap with father's day once a decade.

Or, perhaps they purposefully triggered the summer of love because the overlap was coming up.

Why celebrate the occupation and not the declaration? 4th of July celebrates a purely formal act, and not when the British lost control of anything.

It was originally a local holiday on the gulf coast in Texas, which seems eminently reasonable. Why pick this one and not one of what I’m sure are a dozen other local African American holidays I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable arbitrary decision to make.

It seems that it was initially a niche holiday in certain parts of Texas, so maybe that's why they cared about the emancipation of Texas.

I agree with this criticism, but it’s worth noting that the declaration was in December, which is already pretty holiday-heavy, and which doesn’t have the best weather in most of the country. Whereas most people would welcome an extra day off in June, which didn’t previously have any federal holidays.

Juneteenth doesn’t celebrate the emancipation proclamation. It celebrates occupying troops taking possession of Galveston.

It celebrates the enforcement of the proclamation, as I said.

Father's Day isn't a federal holiday. Nobody is getting a day off work for Father's Day, but they do for Juneteenth, and in the corporate world, that means it usually unseats something else. I get MLK Day off, but not George Washington's birthday, as another example.

What workplace gives Juneteenth off instead of July 4?

None, yet. I don't think they started with MLK day, either, but it sure did turn out that way eventually.

seen as less offensive to call a woman a chestfeeder than to remind a man that he doesn't have breasts, and cannot breastfeed.

No, that's not why. "Chestfeeding" was coined for the benefit of trans men and enbies who don't want the word "breasts" being used to describe their breasts because they associate it with femininity.

TWs will talk all day long about how they can (sometimes, kind of, with pharmaceutical assistance) breastfeed. They love having breasts, and they love calling them breasts.

I'm not speaking as an apologist here. I'm just saying that the idea that they want to abolish words like "mother" and "woman" is not based on an accurate understanding of gender ideology. They want to redefine these words.

less offensive to call a woman a chestfeeder than to remind a man that he doesn't have breasts, and cannot breastfeed

Oh, I thought it was to avoid reminding women who are breastfeeding but identify as male that they do have breasts. Which always seemed like it must be a rare request. Like how many women feeding their baby using their breasts, who certainly can feel what's happening, still get psychic psychic relief from not acknowledging that it's a breast?

These people’s framing of what it means to be a man or a woman is so different from normal people’s that it’s blue and orange morality. But crucially you can’t have both in the public square, because their idea of what a woman or man is entails everyone else going along with their deluded self ID.

As a society we have to pick one or the other. This isn’t a whatever floats your boat issue, not really. The commons belongs to someone and your gender is in the commons.

Good point, I think I got the type of offense to be avoided backwards.

For example, "Birthing Parent's Day" is mostly a GC meme. Trans activists are, to the best of my knowledge, not particularly interested in renaming Mother's and Father's day, because they still see "Mother" and "Father" as totally valid terms as long as they're used in a manner consistent with self-ID and not with biological sex.

This strikes me as kinda sanewashing or bad-faith. It's tough not to tie the effort to technically rename mothers as "Birthing Parents" to broader, largely left-coded, efforts to expand Mother's day to include non-mothers, or to avoid offending non-mothers. The NYT and such regularly run mother's day op-ed articles about how X was like a mother to me, or that mother's day was depressing to me because I didn't have a mother, or how just because I'm not a mother people should still honor my professional accomplishments and not reduce women to wombs, and really we should include aunts and mentors and whatever else. There's a definite effort to downgrade motherhood afoot, even if not every individual in every case agrees with every aspect of it.

This strikes me as kinda sanewashing or bad-faith

I don't claim or believe that what I'm describing is any more or less sane than what the OP is describing. It's just different, and I believe a more accurate characterization.

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