site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33184 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

23
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I found a post on /r/Destiny which I found insightful enough I want to post it in full here: Credit to /u/hello_marmalade

On the Sexualization of Women in Contrast to Men

A sentiment I've heard about women before is that they aren't valued for things other than sex. I think this is correct, but the sentiment lacks context.

I think something that gets missed, is that men will pretend to be interested in women for reasons other than sex, in order to get sex - however if sex wasn't an option, they wouldn't be interested in those women at all.

I think the implication is that these women would be noticed for their other qualities - but in reality, without the draw of sex, most people will be ignored. That's the reality for men, which I think gets lost in translation in conversations about sexual attention.

I think this is why you get situations where men will be very dismissive of women when they complain about this, or where the attitude in response comes from. From a man's perspective, these women seem full of themselves. The thinking going something like "Why the fuck would anybody be interested in you? You're just another random chick." Now that comes off as misogynist but I think the sentiment comes from the experiential reality of most men being essentially being invisible. This doesn't get verbalized, because I think it's something that happens so early to both genders that it just becomes part of a person's qualia. Like, just knowing that the sky is blue. You can see it, it's right there. You could argue for hours with someone before realizing that the sky is green for them, because you wouldn't even think to consider that they thought it was a different color in the first place.

Now, some complications with this. There are more issues with the constant sexualization of women. One is that it fucks up your ability to trust people. How can you know when someone is genuinely interested in you, or is faking it? Two, there will absolutely be people that will ignore your other qualities in favor of sex. Three, people will correctly, but nonetheless unfairly evaluate you with the awareness that other people may have given you credit for things unjustly in order to try and have sex with you, which will simultaneously do damage to your self esteem.

I think this leads to attitudes in women that make complete sense even if they're kinda shitty. Basically, if you're always going to be evaluated in regards to sex, then fuck it, get the best evaluation you can possibly get. Think of the F&F panel with Sneako. The first question they get asked is "How much to fuck you?" Well shit, if that's where we're starting, does saying "As much as someone is willing to give me," make a woman a gold digger? If all you're gonna be evaluated on is being a hole, then fuck it, might as well get the highest value. This then gets weaponized as those women being entitled, or shallow, but if you were never going to evaluate them on anything else, why should it matter?

However, by the same token, it leads to a situation where men will feel taken advantage of. I can say for myself at least (and I think a decent number of other men) that being horny can feel like you're being 'tricked' by your own body. Hell, there's even a term for the clarity after you cum: 賢者タイム "Sage Mode", or more commonly known as "Post Nut Clarity". The phenomenon seems to be so universal that it has equivalents in multiple languages that are disparate. I think this is where the sort of misogynistic hate and bitterness can come out of some men. There's a power that you feel a woman can unilaterally hold over you in a way you can't hold them, which can lead you to doing foolish things. As such, any woman using her sexuality for personal gain feels like "cheating".

Additionally, I don't think most women really understand just how invisible you can feel being a man - on almost every level. Personally, I think this affects us in a really deep, underlying way. I think every woman understands that they intrinsically have value. They have limited control over that value, and that value can overshadow everything else about you as a person - but you have intrinsic value nonetheless. On the flip-side, as a man, you are essentially worthless until proven otherwise. Nobody cares. You intrinsically are valueless at best, and a drain at worst. I think this also forms a root of resentment in men towards women who seem to fundamentally not understand this. The line of thinking being "Who the fuck are you? Why do you think you should be valued for anything other than being a woman unless you've earned it? Why do you think you've earned it the same way as any man has?" For some women, this is true. There are women who don't recognize that they've been given credit for things that nobody would care about if they were male. However, at the same time, this creates a situation where any woman who has earned her value is looked at with suspicion. Her successes cannot stand on their own.

Anyway, those are just some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head. Just things that I see come up fairly often, but I don't feel like I hear these things mentioned very much. I think a big problem is that the people who end up seeing these things end up being too invested in their own side to achieve any kind of synthesis of these ideas.

Interested to hear other people's thoughts on this. There's probably some other shit I've missed, since this is mostly off the cuff, so I may add to this with edits later as I remember/think of other shit.

This comment is not insightful for those who are familiar with the "Red Pill" views (or any non blank-slatist view) on gender relations. Of which it is a rehashing of, albeit the non-blank-slatist arguments on gender relations usually leaves out the view of either gender depending on who is doing the arguing (Mano-sphere vs FDS, etc).

Therefore, given that most users in this forum are not blank slatists, it's likely that none of this is new for most users here. It might be for Destinys audience who tend to be far less aware/more skeptical of "HBD".

I suppose I should take the above conclusion of mine as a sign that I might be spending far too much time plugged in CW adjacent forums to have that "knowledge". Little of which translates to actionable advice.

Tangent:

Does anyone disagree with the notion that most CW related knowledge is particularly useless for wordly matters? Such that it doesn't help come up with ways to live better, do things better or even give off the impression of being particularly "well read"?

I think something that gets missed, is that men will pretend to be interested in women for reasons other than sex, in order to get sex - however if sex wasn't an option, they wouldn't be interested in those women at all.

I think this is a very weird conjecture. What does it even mean to be interested in a woman?

If a man is looking for a romantic partner, then duh. A platonic relationship is strictly inferior to a complete one. But while sex is necessary for most men looking for a relationship, it's not sufficient. Women claiming most men are looking for a sex bot that cooks and cleans are ignoring the whole OF/Twitch industry of women selling simulated companionship.

Anything other than a romantic relationship? Friendship, business? While women have to rely on their appearance to make a good first impression much more than men, sexual availability doesn't matter. The vast majority of men don't try to have sex with every woman they know, even though there's a daemon in their head that automatically sorts every woman they know into "yes", "not drunk enough" and "can't get drunk enough" piles. If anything, it's easier to form stable non-romantic relationships with the latter two groups.

The vast majority of men don't try to have sex with every woman they know

It's not about the women you know, it's about the women you choose to get to know.

Yes, you're right, I don't try to have sex with every woman I know, but that's because most women (and, indeed, people) I know come as unfortunate by-products of going to school, then work. I got to know them due to being forcibly flung together by circumstance, not because I thought they were an improvement over keeping my own company.

The set of people I would proactively choose to get to know is mostly coterminous with the set of busty women 18-35.

What about men? Would you proactively choose to get to know none of them?

I have yet to meet a male friend in my entire life whose company I enjoy more than my own solitude, so yes.

But I feel this is more a measure of the wonderful richness of my inner life than is is of the spiritual poverty of my neighbours, so I'm not complaining.

I have lots of male friends, I just wish I didn't, they're a tremendous drain on my reading time.

In this case I doubt you're a good example of the median man. While men are more schizoid on average than women, they are less schizoid than that.

I've seen a (possibly) female profile on a horny subreddit, and in her profile there's a vent post about how she feels worthless because everyone only values her for sex. My sister in Christ, how am I supposed to value you for anything else when all you present (on this profile, at least) are cybersex offers!? At least suggest something, anything else to talk about! Sorry, "being a human person I don't know" is not interesting enough. There are 8 billion people offering that.

I mean, there's a fair point that whatever else she puts in there, some guy will feign interest in it to try to get laid.

Or she'll catch attention of an abjectly creepy guy who IS interested in [thing] but, like, to an obsessive level.

I don't think there's a good solution for being openly female on a site that allows private messaging.

I think this misses a key factor to explain where the actual intersex resentment can come from.

Accepting for now the premise that men are functionally invisible for most of their lives, they DO have a key advantage over women in this particular game: their value INCREASES with time as they age... if they play their cards right.

A woman's value as a sex object, in contrast, has a ticking timer on it, and whether it's at age 30, 35, or 40, there will be a point past which she can never get the same level of attention for her looks that she used to.

And most of these women will be slathered in male attention starting at puberty, so they WILL notice this change.

Thus, we get a real issue where women get "taught" early on that they can use their looks and sexuality to get male attention and turn this into, well, whatever she wants, including sex.

Meanwhile, young men are simultaneously at their horniest and yet least capable of exercising good judgment in this age range... and some huge portion of them end up sexually unsuccessful WHILE they watch women exploit sex appeal for fun and profit. Often with older, established men.

So the lesson THEY'RE learning is that they're not good enough to stand out from the crowd and women are living life on easy mode as long as they're even moderately attractive.

Then a guy who finds himself alone in his mid-twenties either falls into despair or buckles down and presses his one advantage: time. Time to build wealth, acquire skills, get fit, and learn how to exploit said factors to the greatest extent.

And then soon the script flips. The dude who put in the effort and didn't blackpill himself is suddenly able to more easily land the hot young chicks who ignored him back then, meanwhile the women his age are losing the ability to effortlessly draw in male attention and have fallen back on... well hopefully they have developed some other valuable skill or trait.

So men get to feel the resentment early but (MAY) still find mating success later in life whereas women are likely to develop an expectation as to how easy life will be early on that will later be thwarted by age, and THEN they resent men their age for ignoring them and the men from her past for never settling down and leaving her to this fate of loneliness.

So men and women who are similarly aged probably end up looking and talking past each other as each side has a different set of experiences at each stage in life.

Young women ignore young mens' plight because they have no reason to care, and older men ignore older womens' plight because... they have little reason to care.

And this apparent lack of care or compassion when the other side needs it most would certainly explain resentment on both sides.

I have intentionally excluded the men and women who find a partner and settle down earlier in life since almost by definition they aren't contributing much to this problem, although the resentment that builds between some married couples is likely similar in nature.

And then soon the script flips. The dude is suddenly able to more easily land the hot young chicks who ignored him back then,

Except 90+% of the time this part never happens. The average middle aged man isn't pulling hot young chicks, not even close. He might be able to pull other 40-year divorcees and single moms who used to be hot young chicks 20 years ago but that's not exactly the same thing

Sure.

But the prevalence of age gap relationships where the female is younger and the male is older vs. the practical non-existence of older-female, younger-male relationships makes my point for me.

Sugar daddy and sugar baby relationships, likewise, are FAR more common than the gender-swapped equivalent.

Leo Dicaprio is the ur-example here.

Older men can target and acquire younger women. Younger men either aren't targeting or can't acquire older women.

I pointed out 2 fates for the lonely mid-twenties guy. One is despair.

If a guy isn't in a relationship by then and doesn't try to maximize his sex appeal, then NO SHIT he won't be picking up hot younger ladies as he gets older, unless he takes some really financially irresponsible steps.

But the prevalence of age gap relationships where the female is younger and the male is older vs. the practical non-existence of older-female, younger-male relationships makes my point for me.

I don't think they do.

I don't actually have any numbers so I guess we're just playing Battling Narratives here, but my expectation is that maybe 0.1% of fourty year old men are banging college girls, while maybe 0.01% of fourty year old women are banging college guys*, so even if we say you're right and the proportions are out of wack, by a whole order of magnitude, it's still a rounding error even in the larger case and therefore hardly something to draw conclusions about the general anomie of men/women.

*(In fact while I was typing this the thought struck me that this is probably low, more because college guys are horny all the time than because milfs are attractive. So I am tempted to reject even your premise that 40 year old men get more 20 year old girls than 40 year old women get 20 year old guys. 20 year old guys don't need sugaring lol)

I don't actually have any numbers

I DO! Feel free to tear apart the methodology if you can.

https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/age-gap-dating

From the polls:

Men are more likely to have dated someone 10+ years younger than them compared to women (25% vs. 14%). Meanwhile, women are more likely to have dated someone 10+ years older than them compared to men (28% vs. 21%).

This surely implies that women are having less success finding younger men as they age, meanwhile younger women are finding older men fairly often, and older men are finding younger women at a similar rate (28% younger women have dated 10+ years older, 25% older men have dated 10+ years younger)

And when it comes to actual marriages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_disparity_in_sexual_relationships#Statistics

Approximately 8% of married couples feature a male who is 10+ years older than the female. For the reverse: 1.7%. A 4x disparity.

Plug that into Bayes' theorem and smoke it, it has some interesting implications as to how so many men end up in a position to marry younger women, which is to say, men who are unsuccessful at finding a mate early in life but successful at finding a mate later... and succeed at finding a younger one.

Not counting prostitution what percentage of 40+ year old men do you reckon can regularly pull "hot young chicks"? I would put it at a few percent. It's a small minority for sure. Of course Leonardo DiCaprio can do it, he's a rich and famous actor. His experience says nothing at all about what most men will experience.

I went to college, I know who the hot girls were sleeping with and for the most part it definitely wasn't significantly older men, it was mostly other college students.

Not counting prostitution what percentage of 40+ year old men do you reckon can regularly pull "hot young chicks"? I would put it at a few percent.

I'm talking more about guys in the 30-40 range, but if we limit it to single men I wouldn't say you're obviously wrong but it might be time to update some priors.

Lets pull some stats to get an inkling of an idea of how this dynamic works in practice.

Here's data from U.S., Heterosexual, MARRIED couples, as a percentage of all married couples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_disparity_in_sexual_relationships#Statistics

For marriages where the male is 10+ years older than the female, its' already at just shy of 8%. Include 6-9 year splits and it starts pushing 20%.

This already implies that many guys find themselves single in their late 20's/early 30s, and are able to find and secure a woman in her early-mid twenties. And that's just as a percentage of marriages, it doesn't reflect how many dates a guy goes on to get there.

(I will grant that many or even most of such age gap marriages are probably found in religious communities).

So recent data on age gap dating is also available:

(note this poll was commissioned by 'Cougar Life' but is otherwise done with proper procedures)

https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/age-gap-dating

Men are more likely to have dated someone 10+ years younger than them compared to women (25% vs. 14%). Meanwhile, women are more likely to have dated someone 10+ years older than them compared to men (28% vs. 21%).

1/4 of men right there saying they've dated someone 10 years or more younger. I'd guess this fraction shoots up if we drop men married men out of the equation.

Here's a tantalizing headline:

https://archive.ph/dHvWf

For Online Daters, Women Peak at 18 While Men Peak at 50, Study Finds. Oy.

Here's the study in question:

https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/sciadv.aap9815 (PDF warning)

This one probably gets the closest to our exact query, since the sample is drawn from online dating sites, which ideally captures the population of single males we're discussing.

Once we have our desirability scores, we can use them to identify characteristics of desirable users by comparing scores against various user attributes.

As shown in Fig. 2, for instance, average desirability varies with age for both men and women, although it varies more strongly for women, and the effects run in opposite directions: Older women are less desirable, while older men are more so (18, 19). For women, this pattern holds over the full range of ages on the site: The average woman’s desirability drops from the time she is 18 until she is 60. For men, desirability peaks around 50 and then declines.

From the data in the study, this appears to mean that men at age 50 (conditional on them being on a dating site) are most able to get matches, conversations, and dates with their preferred demographics, regardless of the age range they are targeting.

And as the data in the study already pointed out that women are most desirable at 18, not a huge leap to guess who a 50 year old guy is targeting.

So I dunno bud, 25% of men claim to have dated someone 10 years their junior, and 8% of married men tied the knot with one. Even FIFTY year old guys are able to succeed on dating sites despite targeting younger women.

If this isn't an indication that a guy going into his 30's or even 40's single can get dates with younger women, if he cares enough to work at it, I don't know what else you can do to confirm or refute it. Other than maybe find one of your male friends who remained single in his 30's and has decent looks and a stable job and ask him to talk about his dating life with you.

I feel like there's a bit of a motte and Bailey going on here. The bailey is something like "don't worry if you didn't get laid in college, in a decade once you're established you'll be able to go back and sleep with hot young girls just like the ones who always rejected you" while the motte is "men age a little bit better than women and you can date a wider age range as you get older so the pool opens up so dating might get a bit easier especially if you're financially successful and stay in shape" the motte is true but the bailey is pure cope

if you're financially successful and stay in shape" the motte is true but the bailey is pure cope

This situation may indeed be so bad that there are guys leaving college a virgin who have ~0% chance of losing it without paying going forward.

But I think the Bailey as described is mostly a POSSIBLE strategy for a guy who has managed to increase his odds of dating success later in life, based on factors he now knows to be true. His SMV can be increased, and with it his odds of finding a partner, if he doesn't give in to despair. If he does give up, then yeah, he falls out of contention and has nothing left but cope.

But his odds of success are limited by the fact that ALL eligible guys are chasing those younger women, so every older single guy is competing with every other older single guy is competing with all the younger single guys for the same pool of women, and there's no way for even half of these guys to 'win.'

Which contributes to the whole "women are slathered in male attention from puberty onward" part.

That said, it is theoretically possible for most older guys to sleep with a whole passel of younger women over time, assuming they never give commitment to any particular one and that woman moves on to a new (older) partner quickly.

So if a bunch of men go with the strategy of banging as many women as possible and 'spinning plates' so he always has fresh ones in rotation, this resolves the above hyper-competition issue to some degree.

But that whole "sleeping with them and never giving commitment" thing is the likely explanation for women growing resentful towards men as the woman gets older.

I think all of this is happening at once to various degrees, which is creating a really unhealthy situation for everyone stuck in the dating rat race. Relatively few people are getting what they 'actually' want (committed relationships with a compatible partner) and many are even having difficulty getting what they're willing to settle for (regular sex and companionship, even without compatibility or commitment).

It all strikes me as suboptimal, but I don't control any of these factors, I just observe.

I think that this is oversimplified. Being attractive as a woman takes a lot of willpower (not eating a lot in the modern world), work (applying make-up is not easy) and money (clothes, make-up, perfume, hairdressing etc. are not cheap).

And there are innate things as a man that can make people more pliable to you. For example, I am fairly tall, broad-shouldered, I have naturally very good skin, a prominent jaw, and all my hair in my 30s. These make life easier for me as a man, but I didn't have to work for them.

I guess you're trying to be generous, but it feels like you're taking it too far. I think you really overdo it -- not being obese shouldn't get people big points. Most women don't need to wear much make-up, if any, to still look okay. I don't think applying basic make-up is particularly hard, but perhaps I'm missing the complexity. Hair back in a pony-tail, halfway healthy, and you will be attractive to most men.

Most late teen girls basically can eat crap food and still not get fat (at least according to the older people I talk to now who talk about how they used to be able to eat anything).

(I think women do have a hard time finding someone who values them for more than just their sexual attractiveness, I don't want to downplay that at all, I just want to say in terms of easily getting attention, young women are generally "playing on easy mode" (much as I hate that phrase).)

not being obese shouldn't get people big points.

Why not?

As for late teen girls, women are only late teenagers for a few years. And the same is true for men: I could eat all sorts of stuff when I was a teenager with minimal consequences.

Why not?

They can get some points, but not big points, because most of the world manages it (especially, as you note, when you're under 30, and even slightly active). I also don't give big points out for brushing your teeth, combing your hair, or cleaning your ass after shitting. I don't think I'm setting that high a bar, although I recognize obesity does seem to be getting ever-harder to fight. (I also have some sympathy for people who's parents screwed them on the eating habits and metabolism front).

I'm confused. Are these points for attractiveness or moral merit?

Both, but they are separate.

Being obese is a pretty big hit (for most people, but there are always exception) to attractiveness. But the original point was how hard young women have it to be attractive, because they have to spend time and money on fashion, and doing make-up is hard, and not being fat is really hard. I was disagreeing with all of those, especially the last one, which is what caused this comment chain.

money (clothes, make-up, perfume, hairdressing etc. are not cheap).

Except 90% of the choices women make in this arena are negative for sexual attraction of men. Thereby blowing the whole theory out of the water. Imagine men wearing orange overalls and telling every woman they meet they are an alcoholic and you have an approximation of women's fashion over the last 2 decades.

Except 90% of the choices women make in this arena are negative for sexual attraction of men.

Just in the interest of avoiding typical-minding, I ask my fellow whore-makeup-appreciation-chads to rise up!

Bad make-up is better than no make-up because I interpret any make-up at all (just as the feminists' nightmares alledge) as a signal that "I am trying to make myself more pleasing to the male gaze", which in turn implies a receptiveness to male advances, which IN TURN is more alluring in terms of attainability bias than the 'natural beauty' it replaces would be.

And yes, yes, I know that we are lectured relentlessly that "That's not what wearing make-up signals you misogynist", but whether my perception of it's implications is accurate or not is beside the point.

Yeah, this is how I feel as well. It is for the male gaze regardless of the official narrative. Not just a receptiveness to male advances, but a tacit acknowledgement that men and women are different and that women should try to be at least somewhat attractive to men. So it signals that she's not entirely lost in the feminist frame.

Yes, it's even harder than I suggested: a woman needs money, skill, AND taste to increase her attractiveness this way.

I do think that much of makeup and fashion that is actively unattractive to men is a signalling activity for women, though; so it might not be that 90% are so bad at it that they fail utterly.

Interesting. Or they may be trading off attracting men with impressing women.

Yes, fashion is intra-female signaling. That there are no straight men in the industry is proof enough of that.

I think stuff like expensive handbags are the most clear example of this. It used to be that men would buy women handbags, and being a woman that can get expensive gifts from men signals that you are a desirable person (even if people may secretly envy you) and less dispensable as a person in the group. (Or it might simply be flexing, I don’t know? Someone can probably flesh this out better.) Now that women earn money comparable to men, they buy their own handbags, even though the true signal (of “I’m so attractive I can get people to get impractically expensive things for me”) is dead, and the recognition of handbags as status symbols is pretty much vestigial at this point.

At least I don’t think I’ve met a man who gushed over a woman’s LV handbag and wanted to bang her afterwards because of it?

Is this really true? I'd 'personally' say all existing makeup and 99% of fashion is bad, makes people unattractive, and specifically in the equivalent senses of the highest aesthetics and the functions / signaling meaning of attractiveness. And, certainly many women apply makeup and fashion in an unattractive way. That isn't a mainstream approach though.

But many men can fall for equally social-signally-fashionable things like expensive cars, shoes, various sports things, video game skins, etc. Maybe some of them find that makeup or fashion stuff attractive for the same reason the women do?

Also, a lot of makeup really does work at covering up obvious or more subtle but still important flaws. Often people do notice the bad parts of makeup, but well-done makeup is just being hot. Also, more people I know than not say makeup makes women more, not less, attractive.

Let's simplify it further: a non-obese woman only needs like ONE aesthetically pleasing physical feature to attract male attention.

If she has a pretty face, she's golden. Or nice breasts, or a shapely butt, or a toned stomach, or long, smooth legs. Hell, I would bet my life that having pretty feet is sufficient all by itself these days.

Men, in contrast, need several favorable physical features in conjunction with more intangibles (sense of humor, high social status, wealth) to get the same level of attention.

If true then the "genetic lotto" is easier for women to win than men. Indeed, arguably men only need to lose on ONE dimension: height, and their prospects are forever hampered.

You practically admit as much in your comment. If you were visibly balding at your age, how much would your other features really matter?

Yes, the situation is not symmetric. I'm just saying that it's not simple, either. As you suggest, thinking of it as a lottery with a variety of prizes is a good analogy.

For example, a woman's options are hampered by a big nose, flat chest, saggy breasts etc., but the initial option set is probably better than most men's, e.g. she may not be able to make money as a streamer or model, but she can still attract a larger variety of partners than most men, mutatis mutandis.

Incidentally, I have a friend who started visibly balding at 17. He recently married a hot, sweet, smart chick. He also has the personality that a lot of Nice Guys have, or at least think they have - kind, helpful, not very assertive. He has slightly above average intelligence and a moderately good job. On the other hand, she was his first girlfriend, at about age 27. This exemplifies how the situation for men is certainly not ideal, but it's not necessarily awful.

Yes, the situation is not symmetric.

And once we admit this, it shouldn't surprise us to see things follow a power-law distribution rather than a normal one.

The 'average' guy doesn't have an 'average' chance of finding a mate. Rather, the top 10% of guys have it extremely easy, then the ease of dating/marrying drops off sharply from there.

The average woman, on the other hand, can easily get the attention from the average guy, but is more likely going to target someone in that top 10%.

Yes I'm fudging the statistics but this particular distribution of attractiveness and ease of finding a mate is maybe the most well-documented anthropological/sociological phenomena ever.

I say anthropological because throughout almost every culture on earth and history, there's been a class/caste of male who gets to have a harem of women whilst the rest of the male population is in a state of hypercompetition for what remains.

So to simply state that the average guy, who doesn't have the collection of physical features that make him stand out from the crowd, has it much harder than the average woman, as long as she has one feature that she can display to find attention, is to REALLY undersell the reality of the situation.

Average guys get laid and married on the regular, mind. By definition most guys will fall in this category so the law of large numbers means that SOME of them will still get mates even if it is just luck/chance. This is NOT the same as saying that most average guys will get laid and married.

And now let us add in the point that a man's attractiveness tends to scale up as he ages if he puts in the effort, and the situation looks even bleaker for younger men of average physical attractiveness.

A decade after it stops being the only thing you ever think about you might finally get a girl. You know, if you are a nice guy, which I guess is an incel without self awareness. But at least he knew with bold, soul-destroying clarity that nobody was only talking to him to get him in the sack.

I agree that thinking all the time about getting a girl is not a good strategy, at least for a sustainable relationship.

What destroys many young men's souls is rating themselves based on people's attraction to them. Rating yourself on any basis is unwise, but rating yourself based on other people's approval is even more unwise, because it's a way of voluntarily making your happiness contingent on the mental states of another person - something that neither you nor they can do much to control.

I think my friend is luckier than most women, at least as far as happiness goes. The real joy of relationships and sex comes from activity: from actively pursuing something meaningful. That's how happiness works in general. It's not getting what you want that gives you most of the happiness, it's doing things that you think have a good enough chance (relative to the value of what you are pursuing) of achieving your goal. Our neurochemical reward system is designed to push us towards achievements, not to make us happy and satisfied. So my friend, who had to work hard to learn how to talk to girls, be emotionally stable, and be interesting, experienced more happiness than some naturally hot chick.

Similarly, a woman who exercises hard, learns how to cook healthily, learns how to look beautiful using make-up, and how to be someone that guys enjoy staying with, will probably have more happiness than a woman who just naturally looks beautiful. As Jonathan Haidt puts it, "happiness comes from in between" - the joy of life comes when you realise that you are doing things that help you to get what is important to you.

I would only add to Haidt that those goals must be thought of as "wants" rather than "needs". Pursuing women because you think you need one (for happiness, status, or just because) is a great way to be unhappy. Pursuing women because you want one (or more) is a great way to be happy. I'm pretty sure that that's the key difference between my friend and incels: for him, a good relationship was something he wanted and worked hard to achieve; for most incels I know, they think they need a woman for "...reasons...".

There are more issues with the constant sexualization of women. One is that it fucks up your ability to trust people. How can you know when someone is genuinely interested in you, or is faking it?

If sex exists, at all, then this will be a problem for women (and rich/attractive men, and in business, and many other places). It has nothing to do with some idea of 'sexualization'. E.g. - does the hijab desexualize women?

Two, there will absolutely be people that will ignore your other qualities in favor of sex

How is this even a problem? If you're emmy noether, people won't ignore your genius in favor of sex. If they're ignoring said qualities - it's usually because they would anyway.

Additionally, I don't think most women really understand just how invisible you can feel being a man - on almost every level. Personally, I think this affects us in a really deep, underlying way

This is a common sentiment - but, what? I'm male, have friends, do a variety of things at work and outside of work, am never invisible, nobody I interact with IRL is really invisible in any sense. Yeah, I'd be invisible if I was unskilled, uninteresting, unfunny, etc - but that's good, and an interaction or conversation without any of the former would be empty and worthless anyway.

I can say for myself at least (and I think a decent number of other men) that being horny can feel like you're being 'tricked' by your own body

I mean, if sex was worthless, you would be tricked, but it's just a selectively advantageous, mostly fair evaluation of the usefulness of having children.

There's a power that you feel a woman can unilaterally hold over you in a way you can't hold them, which can lead you to doing foolish things

Women also often do ""irrational"" (making a sex/sexual desire-related mistake isn't any more or less irrational than making a normal "intellectual" mistake) things over men, and also very strongly desire men in certain contexts, so there isn't really a stark difference here

I think every woman understands that they intrinsically have value.

Well, every man also just-as-intrinsically has value, in the sense of labor. Almost any man, or woman, can get a job and be paid. There's value! And society and the state respects this in all sorts of ways. Or just being buds with other men of equivalent value / status / whatever. There's also welfare! There are multiple senses of 'value', indeed a sense for every possible activity, desire, and these aren't directly comparable. Just saying 'men have value, women don't' is, at best, an imprecise metaphor, and at worst just wrong. Also, people treat women better because of a combination of the biological role of women and universalism - if we go back to Rome, is it really fair to say that "women intrinsically have value, whereas if you're a man nobody cares", given the severe difference in legal status between the two?

the flip-side, as a man, you are essentially worthless until proven otherwise. Nobody cares

Yeah, but almost all men can prove otherwise in plenty of contexts, so this doesn't really matter.

Well, then let's ask it outright:

How do we (as a society) socialize women to pursue nonsexual value? How do we create opportunities for this to occur?

Personally I think it has to look like absolutely bringing a hammer down on workplace relations, while also pursuing sex-blinded hiring/promotion policies. But that only addresses (if at all) the workplace situation, it does nothing for early socialization, social groups, etc. I have no idea how you'd do it for non-workplace groups.

Personally I think it has to look like absolutely bringing a hammer down on workplace relations, while also pursuing sex-blinded hiring/promotion policies.

We did that, and it had absolutely the opposite effect, so you might want to re-examine your reasoning.

I'm not sure if the current approaches result in better outcomes? My proposed approach is only half the puzzle; it can remove hindrances but can't solve lack of availability or interest.

What in God's name is a Sneako?

Some streamer/YouTuber famous for doing highly cut street interviews, and in this particular area having extremely cynical (and some would say immature) views on sex relations.

Some streamer who is vaguely red pill don't worry about it too much

I'm firmly in the camp of people who doesn't quite understand what a lot of "non-binary" people are doing with gender, despite being somewhat progressive and happy to exercise pronoun hospitality with such people. (I once heard an acquaintance describe their gender by saying, "if man is black, and woman is white, I'm purple - if you see me in monochrome, I'm more masculine, but really I'm not either of them" - and I was more confused than before I heard the analogy.)

I've seen various mottizens bring up the idea of "gender" being the latest subculture like goth or punk, and recently I stumbled across an interesting Tumblr post that accidentally circles around a similar insight. The whole thing is interesting, but I think you can get the gist from the following:

[...] I think there’s an interesting similarity in the way nonbinary (or genderqueer people in general) talk about the nuances of their gender and how people really big into specific music scenes talk about the nuances of the genres they listen to. Like there’s the description you give other people in your community, and the “normie” description you give to people who aren’t as familiar. And “genre” and “gender” are both constructs in similar ways too. Just my little binary observation tho.

and

so if someone identifies as a demigirl in some circles but to you they just say they’re nonbinary or even just “female”, they clocked you as a gender normie lol.

Now, I grant that the gender-as-fashion analogy isn't the only possible takeaway from this person's observations. I'm reminded of the "soul-editor" from the SCP Foundation Wiki that had symbols from every major world religion, as well as a few unknown ones. Who's to say that some phenomenological aspects of being human aren't so complex that no one set of vocabulary is capable of describing it all? Perhaps some qualities of human minds/souls/whatever are ineffable, or so unique and subjective that one cannot help but create a new label for oneself in describing one's personality?

But I have my doubts. Mostly, I often feel like people must be mislabeling something that I have in my "mental box" as well. (I've read accounts of genderfluid people who talk about "waking up feeling masc" some days and dressing the part, while suddenly and abruptly "feeling femme" partway through the day and wanting to change outfits - and I couldn't help but speculate if they hadn't attached special significance to what I label "moods" in myself.) I don't discount that there are many real human experiences that aren't in my "mental box." In a very real way, I can't do much more than guess what depression, schizophrenia, OCD or dozens of other seemingly real human experiences are like. If I'm being maximally humble about what a tiny part of the vast terrain of possible human experiences I occupy, I have to concede that I can't know that many people aren't out there experiencing "gender" in ways I never will.

My partner is a binary trans man, and many of my friends and acquaintances are part of the LGBT+ community. I still don't quite understand why someone in that extended friend group suddenly finds it very important to change their name, and let everybody know that their pronouns are "she/they" now - while changing nothing else about their appearance or presentation. I'm happy to use a new name for someone, if they don't make such changes too frequently for me to keep up with, but I often feel baffled by why they find it so important? It's not really a big deal to me, but I would like an explanation. Gender-as-fashion seems so tempting as an explanation, but I worry that it might be a false explanation flattening human experiences into something that's more comfortable to me - the same way, "that person who supposedly has ADHD is just lazy" might flatten a person with ADHD into a form more comfortable for neurotypical people, and not in a way that is very sympathetic to the person with ADHD.

Definitions are bidirectional:

If someone is a man(gender) because they fit the social roles of males (eg. football, trucks, acting tough) and not the social roles of females (eg. makeup, dresses, nurturing) then any person who fits said roles is a man(gender).

But this is obviously not how gender works in common usage. If it were, then you could tell someone they are wrong about their gender. I know several female people who, if you said to them they were actually men because of their hairstyle/personality/interests, would laugh deep manly belly laughs, and then gruffly tell you. "Fuck off. I'm still a woman."

So I don't know that the analogy to fashion is a good one. In that realm, you can still classify things as Goth or Punk or Goth-Punk or neither Goth nor Punk based on their characteristics.

Sometimes I wonder if a lot of the more creative gender descriptions are like a pearl around a bit of grit, you know? Like, here's this thing that keeps bothering me, let's turn it into a game, or an art, or something else like that. I don't think it does any harm, at any rate.

Not inherently, no. It's when the next step is taken, and people start whipping out the social sanctions (or worse) for not properly admiring the pearl.

Who's to say that some phenomenological aspects of being human aren't so complex that no one set of vocabulary is capable of describing it all

This is plausible, although ... the way words work is they change and people use them in new ways, so it can just change for any particular topic

So, maybe it's believable that the life of a roman 'pederast' and a modern gay are just very different. But that doesn't mean that nonbinaries/demigirls are actually doing anything significantly different, instead of just claiming they are and then dying their hair, posting on twitter, and having weird sex

might be a false explanation flattening human experiences into something that's more comfortable to

If you're really worried about 'falsely flattening human experiences into something comfortable to white moderns', consider reading some literature on the attitudes and lives of medieval peoples, ancient history, or anthropology of 'primitive' peoples (and not the ones that claim they are progressive/egalitarian when they aren't). Their approaches and lives are incredibly different from ours, and ... demonstrate by comparison that a 'nonbinary' really are precisely the same as normal modern people.

deleted

Its just a status play in my eyes.

Being a special snowflake is socially more advantageous than not being one. Especially when having some kind of victimhood is a staus marker, even if its only the trappings of it.

The logical outcome is a billion different ways to be a special snowflake will emerge. Its an arms race until there are so many non binaries that there is so social incentive to Id as one or if it becomes low status to be one.

Its just a way to print social status out of thin air.

Warning: Not very effective outside of tiktok.

Who's to say that some phenomenological aspects of being human aren't so complex that no one set of vocabulary is capable of describing it all? Perhaps some qualities of human minds/souls/whatever are ineffable, or so unique and subjective that one cannot help but create a new label for oneself in describing one's personality?

Obviously every individual is unique in a way that defies the ability of language to describe in a single word or phrase. But it's not clear what, if anything, this has to do with gender, or why, having staked out this position, suddenly it's necessary to invent a whole load of new terms to express the things that apparently can't be expressed. The 'demigirl' might feel less feminine (whatever that means), but does that actually justify the word rather than just describing her as an unconventional woman? Cut an arm off an octopus, you just get a wounded octopus, not a septapus.

I feel this goes doubly for sexuality, too. Defining someone by who they prefer to have sex with feels reductive in the extreme. Yes, it is an aspect of their personality as an individual. No, they (probably) shouldn't be discriminated against for it. They also shouldn't require public recognition of it in order to feel fully validated and functional.

And it gets really absurd when they start naming concepts of sexuality that have been accepted for nigh-centuries as if they've discovered and elevated them for the first time. "Demisexual" meaning someone who doesn't form attraction from mere physical observation but from getting to know someone deeply? My friend that used to just be called 'not being shallow.' It is very, very unclear why this needs to be recognized as a unique sexuality that defines you as a person. Don't even get me started on "Sapiosexuality."

I happen to like ample-sized breasts on my possible sexual partners. I don't go around calling myself a 'mammosexual' who only feels attraction to persons with big breasts.

I call myself a 'boob man' and leave it at that. And I wouldn't bring it up in any conversation where it wasn't obviously relevant and appropriate. And it doesn't even go very far in describing my preferences anyway!

They also shouldn't require public recognition of it in order to feel fully validated and functional.

Are you saying they shouldn't be allowed to marry someone they're capable of finding sexually attractive, or that the recognition shouldn't go beyond marriage?

I'm saying that the only people who need to know about one's sexual preferences are their actual sexual partners.

It needn't be a flag that one proudly displays on publicly-facing social media profiles.

Well... if a gay man wants the same chance to score dates from the publicly facing social media profiles that straight man have, then he does need to make his preferences known, no?

Also... isn't marriage intrinsically public, and doesn't that reveal one's sexual preferences, at least in the sense of which sex one prefers?

Well... if a gay man wants the same chance to score dates from the publicly facing social media profiles that straight man have, then he does need to make his preferences known, no?

Maybe? A blurb that says "I'm single and will entertain offers of dates from eligible men" sends this message too, with less ambiguity.

Or some variation on the theme.

What I'm getting at is that one doesn't need to make their sexuality an overriding part of their identity such that it supercedes other information about you.

The first thing I need or want to know about a person upon first meeting them is almost never "What is their gender identity? What types of people are they willing to have sex with?"

And YET, that's the primary information that is conveyed by these symbols. If it were a dating profile it would be relevant info. But its used everywhere, including in 'professional' setting!

And I ask... why?

Also... isn't marriage intrinsically public, and doesn't that reveal one's sexual preferences, at least in the sense of which sex one prefers?

I don't know what you mean, you get married and people know you're married. That's the sum total of it. Usually this means you're 'off the market' for dating purposes, which is a useful signal to send.

They can make inferences about you from that signal, but that's different, for instance, from an actual flag/symbol that you display that says "I'm deeply heterosexual and love to have vaginal intercourse in the missionary position!"

Got it, that's all fair I think. And I agree that people who make their sexuality or gender identity the core of their personality are tiresome and frivolous. I guess I'm just sensitive to the idea that gay people should "keep it to themselves" as was a common talking point in the years before same-sex marriage became legal nationwide. For my part, I don't want the fact that I'm gay to be foremost in people's minds when they're talking to me, I just want to assimilate into society like everyone else and have a normal life insofar as it's possible. But assimilating and having a normal life entails, at some point, having a monogamous relationship that is public, initially as dating and then ultimately as marriage and a family. And the "keep it to themselves" logic doesn't really account for that. It works while people are having flings and dating serially -- no one in a professional setting or in everyday life needs to know about your fuckbuddies or your one-night stands -- but marriage and family are naturally public, and need to be public to function as such, and I think the "keep it to yourselves" logic has a corollary (whether intended or not) of demanding that gay people stay on the margins of society in that sense. Not suggesting you intended it that way.

A blurb that says "I'm single and will entertain offers of dates from eligible men" sends this message too, with less ambiguity.

"I'm gay" is shorter. From everything you've said, I don't understand your issue with it?

The government can make you marriage legal, but no one can make other people actually respect you.

That's totally fine, I'm not interested in coercing anyone's respect. But the parent poster suggested that public recognition shouldn't be given. Isn't same-sex marriage the public recognition of a gay relationship? The notion that sexuality should be kept to oneself seems to require that one have only secret relationships, and not get married.

"Demisexual" meaning someone who doesn't form attraction from mere physical observation but from getting to know someone deeply? My friend that used to just be called 'not being shallow.'

Really? I mean, maybe I'm just shallow, but I've always assumed that most people have the capacity to be attracted to someone within a short time of meeting them. I completely understand why some people would either want or need a longer acquaintance before actually having sex, but needing to know someone for years before you even understand that they could be attractive seems to me to be fairly unusual. Am I wrong? Perhaps I'm just falling prey to the fallacy of the typical mind.

I tend to agree, but I think you may be taking them too much at face value. If they feel that attraction quickly, they'll also just say -- "I felt a deep connection, like we'd already known each other!" Maybe I'm just too cynical though, or projecting my own take on it -- i.e. I wouldn't want to jump someone I just found attractive, but if I found them attractive and felt something of a connection, I wouldn't need to to know them a long time to get physical -- that would in fact be part of 'getting to know them'.

I don't know if such a person in fact exists, but I can certainly imagine a hypothetical person who literally does not experience sexual arousal until they have formed an emotional bond with a prospective sexual partner.

Are some people calling themselves "demisexual" when they do, in fact, experience sexual arousal towards people they have no emotional bond with, but nonetheless prefer to hold off on actually having sex with them until they have formed an emotional bond?* Probably.

Are demisexuals "oppressed" in a manner comparable to the treatment of Alan Turing, or gay men in Saudi Arabia? Obviously not.

Were they ever so oppressed? Obviously not.

*i.e. are they using "demisexual" as a description of their preferred sexual behaviour, as opposed to their inner sexual life?

Do you think that asexuals exist? That is, people who do not feel sexual attraction at all? If so, I think the existence of genuine demisexuals, in the sense of "almost never feels sexual attraction," isn't really so hard to believe. I see no good reason to think that most of the people who describe themselves in this way are lying.

With that said, the misapprehension that demisexuals merely do not desire to have sex in the absense of an emotional bond is common enough that it is also very plausible that some of the people who call themselves "demisexual" are themselves misunderstanding the term.

Do you think that asexuals exist? That is, people who do not feel sexual attraction at all?

Over what timeframe? If we take the definition at face value, 100% of the population either is or used to be asexual as children. There are also various things that can cause a low or nonexistent sex drive, such as hormone levels, particularly in women who usually start with a lower sex drive to begin with. Wikipedia claims that 10% of all pre-menopausal women in the United States are affected by Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder, though the source is just an executive at AMAG Pharmaceuticals in an article about the FDA approving their libido-boosting drug, so I don't know what research this is based on. (For instance, I don't know if that's 10% being affected at any one time or if it's 10% who are substantially affected at least once in their lives.)

But of course "asexual" has implications beyond that: it is formulated in analogy to sexual orientation to imply an inborn, permanent, and immutable state. (Originally "asexual" was used in psychiatry to indicate women who have difficulty orgasming during sex, with recommended treatments ranging from psychoanalysis to having the woman be on top, but this has been displaced by the lay meaning which uses it in analogy to "homosexual".) But that's not actually a good model of how libido works, as seen by the tendency for people who identify as asexual to either stop identifying as asexual or to adopt some "grey-asexual" identity that allows them to continue identifying as asexual while having sex. To venture beyond anecdotal evidence, the only study I've found on the subject is The Temporal Stability of Lack of Sexual Attraction across Young Adulthood. Of the 25 people aged 18-26 in Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health who selected "No sexual attraction", only 3 of them selected that option again in Wave IV 6 years later.

So if people with low or no sexual desire are put in an ideological environment where they are encouraged to identify this as "being asexual", the vast majority of those are going to end up happening to have more sexual desire at some later point, whether due to changing hormone levels over time, the right circumstance to get in the mood, etc. (An even greater majority if we count children, and I've seen a noticeable number of 13-15 year olds identify as asexual on Tumblr or have their supposed asexuality uncritically mentioned in news articles, despite a large fraction of the population being enough of a late-bloomer to not be interested in sex at that point.) Even if they don't do so on their own, the ideological framework discourages treating it as a medical issue (even though it is a symptom which can reflect deeper medical problems needing investigation) or taking something like the aforementioned libido-boosting drug to help you have a romantic relationship or enjoy a sex life (which I'm assuming would be termed "conversion therapy"). Nothing about the framework is designed to better understand the world, but to fit people into categories extrapolated from popular identity-politics categories.

So then that brings us to "demisexuality". As many people will attest, especially women, romantic interest and emotional involvement often enhance sexual interest. A lot of men will say "my wife is the most beautiful woman in the world" and mean it. Established relationships also have more opportunities for romantic situations to get in the mood, casual physical contact to arouse interest, or actual sexual interactions that one partner becomes interested in before the end (the aforementioned HSDD Wikipedia article terms the last one "responsive desire"). Even with porn women are more interested in mediums like writing that tend to build up more of an emotional context for sex. It is thus unsurprising that if someone has a libido low enough to not feel noticeable sexual desire, something that boosts sexual desire like an emotional relationship could make the sexual desire noticeable. But, like asexuality, there is no reason to think the implications of calling this "demisexuality" in analogy to sexual orientation are accurate.

It isn't a hypothesis which is hard to believe. I just haven't conducted any research into it, so I'm not in a position to comment on whether people meeting that description do, in fact, exist. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they exist.

I think there may be some slipperiness in the term "attraction," here? Because the word can mean things from "ooh, pretty" to "I am quite emotionally invested in [whatever]."

Yeah. Most of the demisexuals whom I have seen describing their sexual orientation have been at pains to explain that the simple "ooh, pretty" does not kick in for them under ordinary circumstances, except in the disinterested aesthetic sense.

I wish we could all just agree that sex is biological and gender is a social role. So if someone wants to say "Some days I feel masc, but other days I'm more femme," okay, whatever Demi Lovato. I'm even willing to use whatever pronouns you prefer, even if that means changing them from time to time (so long as you let me know what they are today and aren't going to throw a tantrum if I sometimes make a mistake). If attention-seeking teens want to claim they are Ψ-gendered today, you can accommodate them if you wish without agreeing that their physical bodies are in some Ψ state that is neither male nor female.

The real problem is not with teenagers who are trying to carve out special, quirky new identities for themselves, it's with the grown-ass adults who take this shit seriously and then run conflict theory on it.

I wish we could all just agree that sex is biological and gender is a social role

But this is just begging the question, isn't it? It's like Byzantine Christian monothelitites saying "I wish we could all just agree that Jesus' nature is Man but his hypostasis is Divine". To even get into the hypostasis debate is to concede to your interlocutor's point.

The correct response to the Byzantine Christian monothelitites is "hypostasis is just some term you made up to try and make yourself sound smart and smuggle in a bunch of theological assumptions in by connotation, Jesus was just a guy in a robe, he was born a Man and he's stuck as a Man only, that's just biology for ya, sorry, he doesn't get to be Divine by any measure even if he and you really really want him to be.'

You can probably see where I'm going with this but in the interest of plain speaking, the correct response to the gender theorists is "gender is just some term you made up to try and smuggle in a bunch of ideological assumptions in by connotation, Emerald Treespirit is just a guy in a robe, he was born a Man and he's stuck as a Man only, that's just biology for ya, sorry, he doesn't get to be a woman by any measure even if he and you really really want him to be.'

There is no such thing as gender, the way you act is contingent on the hormones in your brain and the hormones in your brain are contingent on your chromosomes. A man acting weird is a man acting weird, not a man filling the social role of a woman (or being the Messiah).

You can probably see where I'm going with this but in the interest of plain speaking, the correct response to the gender theorists is "gender is just some term you made up to try and smuggle in a bunch of ideological assumptions in by connotation, Emerald Treespirit is just a guy in a robe, he was born a Man and he's stuck as a Man only, that's just biology for ya, sorry, he doesn't get to be a woman by any measure even if he and you really really want him to be.'

I feel like no smuggling needs to be done. If we taboo the word "gender", I feel like I can build up more or less the same concept from the concept of an "adoptive sex." By analogy with adoptive parents - normally parenthood is biological, but we have carved out a social/legal form of "parenthood" for adoptive parents. So too - normally sex is biological, but we have carved out a social/legal form of "sex" for adoptive men/women.

I think even if you're just being descriptive, "adoptive sex" is real. The federal government, and most states allow you to legally change your documented sex - so if one wanted to be a translegalist (= a person is validly trans if they have formally, legally transitioned) then I think everything would work fine. I think translegalism avoids many of the issues with the identification-only standards, and works better than other de facto standards like a "passing" standard, or a transmedicalist standard. I've circled around the idea of considering myself a translegalist, who extends pronoun and nickname hospitality to people who haven't legally transitioned, or who have no plans to ever legally transition.

By analogy with adoptive parents - normally parenthood is biological, but we have carved out a social/legal form of "parenthood" for adoptive parents.

This kinda supports exactly the point I am trying to make. Adoption is explicitly a legal fiction: it exists because you want do do something that you know is physically and/or logically impossible (that is, retroactively change someone's parentage), and adoption is just a way of telling lawyers "pretend you don't see the impossibility". Which is possibly fine for lawyers, but as someone who's trying to cleave reality at the joints (and/or arrange a blood transfusion), the scientifically correct answer is once again "No, I will not play your kayfabe, he's not your dad and no piece of paper can make it so, no matter how much state power you array behind it".

The government of Oceania can pass as many laws as it wants that 2+2=5, but paper ain't worth much.

I agree with your assessment if we're carving reality at the joints, but legal fictions are important in people's lives. If legal fictions are descriptively in favor of translegalism, then it matters a lot to how trans people can live their lives. You don't have to believe adoptive parents are biological parents to believe that the legal regime around adoption has a lot of effect on the lives of all the people involved in adoption.

Essentially, I think there are two separate questions here:

  • What legal barriers, or legal support is there for changing one's documented sex?

  • What do trans people believe that makes them want to change their documented sex?

Obviously, the main disanalogy between adoptive sex and adoptive parenthood is in the participants' explanation of what they are doing, and why they are doing it. Adoptive parents understand that they were not "parents" in any sense before adoption, and that the act of the court is the thing granting legitimacy to their claim of "parenthood." Adoptive men/women on the other hand, often claim that they have always been their adoptive sex in some sense, and are merely seeking medical, social and legal recourse to reflect this personal belief.

But I'm not sure if that difference matters in practice. The law can be relatively agnostic to the why of people transitioning - I'm sure a lot of adoptive parents' desire to adopt comes from a religious background, but the state shouldn't have to decide that metaphysical question before allowing them to adopt. Similarly, I think the metaphysical claims of many trans people (that they either have a soul/mind of their adoptive sex, or that they have a brain more in line with their adoptive sex) is kind of a side issue to the first question. I'm okay with considering this almost a religious question (I don't believe in souls, and a lot of the brain evidence is pretty mixed) and moving on with my life. I feel like my translegalism+hospitality approach lets me see reality at its joints just fine, while still allowing people some freedom to live their lives the way they want to.

Obviously, the main disanalogy between adoptive sex and adoptive parenthood is in the participants' explanation of what they are doing, and why they are doing it. Adoptive parents understand that they were not "parents" in any sense before adoption, and that the act of the court is the thing granting legitimacy to their claim of "parenthood."

When I read the italicized bit, I immediately thought of foster parents, who form a sort of intermediate case--they clearly have some of the rights and responsibilities of parenthood, but not to the same permanent extent as adoptive or natural parents. If someone were to ask me, "are foster parents a subset of parents?" I'd say...kind of? For some purposes yes, other purposes no?

Do you think this fits into the adoptive sex metaphor?

the way you act is contingent on the hormones in your brain

If it could be experimentally demonstrated that certain males experiencing gender dysphoria do in fact have unusually high levels of oestrogen in their brains compared to the cis male baseline (e.g. a comparable mechanism to how prenatal endocrine influences sexuality), would this provide a biological underpinning to the transgender paradigm, in your view?

No.

My Popperian falsifyability criteria are as follows:

  • Levels of neural estrogen equal to or higher than cis females.

  • Levels of neural testosterone equal to or less than cis females.

  • Research not performed in The Current Year (given the large ideological incentives for researchers to massage the figures in a pro-trans direction in The Current Year)

With you on points #1 and #2. You lost me on point #3. I don't believe that every neuroscientific study published in 2022 is automatically garbage, even if many (or most) of them are.

Historical precedent is that there is such a thing as gender, in the definition of "social role strongly defined by sex yet not entirely contingent on it". Sure, modern progressives wouldn't want Ancient Greece's gender roles, but once we've established that such a thing exists the rest is just haggling over the price.

There's no historical precedent for the divine.

Historical precedent is that there is such a thing as gender, in the definition of "social role strongly defined by sex yet not entirely contingent on it".

No, I do not grant your premise. As [another post which I can no longer find] remarks, the wounded octopus is not a septopus; nor is the crossdressing man a demigirl. The determination to define this behaviour as a whole new axis instead of a pathology on one axis is precisely what I object to.

There's no historical precedent for the divine.

This seems like the worst possible angle of attack given that there is tremendous historical precedent for the divine. "What is the sun and why do those stars move faster than those other stars?" is a question that demands an answer any time anyone looks up, and it's what led all historical human cultures down the divine rabbit hole. "Why do 0.001% of men want to wear skirts?" is not a question which anyone has been required to consider until modernity, an for such rounding errors and answer of "idiopathic madness" seems satisfactory.

"Why do 0.001% of men want to wear skirts?" is not a question which anyone has been required to consider until modernity, and for such rounding errors and answer of "idiopathic madness" seems satisfactory.

It is only slightly less modern than trans ideology to consistently think of men and women as something that is immutable from birth. The expression "a real man" would not exist if a penised-and-testiculed fertile male's manhood could not be in question.

The expression "a real man" would not exist if a penised-and-testiculed fertile male's manhood could not be in question.

DOES the expression exist in any language other than English? That mongrel tongue cobbled together from the detritus of four other languages and thus should not be particularly expected as being first for purpose?

Anyway, even if it does, this is a tremendous stretch. You're taking as literal that which is figurative. That the phrase "a real man" exists does not imply that the insulters really believe that the object of their mockery might be "an egg", or whatever the term is for an undiscovered trans-woman; or even that they believe such a thing is even logically possible. When I call my little brother "a stinky booger" this doesn't mean I believe that it is genuinely possible that a 50kg pile of dried mucous could be perambulatory.

DOES the expression exist in any language other than English?

Yes.

You're taking as literal that which is figurative.

I'm taking statements about one's social role and status as something that was apparently really fucking important back in the day.

That the phrase "a real man" exists does not imply that the insulters really believe that the object of their mockery might be "an egg", or whatever the term is for an undiscovered trans-woman

No, they probably didn't believe that specific thing, I already said the gender role climate wasn't what it's like today. It did exist, though. I'm confident that when someone said "man" in the era I'm talking about (hell, such societies still exist), they meant not "adult human male" but "human male who met all the social criteria to be called a man, optionally past puberty". The rest is haggling over the price.

The rest is haggling over the price

People have accept your premise, for the rest to be haggling over the price.

There is no such thing as gender, the way you act is contingent on the hormones in your brain and the hormones in your brain are contingent on your chromosomes. A man acting weird is a man acting weird, not a man filling the social role of a woman (or being the Messiah).

That's a pretty strong claim. So you believe that all gendered behavior is 100% in our chromosomes, and 0% socialized?

I am sure you can see the difficulty in asking a person who has just staked out the position "there is no such thing as gender" a question "So you believe that all gendered behaviour..."

Is this a question can be coherently rephrased with the g-word under taboo?

I am sure you can see the difficulty in asking a person who has just staked out the position "there is no such thing as gender" a question "So you believe that all gendered behaviour..."

Okay, let me rephrase: do you believe that all behavioral differences between men and women are 100% determined by our chromosomes?

Is this a question can be coherently rephrased with the g-word under taboo?

We're not on reddit anymore, we don't have taboo words. You're going to have to explain the relevance to me, though.

Re: taboo - I think they were referring to this old rationalist chestnut.

Your last paragraph implies that once someone is on hormone replacement therapy we should consider them transitioned, is that your intent?

There is no such thing as hormone replacement therapy.

There is a thing that is called hormone replacement therapy, but it's a misnomer, because it is actually hormone supplementation therapy.

Swimming in biogenic testosterone + supplemental estrogen is not the same as swimming in just biogenic estrogen.

Also:

  • There is much uncertainty about the degree to which injected supplemental hormones can cross the blood-brain barrier, so they may well not be great at influencing behaviour

  • Hormones have a profound developmental effect on the brain as well as an acute effect at the time of injection. Therefore unless you've been taking them... in utero since conception, your ship has already sailed.

Yes transwoman on HRT do have somewhat different hormone profiles than ciswomen but they also certainly have different hormone profiles than cismen So if we use the framework that hormone profile determines gender, cismen, ciswomen, transmen and transwoman should all be 4 distinct gender clusters and in fact you can add a 5th for bodybuilders on AAS. You can call us super-males.

What massively bothers me is that this gender as social and sex as physical is completely thrown out of the window when talking about transgender people's need to physically mimic the opposite sex. Both of these narratives can't be true at the same time. And that isn't the only issue that is solvable but I never see people grapple with. If we're going to start taking seriously that womanhood has certain gender characteristics and throw out the "women can be and do anything" framework that implies some female people who think they are women are wrong. Otherwise the category is meaningless.

There are some frameworks of gender ideology that actually make sense, and as I care very little about gender itself I'd be willing to adopt but what mainstream gender advocates are offering is not one of those frameworks. It's all of them at once carefully switching from one to another in order to dodge the uncomfortable implications.

The problem is that - many 'trans people' do, even though the cause is some weird simulacra desire alienation thing, really strongly want to be seen like women. And, for a progressive, this plus the whole 'being oppressed by gender roles' thing means we really need to protect, amplify, and ensure they can express themselves. And that entirely beats out anything about 'gender is a social role'.

and as I care very little about gender itself I'd be willing to adopt

you'd be willing to "adopt" something that's wrong, just from caring little about it?

The problem is that - many 'trans people' do, even though the cause is some weird simulacra desire alienation thing, really strongly want to be seen like women.

I know this is a meme but it's important. What you do mean by "women"? do you mean female? Because if you say women then the category is self referential in really strange way. There is some tension in it and activists are resistant to efforts to switch to using "female" in many categories where it's thought that might better capture the original intent(most flamingly hot example being sexuality, the 'Super Straight' phenomenon). What the actual ask seems to be is that we need to hold two categories in or heads at once when talking about women so that trans people can identify as a category that would otherwise inherently excludes them and lie about doing so.

you'd be willing to "adopt" something that's wrong, just from caring little about it?

I'd be able to adopt some coherent way to think/talk about gender as a real phenomenon so long as it's consistent. If I can talk about it in a consistent way I could find the truth in that framework and dispel the obviously silly elements. If the framework is not internally consistent then I can't use it to describe/compare to reality. If asked what my gender is should I say man because that's the role I actually play out in real life or should I say nonbinary because of the aforementioned indifference to gender as a general concept? what relation, if any, does my answer have to do with my sex/sexuality? There's half a dozen contradictory ways within the gender sphere to interpret my answer and come to opposite results. I don't want the delta between my understanding of the world and my interlocutors understanding of the world to be obscured by incomprehensible language games.

Is there a term that combines motte-and-bailey with the sort of three-card-monte shuffle you're talking about?

If there is I don't know what it's called beyond the rather loose 'incoherent' or 'cognitive dissonance'. When both the frameworks are invoked at once I think it's rightfully called cognitive dissonance, like famous struggle over the phrase "what is a woman" where the nonbinary friendly framework butts up against the transgender friendly framework.

Monte-bailey?

That sounds like a castle with 3 baileys one that contains goats, and another that contains cars, and a third with no gate.

I'm even willing to use whatever pronouns you prefer, even if that means changing them from time to time (so long as you let me know what they are today and aren't going to throw a tantrum if I sometimes make a mistake).

I'm not, unless they're willing to do the same for me, in which case mine are Sir/His Lordship.

If we're allowed to semi-arbitrarily declare pronouns and we agree to recognize them because it validates the other person's choice of identity, then this should be a small ask, and I would find it massively validating, thank you kindly.

Or we draw some bright lines around which ones people are 'allowed' to use and have an actual discussion around why some are allowed and some aren't, rather than the unilateral declaration that every identity is valid.

Hell, we've had the concept of "nicknames" for fucking ever. If you want to be identified as something other than your biological sex then come up with a nickname that you like that captures this and most people will go along with it, right?

If someone were to genuinely ask me "what are your pronouns" my response is "go ahead and use your best judgment and I promise not to be offended either way."

It is a hassle to be 'made to care' about this game in the first place, so I would shift the burden back to the person who wants to play.

Sir/His Lordship is just douchey.

But there are far more triggering pronouns than those. It’s the identities Meloni claims. Christian, American, Father, son, husband.

You think on zoom that the wokes want to identify someone as Christian every time they speak.

The most triggering of all might be Mother.

Sir/His Lordship is just douchey.

As long as we're claiming the ability to give ourselves titles which confer some level of privilege, I'm going all the way.

If the cutoff is whatever is 'too douchey' I'd love to have that conversation at length!

I'm placing the cutoff at whatever is an actual honorific, or implies actual deeds (such as "mother"). You may think "he" or "she" confers privilege all you want.

Of course, there are ways to persuade me to call someone "Mommy" without them having birthed anyone.

Or 'Mister' and 'Mrs.'

I dunno, there's a workable framework for this sort of thing already in existence. I still place most of the burden of proving why we should upset this in favor of the new pronoun system on those proposing it.

Why is sir/lordship douchey? Plenty of people refer to prince William as his highness, and to whatever rank of nobility is signified by that(barons? I'm going with that) as sir/lordship. If a person with a penis can arbitrarily declare that he/him is now she/her with no possibility of being wrong, why can a commoner not claim to be a baron with no possibility of being wrong? It is, after all, far less reality defying.

I have never met an IRL British peer, although I did briefly meet the heir to the pretender to some European country or other who preferred his/your highness, which I abided by because it seemed reasonable. After all, the title might be meaningless, but no one seemed to dispute it was his. That doesn't mean that my idiot cousin calling himself king of the neighborhood gets to be called your highness. I would ask why the same principles don't apply to gender, something that we can probably all agree is far more fundamental to human nature, and less changeable, than being a king.

I would ask why the same principles don't apply to gender, something that we can probably all agree is far more fundamental to human nature, and less changeable, than being a king.

The concept of nobility has a baked-in assumption that they're better than you in some way. No such thing with the concept of being a different gender.

I'm fine calling people a different pronoun than what I would've assumed, because I do not believe they're asking for it to literally lord it over me.

Because we all know the people using the pronouns are doing it to mock the other people using pronouns and not because it’s a sincere identity.

They're still more likely to be a duke/baron/prince than a transwoman is to be a real woman.

What if it is sincere? For example: if we live in a world where no one gets to customize their pronouns, then I accept he/him as a matter of necessity, but if you concede that pronouns are customizable based on what feels validating to one's internal identity, then I would sincerely prefer and feel validated by your use of pronouns that imply that I am nobility.

You might argue that any given person doesn't actually believe the above sincerely, but if you assume a hypothetical where your interlocutor does, will you actually start calling him "sir" and "his lordship," not just to his lordship's face but also in conversations where his lordship isn't a participant?

So if someone sincerely wanted to be called "your lordship" you'd do it?

What do you think of otherkin? They sincerely want to be considered animals. Would you refer to someone as a cat if they sincerely wanted it?

Of course the irony in this statement is that many, myself included, consider that the people using xim/xer are ALSO doing it to mock other people ("squares", "my dad", the laws of God and nature) and not because it's a sincere identity. Because play-acting as a girl when you have a penis is the very definition of insincere.

But apparently because they got there first and have the left-memeplex stamp of approval, we're not allowed to call them out for it.

I am incapable of even understand the mental model of people using pronouns.

I do understand the mental models of people trying to mock them.

Basically I can’t call them out for being dishonesty because I can’t even understand them but I can call out “your highness” because I understand it’s mockery.

But you're not being clear on why mockery shouldn't be allowed.

The pronoun people haven't set up a ruleset that would exclude it. So they in fact imply that any pronoun you want to use SHOULD be allowed until proven insincere.

If we're allowed to semi-arbitrarily declare pronouns and we agree to recognize them because it validates the other person's choice of identity, then this should be a small ask, and I would find it massively validating, thank you kindly.

I don't think there is any kind of good faith equivalency there, but as I said, my tolerance doesn't extend to semi-arbitrarily declared pronouns (especially made-up ones), only to people who I think are being sincere and not trolling or mentally ill. (Leaving aside the question of whether one considers trans or non-binary identification as de facto mental illness.)

IOW, if you want me to call you "she," I will. If you want me to call you "they," I will grit my teeth but try to remember. If you want me to call you "Your Lordship" or "Θ", I will disregard this request because you're either trolling or crazy.

I don't think there is any kind of good faith equivalency there

I'm not sure there's much 'good faith' to be had anywhere in the pronoun debate.

There's very little way to tell the difference between sincere/trolling/mentally ill if we already grant that a person's pronouns are based solely on their mental experience of their own identity, not any externally verifiable signal. You can't tell if someone is 'making it up' or not because you can't really get a peep into their true thoughts unless, perhaps, you get to know them extremely well.

Privileging a persons' inner 'reality' over the actual observable reality that we can confirm with our own eyes is a recipe for conflict. I can never be fully certain if the 'facts' someone is trying to assert are honest beliefs or an attempt to fool me into taking some course of action, when the facts are dependent solely on what's in their head. This also goes for people who claim particular emotional responses to a particular stimuli! Trust CAN be built, mind you.

As I indicated my problem isn't so much with an individual wanting to be called something other than the obvious (hence, nicknames!) but with being expected to buy into the larger game this represents. A game that, I remind you, doesn't have any prescribed rules and whatever rules do exist, haven't been discussed or agreed to, and yet violation of which can be punished via social means.

You want to be polite and assume that you won't be pilloried for rejecting 'made up' pronouns, but there's literally nothing that makes your boundaries the ones that matter. They're already inserting stuff like "Xe/Xim/Xir" into the lexicon.

So I'll object to the game itself every time someone tries to get me to play it, unless and until we have the discussion regarding the rules.

But end of the day I anticipate that they want the rules to remain fluid and convoluted, since being able to hold them to any standard would diminish their ability to use this game to push for social outcomes that they want and to punish defectors, which is the nature of the true meta-game being played. Or so I believe.

Much simpler for me to engineer my personal social group to avoid people who make a big deal of pronouns than to openly accept and appease every person I encounter, including on the internet, for no personal benefit.

I'm not sure there's much 'good faith' to be had anywhere in the pronoun debate.

I believe most trans people genuinely do identify as and perceive themselves to be the gender they say they are. I consider their request to be made in good faith whether or not I believe their object-level claims about what gender they are. So yes, I'll be polite as far as using the pronouns they prefer. If you meet a trans woman who's introduced to you as a woman, do you make a practice of saying "Bullshit, you're a dude"?

Privileging a persons' inner 'reality' over the actual observable reality that we can confirm with our own eyes is a recipe for conflict.

Well, yes, in some cases.

I know people who genuinely and sincerely claim to have heard God talking to them - not in a delusional "God spoke words to me and told me I was the Chosen One" kind of way, but in a "I absolutely know for a fact that God is real because I have Experienced Him" kind of way. And people who've had like religious and/or allegedly supernatural experiences which I consider as delusional or non-real as any trans identification.

I don't think they're crazy or trolling, and while I won't pretend I believe that their experiences are real, nor will I start a fight with them. I don't feel obligated to sneer and say "You're just experiencing things you've convinced yourself are real."

You want to be polite and assume that you won't be pilloried for rejecting 'made up' pronouns

I'm sure I could find myself being pilloried for rejecting made up pronouns, but since I don't hang out on Twitter and I'm not in the public eye or in a profession where I have to worry about woke shit-testers, it's not a significant concern to me.

Maybe at some point I will encounter one of these hypothetical "Please call me Ravendarkhart (Xe/Xir)" people in the wild, and I'll have to figure out if I can navigate that without either acquiescing to that bullshit or starting a fight. But while I won't say trans women aren't on that slippery slope, I don't personally feel like I am sliding dangerously down it by not striking a contrarian posture every time I meet a trans person.

deleted

I don't feel this is a fair comparison, speaking at least from my own, religious perspective.

That's not surprising, but the comparison isn't meant to say I think believing you're trans and believing in God is an exact analog. Use any example you like of people believing things, based on their personal experience, which are completely internal to them and thus unverifiable to anyone outside their own head. Hence I used the example of people who believe they have experienced God directly and not, for example, people who believe they saw a UFO (something that in theory could be verified by anyone else who was there to see it).

The rest of your objection is basically "You can brush off someone's religious beliefs with impunity, but you can't do that with trans people," which is true today, in our society, but is not true in every society (trying telling an authority figure in Iran that their religious beliefs are nonsense) and has not been true historically in ours.

I am obviously against the current regime which so heavily punishes anyone who questions trans orthodoxy (see: J.K. Rowling and anyone else labeled "gender critical"), for the same reason I'm against religion having that much power. Even in the absence of such a regime, I wouldn't insist on calling a transwoman a man to his face, for the same reason that as an atheist I won't be rude to you just because you're talking about beliefs I don't share.

Also, in most workplaces (including mine), being disrespectful of someone's religious beliefs would get very similar treatment from HR as disrespecting someone's gender identity.

deleted

I believe most trans people genuinely do identify as and perceive themselves to be the gender they say they are.

That raises the question of otherkin.

Aside from that, the reason it's even vaguely plausible that they're sincere is that your allies have created an environment where sincerity may be assumed. It's with circular reasoning where people wouldn't use unusual pronouns if society didn't accept them first, but society decides whether to accept them based on the fact that people use them sincerely.

If this was 1970 and someone wanted to be called xe/xim, or even if a man wanted to be called "she", you'd know that they're trolling because it's so frowned upon that nobody would want to do that for real. Even if closeted trans people exist in 1970, they would know that society frowns upon the request so they wouldn't ask--anyone who does ask you in 1970 is probably trolling. Trans or custom gendered pronouns in 1970 are in the same position as "your lordship" is in right now.

Imagine that there was a social movement about people's right to be called "your lordship", and because of that movement, there were people who sincerely requested to be called "your lordship", so you could no longer assume that such a request is trolling. Also imagine that even then, the connotation of "your lordship" is still what it is now. If someone asked to be called "your lordship", would you do so? Or would you say "even if you're sincere, by making that request, you are trying to claim the conventional connotations of 'your lordship', and they don't apply to you, so I wouldn't call you that"?

If this was 1970 and someone wanted to be called xe/xim, or even if a man wanted to be called "she", you'd know that they're trolling because it's so frowned upon that nobody would want to do that for real.

Sure, yeah, we assume sincerity now because they made it sincere. Just as we assume sincerity about claims such as "maybe people from other countries are real people too" or "there shouldn't be an unelected king".

Also imagine that even then, the connotation of "your lordship" is still what it is now.

Are the connotations of "he" and "she" now what they were before? Anyway, sure, if we assume that society developed in a way that changed my mind about "your lordship", then my mind about "your lordship" is changed. So?..

Aside from that, the reason it's even vaguely plausible that they're sincere is that your allies have created an environment where sincerity may be assumed.

"My allies," forsooth!

You're mixing up several different things here. Some otherkin probably are sincere (which doesn't make them less deluded). I do believe most trans people are sincere, and trans people, by which I mean actual people who believed they were a different sex than the one they were born as, not just gender nonconforming people that trans activists try to retroactively label trans, certainly existed before the 70s. As for the newer genderspecials, probably they are about as sincere as otherkin, which is to say some of them are sincere and deluded and some are just adopting the cool fashionable new hairstyle and will abandon it when it's no longer cool.

The argument isn't "someone can sincerely be trans", it's "someone can sincerely demand trans pronouns". In 1970, most trans people would not demand pronouns, and any person who does demand one is probably a troll, not a trans person. This is the situation today for "your lordship"; anyone who would (in a more permissive society) want to demand it sincerely probably stays silent, so any demands you hear come from trolls.

I edited it into the previous post so you might not have seen it, but if society changed, so you couldn't assume that people who wanted to be called "your lordship" were insincere, would you call people that upon request?

More comments

I don't think they're crazy or trolling, and while I won't pretend I believe that their experiences are real, nor will I start a fight with them. I don't feel obligated to sneer and say "You're just experiencing things you've convinced yourself are real."

It's not nice, but ... it is true, and what would've happened if voltaire, jesus, moldbug, etc took this approach? Even if it makes the person 'mad' or 'sad', surely it benefits them to understand the situation better? They're making significant decisions based on these claims, and .. what else is there to their belief in god, besides the way they understand things, and decisions they make resulting from it? (no, not saying moldbug is jesus, they are varying examples of the same point)

Did the person who'd heard the voice of God insist you call them prophet?

If you meet a trans woman who's introduced to you as a woman, do you make a practice of saying "Bullshit, you're a dude"?

Is there evidence you can argue someone out of mental illness? I'm not arguing with the phophet, dementia patients or the girl at the party who's convinced the universe is sending her message either.

So yes, I'll be polite as far as using the pronouns they prefer. If you meet a trans woman who's introduced to you as a woman, do you make a practice of saying "Bullshit, you're a dude"?

No, I would never make any extra effort to intentionally 'misgender' or otherwise antagonize someone by repeatedly getting their pronouns wrong. Because as I have noted twice now, individually I have no problem with the concept of referring to someone as they prefer to be referred. Nicknames, initials, whatever. There's ample precedent for letting some pick their own name and having it be accepted socially.

The game I don't play is "EVERYONE must now make their pronouns explicit and everyone must accept those at face value."

And using the 'wrong' pronouns intentionally would also be caring waaaaaaaaaay to much about this game too.

But by the same token, if you get viscerally upset and attempt to shame or otherwise directly influence my behavior because I slipped up once or twice, I'm also less inclined to think you're acting in good faith, and using it more as a bid for status or control.

Like, there are people who still mispronounce my actual birth name even after knowing me for a while. I may or may not correct them but it just never even occurs to me to take offense or pretend to take offense.

So it's not clear to me why the pronoun thing is even worth stressing over.

know people who genuinely and sincerely claim to have heard God talking to them - not in a delusional "God spoke words to me and told me I was the Chosen One" kind of way, but in a "I absolutely know for a fact that God is real because I have Experienced Him" kind of way. And people who've had like religious and/or allegedly supernatural experiences which I consider as delusional or non-real as any trans identification.

Right, but I wouldn't accommodate someone who said "GOD HIMSELF told me that you have to give me $20" either. Because no matter how emphatically they believe it, there's no external signal I can use to verify it, and I'm not buying into this game when there's a personal cost attached.

Likewise, I won't exchange pronouns with every single person I meet or police my own language merely because someone may be within earshot and care about this stuff.

If I'm dealing with someone at a professional level who wants to be called 'he' or 'she' and makes a point of stating this I might do it just to grease the wheels of the interaction, since its not worth interrogating someone's mental state when you're just trying to have a professional conversation and complete a transaction.

But again, the game is "everyone must accept every other person's pronouns."

I'm not in the public eye or in a profession where I have to worry about woke shit-testers, it's not a significant concern to me.

Right. And I've got my social environment arranged such that I am vanishingly unlikely to encounter someone who would make a big deal out of this particular issue.

And hell, I know some trans people who I have some rapport with and I refer to them as their preferred gender because that's easy. But I'm also reasonably sure they wouldn't have a conniption or try to publicly condemn me if I got it wrong, if I thought they'd do that, I'd minimize contact with them.

The reason I care on a meta-level is that the world seems to be shifting towards the situation where you will be made to care about this stuff and punished for not doing so.

I know people who genuinely and sincerely claim to have heard God talking to them - not in a delusional "God spoke words to me and told me I was the Chosen One" kind of way, but in a "I absolutely know for a fact that God is real because I have Experienced Him" kind of way. And people who've had like religious and/or allegedly supernatural experiences which I consider as delusional or non-real as any trans identification.

I don't think they're crazy or trolling, and while I won't pretend I believe that their experiences are real, nor will I start a fight with them. I don't feel obligated to sneer and say "You're just experiencing things you've convinced yourself are real."

But this isn't anything like a trans person. If a person sincerely (or trollishly) says they've experienced god, nothing changes for you. You need not call him "Holy One". This god experiencer doesn't then start undergoing sterilizing medical procedures. There is nothing to start a fight over.

But this isn't anything like a trans person.

Sure it is. In both cases, someone is making a claim based on what they experience inside their head, and you can choose to believe them, disbelieve them quietly and be polite, or disbelieve them aggressively.

If a person sincerely (or trollishly) says they've experienced god, nothing changes for you. You need not call him "Holy One". This god experiencer doesn't then start undergoing sterilizing medical procedures. There is nothing to start a fight over.

If someone says they're a woman, nothing changes for me either.

You're just arguing that accepting someone's gender identification has real world political (and physical) implications, which is true, but so do religious beliefs. I have certainly seen more conflict over the latter than the former.

I'm even willing to use whatever pronouns you prefer, even if that means changing them from time to time

This is a level of permissiveness that I cannot fathom. If someone asked you to address them differently depending on their mood, would you? Like if they were in a good mood they want to be called Jonathan Sunshine, but if they're feeling a bit down it's Gloomraven, Lord of all Sorrows? Because I don't really see how it's any different.

He and She are words already in my lexicon, as is they - they're not particularly loaded down with baggage in the same way that Gloomraven is.

In that case do you also refuse to memorise the name of anyone you meet whose name is unusual, uncommon or otherwise unheard of to you?

I think it's different for the reason that switching from "he" to "she" does not discommode me much, while switching from "Jonathan Sunshine" to "Gloomraven, Lord of All Sorrows" would be ridiculous and asinine and is fortunately something that only happens in ridiculous and asinine straw man what ifs.

I'll note that even the first example is hypothetical, since I don't actually know any people who change their pronouns on a recurring basis.

Obviously there is a limit to my tolerance. I don't respect neo-pronouns like "xe" or "xir," and I have yet to be forced to use "they" as a singular third-person pronoun in person. (That one offends me more on grammatical grounds than any feelings I have about gender identities.)

If someone were actually changing their pronouns on a daily basis, I would stop trying to keep track and tell them they're being unreasonable to expect me to.

while switching from "Jonathan Sunshine" to "Gloomraven, Lord of All Sorrows" would be ridiculous and asinine and is fortunately something that only happens in ridiculous and asinine straw man what ifs.

Is it though? There's certainly someone on discord or twitter whose moniker is 'Gloomraven', and people have no trouble calling them by that.

Changing pronouns has been ridiculous and asinine in practically all cultures through all of time. It is still ridiculously asinine in most places in the world today.

We are already down that slope, down so far that "Gloomraven Lord of the Sorrows" is closer to whay we have now than not having that.

This battle was lost the moment changing pronouns more than once was "normalized". It should have been something that you choose and have to commit to else pay a great price to your credibility.

I don't want to comment on the neo-pronouns, but I have a question about this bit:

That one offends me more on grammatical grounds than any feelings I have about gender identities.

The singular they goes back to at least the 1300s, at least according to Merriam-Webster. What kind of pedigree are you looking for in your english words above and beyond a word usage that literally predates modern english? Is it just that the same word can refer to singular and plural? Does the word "deer" bother you in the same way?

The singular they goes back to at least the 1300s, at least according to Merriam-Webster. What kind of pedigree are you looking for in your english words above and beyond a word usage that literally predates modern english? Is it just that the same word can refer to singular and plural? Does the word "deer" bother you in the same way?

Trust me, I am familiar with the linguistic history of "they" and with this argument.

The problem with it is that in the past, "they" has been used (somewhat inconsistently) as an indefinite gender pronoun (such as when the gender of the person being referred to is unknown, or when you are talking about a generic person of either gender). And even in those cases, it sometimes leads to grammatical ambiguity.

The new usage, where it's used to refer to individuals even when their gender is known (see what I did there?) is both awkward and frequently unclear.

"They're waiting for me in the car."

"I called my friend and they were very upset."

"They told me I misgendered them."

It's becoming more common for me to be reading an article where people use a singular "they" and I have to backtrack to figure out if we're talking about one person or multiple people. I would almost prefer that we actually adopt some neopronoun like "xe/xir" just to disambiguate the grammar, but since I don't recognize that "xe/xirs" exist, I just mentally roll my eyes at people who identify as a singular-they.

The new usage, where it's used to refer to individuals even when their gender is known (see what I did there?) is both awkward and frequently unclear.

Could you expand a little on this? I'm not sure how, once you've accepted the singular they for a person of unknown gender or perhaps an abstract person without gender, applying it to different individuals causes more ambiguity.

Or is it just that this previously rage edge-case is becoming more common which is leading to problems?

I thought my examples above gave pretty good examples of the problem. What's still unclear?

I think the issue is that I'm still unsure of your position on the singular they for use with a person of unknown gender (old definition).

Specifically the paragraph that starts with:

The problem with it is that in the past...

"it" here seems to imply the new definition, otherwise contrasting with the past is odd (or I'm just parsing something wrong, always an option). I interpreted this as the old definition was fine (if not ideal), and the new version was a problem.

But later there's talk about ambiguity, and as far as I can tell, both definitions do that to roughly the same degree, so I'm not sure why contrasting the old and new definitions comes up beforehand.

More comments

The historical claim to a "singular they" is a central example of a motte and bailey. There was the occasional usage of singular they to refer to a person of unknown or unspecified sex, where "he" would be more grammatically standard--this is the motte. Referring to a known and identified singular person as "they" was not a thing.

Did you think no one would actually click your link? Because Merriam-Webster lays out exactly what I said above, though with more sneering.

It was not immediately clear that the new definition was the point of contention. People railing against the "singular they" is much older than the current gender debate (including my 8th grade english teacher), and the OP specified that it was more on grammatical grounds than gender.

I think it's different for the reason that switching from "he" to "she" does not discommode me much, while switching from "Jonathan Sunshine" to "Gloomraven, Lord of All Sorrows" would be ridiculous and asinine and is fortunately something that only happens in ridiculous and asinine straw man what ifs.

Back in the ancient days of AOL and Ryhddin chatrooms, i once met a teenaged boy IRL who wanted to be called Angel when he was in a good mood and Angelus when he was in a dangerous mood.

I'm honestly not sure how valid the connection is, but it feels easy to intuit a line from the warlocks and druids I played Vampire the Masquerade with 20 years ago to the otherkin and therianopes of the early teens to the gender creatives of the last five years.

Back in the ancient days of AOL and Ryhddin chatrooms, i once met a teenaged boy IRL who wanted to be called Angel when he was in a good mood and Angelus when he was in a dangerous mood.

I've known my share of Internet crazies too, and people who wanted to adopt new names for various reasons. The degree to which you're willing to humor an edgy teen is up to your own tolerance level. The degree to which you're willing to humor an adult who identifies "differently" is also up to your own tolerance level. I will be polite to trans people and "non-binaries." I'd be polite to an otherkin too, but I wouldn't call him Lupus Bloodmoon Rayvnfang or pretend that I believe he's a wolf.

(I don't pretend I believe transwomen are women either, but unless they want to press me and force a conversation about it, neither do I feel obligated to tell transwomen what I actually think any more than as an atheist I need to go off on someone who says "God bless you" when I sneeze.)

I don't pretend I believe transwomen are women either,

Do you believe in following requests to treat them as women such as being in women's bathrooms or locker rooms, on women's sports teams, in women's prisons, in women's shelters, etc.?

I think transwomen should be allowed to use women's bathrooms, but sports teams, no, and women's prisons, only if they have physically transitioned. Locker rooms and shelters I would say situationally dependent, particularly on whether or not the person has physically transitioned. I know the gotcha you're looking for here is the bad faith actors who just want to go in and flash their girldicks around, and the fact that the trans movement is reluctant to acknowledge the existence of bad actors is the petard they are hoisting themselves on.

But does it count as a petard if it doesn't identify as a petard?

Yes, obvious joke, but there's also a point--what are the consequences of not acknowledging the existence of bad actors, and who can and will enforce the consequences?

There was a bit of earlier discussion about kids pushing boundaries, and how that's normal, but it's the job of adults to set boundaries. I fully agree, but this is yet another case of those with the power to set boundaries refusing to do so. That petard ain't gonna set itself.

More comments

If a good friend asked this of me in an apologetic way, emphasizing that they wouldn't ask if it wasn't important, sure, I'd call them whatever they want.

I was reading American Renaissance's "A White Teacher Speaks Out" (ctrl + f for goth) and a teacher described that his black students all seemed basically the same to him. (This might just be "seeing the other race as all the same"). Whereas in his experience the white students might form cliques. As far as I can tell, it is mostly whites who join gender subcultures. Just like goth etc., gender might be a way for white people to feel special.

I do not mean this in the uncharitable, "a way to be on the oppression pyramid" -- I don't think it feels like that on the inside at all. It could be that whites, being "normal boring default," want to feel more special and do weird and quirky things. Whereas people who are already a little quirky, a little weird, or less normal (racial minorities, actual gay people with abnormal lifestyles) aren't inclined to join weird subcultures themselves. Scott had an essay comparing this state of affairs to weirdness points but I can't find it.

Wow, that article is just like, paragraph upon paragraph of distain for black people. Went to read it to see if there’d be anything interesting brought up, but… oof.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/style-guide-not-sounding-like-an-evil-robot/

https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/02/11/black-people-less-likely/ ?

I remember seeing such an article too. I thought it was one of the followups to the barber pole theory of fashion, but I had no luck searching.

Is it Black people less likely?

I thought it was black people less likely

Fourth, black people might avoid weird nonconformist groups because they’re already on thin enough ice in terms of social acceptance. Being a black person probably already exposes you to enough stigma, without becoming a furry as well.

But, I swear someone mentioned weirdness points but Scott & the comments don't seem to.

I think a lot of the problem for understanding "nonbinary" as a term is that it can mean a lot of different things, both as an umbrella term and as a mess of categories that aren't that clear themselves:

  • Clownfish-nonbinary, in the sense of taking different gender roles depending on outside stimulus. That can be social, in the strict sense that clownfish only turn female in a sausage fest, but it can also be role-based (eg, male at work and female at party), group-based (eg, female among one social party, male among another), or through different times (eg, some weeks male, some weeks female). Genderfluid usually means this, though I've seen a few exceptions.

  • Whiptail-nonbinary, in the sense of taking a role that doesn't normally make sense within the male/female lines. I use whiptails as an example not because they're lesbian, but because they're lesbian in a way that can have hormonal layout take 'male' or 'female' courtship and mounting in the same coupling regularly, in ways that increase reproductive success'. In humans, this usually doesn't turn into becoming the non-genetic-but-physically-relevant role for reproduction (and even most people that fetishize that don't do so in a nonbinary framework), but the 'so dyke she answers to sir' is kinda the low end of this particular wading pool. These people aren't (usually?) trans in the surgery-sense, and even stuff like laser hair removal or hormones might be more in the aesthetic framework than the dysphoria ones, but there's some point where it's useful to be able to distinguish from mere 'gender-non-conforming' (... sometimes...).

  • Hyena-nonbinary, in the sense of having a mix of traits consider mainstays of male/female. No one is archetypically male or female, not least of all because each of these have contradictory and/or impossible, but just as there's a level of bro or stacey that can't shut up about being it, there's eventually a point where people can't shut up about how they're not.

  • Worker-ant-nonbinary, in the sense that talking about gender in any sense but the chromosonal is kinda missing the point. Neuter or neutrois are the more extreme bits, here, but there's a dark mirror to the 'cis-by-default' concept that's kinda the opposite of it, where someone doesn't hugely care about gender but also doesn't get any reason to act toward their default role.

  • Landmine-nonbinary, where they just really don't want to deal with any gender stuff publicly, and want to make it your problem.

  • Peacock-nonbinary, where there's a bunch of really complicated social signalling stuff that doesn't (seem to?) have pragmatic impact.

  • and probably some other groups I don't know about.

the 'cis-by-default' concept that's kinda the opposite of it, where someone doesn't hugely care about gender but also doesn't get any reason to act toward their default role.

I strongly suspect that this is the majority of people. I am baffled by someone describing the experience of 'feeling like' something as abstract as a Gender.

so if someone identifies as a demigirl in some circles but to you they just say they’re nonbinary or even just “female”, they clocked you as a gender normie lol.

This doesn't seem to happen, though. Instead, it seems like a demigirl is far more likely to demand that gender normies recognize their demigirl status, to address them as such, and that the normies educate themselves on what a demigirl is.

All these multiple genders want their pronouns to be used and for society to accept them just like any other gender. I honestly do not remember the subcultures of my youth demanding that society treat them as 'normal'. That was antithetical to their very existence.

You know what I think happened? The internet made it soooo easy for a kid to rapidly 'specialize' in a subculture. You didn't have to seek out the music, the styles, learn the history. You could just pick it all up within a couple days. Most of these subcultures were extremely gatekeepy. With the internet, the bar became relatively lower for those with access, but it became EXTREMELY high for those who didn't.

But this resulted in people with basically a cliff notes understanding of a subculture forming the majority. There was no deeper understanding. Many might not have even liked the core aspects of a subculture, just certain aesthetics. So you have people who can say all the right things, but are only really in it for the outward appearance. Normies took over the subcultures.

Social media comes along, and the attention span of the average person collapses. Most people no longer have the depth of specialization to even pretend they are part of a subculture (hell, I get that vibe from the Tumblr post you linked). What happens is that people move away from the 'classic' subcultures, and begin turning innate human characteristics into subcultures, because a person is innately knowledgeable about that, and they can't be invalidated by being wrong, because they can just say "that's my experience/that's how I feel."

So no longer do you need to understand anything about the music you're listening to in order to bond with others. Instead, you can just pick apart things like gender and race, and begin to make a culture out of that. "I like to wear ballcaps sometimes" suddenly becomes being 'masc'. If someone says "Women wear ballcaps" they can just respond "well I feel masc when I wear one." Can't invalidate that.

Anyone and everyone can discuss all these things at length. There's nothing special about the shit nonbinary people are talking about. It's not hard to understand. It's just that I wouldn't attach my gender identity to the clothes I wear, how I feel on a particular day, my current emotions, etc.

All these gender 'subcultures' are for the normies. They have absolutely no barrier to entry, you need no knowledge, there's no learning curve. You basically just get to make YOURSELF a piece of the subculture. And you get to pretend you aren't a normie, and demand all the other normies abide by your subculture's rules.

I'm reminded of the "soul-editor" from the SCP Foundation Wiki that had symbols from every major world religion, as well as a few unknown ones.

What SCP number, by the way?

In the same way that parapsychology serves as a control-group for science, I think identities like otherkin, transracialism, and systems/plurals/headmates function as a control-group for gender identity. The results don't look good: otherkin used the same framework and seemed to genuinely believe they were experiencing things like feelings of dysphoria at not having their true identities as animals (or sometimes celestial bodies or fictional characters) be accepted. Plurals are a social-justice reimagining of Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder, a condition now heavily discredited and typically considered the product of social contagion from therapists themselves or media portrayals. (Something the plural community doesn't appreciate.) Moreover the number of people identifying as plurals seems much greater than the ones who identified as having MPD during its heyday, presumably thanks to the idea attaching itself to social-justice ideology and spreading through internet communities. People will attest to psychological experiences as extreme as "being multiple people" because of a bit of social influence, but we're to believe vaguer supposed feelings of "gender identity" aren't subject to the same phenomenon?

Like a scientist running 20 tests and reporting one of them positive at P<0.05, we should take notice that there were a whole bunch of communities for special social-justice-related identities and "non-binary" is one of the few that happened to pass the test of getting acknowledgment from mainstream institutions. Even the non-binary concept itself has been noticeably optimized, like how there used to be much more of an emphasis on neopronouns and the terrible "misgendering" of not being called "em" or whatever. Despite being acknowledged as legitimate by a decent fraction of the social-justice community, otherkin still got mocked enough even on websites like Tumblr that they adopted a set of "secret" tags for their posts so it was harder to find them by searching "otherkin", while non-binary identities ended up performing better socially. Non-binary identity also ended up getting much more mainstream acknowledgement than those other identities, presumably because they fit more easily into the same framework of "gender affirmation". Unsurprisingly it is nonbinary identities that have exploded among the young to the point of being mainstream rather than niche internet communities or obscure diagnoses (especially among groups like college students, particularly students at elite colleges).

This brings us to another use for control groups. Binary transgender identification has also exploded among youths/minors (to a lesser degree). If 3.48% of 2021 college students identify as some form of non-binary/genderqueer/agender despite all or most of them not experiencing anything besides a social phenomenon, it seems likely the same phenomenon would be influencing binary transgender identification as well (which has a higher likelihood of spurring medical intervention). I don't know if the correct way to model this is some sort of hard "truscum vs. transtrender" division, the whole model of "gender identity" being wrong, and/or something else. But the combination of rapidly changing statistics (including/especially in communities where transgender people were already so accepted that traditional "closeted" narratives don't work well), seeing how it spreads through peer-groups or various communities like speedrunning, and seeing how the sausage of social/institutional recognition gets made has made me extremely skeptical.

The results don't look good: otherkin used the same framework and seemed to genuinely believe they were experiencing things like feelings of dysphoria at not having their true identities as animals (or sometimes celestial bodies or fictional characters) be accepted.

To be fair, I think there's some interesting stuff that happened in the therianthrope and related shamanistic forms of otherkin-stuff, before it largely got driven off the open web by aggressive trolling and the unification of social media in the late-00s. I don't know that it was ever especially useful, excepting in the ways that other religious-and-not-just-spiritual stuff could be, but to the extent things like 'phantom shifting' eventually could be reinterpreted into dysphoria-like, the WereWEB or werewolf.com era framework wasn't really into that concept. A lot of the extent it has turned into it has be a result of evaporative cooling in the strict "point a laser at it" sense.

Once you've been through a few youth fad eras, it's hard not to see this sort of thing as just more pleas for attention. "I'm special, there's no one like me, I'm [punk/metal/hippie/anorexic/ADD/neurodivergent etc.]". People are terrified that "Fight Club" might have been right, and we aren't unique or notable in and of ourselves. Look at the language we're using here, where not understanding an arcane and constantly changing gender taxonomy makes one a "normie". As in: "normal". The horror! You can hear the fear.

It's a common adolescent obsession, but extending adolescence has extended the obsession. I cut my mohawk off when I was sixteen, seems to be taking some people a bit longer.

Well, it's good to bash attention-seeking but this sort of competition is constant. So what, should teens just be good boys/good girls and not compete for status and attention? But it's oneupmanship all the way. A quiet nestling won't get fed.

Teens are right to join fads, going through them creates shared experiences, the acting out of various social roles, etc. It's a form of play, even if it feels serious from the inside at the time.

The bigger question is why our broader culture is drifting in a way that the fads are becoming self serving, narcissistic, self referential, navel gazing and misanthropic.

There are many ancient myth story types, killing one's father, the father devouring the sons etc. Is there an archetypal story of the daughter refusing to give birth to the new generation just to spite the tyrannical father? Because I think that's the story our current culture is playing.

I'm perfectly ok with kids acting out (within reason). It's part of testing boundaries, developing a sense of self.

That said, I think it is incumbent on adults to contextualize and police this process. The problem as I see it is not that kids are somehow "worse" now than they used to be. The problem is that adults pretend to believe the little psychos and seem to be incapable of telling them "no". Also, we've extended the zone of acceptable rebellious behavior long past adolescence into the twenties, thirties and forties. The problem is not "kids today", it's kids thirty years ago, who never grew up and refuse to shoulder the responsibility of being the buzzkill adults. Sometimes you have to tell the kids "hey, I know you're nonbinary today, but maybe don't take a bansaw to your genitals until you really think it over and are a legal adult". Yes, they're gonna rage and call you mean names, it's ok. That's what fucked-up kids do. I did the same thing when I was thirteen, but I grew out of it and learned some shit. So now, I'm in a position to contextualize all that anger and silliness. Been there, done that. Most of them will probably be as embarrassed about their antics in twenty years as I am about that mohawk.

We don't have to take the tantrums of hormonal teens (or terminally online/mentally ill adults) as some sort of universal Truth. Disagreement and caution are not "hate", and when we accept that framing, we lose moral authority to do the right thing for people who are incapable of it in the moment.

I agree. Parents think they have to be best friends to their kids. Kids crave the boundary, they search for it and want to find it. As a mature adult you play along and provide it. So they can get the adrenaline of transgression but still without ruining their life.

But setting up expectations, rules and boundaries is apparently too authoritarian. And parents themselves don't want to grow up or feel old, so they don't dare to draw a line and take on the role of "the mean parent" (from the kid's POV). Why people don't want to grow up probably has many reasons. One is the media's obsession with keeping people perpetual adolescents, because those are better consumers. Also for some reason teen culture is somehow elevated to be seen as the "real" culture of the times and if you don't follow it, you're a dinosaur who is out of touch and it's cringe and whatever. An adult should have no time to care about getting called cringe, but here we are.

We pretend that all this is about keeping up with the times, but in fact we collectively froze around the 60s in the role of the rebellious Beatles fan teenager.

I forget where I heard it, but a historian of Rome was asked what he thought accounted for the immense influence and legacy left by that civilization. He said something like "the incredible contempt they had for youth".

change their name, and let everybody know that their pronouns are "she/they" now - while changing nothing else about their appearance or presentation. [...] I often feel baffled by why they find it so important?

How do people in your circles react to them coming out? Is there an outpour of love, applause and validation?

Being nonbinary in gender or bi-curious in sexuality are cheap ways to become LGBTQIA2S+. No need to transition. You suddenly become an interesting person. It's basically the next level of "ally". There was some leaflet I saw on the Motte how the gender spectrum goes from Barbie to GI Joe. If conceptualized like this, it's not even a lie for them to say they don't feel fully female, as they are not some plastic barbie doll or stereotypical extremely girly girl. They see the female role as too weak, too patriarchy-defined, to male-gaze-defined.

Call it fashion, peer-pressure or whatever. People want to belong. And today, especially online, you can belong, be interesting and validated by showing that you are "diverse". Identify as mixed-race, discover your 1/32 indigenous roots, be nonbinary with 'they' pronouns, have "mental health struggles" etc.

There's also this gender hobbyist/enthusiast community who like to catalogue all the genders, like stamp collectors. They are the same sort of people who made Tokio Hotel fan club websites in 2003 on Geocities. The sort of people who make the Aesthetics Wiki. I think this hobby community (who debate the fine differences between demigirls and whatever else) is also really just a small subset of the whole progressive pro-gender crowd, a kind of autistic/aspie subset probably. They also probably don't quite understand it so they obsess about systematizing it, and probably a lot of them are wannabes. The rest probably just go about their lives, or go to weird quirky bars and have nontraditional sex and so on, instead of arguing online.

This is not to say that it's all based on nothing. There certainly are some rather androgynous people, tomboyish girls. But now it's hard to distinguish because it's become a fashion too.

It's certainly more healthy to do this, than to go full HRT+surgery. It seems to me to be an alternative path towards becoming LGBT instead of just a step on a slippery slope. It might be a memetic evolution to allow teen (which nowadays extends to the 20s) girls to do their teen girl stuff without also destroying their bodies and their ability to have kids once they grow out of this.

I see it as a cope rather than an identity. The people who I have met who have called themselves non binary have been people who have failed out of their gender rather than adopted something else. Women who simply don't preform as women call themselves non binary instead of just admitting that they have few female secondary sexual characteristics and are far from any man's fantasy wife. The men who become non binary are often physically weak men who are lacking in male capabilities and virtues. Instead of admitting that they lack the attributes of their gender, they claim that they both male and female. Apart from certain superficial attributes, this is rarely the case. They are not doing lobster fishing on Saturday and dancing on Sunday. In reality, they are probably laying on their sofa scrolling tiktok.

We have a society obsessed with gender, yet we have less gender than ever. The same goes for asexuals, I have yet to meet one that I found highly attractive. I have never met an asexual man that gives an aura of having ravaged a women. My suspicion is that this is just a nicer way for incels to label themselves.

I don't know that "copes" and "identities" are mutually exclusive. Many identities, including some ethnic identities, are copes of some sort. A kid who identifies as Hui in China might well identify as Chinese if he moves to the US if the only other Asian kid in school is Han. Someone who never identified as a member of a group is more likely to do so when circumstances change. And, someone who is told or feels that he does not belong in group X or group Y is going to look for another group to identify with. And, an effeminate guy who is straight is not clearly in any particular prexisting group, so it is hardly surprising that he will end up identifying with a new group of similar people. You are describing >how binary gender identity develops more than you are undermining the legitimacy of the identity.

And, the people you describe -- women with few secondary female characteristics and men lacking in male capabilities and virtues -- clearly don't fit neatly in either gender and almost certainly have attributes of the other gender. You are basically acknowledging that some middle group with attributes of each gender exists, so it seems that you are mostly objecting to the name. And note that society already acknowledge that there are women with male gender (not sex, but gender*) attributes: they are commonly called tomboys.

*You err in saying "Instead of admitting that they lack the attributes of their gender, they claim that they both male and female" -- they lack the attributes of their sex, not their gender. Gender = a set of roles, behaviors, etc, generally expected by society of the members of each sex. By calling themselves non-binary, they are indeed admitting that they lack the attributes of the gender associated with their sex.

I am reminded of how in Northern Ireland there are Catholic atheists and protestant atheists. If someone tells me they are non-binary, I immediately think, "yeah, but which one?"

You are basically acknowledging that some middle group with attributes of each gender exists,

Many of those traits are not just a linear spectrum, but seperate meters that we expect different genders to optimize differently. There are men who are weak cowards who also fail to be caring and compassionate.

Gender = a set of roles, behaviors, etc, generally expected by society of the members of each sex.

Using "gender" to refer to this instead of "gender roles" or "gender stereotypes" conflates it with the idea of "gender identity". The idea of "gender identity" claims that people have some inherent deeply-rooted "true" gender separate from both their bodies and what societal roles they fulfill or stereotypes they match. This then comes with a whole set of ideas about "misgendering", about "deadnaming" if the non-binary identification accompanied a request for a name change, etc.

Note that actually basing it off gender roles would be completely different, for one because it would be based on society rather than the individual. Nobody advocates calling every woman in the military "he" even though the job is a male gender role. Similarly someone might believe in stereotypical correlations such that he's surprised to see a female programmer of a white NBA player, but that doesn't mean he thinks those people are actually becoming male or black, not even partially.

Once again, the claim I am defending is not that someone "becomes male." It that they identify as male. A concomitant claim often is that society should treat those people the same as those born with penises (ie, of the male sex), but that does not necessarily follow. In other words, there are two claims: 1) sex and gender are different things; and 2) society should, in many instances, treat them as if they are the same. I am discussing only #1, which is true by the definition of "gender"

I am discussing only #1, which is true by the definition of "gender"

Well, not really. In standard usage it is a synonym for "sex".

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=gender

The "male-or-female sex" sense of the word is attested in English from early 15c. As sex (n.) took on erotic qualities in 20c., gender came to be the usual English word for "sex of a human being," in which use it was at first regarded as colloquial or humorous. Later often in feminist writing with reference to social attributes as much as biological qualities; this sense first attested 1963. Gender-bender is from 1977, popularized from 1980, with reference to pop star David Bowie.

Most people are not engaging in feminist academic writing, and so they usually do not imitate their confusing use of "gender". Everything from conversations with normal people to news articles to government/corporate forms will use "gender" and "sex" interchangeably. Meanwhile the "identify as" definition is sufficiently new that it isn't even mentioned. Needless to say, people are not obliged to use that one either, especially since it is typically used to smuggle in the contested assumption that people have an internal feeling of "gender identity".

It that they identify as male.

Then how does that follow from defining gender as "a set of roles, behaviors, etc, generally expected by society of the members of each sex"? Under this definition is it meaningful to say things like "Andriy falsely identifies as a man, since by fleeing Ukraine as a woman rather than staying she is refusing her society's able-bodied male gender role of staying in case she is needed to fight and die against Russia"? Or does it mean that gender self-identification is true by definition, in which case it is not a reflection of society's gender roles but of the "gender identity" definition?

I have discussed this ad nauseum elsewhere. You are referring to "gender identity" not "gender." And your Andriy example, yes that is fine. That is a claim about whether Andriy understands the societal norms, not about whether he actually has the belief that he is a man.

As for what the terms mean here is what Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas, had to say in the Bostock case:

"Sex," "sexual orientation," and "gender identity" are different concepts, as the Court concedes. Ante, at 1746-1747 ("homosexuality and transgender status are distinct concepts from sex"). And neither "sexual orientation" nor "gender identity" is tied to either of the two biological sexes. See ante, at 1742 (recognizing that "discrimination on these bases" does not have "some disparate impact on one sex or another"). Both men and women may be attracted to members of the opposite sex, members of the same sex, or members of both sexes.[8] And individuals who are born with the genes and organs of either biological sex may identify with a different gender.

And see Holloway v. Arthur Andersen & Co., 566 F. 2d 659 (9th Cir 1977) [refusing to extend protection of Title VII to transsexuals because discrimination against transsexualism is based on "gender" rather than "sex"]. That was 45 years ago. So this is not all that new a distinction.

I understand that terms are often conflated in the vernacular. Nevertheless, when pro-trans people use the terms, they mean them in the senses I have described. Hence, criticizing their arguments by using a different definition is not much of a criticism at all, because it does not address their actual claims.

The point is that "gender" meaning "gender identity" and "gender" meaning "gender roles" are different and incompatible definitions, and applying them to individual cases gives very different results. Under a gender-role definition of gender (which approximately nobody actually uses except in a motte-and-bailey fashion) Andriy is not a man due to defying the strict gender-role currently mandated by Ukrainian society with unmanly flight. Under a gender-identity definition of gender Andriy would be a man based purely on self-identification, even if the only difference from a stereotypical woman is a Twitter bio saying "he/him". Whatever definition is used it cannot coherently be both, and so "non-binary gender identity" is not meaningfully based on defining gender as "a set of roles, behaviors, etc, generally expected by society of the members of each sex".

Nevertheless, when pro-trans people use the terms, they mean them in the senses I have described.

The "difference between gender and sex" argument has actually fallen out of favor in trans-activist circles in recent years. It's now fairly common to see explicit arguments that trans people are whatever sex they identify as. But even before it was never really used consistently. For instance various governments have implemented plans to be more inclusive of non-binary people by letting people choose "SEX: X" on their driver's licenses, and apparently nobody involved in this process takes the opportunity to make it say "GENDER:" or even notices the distinction.

The point is that "gender" meaning "gender identity" and "gender" meaning "gender roles" are different and incompatible definitions,

I don't understand what you mean. Gender is not used to mean gender identity. They are distinct concepts. See my citations elsewhere, and see eg the definitions on the Planned Parenthood page

Sex is a label — male or female — that you’re assigned by a doctor at birth based on the genitals you’re born with and the chromosomes you have. It goes on your birth certificate.

Gender is much more complex: It’s a social and legal status, and set of expectations from society, about behaviors, characteristics, and thoughts. Each culture has standards about the way that people should behave based on their gender. This is also generally male or female. But instead of being about body parts, it’s more about how you’re expected to act, because of your sex.

Gender identity is how you feel inside and how you express your gender through clothing, behavior, and personal appearance. It’s a feeling that begins very early in life.

The "difference between gender and sex" argument has actually fallen out of favor in trans-activist circles in recent years. It's now fairly common to see explicit arguments that trans people are whatever sex they identify as.

As I have pointed out many times, this is actually a claim about how trans people should be treated. it is a claim, that transwomen should be treated AS IF they were people whose biological sex is female; it is not a claim that gender and sex are the same thing, nor that transgender women are of the female biological sex. If you have actual evidence that trans-activists now generally believe that the terms "sex" and "gender" mean the same thing, I would be interested in seeing it (note that I said "generally", not one nut job. There is always someone who is arguing something nutty, such as that sports in the US are all about white men feeling sexually inferior to black men - hence, baseball is about hitting little white balls with big brown sticks, and bowling is little white sticks being knocked down by big black balls. That doesn't mean anyone else believes it])

Because I see the opposite. eg: Genderspectrum.org says, "People tend to use the terms “sex” and “gender” interchangeably. But, while connected, the two terms are not equivalent."

Moreover, there is a whole Wikipedia page on the topic, and the only discussion of current criticism on the distinction is not by trans activists, but among psychiatrists who are engaging in a very inside-baseball argument about the relative contributions of nature and nurture to human behavior. And even that is posed not as a discussion of the terms "gender" and "sex' but rather "sex difference" and "gender difference."

More comments

A kid who identifies as Hui in China might well identify as Chinese if he moves to the US if the only other Asian kid in school is Han. Someone who never identified as a member of a group is more likely to do so when circumstances change.

This is a poor example. The Hui in China are largely descended from Han Chinese who converted to Islam (in fact, the word it derives from - huihui - describes people who follow Abrahamic religions, not just Islam). There is no reason why they would not consider themselves Chinese, even if we go back centuries, even if they differentiate themselves from Han Chinese, as they're not exactly a people who kept a separate society which was then conquered by/did the conquering of China, nor have they ever tried to establish their own state and cultural history entirely apart from China (unless you count the Taiping, but then the Taiping were very much so Chinese nationalist).

You would be better served with almost literally any other minority in China, like the Zhuang, or the Miao, or the Manchus.

Gender = a set of roles, behaviors, etc, generally expected by society of the members of each sex.

So is a gender a specific set of roles attributed to members of a sex in a given society?

There is no reason why they would not consider themselves Chinese,

Well, judging by this, the Chinese govt seems to think that they don't, or at least not as much as the govt would prefer. It quotes Xi Jinping as saying that “Cultural identity is the deepest kind of identity,” which tends to refute what I see as your implicit argument that identity must be based on genetic ancestry. And btw Wikipedia cites a source which apparently states that "Communist theorists used his argument to justify their early treatment of the Hui as an ethnic minority or ‘minority nationality’, resulting on the Chinese Communist Party identifying Chinese Muslims as a historically oppressed minzu rather than a religious group."

But, that is kind of the point: Identity is flexible, and what it means to be "Chinese" can change, depending on circumstances.

So is a gender a specific set of roles attributed to members of a sex in a given society?

As I understand it, it does not make sense to refer to "a gender" in that way, though it seems that people might sometimes use it as shorthand for "gender roles." Our society, AFAIK, only has norms re males and females, and note that, as I understand it, someone who claims to be nonbinary is not saying that they are a third gender, but rather do not fit in either of the the two genders that society recognizes.

A kid who identifies as Hui in China might well identify as Chinese if he moves to the US if the only other Asian kid in school is Han.

…

Well, judging by this, the Chinese govt seems to think that they don't, or at least not as much as the govt would prefer. It quotes Xi Jinping as saying that “Cultural identity is the deepest kind of identity,” which tends to refute what I see as your implicit argument that identity must be based on genetic ancestry. And btw Wikipedia cites a source which apparently states that "Communist theorists used his argument to justify their early treatment of the Hui as an ethnic minority or ‘minority nationality’, resulting on the Chinese Communist Party identifying Chinese Muslims as a historically oppressed minzu rather than a religious group."

I am not exactly making the argument that ethnicity is based strictly on genetic ancestry, but that there has been no real Hui identity that is divorced from the civilizational project of China, which doesn’t exclude that they can be a minority, or segregated, or whatnot. This is the case even if we take for granted that the Hui are a separate people (minzu as in the Wikipedia article you linked). In that sense, then, I don’t see where the oddity is in a Hui person thinking themselves Chinese, unless you explicitly try to equate Chinese with Han.

This is not the case with the Manchu, for example, who have a long history as a separate people.

Your first sentence was saying that “a person who identifies as Hui in China might well identify as Chinese” seems to imply that a Hui person would usually rather not identify as Chinese, which is very odd sounding to me.

Regardless, it’s a minor quibble, no big deal really.

Our society, AFAIK, only has norms re males and females, and note that, as I understand it, someone who claims to be nonbinary is not saying that they are a third gender, but rather do not fit in either of the the two genders that society recognizes.

What exactly is the purpose of neopronouns and “they/them”, then? What exactly are the people (some of whom I know personally) who sometimes flip between “she/her” and “they/them”, and take it very seriously, doing? What about someone who decides to be “xe/xir”?

(One simple way to do away with all this is to just have unisex pronouns for everybody. Alas, that ship has sailed.)

Isn't the use of "they" or any other alternative to he and she consistent with being nonbinary? As for xe, that is apparently exactly what you call for: a unisex pronoun

Yes, now to get it adopted by the entirety of society!

The problem with the they and she thing was the inconsistency and the insistence on different ones at different times (as well as the rarity until recently of using they as a singular for a named subject in modern English); xe is also just not common - I had not heard of it before being exposed to someone who wanted to be called that, nor do I think people who insist on being called xe/xir in contradistinction to more traditional pronouns banking on the idea that having unisex pronouns stops all of this silliness. (Edit: I would be more amenable to going back to the singular they, as English I believe has a history of using it as such, but even then it still just sounds wrong somehow. Xe/xir or ze/zir etc also just look and sound aesthetically revolting, at least to me.)

What I meant was a language, like Estonian or Finnish, which lacks gendered grammar entirely. That sort of cultural and linguistic structure/norm probably isn’t going to happen without a great deal of time and who knows what else.

Gender = a set of roles, behaviors, etc, generally expected by society of the members of each sex.

This definition presupposes that these roles are all learned and are mere societal expectations (presumably arbitrary ones at that).

But actually the same thing that makes your body grow a penis or a vagina also affects the brain, the hormones etc. The gender-sex distinction is made up, it's not even possible to express it in any other language than English (other than outright loaning the word "gender" as is). Gender started out as a euphemism for sex, to avoid referring to the act of sex (before that, it only referred to grammatical categories). They should be nothing more than synonyms.

No, it doesn't assume that. A norm is literally that which is deemed normal. Eg: Men are stronger than women, so it is natural that society would deem it normal that men do jobs which demand physical strength. There is no reason at all that gender norms should be arbitrary. But they can be nonarbitrary, yet nevertheless change, as when they take more extreme forms, such as "women can't be lumberjacks" or "men don't cry" or "married women shouldn't work."

And, feel free to suggest a different term, if you don't like "gender." We would be having this same discussion, regardless.

Feminists who still understand gender as the roles you mention are fringe today and labeled TERFs. Yes, originally gender studies was about these roles and women's place in society etc, but today's woke gender concept is something else. The whole point was that these gender roles are something you are pushed into by your social setting, not something you choose based on your unique snowflake personality quirks. The original goal wasn't to tell people "hey, you don't like the roles/social expectations put on you? Then you aren't actually a woman/man!" but to allow women and men more flexibility in shaping their roles to their personality and temperament without anyone denying that they can live like that as women/men.

Interestingly enough, a significant chunk of the Hungarian left (including a massively popular leftist YouTube show) are also with that earlier definition and are woke-critical/gender-critical. It would be worth a post sometime I think.

The original goal wasn't to tell people "hey, you don't like the roles/social expectations put on you? Then you aren't actually a woman/man!" but to allow women and men more flexibility in shaping their roles to their personality and temperament without anyone denying that they can live like that as women/men.

I don't think that's the intention, but when you start putting all sorts of prescriptive political, moral and aesthetic judgements on these things....

What they hell did they think was going to happen?

The problem was a lack of self-criticism where they never realized that trying to allow men and women more flexibility in terms of personality and temperament was always in conflict with the political goals of more freedom for women, or at least how they went about it focusing on universal socialization and the Blank Slate.

The original goal wasn't to tell people "hey, you don't like the roles/social expectations put on you? Then you aren't actually a woman/man!"

I think that is an issue that is orthogonal to the one I am raising. I am merely saying that the concept referred to as "gender" is different from the one referred to as "sex." How a person who does not conform to current gender norms should or should not respond is a separate issue.

Is your gender the social expectation from you or is it your inner feeling?

Does someone who doesn't conform to "current gender norms" have a different gender then?

No, It does not make sense to say that someone "has" a gender in that sense, because, as I said, gender is a set of norms, etc. You can conform to the set of norms assigned to your sex, or not, and based on gender norms, you can identify with your sex, the opposite sex, or in the case of those who identify as nonbinary, neither.

Identity is, by definition, an inner feeling. Whether a given identity should be recognized by others is a different question, but even ethnic identities are manufactured to some degree and are a function of beliefs/feelings. See, eg, the literature on the development of Scottish ethnic identity, and of course arguably almost no one identified as "Palestinian" pre-1948, but plenty of people do today.

More comments

EDIT: WRONG POST LOL

As for this: I can't find it in my heart to care about gender at all in any circumstances. The whole concept seems kinda silly to me. There are people, and they have phenotypes and capacities and that is the end of it. We have decided on two genders because sex is easy to see and is important for reproduction and people like fucking each other along those lines pretty often, but we could just as easily justify "Curly hair gender" or "reaches the top shelf gender".

I'll respect other peoples preferences, but if it was up to me we would take the whole thing way less seriously.

Then again, that's easy for me to say as someone who doesn't feel like any gender/not any gender. I can't in good faith yell advice from outside the ring.

The whole idea of non-binary gender seems to me like it's a natural (and probably inevitable) result of the idea that gender is separate from sex. Occasional physical deformities aside, I imagine most people (though probably not all) would agree that we have only two sexes in mankind. So, if you take gender to be a euphemism for sex, then it naturally follows that there can only be two genders.

Decouple those concepts, though, and it's different. If gender is merely something to do with social norms and how you feel you fit into them, then it seems only natural that there can be more than two. There may be different combinations of social norms that one might group together in one package, and you as an individual may feel sometimes strongly drawn to one package, and sometimes to another.

Personally I think that the whole line of thought is nonsense. We have only two sexes, gender (as separate from sex) is not a thing, and so there's no "other" option for gender. But disagree though I do, I do at least think it's understandable how the non binary people are likely thinking about this topic.

I could understand the "I'm non-binary" but the whole "I'm non-binary trans femme" bit is where the confusion sets in. If you're non-binary, where does the trans bit come it? Is trans now meant to be sex not gender, despite all the protestations previously that sex and gender were two separate things? And anyway, how can you be both non-binary and one of the two binary femme/masc or female/male?

It does seem like attention seeking, more than anything else. If being cis het (white, male) is the worst identity in the world because Privilege, Systemic Racism, Oppressor, Colonizer, etc. then non-binary is an easy way to go "I'm not cis het! I'm one of the oppressed queer minority! Don't beat me up, please!" Most of the "I'm non-binary" that I've seen online identifying as such are pretty clearly female, the couple of male are also clearly identifiable as male. So yeah, I'm leaning towards 'fad" (if everyone in your social bubble is some flavour of queer, being the sole cis het is uncomfortable and makes you stand out as behind the times, some dull normie who might as well live in a suburb and vote Republican).

To answer your first question, the "trans" in "non-binary trans femme" is using "trans" as an umbrella term, with "non-binary" as a subset of that.

Personally I think that the whole line of thought is nonsense. We have only two sexes, gender (as separate from sex) is not a thing, and so there's no "other" option for gender. But disagree though I do, I do at least think it's understandable how the non binary people are likely thinking about this topic.

Agreed. As I've said before, I feel like the introduction of "gender" as something entirely different from "sex" is potentially insidious. It'd be like if I went around asking people to treat me as if I were 6'4". When people say "no, you're actually 5'10"", I reply "no, you're referring to my height. That's entirely different from my tallness. My height is 5'10", but my tallness is 6'4"".

I don't understand why you think the separation is nonsense. Social norms about the sexes do exist, and they are clearly separate from sex, since unlike sex, they differ from society to society and, within a given society, they change over time. So, we have given it a name. Moreover, there are always people who do not conform to current social norms (a male nurse in 1950? Crazy!)

i thinkI'd say a couple things to that. Gender roles may be real, but they can be somewhat arbitrary, and tend to be based on sex anyhow. But I think the very arbitraryness of gender roles in different places and times makes me utterly confused about why one's gender identity should matter to me at all, more than, going with the genre comparison, whether you like country music or rock or blues. it's something to know about you, I guess, but there's no need to give it any more attention than that.

On the other hand, sex matters a lot. It matters biologically, medically, it has for most of history mattered legally as well. Rights have historically been granted or denied on the basis of sex. Similarly, from the concept of sex derives the concept of sexual orientation. Most people's orientation is towards the opposite sex, but there are some people whose sexual orientation is towards those of the same sex or towards both sexes. Genderists will thus say that a lesbian is someone who is attracted to people who "identify as female." Meanwhile, lesbians say no, they are attracted to people of the female sex only, and are not attracted to men no matter how men self-identify. And then they get accused of being transphobic by people who want to erase the concept of sex and replace it with this concept of gender.

But I think the very arbitraryness of gender roles in different places and times makes me utterly confused about why one's gender identity should matter to me at all, more than, going with the genre comparison, whether you like country music or rock or blues. it's something to know about you, I guess, but there's no need to give it any more attention than that.

I can't remember who, but someone raised an imo very effective argument against this elevation of gender identity by pointing out that some of the absurd claims made (i.e. you need some medical doctor or unassailable subjective insight to determine who a woman is) lead to a situation where you theoretically can't define women in such a way that it captures American, Saudi and Japanese women at the same time.

Except that nobody - even the most "woke" - acts like this is the case.

Pretty sure there were male "nurses" (caregivers to sick people) all throughout history. There are lots of tasks involved that need physical strength, carrying and lifting patients, restraining aggressive ones, etc.

That is why I referred specifically to 1950, and implicitly to the

USA, when the gender norms deemed nursing to be women's work, and why I said that gender norms often change over time.

1950s USA is this magical reference point for some reason, that justifies introducing a whole new concept called "gender". Actually that's not even surprising, I just wrote a comment on how we are stuck in the 60s on repeat, so yeah I guess comparing ourselves to one decade ago make sense.

So, had I said 1940, instead, when AKAIK the norms were the same, you would agree that gender norms can change? I am really not sure what your position on that is, and of course, that is my entire point. You are picking on the nit that is my admittedly somewhat snarky example, but are not addressing the underlying point.

Just because men and women play different roles, wear different clothes etc at different historical times and technological circumstances doesn't somehow negate that they are men and women. We don't need a new concept (gender) to be able to say that women had lives and jobs like this before but like that after.

Also if gender is merely the difference between the roles in different cultures or times, are transgender people adopting some roles from a different era than today? I thought they transition from male to female etc. and not from 21st century to, I don't know, 8th century.

Come on. I didn’t say that they aren't men and women. I said that norms have changed. My entire point has been that sex and gender mean different things, so how can you believe that I said that?

I don't get the relevance of the transgender question. What transgender people do or feel is not really relevant to what the term "gender" means, nor with whether gender norms are constant or instead change over time and space.

More comments

Here's an old comment of mine from the old Reddit site:

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/n8xict/comment/gxmeur8/

People say that gender is a social construct, but I think there is a more traditionally and standard-use word for what is being called "gender" these days ("expression as a person's behavior, mannerisms, interests, and appearance that are associated with gender in a particular cultural context"). Prior to 2010, I think that definition would not be called "gender" but rather "gender roles". I think it would be much less controversial if people said "gender roles are socially constructed" as opposed to "gender is socially constructed. After all, women in India, China, or wherever else do not act like women in the US, Canada, etc, so at least part of gender roles is socially constructed, if not all.

I sort of feel that this playing fast-and-loose with the terms "gender" and "gender-roles" has had implications for the development of the transgender movement. If people say that gender-roles are socially constructed, no biggie, no complaints from almost anyone. If people say that gender is socially-constructed, that would mean that being a man or woman itself is socially constructed; most people don't believe that to be true. After all, a woman in India may dress differently than a woman in the US, but everyone still agrees that they're both women. We don't believe that India-woman is a different gender from US-woman. I feel like the hot-swapping of these terms has been put to questionable and potentially insidious use.

I still have seen no convincing explanation of why people use the term gender these days to describe what used to be called gender roles.

We attach social roles to many attributes of people. For example, there are social roles for old people and young people that can differ between cultures. So do we need a new word for "age" that describes the social role attached to one's age?

I kinda feel like "adulting" looks suspiciously like the genesis of such terminology. And if I'm being pedantic, my high school health textbook in 2002 divided age into things like chronological age and social age, but those feel more like "biological sex" and "gender roles" rather than "sex" Vs "gender", so IDK.

What's wrong with "social expectations" and "social roles"?

Sure, but usually context makes it clear. For example we don't need a fancy academic term that distinguishes the social role of a police officer from the occupation of police a police officer, so I don't see why we need a separate term for the social role of men and women.

If we had an ages-long debate about the social role of police officers, it would be rather useful to have a specific word for that.

I dunno, there are languages that have no equivalent of the word "gender" and seem to be having that conversation just fine.

But on the other hand, it is rather silly to argue against having specific and precise terms.

See, there's the rub. Academia loves jargon because they think it makes their field more serious, but jargon doesn't necessarily mean a word i specific or precise. When you point that out they love to blame Twitter or Tumbler activists, but that's incorrect, a lot of vagueness of different terms comes from academia itself. Just check the usage of the word "neoliberal" if you don't believe me.

If a word is creating more confusion than clarity, I think it's perfectly fine to suggest dropping it's usage.

That would not distinguish social norms around sex from those around everything else.

So? We don't come up with a fancy term for every other type of social norm or role.

I am not sure how fancy "gender" is in comparison to the obvious alternative, "gender norms." I really don't understand what the objection is. People who study this stuff use a particular term. So what? Why does that matter?

This is like left wingers who get all bent out of shape about corporate personhood, and as a result write [pointless, irrelevant articles]{https://theprogressivecynic.com/2013/06/23/if-corporations-are-people-they-are-sociopaths/) because they don't understand that the term "person" has a specific legal meaning which .

I am not sure how fancy "gender" is in comparison to the obvious alternative, "gender norms." I really don't understand what the objection is. People who study this stuff use a particular term. So what? Why does that matter?

It matters a great deal because they are coopting a preexitsing term with preexisting definitions and using it to achieve their preferred outcome. The words are charged with previous connotations, that are inseparable in most people's minds, and as such can have sway on the public. This is, like, the core argument of Scott's brilliant essay Social Justice and Words Words Words which largely popularized the term "Motte and Bailey" from which this forum itself derives its name.

The paper was critiquing post-modernism, an area I don’t know enough about to determine whether or not their critique was fair. It complained that post-modernists sometimes say things like “reality is socially constructed”. There’s an uncontroversial meaning here – we don’t experience the world directly, but through the categories and prejudices implicit to our society. For example, I might view a certain shade of bluish-green as blue, and someone raised in a different culture might view it as green. Okay. Then post-modernists go on to say that if someone in a different culture thinks that the sun is light glinting off the horns of the Sky Ox, that’s just as real as our own culture’s theory that the sun is a mass of incandescent gas a great big nuclear furnace. If you challenge them, they’ll say that you’re denying reality is socially constructed, which means you’re clearly very naive and think you have perfect objectivity and the senses perceive reality directly.

The writers of the paper compare this to a form of medieval castle, where there would be a field of desirable and economically productive land called a bailey, and a big ugly tower in the middle called the motte. If you were a medieval lord, you would do most of your economic activity in the bailey and get rich. If an enemy approached, you would retreat to the motte and rain down arrows on the enemy until they gave up and went away. Then you would go back to the bailey, which is the place you wanted to be all along.

By this metaphor, statements like “God is an extremely powerful supernatural being who punishes my enemies” or “The Sky Ox theory and the nuclear furnace theory are equally legitimate” or “Men should not be allowed to participate in discussions about gender” are the bailey – not defensible at all, but if you can manage to hold them you’ve got it made.

Statements like “God is just the order and love in the universe” and “No one perceives reality perfectly directly” and “Men should not interject into safe spaces for women” are the motte – extremely defensible, but useless.

As long as nobody’s challenging you, you spend time in the bailey reaping the rewards of occupying such useful territory. As soon as someone challenges you, you retreat to the impregnable motte and glare at them until they get annoyed and go away. Then you go back to the bailey.

Huh? It was RococoBasilica and you claiming we need the term to talk about social roles, how is saying "not really" getting bent out of shape? If anything, isn't it people who try to get others fired for "misgendering" who are getting bent out of shape?

I was responding to a very specific question, which was why not use the generic term "social norms." My answer was that there are many types of social norms, and the term refers to a specific one. Not sure what that has to do with misgendering. I can believe that 1) gender norms exist; 2) therefore, we need a term to distinguish them from other classes of norms; 3) the term "gender" is reasonable term to use to refer to those norms, even if it is not the one I would have chosen; and 4) left discourse around misgendering is submoronic

More comments

Not OP but I would call them "gender roles".

Call them "sex roles" if you prefer, it's all the same to me.

Gender doesn't refer to nothing. It a synonym for sex. We could say sex roles, but that sounds too much like it's referring to something related to the act of sex.

Have you heard the term "gender-creative"? When I heard it, it was used in a self-identifying manner (signifying an umbrella term that covered LGBT+), and I thought it was a bit too on-the-nose to remain popular for long.

I'm not in a position to analyze the complexities of what goes on in someone else's head. If you happen to "feel purple" some percentage of the time, you do you. But I am most certainly capable of recognizing when someone's acting like a narcissistic twat, and I don't particularly care if that person's got a constantly-updated Tumblr explaining why.

I prefer genderspecial. Probably because I've lost all patience with being expected to play along with the games of random people I don't know or barely know but who demand I agree to pretend I believe their version of reality on pain of social ostracism.


What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats