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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm not sure I agree with "frequently", but the bigger point is "gender will always be there" is only true for the hypothetical anthropologist's word for tendencies in behavior. If we're talking about core parts of identity, it is very much the case that gender might not be there.
a) So it's pretty clear you're using agreement with the idea that there might be some sex-based tendencies in behavior, to smuggle in acceptance for the "core part of your identity" idea.
b) Actually, you'd need to further define "gender roles" for me to agree. To me, the word implies normative prescriptions, not mere correlations, and western societies have spent a lot of time deconstructing the former, so I think to the extent they still exist, they're barely hanging on.
Well if you think "a preverbal child unsnapping a onesie to make a dress / pulling out barrettes out of their hair is a gender expression" is quite "like that", allow me to introduce you to Dr. Diane Ehrensaft of Benioff's Children's Hospital. She recently repeated that claim at a recent National Transgender Health Summit (sorry, no timestamp or clip), where she also said she was transitioning a non-verbal autistic child until the parents pulled them out of the clinic.
I don't disagree with this in a hypothetical sense but that world is borderline unrecognisable from the one that exists today or has ever existed in the modern West. Except for a small number of people widely regarded as eccentric, gender has always been critical to almost everyone's identity in the recent past, and still is.
Perhaps, but I think overall you're being a bit restrictive here. In order for gender roles and gender to be important, it doesn't have to be some strict delineation between male and feminine roles, strictly policed, but could instead be merely about expectations surrounding patterns of behaviour etc. I think 'normative prescriptions' is also a bit restrictive, as such expectations can exist without any individual considering 'normative'.
Watched the shorter clip and her statement, while I wouldn't necessarily agree with it, also definitely was not saying 'your child is a girl is they make their onesie a dress'. I think she was simply saying that children can be cognisant of gender from an early age, and so in doing something like that it's plausible that a child knows the gendered connotations of what they are doing. Again though, that doesn't mean they are a girl, and I don't think Ehrensaft is saying that, the point is just to show that children can be surprisingly attuned to gender norms. You could draw various conclusions from this, but I don't think her statement implies anything close to the level of 'if you want to wear a dress as a young child you're probably a girl'.
I don't think so. How would you go about proving it? One thing you're definitely wrong about is that such people would be regarded as eccentrics, because you wouldn't even know you're talking to one unless they explicitly told you, and few people are going to go on at length about what they don't believe. What's more, as one such person, on the few occasions the topic came up, and I shared my position on gender identity, I never had anyone express any sort of indication that my views are outside of the norm.
No, I'm not. I'm not saying you should use any particular definition, I'm saying you should be clear about which one you're using. I already have the issue that you're conflating "gender" as norms with "gender" as identity, and using the former in order to claim there will always be "gender", but even "gender" as norms will only always exist if you mean "a set of behaviors that correlate with sex" rather than normative prescriptions.
There's a few issues with this.
I don't think there is even a theoretical way to tell the difference. What, specifically, is "being a boy" supposed to mean, if it's not "being cognisant of gender" and "making a gendered statement" (that you are a boy) about yourself?
Even if you were right about your interpretation, you'd still be simply wrong about there being anything definitive about it. Here's a quote from the clip:
Nowhere in the entire clip is she saying anything that would indicate that a kid saying "I boy" is anything other then a boy, and she is emphatically making a case for believing the children when they make these gendered statements.
If she meant what you said, why did she socially transition a kid that had such severe autism that they were effectively non-verbal, and wanted to continue to medically transition her, and finds it very sad that the parents pulled her out? It again seems pretty clear that her whole approach is to believe children when they make these "gender expressions" and making medical decision based on them.
The idea that pre-verbal children are cognisant of a concept that regularly flusters trained academics, when you ask them some basic questions, is itself pretty batty.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link