Comment by antonfire
5 years ago
> Contrapoints is a homophobic monster who supports shaming people with "genital preferences"
Jesus, what was the phrase you used? "Straight to ideological slander"?
> I'm super behind being sensitive, but if you're six inches taller than the others, have a beard, or breasts, etc, those are sex linked traits.
So if you were talking to me and saw someone who looks like Blair White across the room, and wanted to single that person out, do you think you'd spot that person's biological sex and say "him over there" to me rather than "her over there"?
It's not straight anywhere though. It came over years of watching CP defend literal incel terrorists beating up lesbians who refuse to have sex with them, while gaslighting the victims and defending the attacks. CP didn't coin "Cotton Ceiling" but they sure go on about it. If kinkshaming is bad, what is it to personally shame lesbians who reject men?
And I didn't lead with it, I used it to explain why I found your reference to be less than compelling.
> So if you were talking to me and saw someone who looks like Blair White across the room, and wanted to single that person out, do you think you'd spot that person's biological sex and say "him over there" to me rather than "her over there"?
You and I are already talking about Blair so I'd say 'He'. But If I thought it might be ambiguous I wouldn't use either. Like I wouldn't use a shirt-color if I couldn't see it clearly, or thought that you couldn't.
And I won't use people's chosen pronouns but I don't pick fights either so I'd sidestep the issue in their home or at their event.
But if you mean, would I spot Blair if I didn't know them? Ehh, I dunno.
Do you think this means I'm reading their gender expression? Doesn't that implicitly assume that there are only two gender expressions then, such that I'm being fooled into seeing the other one? This whole angle feels like it'd be labelled regressive, and it brings up the question of how one would be expected to recognize 'Moon Gender' at all.
It feels like it'd be simpler to just say that I would be mistaken about their sex.
Alright, I'm pretty burned out on this conversation so this is gonna be my last post. It's been distracting me and I want my real life back. I'll just try to wrap up the bits I find interesting.
> But if you mean, would I spot Blair if I didn't know them?
That's more or less what I mean, but also, would you, on top of that, expect me to spot the same thing?
> Do you think this means I'm reading their gender expression?
I don't think that logically follows, and I certainly don't think I'm going to convince you of that.
I think I have a chance of convincing you that the argument you gave in the paragraph starting with "What people who harp on pronouns miss is" in the comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25379317 is a bad argument for the claim that pronouns (should?) refer to biological sex rather than gender. So I'm shooting for that. (But not for convincing you that the conclusion is wrong.)
I think the Blaire White across a room scenario suggests that pronouns are more useful in a referential sense if they're used in a way that aligns with gender presentation (assuming a person's gender presentation falls neatly into male or female) than if they're used in a way that aligns with biological sex, in the case where those things differ. So if you're really just optimizing for referential usefulness when you're using "he" and "she", I don't think "biological sex" is where you're going to land. I think you're going to land closer to "gender", and even closer to "gender presentation". These things align for most people, so usually it doesn't matter, but in the cases where it matters I expect "biological sex" to be less referentially useful pretty often.
I also don't think the Blaire White scenario is unusual. I know a handful of trans people in person, and the same applies to them, i.e. if you were to point someone who looks like one of them out of a room and use a pronoun to help me know which person you're talking about, the pronoun that matches their gender identity would do a better job than the pronoun that matches their biological sex.
I also don't think it's just me, i.e. I don't think most people are much more prone to 'seeing' someone's true biological sex in this kind of scenario than I am.
> Doesn't that implicitly assume that there are only two gender expressions then?
Sort of. I think "that thing that you see and also expect me to see that makes you choose which of 'he' or 'she' you would use if you want to be referentially useful when pointing out a person across the room" doesn't quite capture what "gender presentation" is either. (Hence the hedge with "if anything" in my earlier comment.) I just think that thing lines up with "gender presentation" a lot better than it lines up with "biological sex" in the cases where those differ.
> It brings up the question of how one would be expected to recognize 'Moon Gender' at all.
Taking it seriously, in real life, for people with Moon Gender (or whatever outside-the-binary gender identity you want to substitute)? I don't think one is expected to just recognize it based on presentation. Hence, the practice of being explicit about preferred pronouns in circles that care about about this.
> I think the Blaire White across a room scenario suggests that pronouns are more useful in a referential sense if they're used in a way that aligns with gender presentation
I think we should have defined what we think of as gender expression. I think it's stuff like affectations, hair styles, makeup, "gendered" clothing (dresses), etc.
Harry Styles wore a dress recently to much acclaim. He was lauded for expanding the male repertoire.
> I also don't think it's just me, i.e. I don't think most people are much more prone to 'seeing' someone's true biological sex in this kind of scenario than I am.
I saw a man, in a dress. And I think that's what everyone saw.
The difference between Harry and a transwoman is - intent, which is invisible. I only know Harry isn't trans because the article told me.
> I just think that thing lines up with "gender presentation" a lot better than it lines up with "biological sex" in the cases where those differ.
I would have agreed. Ten years ago nobody was going out of their way to queer everything. If a man wore a dress they either lost a bet or wanted to be seen as female. But now, in a world where nothing signifies sex, how can I read your gender expression?
But now a dress isn't part of gender expression anymore and is simply a garment. I guess we're expected to just move the bar and say that because Harry wasn't wearing a dress and lipstick he's a guy not a transwomen but that feels fleeting.
> I don't think one is expected to just recognize [Moon Gender] based on presentation. Hence, the practice of being explicit about preferred pronouns in circles that care about about this.
But that makes a mockery of the entire idea of gender expression. Now it's just people demanding special labels again.
The whole ideology is pushed as a unit and lives and dies as a unit. Either gender expression is a thing, and there are a finite but large set of them, and sex doesn't exist as a binary, and trans babies are real, etc, or it's not.
> Alright, I'm pretty burned out on this conversation so this is gonna be my last post.
I sometimes try to have proper conversation, but these days try to make sure I'm not dealing with some form of alt-right bandwagon trolling by checking comment histories. Every single HexagonalKitten comment so far has been about how others get all upset about things, and, of course, 'immigration issues'.
It's not that I have an issue discussing these topics, but at some point I do feel I have to use some quick heuristics to weed out the trolls or 'culture wars' group-thinkers.
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