Comment by bigmealbigmeal
4 hours ago
To be honest, I apologise if the following appears a bit terse; I’m just really frustrated with what you’ve said and this is the best I can describe why that’s the case (without watering it down)
We don’t need to step back and work out the fundamental nature of sex and gender in order to have a functional conversation about them.
I don’t need to provide a definition of a chair before I can tell you that ones with three legs are more stable (“but what is a chair? what is the exact definition? aren’t some of them tables? aren’t some three legged chairs less stable?”). We just don’t have to do this. Do you do it for chairs? Or just gender? Why? Does it help feminism or trans rights to interrupt a conversation about male mental health with a semantic rabbit hole?
As for your second paragraph, there very much are studies showing the correlation being described, and they’re very easy to find. It would have been far more constructive to actually ask rather than suggest it’s an “assumption” — or even better, to research it yourself.
Among my favorite Paul Graham essays:
<https://www.paulgraham.com/heresy.html>
>For example, when someone calls a statement "x-ist," they're also implicitly saying that this is the end of the discussion. They do not, having said this, go on to consider whether the statement is true or not. Using such labels is the conversational equivalent of signalling an exception. That's one of the reasons they're used: to end a discussion.
>If you find yourself talking to someone who uses these labels a lot, it might be worthwhile to ask them explicitly if they believe any babies are being thrown out with the bathwater. Can a statement be x-ist, for whatever value of x, and also true? If the answer is yes, then they're admitting to banning the truth.
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Please don't try to end our constructive discussions, mmoose; people (men and women sure fine) have a tough enough time without having to get the language police involved.
[this will be my last response to this thread, as I continue hoping somebody learned anything, today]