This is new! I usually don’t get rape fantasies, but Thunderf00t’s angry rabble have opened up exciting new vistas.
The whole point of free-thinking is to express what you have been thinking to others; what would the point of Socrates’ trial have been if he had not made the impressive speeches he made? If the people judging him had simply written him off as ‘too out there’ and simply condemned him five minutes into his talking? The point I’m trying to make is that as much as I think Watson is at a minimum misguided, you are culpable for much worse. Free Speech is the fundamental human right; without it, we are all doomed. You removing his website because you disagree on a matter of opinion makes you as bad as the papacy banning books, or Iran banning books, etc. etc…. In other words, by shutting off free expression you have sauntered effortlessly to lines the old and evil; too much information is bad, we decide what you should be exposed to, let’s have Salman Rushdie killed for writing something we don’t agree with. You have not tried to have Tf00t killed yet(my, what restraint you have), but at this point I wouldn’t be surprised to see that either. You’re supposed to be a scientist; a little open-mindedness goes a long way in investigating the truth.
In this modern world the only way to survive and live well is to laugh, rather than cry… A little cynicism never hurt anyone.
Anyway, I don’t believe I shall be reading your blogs any more; at least until you apologize to Mr. f00t; if you don’t all I can to is hope you get raped to death by Jaguars in the Yucatan. Next time think with your brain instead of your balls, and maybe over time I’ll grow to trust and respect you again. until then, eat shit. I mean, you’re supposed to be a scientist, for Christ’s sake.
I could swear some more but based off what I know of you you’re probably bawling already. Nobody likes a crybaby. You old cunt.
Thanks for your time!
Phil Krstulich,
someone who actually believes in equality of right for all humankind, and who isn’t a two-faced fuck who pretends to be in favor of free speech while trying to stamp it out.
Curses! My plan to have Thunderf00t killed has been exposed!
I have now seen a teeny tiny fraction of what Anita Sarkeesian gets.
cyberCMDR #498
You, Sir, win one internets.
(and yes, attempting to forcibly stifle or derail a discussion counts as abusive in that one is abusing others by denying them the ability to have said discussion when they want to have it)
Barely skimmed thread, going to reply to sheeptick next.
I’ve always been uncomfortable calling myself a skeptic because it feels like calling myself a hacker — it’s a term others should apply to you if they decide you warrant it, not one you should just claim for yourself. Moreso in the case of skeptic, because basic cognitive biases inhibit useful introspection about whether you’re really acting like a skeptic.
Awright, you heard the drive-by troll. All youse non-lesbians get outta the pool!
Sheesh.
that sounds like a good idea.
that’s true, but guaranteed to spark stupid-ass arguments about the meaning of the word :-p
Setar
Setar, for my “logic” to apply to anything we must first agree an actual disorder such as mental disorders of ASPD.
Then my logic would say we should still call pedophiles pedophiles, but NOT use pedophilie in a derogatory manner such as: “you are a pedophile” (compare to “you are a retard”). You are free to disagree, I was only throwing out an oppinion, and i didnt have pedophilia in mind.
So explain to me where my post prove anything. So far i am going to say you are wrong.
I just now saw Jadehawk said what i wanted to say only better.
QFT
Erm… *looks confused, tries to stand half-in and half-out of the pool*
A correction for my post #6, I meant to say: Setar, for my “logic” to apply to anything we must first agree pedophilia is an actual mental disorder such as ASPD.
Months?
Bwhahahahahahahahahahahaha! :falls over laughing: Oh, so cute.
As a bisexual, I’m claiming my right to hang out in the pool.
Boo. Spamfilter.
*sits on edge of pool, watching the lesbians have all the fun*
davidbohm:
Many of the words we use for “stupid” are just normalized words that used to refer to various categories of “mental retardation” – such as “idiot” “moron” etc.
However, they haven’t been used clinically for a long enough time that many people don’t remember their origins.
Those words are bad enough, but “Retarded” is not one of those words. It has been used clinically and in government documents and other uses very recently – to refer to people with developmental and cognitive disabilities.
However, the history of a word, by itself, is not the reason people don’t use a particular word. Many of the common words we use have horrible origins, and it would be difficult to cleanse our language of the remnants of all the hateful disgusting pitfalls of our collective history.
What makes it not okay to use a word, is if using that word currently actively harms an embattled group of people. If you don’t know how to figure out if a group is “embattled” just ask yourself, “When was the last time this group has been targeted for mass slaughter by the dominant culture?” If you can answer that question, then maybe, ethically, your unrepentant desire to use a slur used against them is trumped by their interest not to be reminded that assholes that sometimes have guns treat them as subhuman.
And who do you ask, if you want to know if using a word currently actively harms an embattled group of people?
You ask that group of people.
If someone uses that sort of language and just somehow missed the damned memo, it’s polite to simply educate that person. Sure. Count yourself educated.
Of course, I would have hoped that a well-publicized national level campaign against the word’s use in government and media would have tipped you off.
But y’know, you strike me as a willfully ignorant jerk-face, ultra-privileged piss-ant wannabe pseudo-intellectual stallion monkey who just can’t think of anything else you could possibly say; ’cause your inner imagination-works lingo-static insultation mechanism got a putrid piece of maggot-soaked word vomit stuck in it’s gears so it was replaced by a used 5th grade bully’s you bought, being sold at a garage-sale after the original owner grew the fuck up.
Just sayin’.
Melby,
:D
I’m reminded of bell hooks’s “I advocate …” instead of “I am a …”.
But “I advocate skepticism” still sounds to me like “I advocate acting like I’m the smartest fucker in the room.”
Maybe “I advocate asking ‘how do you know that?'”
Hmm, from tone trolling to shame on you in less than two days. I guess that’s a pretty predictable trajectory.
Tip to the very persistent commenter who wants to make Pharyngula more genteel.
Yes, empathy is a lovely quality.
However, paragraphs that begin with “How dare you…” are rarely chock full of empathy. The phrase more commonly indicates rage and self-centeredness.
In this case, your empathy score is zero. And all of us can see your ass.
It’s nice, sort of, that you are outraged by what Caine experienced. But being outraged at her is grossly wrong.
ixchel:
“And fail miserably.” :D
Yep.
However, it would be nice is “pedophile” stopped being used synonymously with child molester or child rapist. Having desires and acting on them are two different things. I suspect that it has been put in use essentially as a euphemism because the subject is just so incredibly uncomfortable.
Of course, this has nothing to do with using the “r-word” as a derogatory term.
(My apologies for the slight derailment, however much the thread is already completely off the tracks.)
moshiachone @ 479;
Wait – I like Pharyngula and the culture here of not giving bad arguments a free pass simply because of the privilege of the person who put them forward, and I am pretty sure that I am a man…
*checks*
Yup, definately a man. Either that or a strange tubular parasite has attached itself to my lower abdomen…
Assuming for the sake of time and parsimony that I am indeed, as appearances would seem to suggest, a man, why would Pharyngula not be for me, especially given the fact that I feel rather comfortable here?
What makes you think that the female Pharyngulites are all lesbians? Sure, we have lesbian commneters here, and they are a vital component of the Horde, but why would you claim that being a lesbian is a requirement for commenting? Tell me you aren’t wheeling out the tired and bigoted trope that all women who take a stand on issues of gender equality and social justice are automatically ‘mannish lesbians’? Quite apart from being offensively bigoted, that claim has been so comprehensively demolished, so often, that it is hard to believe that anyone would still be taken in by it.
Oh, and I have to ask – what exactly is a “male lesbian”? I am assuming that you are not employing a truly odd means of referring to homosexual men here, so I think I need a little clarification…
What “party line”? If you mean the broad consensus that women are human beings too, and should be treated as such, then why is that so offensive to you?
Also, it is not the penis that does the oppression – it is the patriarchal culture that affords privilege to those who possess penises for no other reason than the possession of a penis, and thereby defines womanhood as ‘lesser’ by default. This then plays into homophobia, because a man who ‘acts like a woman’ by being sexually attracted to other men is tainted by association in the minds of those who see women as inferior by nature.
Actually, people are considered to be tone trolling here if they are concerned more with the way something is being said, than with the content of the comment. All that serves to do is to derail the conversation into a fruitless discussion on the relative merits of ‘civility’ rather than dealing with the actual topic at hand.
You have to be pretty obnoxious to get banned around here. PZ usually confines someone to the zombie thread after several warnings for bigoted or otherwise disruptive behaviour, and only bans them if they ignore that injunction or repetitively flaunt their prejudice.
And again – where do you get this idea that there is a lesbian majority on Pharyngula from? A majority of people who think that all women, including lesbians, should be accorded the fundamental level of respect due to all humans, certainly, but no majority of Kinsey 4 and 5 women that I have ever observed.
Putting on a uniform does not automatically excuse you of murder if you kill in the name of an illegitimate war – ‘just following orders’ is not a perfect defence.
And what is so ‘hyper-feminist’ about recognising the personhood of women? Why should women be treated like living sex dispensers for every clueless bloke who wonders along and can’t be bothered to find out if she is actually receptive to any advance or not before launching into his full repertoire of manipulative pick up artist techniques? Why should they be subjected to a society that judges them on their appeartance rather than their arguments? Why should they have to put up with the innumerable misogynists who seek to excuse or outright deny the existence of rape culture?
The content of your comment seems to suggest otherwise.
Are we reading the same blog? A few choice epithets uttered in the heat of impassioned debate is hardly comparable to the systematic denial of the very humanity of women that we see ever more increasingly in the sceptical community. You think that the discourse here is rough on those who ‘deviate from the party line’ that women are people too? Click on PZ’s link to Anita Sarkeesian’s blog in the OP, and take a look at the vitriole she has endured for simply proposing to examine the problems with sexist tropes in video gaming. Do you honestly think that the two situations are anything close to equivalent?
Still a bloke.
Still reading Pharyngula (and enjoying it and learning all the while).
Still one among many.
just as a reminder, it’s a male gender identity not a penis that makes one male. meaning, you should be checking your brain, not your underwear :-p
*still teetering halfway into the pool* What I can’t figure out is which of the men – er, I mean, “males” – have to get out of the pool. Apparently some of them are lesbians and are allowed in the pool, except that they’re also not allowed in the pool, because they’re males? Are the male lesbians who are and aren’t allowed in the pool the males who like women? Also, what about males without oppressing penises? Oh, everything is so confusing. My ladybrains are overheating.
or, for that matter, lesbians with oppressing penises? are they allowed in the pool, or not?
Louis:
“Latin is a language as dead as dead can be, it killed off all the Romans, and now it’s killing me”
You can reconstruct the pronounciations of some words by words loaned by other languages. Surprise! “Cesar” was pronounced “Kaisar”. And that big-mouthed lawyer was named “Kikero”. Pity the Etruscans did not come up on top. At least their language would have been interesting.
— — —
Anyway, I don’t really understand why anyone would like to emulate the Romans (including neoclassic architecture). They were the second worst arseholes of history, after the Mongols. After the Romans annexed the last free hellenistic kingdoms, philosophy abruptly ceased to produce new names (apart from some mysticists who obfuscated the understanding of nature even further).
— — —
Speaking of names, it is sad that so many post-Swedish names that come up in the US news are those of douchebags: Lindquist, Rehnquist and wossname that old senator (now dead) who got a black maid’s daughter pregnant when she was 15
Oops, forgot this isn’t the open thread!
Anyway, keep up the good work.
PS I don’t think I am lesbian.
And I like it here.
I advocate acting as a decent human being capable of critical thought, even when aimed at myself.
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe @ 20;
Yup, that would be my cis/het privilege talking. Apologies.
Still, being cis-sexual, I can look down there as an easy shortcut. And, of course, man fee-fees and oppressive pee-pees = IMPORTANT, as you know…
;-P
Melby:
I largely agree to this. I also tried googling the terms (moron, idiot, retard) and see how many images of people who looked as if they might by mentally handicapped turned up and it largely seem like a working heuristic.
I also tried to find oppinion from support organizations of mentally retarded on the use of the terms, and again the only thing i could come up with was opposition to “retarded” in law texts and so on.
Still I do not think it is entirely as clear-cut as you make it out. I dont think it is easy to “ask that group of people” since the group may be very diverse, in my country there is disagreement amongst homosexuals about the correct terms for homosexuals.
Also I do not think it clears up the “psychopath-as-a-derogatory-term”-issue, but i know nothing about how much actual psychopaths feel about the word.
You are spot on about the difference between pedophiles and child molesters, neither group is contained in the other. That was my mistake.
*raises one eyebrow in a Spock-like manner*
get your own damn terminology
(oops, that was more a McCoy line)
Oppressing penises?
I think Richard Corben’s sword-and-sorcery parody “Bodyssey” had one of those (in the early, non-censored version).
And Ralph König has a graphic novel with a man-eating GM organism that mimics a condom. Is that close enough?
Kryten’s cybernetic penis (in “Red Dwarf”) is not so much “oppressive” as “at large”. I mean, it escaped.
Hmm…if a cybernetic penis has more smarts than a human, would it be allowed to run for office? (South Park:… cybernetic penis vs. douchbag)
What is that supposed to mean?
Gregory Greenwood:
You’ve been SILENCED BY THE FEMISTASI!!!
… do you feel more silenced, or more bullied, as an overall percentage? I’m going to do a totally scientific survey where I ask 4-5 people and them make a huge generalization about the entire Internet. :)
As the possessor of male gender identity with pee-pee (I like to think thoroughly non-oppressive, but maybe I am just kidding myself) who remains here on Pharyngula of my own free will and rather enjoys the expereince (thus suggesting that I am a ‘male lesbian’), I have an important question:-
I hear there is a pool of lesbians around here someplace – now am I allowed to get in it, or should I watch from the sidelines with Audley?
I ask on behalf of my potentially oppressive pee-pee (but only if the lady in question is into that kind of stuff). For some reason, the little (though not all that little, ahem) fella really, really wants to know…
;-p
I’d think the ‘cis’ was covered already by the ‘straight’.
(I’m not real happy about this new ‘___ C. __erson’ trope. as you might imagine.)
So the terminology as it currently exists is not inclusive, so we should leave it be and get other terminology? Maybe we should just change the uninclusive terminology to something inclusive. That seems easy enough. Maybe we can get people whining about “political correctness gone mad!” along the way so we know who to shun.
Well, I wasn’t in the pool as my steel-toed troll stomping boots make me sink.
You’d be wrong then chas, as I understand it cis/trans* is a completely classification from gay/straight.
It meant that ‘male’ has had a perfectly good and useful scientific definition for centuries, and which is still current. If you want a term that means ‘identifies as a member of a masculine gender’ you (where ‘you’ is sociologists and Studies studiers) should get your own instead of trying to redefine one that exists. IMO.
Improbable Joe @ 32;
I actually rather enjoy any opportunity to better understand my privilege and take steps to rectify unintentionally othering or discriminatory behaviour. It is one of the reasons I like it here so much. That, the spanking couch, and the ghey secks with Brownian queue…
Perhaps you should just put me down under the ‘kinky that way’ column?
Congratulations, my young Padawan, you have now mastered The Way of the Pitizen…
:-)
If you think we’re being mean with Mr. Whitey C. McStraighterson now you probably don’t want to hear what people call him behind his back.
Spoiler alert It’s Genocider Opresston.
That rather sounds like you are trying to use lesbian as an insult.
I think the party line, if there is one, is that one should try to be a decent human being. If you deviate from that (intentionally or not), then yes, you’ll receive some very vocal criticism. One of the reasons I read Pharyngula is that it reminds me that there are people who care about injustice and that it’s worthwhile to fight it rather than give up. This makes up for the times that I read and discover that people (and sometimes even myself) can also be asses in ways that I had never realized.
what.
are you going to tell me trans women aren’t female, and trans men aren’t male?
the terminology is accurate, and it isn’t “mine”.
why would you think such a thing? there’s both gay and straight trans people.
so you are saying that trans men aren’t male. fascinating. on what basis do you make this radfemmy conclusion?
You’d be wrong about that.
actually it’s “has a brain that perceives itself as male”. it’s biology, a brain that has a body-map for male. on what basis do you privilege other parts of such an ambiguously sexed body?
Gregory Greenwood @39:
I’ll put you down for “mangina” then.
… it is boggling my mind that people actually think that way. I mean, really: at worst, accepting the things that people tell you from perspectives you don’t share and that don’t directly affect you should be neutral. It doesn’t take anything away from me to accept that there are people without a penis who identify as male. The effort it takes to keep that idea in my head and/or live with people reminding me when I forget is so minimal that even if I didn’t care about equality and social justice I can’t imagine making a big stink about it, like Chas is doing. Doesn’t cost him anything for “male” to be more inclusive, any more than marriage equality takes away from my marriage.
oh, and since I’m picking on this silly definition, there’s no such thing as “masculine gender”. there’s masculine expression (that’s the social role part), and then there’s a male gender as well as a male sex (I personally dislike these distinctions, but the former refers usually to the brain’s self-perception, whereas the latter refers to the rest of the body).
There are masculine trans women. there are feminine trans men.
for that matter, there are masculine cis women and feminine cis men. “masculine” and “feminine” are arbitrary social designations and cannot refer to gender identity, since gender identity doesn’t appear to be any more socially constructed than other scientific concepts (species, planet, etc.)
Uh, yeah, no.
That doesn’t mean I have to accept them as male. I accept that they identify as male.
Get the fuck out of here with your transphobic shit.
oh? why not?
Oh, and since you’re so “reasonable,” how about you fuck off to Natalie Reed’s blog, shut the fuck up (this step is very important, because she doesn’t need you annoying her with your fuckery), and read?
♥
That’s why we don’t accept you as a reasonable or decent person. And unlike you and your bigotry, we’re judging you on your behavior, not on your identity.
he’s been complaining about the social sciences usurping common words to mean something else (which apparently other sciences don’t do, and “community” means the same thing in plain English as it does in ecological jargon, right chaz?), and he apparently thinks this is another instance of this.
This is true if we are talking about what is the preferred term. “Mentally retarded” is still used as a clinical term in some areas of the world to refer to someone with developmental disability.
It is NOT used that way in the U.S. currently. It is not a preferred term.
However, regardless of whether or not it is still used clinically. It has NEVER been “preferred” as an insult.
For example, the word “gay” is a preferred term in the U.S. for homosexual (usually referring to a male homosexual person). It wasn’t always.
However, there has been a campaign to attempt to end it’s use – as an insult.
Frankly, it’s rude to use any term that refers to a group of people as an insult. Period.
However, some words simply have a special place in the U.S. as pretty much the worst words you can use (currently), in almost any context. The “r-word” is one of them.
One reason for that, is simply that the group, that the slur or insult refers to, deals with real socially perpetuated injury and emotional harm. So the terms simply have more power.
Why should I? What does it matter what I think about transgendered folks anyway so long as I’m not abusing them?
You’re a bigoted douche. Go away.
1. Thunderf00t has a vast number of options for ways to express himself. If he wants a blog he can literally have one set up on WordPress or BlogSpot in a matter of minutes. FTB is in no way obliged to give him a platform, least of all when there are dozens of other platforms he can use, for free even.
2. I liked Thunderf00t’s YouTube videos, but his blog on FTB was utter shit. Completely setting aside whether or not one agrees with his sentiments, the quality of his writing was just abysmal. That alone was sufficient reason to drop him.
Why are those who put “reasonable” in they ‘nym never reasonable? Except by Medieval standards?
well, it makes you prejudiced. one would think a reasonable person would prefer not to be prejudiced. but aside from that, you’re not just thinking about them, or else I wouldn’t know about it.
by stating in public that you don’t accept them as what they are, you are contributing to their oppression. at best, a statement like the one you’ve made is a microaggression.
Oh, and you fucking asshole, by coming here and posting about how you don’t accept that they are their gender, you are abusing them.
Whats so unreasonable about what i’ve said?
You mean aside from it being a bigoted load of shit that directly harms people who are already suffering horribly from oppression?
you’re publicly airing your anti-trans prejudices. what about that could possibly be reasonable?
Jadehawk,
Some of us who are not going to give up radical feminism per se (and I’m not even sure how I could, any more than I could convince myself the sky is red) because of some transphobic assholes would like to object that:
Chas is expressing the common trans-dismissive attitude of the patriarchy, not a uniquely feminist form of trans-dismissiveness.
I think you’re making a mistake here similar to how when people hear “there’s some misogyny among gay men” they take away the notion that gay men are especially misogynistic, rather than “gay men grew up in the same misogynistic culture as everybody else.”
Unreasoning fucker,
If you actually care about learning why what you said was shitty and stupid, shut the fuck up, and take your ass to Natalie’s. I provided a link above.
M.A.Melby: I am not talking about preferred term, I am talking about identifying terms which are morally wrong to use in a derogatory fashion from those which are not.
I think the following are particulary interesting cases: psychopath, senile.
because they are based on mental disorders/disabillities (disorder may not be the right term).
Its hardly prejudiced to not identify biological males as females or vice-versa. I think everyone deserves equal rights.
*sigh*
you’re right, I shouldn’t have thrown “radfemmy” out there. I just failed to resist the temptation, considering who I was talking to.
@ Improbable Joe;
Ah, yes. The Pitizens do love that phrase. This is where things start to get confusing, though – I am now a lesbian male with both an oppressive pee-pee and a mangina? How am I ever supposed to work out whether or not I am supposed to be in the pool now?
I think that it boils down to the simple fact that most people who have social privilege want to hang onto it. It takes a long time and no small amount of concerted effort to not only recognise that your privilege is unearned and actively toxic, but them to also let it go, knowing that by doing so you are placing yourself firmly outside the ingroup of most mainstream definitions of ‘acceptable’ performance of the privileged group you have just repudiated. The cost of such an action can be felt in the ways that you are ostracised, and even demonised, by those who see nothing wrong with their privilege, and react very negatively to anyone who pokes holes in their smug little bubbles of self righteousness.
In a sense, it is like libertarianism – libertarians hate anyone pointing out that they are where they are not solely by the means of some American Dream, sweat-of-their-own-brow fantasy, but by their unearned privilege with regards to the accident of their birth which happened to land them in a group that was, to some degree, privileged. The same is true with male privilege – cis/het men whose sense of self (and, indeed, self-worth) is, at least in part, predicated upon the idea that they got to where they are on their own merits, perhaps in the face of some kind of adversity, do not like being reminded that by the mere fact of being cis/het male they almost certainly had an easier time of it than a homosexual man, a woman, or a transgendered person would have in their place with all other factors remaining equal.
PZ described being a white, cis/het male as being the ‘easy setting’ for life, and such white, cis/het men who cling to their privilege feel that this belittles their personal acheivements and that there is nothing they can do about it – their advantage is a product of the very fact of who and what they are in the context of contemporary society. They will always be advantaged, and thus they can never say that all they have acheived, they acheived on their own. Many people would rather deny the existence of their privilege altogether than admit to such a possibility.
That is my take on it, anyway.
No. Stop babbling and go fucking read.
This is not the blog for the staunchly prejudiced.
(Unless they want to learn. Which would surprise me. Which is a small form of pre-judging on my part.)
this is ignorant crap. trans women are ambiguously sexed, biologically speaking, and therefore you cannot claim they’re “biologically male”. and once they’re on hormones they’re unambiguously biologically female, and therefore once again you cannot claim that they’re “biological males”, in the same way that AIS women are not “biologically male”. we’re not chickens, ffs.
@ reasonablefellow
You seem to be very confused about what prejudiced and equal rights mean. It’s very simple: you have to treat people as THEY want to be treated. So, if someone identifies as male, and refers to himself as male, then you will address them as such, no matter what YOU think.
you don’t think trans people have the right to have their sex accepted, so obviously that’s not true.
Doesn’t everyone deserve the equal right to define themselves? It isn’t like we can read other people’s minds and tell them what’s going on, it only works the other way around. And since it doesn’t hurt you to accept their self-identification, why go out of your way to contradict them?
Not shown by your posts. Try again, after you have learned a bit. Go and follow the suggested links. Or shut the fuck up.
P.S. Chas, unless you were being sarcastic when you responded to the incorrect use of ad hominem with your “language evolves” thing and I missed it (a genuine possibility!), lol at you.
Gregory Greenwood:
I seemed to have picked one of those up as well. I expect my parasite is bigger than your parasite though.
Bilaterally Gynandromorphic Chickens And Why I’m Not “Scientifically” Male
for those who throw around “biologically male” as a supposed refutation to trans femaleness, and vice versa
@ reasonable fellow;
(Emphasis added)
And why shouldn’t those equal rights include being referred to by the gender identity term that the individual in question prefers?
What do you lose by calling, say, a female gender identified transexual a woman, whatever sexual organs she may have been born with? Set that against what transexual people gain by being treated well enough by society that their gender identity is respected, and tell me which you think should carry the greater weight.
Unless you think its a ‘right’ for people to see you in the way that you’ve defined for yourself this doesn’t hold water.
oh but gregory, he’s ok with “calling” them by what ever silliness they want. but he still reserves the right to point out publicly that he thinks they’re wrong, the silly people.
If you’re confused by this part of what Jadehawk said:
You can consult this text for clarification.
Or fuck it, just consult this text, full stop.
Oh well, serves me right for not refreshing.
you have the right to be correctly identified and accepted as the sex that you are. you are denying this right to trans people by publicly saying that they’re not what they claim to be (but you’ll humor them anyway)
Are you incapable of shutting the fuck up and learning before you run your mouth?
@ hyperdeath;
*Sigh* Not another parasite-waving contest…
Afterall, everyone knows that it is not the size of your parasite that matters, but what you do with it.
;-P
@ reasonablefellow
I’ll repeat my previous post, since you don’t seem to bother to read people’s replies:
It’s very simple: you have to treat people as THEY want to be treated. So, if someone identifies as male, and refers to himself as male, then you will address them as such, no matter what YOU think.
Also, Gregory Greenwood, @ #83 makes a similar, just better worded point.
So why do you want to go around policing people’s gender and deciding who should identify as what?
I could say honesty and integrity but the real answer is that I would probably be polite in real life. This is the internet though and people seem to be offended that I don’t think something.
Funny how the first day of my Science Inquiry course (I used to teach not too long ago) involved explaining how scientists use terms differently than in every-day use and if they relied on the vague definitions that they are accustomed to (you know, like people who use “male” to mean “has a penis”) that they would be come confused.
You know, that in science, we create jargon to be specific enough that when we communicate that our words have meaning?
I would ask “reasonable fellow” if he wanted to clarify that, to be sure your assessment was fair.
However, he just said that he didn’t have to accept transgender men as male because he seems to think that being “male” is different than identifying as “male” – so I’m inclined not to care so much what he thinks about language.
again, he’s ok with letting them “identify as” whatever they want, but he’ll still insist on saying in public that they’re wrong.
and this is of course not at all condescending, belittling, and contributing to their oppression. no, you see, it’s reasonable.
I’m offended that you chose to voice your ignorant, harmful opinion here. Keep your fucking mouth shut if you’re a bigoted piece of shit. If you think you’re not a bigoted piece of shit, go fucking learn how to act like a decent human being.
since I’ve already corrected this, I have to conclude either that you’re not reading the responses you’re getting, or you’re lying.
again, if you were just thinking it, I wouldn’t know about it. you’re not just thinking it, you’re saying it publicly. that’s at best a microaggression, and in any case it contributes to the oppression of trans people.
Calm down Cipher, you’ll do yourself an injury.
Oh, fuck yourself, you condescending puddle of vomit. You come in here waving your smug bigotry around like a flag and have the nerve to act like it’s fucking virtue. Get the fuck out of here.
@ Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe;
Ah, I see. I don’t doubt that our avowedly ‘reasonable’ friend considers that a most important distinction. Pity that it doesn’t make a blind bit oif difference in practice.
Saying;
“There, there – of course you are a man/woman, dear…”
And then following it up with a public statement to the effect of;
“Isn’t it sad when they think they are men/women? It’s obvious that they aren’t really that gender…”
Is no better than just outright denying their gender identity straight off the bat.
Unless you came to your opinion a mere few minutes ago, you were thinking the same thing for as long as you’ve been commenting here, and no one was mad at you. This changed when you started saying.
I agree with Cipher that it would be a really good idea for you to read the linked article (at minimum; you should really check out more of her “Essential Reeding”) before you continue this discussion.
reasonablefellow, It is reasonable to assume that you know less about being trans than actual transpeople. Since an actual transperson has spent the time to educate people like yourself, you can either go, read and inform yourself on the subject or you can admit that you’re nothing more than a stubborn jackass who thinks that an uneducated opinion trumps educated fact.
And that would be very, very bad skepticism. (Sweet, I’ve been dying to use that line in this thread.)
let it be know that “honest” bigots who air their bigotry publicly are not better people than people who know they have bigoted prejudices but do their best not to actually let them out of their head, lest they do harm to people.
and there’s no integrity in airing one’s prejudices, unless as a part of working to reduce/eliminate them
*refresh*
Or, alternatively, you could fuck off.
alright everyone, do you have your bingo cards ready?
@ reasonablefellow
I suppose you consider yourself all polite and civilised for letting the horrible people get away with identifying as whatever they feel to be, but here’s the thing: even if you don’t voice your bigotry, it’s still going to colour all your actions and attitudes towards them. Even if people don’t voice their racism – to give another example – they are still going to do racist things.
We are not the thought police. It’s just that what you think will lead to a certain type of behaviour, and that, in its turn, will affect people’s lives in a negative manner.
So,once again, what do honesty and integrity have to do with anything?
Also, being calm and unemotional in your language while being a bigot doesn’t make you reasonable,less of a bigot, or the intellectual superior of people who use more coarse language while defending against your bigotry.
unreasonable fellow
It has to do with how people identify themselves. There are trans-women who identify themselves as women even though they have penes and testicles. There are trans-men who identify themselves as men even though they have vaginas and ovaries. I go along with the self-identification rather than the genitalia. But then I’m not bigoted in that respect, unlike you.
As Improbable Joe noted, it doesn’t make any difference to me what someone else identifies themselves as. So why should it make a difference to you?
You could say that, but you would be wrong. If you’re referring to a woman, you’re referring to a woman, transgender or not. Bigotted asshat.
People are angry that you are a piece of shit and a bigot who is denying gender identity. But then, it’s clear you think this shit is BIOLOGICAL TRUFAX, absent evidence.
“I think I touched a nerve”, then? Oh, why don’t the trolls get some interesting material.
Ing, I’m not so sure about the idea of just giving up on the skeptic movement. It’s got wonderful people like this ‘reasonable fellow’ guy, I’m so /sure/ there’s something worth salvaging here.
luddite
It wasn’t exactly as if I barged in and announced it with no context. That was the topic, and I offered an opinion on it. For right or wrong mine probably is the majority opinion. Not to say that majority rules, but telling people to stfu if they express it isn’t likely to win many people over.
I’ve already said that it doesn’t. People can call themselves the king of mars for all I care. I’m not going along with it though.
“It’s just my opinion!” Yeah, and your opinion is damaging bigotry. Shut the fuck up.
Do you think we don’t know that a lot of people are transphobic bigots?
Shut the fuck up.
Tone troll more, you disgusting piece of shit. You’ve already been given the resources to educate yourself. Shut the fuck up.
The argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy.
In other words it does make a difference to you since you cling to your bigoted viewpoint and refuse to acknowledge the wants and desires of a persecuted minority. You are a bigot. QED.
You sound concerned.
If it didn’t make a difference to you, you’d go along with it. As it is, you are making a conscious effort to protest trans* people’s asserted identification.
And you still haven’t read the Reed article, AFAICT.
@ reasonable fellow;
So you are some kind of body morphology gender essentialist? Not born with a penis and you can never really be a man, not born with a vagina and you can never really be a woman, right?
First, answer me this – where does that leave intersex people who are born with both, or neither?
Secondly, what makes you think that gender is a function purely of the structure of genital organs? It is a mistake that one can slip into without thinking (I myself did it upthread when joking about looking into my underwear to check that I was still a man in reply to a bizarre screed about only lesbians being allowed to comment on Pharyngula), but in practice your gender, and how you perform it, is a matter of self-body pereception far more than one of the flesh and blood mechanics of what lies between your legs.
On that basis, how is your ‘honesty’ or ‘integrity’ negatively impacted by acknowledging the neurological reality of how that person perceives their gender?
This is still ‘real life’, you know, and you are engaging in the denial of the gender idenity of trans people, which is not merely impolite, but actively harmful since it contributes to their social exclusion and oppression.
What you think in the privacy of your own mind is not at issue here, what you wrote – on this very public forum – is.
I cannot imagine why you’d think this is relevant.
you did. and because your opinion is based in prejudice, you did harm by doing so. this was in fact one of the rare instances where a microaggression was caused directly by prejudice, but let’s face it, it doesn’t matter whether you actually think what you said. if you said it without thinking that, it would have caused the same amount of harm.
and? the majority opinion towards trans people is prejudiced against them.
you were told to STFU until you’ve informed yourself. that you’re currently in the throes of reactance is unfortunate but normal, but it’s not going to convince us to be more polite, since we’re constantly confronted with evidence that in fact, people do change their minds when encountered with harsh criticism of their prejudice and their oppressive actions.
and you’re being condescending and oppressive again. congratulations. does this make you feel proud, to be ignorantly spewing bigotries like this, instead of informing yourself via the conveniently provided reading material?
And now unreasonable bigot is describing trans people as equivalent to people with serious delusions, and that’s what he considers to be “honesty and integrity”.
also, “reasonable”fellow has now hit 3 suqares on the bingo card. I’m so gonna win this round.
@ reasonablefellow
That’s a cute logical fallacy you have there. The number of people who hold a certain opinion is irrelevant to the truth value of that opinion. At one point, millions of people thought that black people were inferior and deserved to be treated as such. Also, most did not change that hideous opinion without being shaken out of it. To paraphrase another commenter here, change of any sort, especially social change, does not happen without trauma. You don’t get people to relinquish their privilege by being nice to them.
You seem to think not going along with someone’s delusions and not respecting someone self-identification of gender are the same thing. They are not.
If someone tells you their given name is Bob, but they hate it and they feel their name is Tom, you are probably going to call them Tom, and not question it. People identifying as male or female is the same thing, only this time they have a lot more reasons, hormonal, psychological and physical, to identify as one or the other.
Nobody is trying to pull the wool other your eyes, people are just trying to live their lives. Why can’t you accept that?
This shit is unbelievable. Seriously the humongous shitstorm that has arisen because Rebecca Watson said she does not want to be hit on while she is in an elevator? Scores of clueless fuckwits screeching “MISANDRY!111!” and “FEMINAZIS!!!OMG!1!!1 WHAT ABOUT DA MENZ11!11!”. People have explained over and over the raw deal women get in many sceptic circles and yet they are dismissed as too emotional, hysterical or irrational. As if sceptic meant being like Spock 24-fucking-7. NEWSFLASH: Being angry, disappointed and sad can be fucking valid sometimes. It can be what helps many fight for better treatment of minorities, help address economic inequality and stop gibberish being taught in science classes. It’s called passion and it is what is helping to make the sceptical movement relevant in modern society.
Sceptics who insist misogyny is not a big deal are just as delusional as people who deny scientific reality. The regulars are amazing for being able to fight this bullshit time and time again. Don’t think you are not making a difference. 2 years ago, feminism never popped into my mind as something that concerned me but after reading the arguments over on FTB about privilege and how it can be used to justify inequality I was convinced. In other words I shut the fuck up and listened. Big thanks to everyone here for educating me. I sincerely appreciate it. Misogyny is a serious problem and the fact that many in the sceptic movement refuse to confront it is a fucking disgrace. Also those atheists who whine about feminism having nothing to do with atheism? Are you shitting me? What do you think is the direct cause of misogyny in the first place! Christ, people can be obtuse.
I agree thats a difficult question, but what percentage of the trans community do you think really fit into this category?
You’re projecting. I never said anything about genitalia. For me its about chromosomes.
I’m being taken to task for it as well. That’s fine.
technically all of them, unless you’re a mind-body dualist.
we’re not chickens. also, AIS women are not male and not trans, either.
Is this the trans* equivalent of invoking strangely-colored people?
Stop babbling. Go read.
hmmm… sounds about right.
Gregory Greenwood in #72 noted:
Transphobic bigots like reasonable fellow are quite likely objecting to trans-women as rejecting the privilege cis-hetro men have “struggled so hard” to achieve. They’re objecting to trans-men falsely aspiring to male privilege.
Well the question was how many transexual people have both sets of genitalia or none at all. Seeing as that’s a physical thing i’d say that mind-body dualism doesn’t come into it.
nah. in this case it’s probably much simpler than that: he simply doesn’t know better, and like all people doesn’t like ambiguity and shades of grey to suddenly materialize in what he was taught to believe are clear-cut, black-and-white issues.
everyone does this when running into complexity and ambiguity where clarity and simpleness was always assumed.
no one ever told you the brain is a sex organ?
point being, at the very least, trans people have parts of their “primitive” brain that is sexed differently from other parts of their body. that would make them intersex, i.e. people who exhibit characteristics of both sexes, or none.
also, if you admit that intersex people are a “difficult” case, it’s obvious you do not in fact base maleness and femaleness in chromosomes.
I sort of want to respond to the asswipe who feels it would damage their integrity to update their gender glossary database, but I can’t, as their ‘nym posits them to be “reasonable” and it would damage my integrity to call them that, so I will just yell vaguely out into the ether to fuck off and go fucking fuck yourself while you’re at it.
@ reasonablefellow
You might want to have people think that it’s all about science with you – and no, chromosomes are not the end all, be all of sex – but, in fact, it’s all about power, and making yourself feel important.
You somehow think you have the right to deny a person his identity, and maybe mistreat them, or shame them, because they don’t conform to your narrow idea of what they should be.
You obviously don’t want to relinquish that claim to power, but don’t worry. It’s only a matter of time, and bigots like you are going to disappear. Just stop depicting yourself as some great believer in science and reason …you are just a hateful bigot.
PZ, when you have a moment, would you please consider a quarantine for ‘reasonable fellow’, who is a willfully ignorant, obtuse, bigoted pos? Thank you.
If Mohammed won’t go to the mountain, the mountain will come to Mohammed.
From Natalie Reed’s article:
Just a sample of Reed’s article and its relevance to reasonable fellow’s position and the vacuity thereof.
What the shit, people? I tootle off for a couple of hours to shoot at some aliens and yet another asshole shows up?
reasonable douche:
Jadehawk #127
Yeah, you’re probably right. Likely I’m reading too much into reasonable bigot’s expressions of transphobia.
Your theories don’t hold water. You know that, and are attempting to deflect attention from your idiocy. Try silence, the best deflector in the world.
That was never the question, and you know it. More evasions… Try silence…
Chas,
You should consider that this usage didn’t originate from academia at all; it originated from transsexual people of all sorts of educational backgrounds, expressing themselves as they understood their own experiences: “I am a man / male” and “I am a woman / female”.
The real world impact of your arguments will not be confined to academia, either.
Self-named “reasonable fellow”:
It’s not someone’s projection, it’s that your ontology is weak; chromosomal sex is but one aspect of people’s sexuality (and aneuploidy means it’s not a simple binary, either).
I guess you’ve not seen the Genderbread Person.
it ain’t working, for the record, since he’s getting the science wrong, too. which he’d know if he’d bother to read the link about gynandromorphic chickens.
oh, and here’s some more science showing that transness is not some counterfactual personal preference or delusion:
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2008/00000015/00000001/art00001
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v378/n6552/abs/378068a0.html
http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/85/5/2034
@ reasonable fellow;
That people who fall into the intersex category exist is beyond dispute, and the point holds as a means of demonstrating the problematic nature of your position. You say the question is difficult – given your stance on the topic, I can see why that would be the case for you. Would you care to provide an answer?
Also, as Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe pointed out, gender identity is a function of one’s brain chemistry, and so unless you accept mind/body dualism, every transexual is both male and female in so far as their body is structured such that it shows characteristics of one gender, but the architecture of the brain is structured in such a fashion that it identifies as another.
Why should the fleshy bits in the nether regions take precedence over the brain’s functionality? Afterall, that is the organ responsible for our character and personality, our thoughts and aspirations – everything that makes each of us who we are.
And why is this chromosomal structure so important? Everyone has at least one ‘X’ chromosome – some have two, some have one and this little thing we call a ‘Y’ chromosome that modifies the expression of the ‘X’ in some regards, and some have rarer chromosomal structures that can lead then to have, say, two ‘X’s and a ‘Y’. And then there is the fact that chromosome expression can be influenced by environmental and hormonal factors, meaning that chromosomal structure alone is hardly biological destiny. Why should any of these factors determine how a person’s gender identity should be viewed?
So why do you keep advocating publicly for this position, when the harm it is doing has been repeatedly explained to you?
Damn it, Audley, how many times do we have to tell you business before pleasure? Shoot at aliens on your own time.
well, there is a rather limitless supply of them, after all. and apparently, bigotry functions like virtual particles: if there’s a bigotry vacuum, there’s always a chance for a bigot or two to pop into existence ex nihilo. [/severely butchered physics]
@ ‘Tis Himself;
I certainly think that there are transphobic bigots like that out there in the world, but I think that Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe is probably right – reasonable fellow probably has not encountered a position such as ours before, as xe may have hinted with hir reference to the ‘majority position’ mirroring hir own, and probably doesn’t really know what to make of it, and so is retreating back into the comforting territory of established tropes about the limits of gender identity.
also, if maleness and femaleness are chromosome caused, then AIS women would be male, even though they’re barely even “intersex”, since they usually have wholly female genitalia and brain structures except for having testicles instead of ovaries.
seriously, in a species that’s so obviously sexed by hormones rather than cromosomes, insisting on sexing people by chromosomes is just not scientific or rational.
Jadehawk,
In deep space, those virtual bigots just collide and annihilate each other, but since the Earth is a massive bigotry well, one bigot is sucked into the atmosphere and eventually collides with civilization, while the other bigot is flung out of the solar system.
@reasonablefellow:
OK, here’s the Reader’s Digest version: “It’s their call.”
If Rebecca Watson feels uncomfortable in a confined space with a stranger trying to make some moves on her, IT’S HER CALL!
If someone is more comfortable living as a male or female, regardless of their chromosomal makeup, IT’S THEIR CALL.
ASSUMING that you have the privilege of deeming their call to be wrong is an indication of your sense of privilege. You haven’t lived their lives, so don’t presume that your opinion is natural law. This is especially true with any group that historically have been denied the right to make their own calls on how to live their lives.
Here’s another Reader’s Digest quote for you: Debate concepts, not identities.
We each have the responsibility to become the best person we can be, which is not always an easy task. As such, who we choose to be should be accepted, as long as it doesn’t impair the lives of those around us.
:-D
I don’t think it should. I also don’t think that you can ignore a persons physicality and focus solely on the make up of their brain, or their own opinions of where they are in the ‘gender-spectrum’.
And your opinion of their lives and experiences is better than theirs precisely why?
so instead you do the opposite, and ignore their brain in favor of the rest of their body?
why?
how is this not mind/body dualism?
you’re an ignorant fuckweasel who knows nothing about the science of transness. read the links I’ve provided you, they show clearly that transness is not an opinion.
your ignorance-based bigotry is tedious. go learn something, m’kay?
This effect is known as Dawkins radiation.
Did I say it was better? Yeah, though, I tend to value my own opinion over that of other people… Good point.
I’m not ignoring anything. I’m labeling them as trans-sexual. Which seems to be an accepted term in that community.
fellow who imagines themselves reasonable:
Already told ya, your ontology is weak.
Sexual identity and gender identity are not the same category, and lumping them together confuses your thinking.
(You’re braying your ignorance)
actually, as regards this conversation, you’re valuing your fact-free opinion over scientific evidence.
you have that in common with AGW deniers who value their opinion that CO2 isn’t dangerous because plants need it over the scientific evidence; with creationists who value their opinion that the bible is true over the scientific evidence; with anti-vaxxers who value their opinions about the connection between autism and MMR over the scientific evidence; etc.
you are. you admit that you cannot definitively declare intersex folks as “male” or “female”, but can claim that you can do so for trans people. if you didn’t ignore it the brain in favor of other body parts, you’d be capable of accepting that trans men are biologically male.
Sure. I notice you still haven’t answered my question. What percentage of people who identify as trans-sexuals (for want of a better term) were born with both sets of genitalia or none at all? Do you think its typical?
This is the wrong question. “reasonable” fellow should be asked:
And your opinion of their lives and experiences is preferred to theirs precisely why?
IOW, why is hir bigotry to be granted precedence over other peoples’ wants and desires?
‘Tis:
You’re only saying that because you couldn’t go sailing today. :p
Shorter “reasonable” fellow: I don’t know what “biology” means!
Do you think it’s relevant?
I have answered that question. since the brain is a sex organ, all of them were. you’re engaging in mind/body dualism. stop it, it’s not rational or scientific.
and I’ve noticed that you’ve refused to explain how you can claim that intersex people are a “difficult” case if you believe it’s chromosomes that determine sex.
That isn’t answering the question. You know as well as I do that in this instance we’re talking about actual penis/vagina.
btw, the definition of intersex doesn’t actually limit itself to “genitalia”, but to characteristics that are typically used to distinguish male from female. the brain is NOT excluded from this, your archaic and anti-scientific mind-body dualism notwithstanding.
who’s “we”? you’re the only one who doesn’t know what intersex means and is using it inaccurately.
also, didn’t you say you distinguished by chromosomes, not by genitalia? and now you’ve even reduced it to a single set of sexual characteristics?
you know what that’s called? it’s called goalpost shifting.
I’m going to take that as “a tiny percentage” then.
at least you admit that you prefer to lie to yourself than follow the evidence.
but on the note of this admission of lying to yourself… whatever happened to that “honesty and integrity” you were bragging about earlier?
[meta]
Such obsession about genitalia, from someone who earlier wrote: !
Now i’m the one lying to myself.
interesting use of the word “now”. your implication that trans people are “lying to themselves” (or are you claiming that we’re the ones lying to ourselves? about what, I wonder?) has been duly noted.
other than that, yes. you are lying to yourself by pretending my answer to your question was the exact opposite of what it actually was. it’s truly not my fault you can’t cope with the biological maleness of trans men.
Whence the ‘now’? :)
—
(As an aside, told ya your ontology is weak: transsex and intersex are also different categories)
Well thats been my position from the beginning. You might have noticed about 10 morons calling me names because of it.
depending on the usage. when people engage in mind-body dualism, then they are two different sort of things. when people aren’t engaging in mind-body duality, and follow what evidence we have, it starts looking as if transsex is a sub-category of intersex, in which the brain exhibits physical characteristics of one sex, and the remaining body (mostly) presents characteristics of another.
Exactly what someone lying and bullshitting to hide their confusion would say. You are a dishonest fool, lacking honesty and integrity. I can’t believe anything you say without third party evidence.
well, I’m glad you’ve spelled it out even clearer just how much of a bigot you are. I have been giving you the benefit of the doubt insofar as I assumed that you thought trans people were simply wrong. But you think of them the way Christians think of atheists. You think they “know” they’re not what they claim to be and are lying.
I don’t think i’ve been dishonest.
evidence shows otherwise.
Actually I did go sailing for several hours this morning, before the thunderstorms showed up. :-þ
[meta]
imagines-they’re-reasonable:
Leaving aside that ‘moron’ does not mean someone more informed than you, your position from the very beginning was opinion from ignorance, and you’ve conspicuously resisted polluting that ignorance with knowledge.
anyway. I’ve got work to do, miniatures to paint, and cardboard to shred, all of which will be a far more productive use of my time, now that we’ve established that “reasonable”fellow isn’t interested in the evidence and is lying, both to us and to himself.
I might be back tomorrow to respond to whatever will be worth responding to.
Ta.
You mean you don’t think, period. Why haven’t you just tried silence to avoid being wrong, instead of working your way from mildly wrong to more wrong?
You’ve hit upon something there. What does it matter what christians think of atheists? It doesn’t make us believe in god.
@Jadehawk No. 458
Wellll, maybe a dimple then, but yeah, I’m sure. ;)
So.. who here has heard of BIID?
Hmmm. So you’re saying that we shouldn’t let other people define us?
Specimen:
This ain’t an open thread. Go take it to TZT, if you want to chit-chat.
@reasonable fellow
What Christians (the majority) think of atheists (the minority) has a great deal to do with how atheists are perceived and treated in society as a whole. Similarly, the way that cis-sexual people (the majority) think of trans-gendered people (the minority) has a great deal to do with how trans-gendered people are treated in society as a whole. Atheists, in the United States, in general, don’t have to deal with nearly so much prejudice as trans-gendered people. I just took the comparison that was made and ran with it – I’m not trying to make the respective experiences equivalent.
You’ve already been informed that your dismissive attitude toward respecting and accepting someone else’s gender identity is problematic, and contributes to the prejudice that trans-gendered people face. If you were truly interested in honest discussion, then you would have bowed out of the conversation and read up on the subject, as I did when I first realized my ignorance on the subject. You can still do that. I think you should.
misnomerfellow @182
What does this dodge, evade, change of subject have to do with anything? Unless you’re saying that the Christian belief that atheists really do believe does not hurt atheists therefore your ad populum bigotry against trans-people does not hurt them.
See, if you had taken a few moments to read up, you would realize how very laughably, wretchedly wrong you are.
Learning new stuff is fun! Go try it!
Sure, why would you?
Why are folks who use reasonable in their ‘nyms so unreasonable? False advertising…
If PZ ran the Internet, I could understand Phil’s anger, but he doesn’t. Thunderf00t can start up his own blog. TF still has his YouTube account, so he can posting there if he wants.
TF just no longer gets any share of the revenue generated by FTB. If he wanted that, he should have treated his blog as another job, and Ed and PZ as his bosses.
TF didn’t lose his free speech. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from him. It just won’t be under the FTB banner.
reasonable:
reasonable:
?
You seem comfortable with the idea of defining transsexuals, rather than letting them do it themselves. By extension, that implies Christians can define us.
It has been a discovery process for me. I have learned a lot about how to be stronger and un-fucking-forgiving when I see shit in my everyday life and on the internetz…
i.e.…
Fuck you if you are so insecure in your straight marriage that you think gay people marrying will somehow affect you.
Fuck you and your marginalizing of the poor, and your support of Ron Paul. I would love to see what would actually happen to you in your libertarian wet dream.
Fuck you when you laugh at the guy in the wheelchair trying to get on the bus. Fuck you and your ableist jokes.
Fuck you if you think that half the planet is just there for your fucking pleasure.
Fuck you if you think that your ability to make your stupid fucking rape joke takes precedence over the feelings of someone who has been raped.
Fuck you if are not arguing in good faith. If I even get a whiff of JAQ’ing off from you, I now know that there is no reason to attempt to engage you in a reasonable argument. I will call you a liar and offer you a porcupine, and tell you to buy your own shortening for lube.
I spent 20 years of my adult life being nice, and Pharyngula has taught me that when you are fighting for civil rights and social justice for all, there is not a single fucking reason to be nice. I am sick of being nice, and I am officially done with nice. If some sexist, racist, homophobic fuck doesn’t like it, they can French kiss my round, rosy Ozark ass.
Thank you PZ and Caine and Hyperdeath and Carlie and Nerd of Redhead.
Thank you Cipher and Louis and Brownian and Jadehawk and Audley.
Thank you Nigel and ‘Tis and Ing and Wowbagger and John Morales and Salty Current.
Thank you especially to Sally/Sam Strange and Josh, Official Spokesgay (h/t for my extended ‘nym, and thanks for the great fun on #FTBullies the other night)
There is now one more angry, vocal, active, tough old broad out there because of all of you.
My “prejudice” if that’s what you want to call it is that biological females can never become men, and that biological males can never become women. That doesn’t mean that i’m prejudiced against trans-sexuals or think that they should have lesser rights or be subjected to harassment or anything else.
Well done M.A Melby. You noticed two parts of a discussion without anything in between.
QueQuoi:
YES! There’s a couple of people ahead of you, but you’ve made my OMnom list.
So… I actually followed that link on the first comment page to thunderf00t’s video attacking PZ. And the comments…dear Lord, the comments.
I tried wading in there, maybe get some factual information out there about how TF wasn’t banned but fired, how he is not entitled to a paid platform, how sexual harrasment is not a ‘minor political disagreement’ and I just…
The stupid, it burns. So much.
Of course, they tried reducing it to Rebecca Watson. Then I got this lovely response:
“She proceeded to call the incident a case of sexism, by the end of that video. That was the radical part. The part where she said “don’t do that” just made me think she was either homosexual or prudish. ”
Yup. Women who don’t like being hit on at 4 am in tightly enclosed spaces are either prudes or dykes. This is totally the first assumption you should make about them.
So yeah. Closed my browser, rocked in the corner for a while, and am now basking in the wonderful feeding frenzy of the horde taking apart clueless, transphobic assholes. I would like to thank the regulars for keeping up this constant battle against mindless prejudice, because I couldn’t even keep it up for a few hours without utterly despairing.
I think the saddest thing is that I used to like thunderf00t, years ago, when he’d only just started making his ‘Why do people laugh at creationists’ videos. Those were good. They were funny, they were educational, they were what my baby atheism needed. I drifted away when TF started getting political and… Pat Condell-y. Now I’m just saddened to see this man I’d genuinely admired as an honest intellectual engage in the most dishonest debate tactics, proudly taking a stance as yet another misoginist douchenozzle seemingly incapable of recognizing how devoid of empathy his positions are.
Welcome to Pharyngula. The Pharyngula Saloon and Spanking Parlor (Patricia, Princess of Pullets, Proprietor), serves grog and swill (some of the swill looks like normal bar drinks in dirty glasses), along with popcornz and bacon sammiches (some even made by men like yours truly). Free internet access. All newcomers get a free drink of choice, a bowl of popcornz, and a 10 e-ducat credit chit. Entertainment is provided by the Pullet Patrol™ trying to prank us, and security is provided by the Lilac Berets™.
specimen:
That is the very definition of prejudice: you’ve prejudged.
(Shame it was on the basis of ignorance, though)
In your world, everyone is assigned maleness or femaleness at birth on a chromosomal/gonadal basis, and then forevermore their gender identity must match their assigned sex identity else you will imagine they’re lying to themselves.
(The real world still exists, though)
Does not fucking add up by definition.
You’re trying to put words in my mouth. You’ve been doing that a lot.
I think that people can change their sexual identity, but if they identify as the opposite gender then they are lying to themselves. Whats wrong with “trans-sexual” anyway?
@reasonable fellow
Yup, that’s the harmful attitude that was identified, and just because you think that trans-gendered people should be free from all harassment except the kind that you espouse here doesn’t mean that you’re not doing harm.
I hesitate to derail the thread any further, but consider the case of Caster Semenya, who has a rare condition in which she has outward female genitalia, and an internal set of testes instead of ovaries. She is a woman. She was raised as a woman, identifies as a woman, and yet since she performed “too well”, she came under scrutiny and gender policing, and her athletic career suffered as a result.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster_Semenya
If you have a problem with accepting other people’s identities, then you should keep it to yourself lest you contribute to the aforementioned harm that trans-gendered people experience. Educate yourself.
It’s not just academic. The adjectives ‘male’ and ‘female’ mean something. And they are applicable to platypuses, turtles, sea urchins, insects, asparagus plants, and any dioecious organism, as well as to the gonads of monoecious/hermaphroditic organisms of all kinds.
‘Man’ and ‘woman’ have of course until extremely recently referred to male and female (in the sense above) humans.
I get the (again very recent, but by the same token progressive) distinction between sex and gender, and you can call yourself a man or a woman as you please as far as I’m concerned. But, I’m sorry, your implicit human exceptionalism does not warrant the redefinition of the word ‘male’. IMO. It refers to the production of small and usually motile gametes. Not a psychological self-identification. *shrug*
This is just bullshit. Expressing an opinion is not harmful in itself.
Riiiiight. We all are so convinced of the power of honesty, that when confronted with a baby we feel is really, really ugly, we say to the parents, “That’s one ugly kid. I am forced to say this because I have honesty and integrity which I will not besmirch by speaking anything but what I think is the absolute truth. So there.”
Johannas:
Mmmm. What they might be if cornered in a tightly enclosed space by an unwanted party is never specified. You just know it wouldn’t be prude or fag. Heh.
No, you missed the point. You said it was “all about chromosomes, and then people gave you examples of when it really isn’t “all about chromosomes”.
Then you got all mad when someone didn’t talk about genitals when defining “intersex”.
I generally use the term “intersex” very broadly, but it usually is used to describe a baby who cannot be assigned a gender at birth according to their genitalia because it is “ambiguous”.
That’s a relatively small group of people; and it used to be that they would be assigned at birth anyway and sometimes given surgery to be more female-typical. That has been a disaster when the original gender assignment is different than the gender identity of the child.
Transgender people are a different gender than they were originally assigned at birth. There are some similarities there. The parents assign a gender based on the genitalia, but later find out that they (the parents) were mistaken about the child’s gender.
Although experiences vary greatly, it is sometimes very disturbing to have a gender different than the one that is usually assigned to you based on your appearance. It is difficult to look at your body and know it is wrong.
For others to insist that you are not the gender you actually are is insulting and pretty damned terrible. To purposefully mis-gender someone is beyond rude – it is abusive.
You do not understand the words coming out of your mouth.
It is NOT being truthful to mis-gender a transgender person. You are not LYING to be polite by gendering them correctly. When you misgender a transgender person, you are telling a lie that has been told to hir over and over and over again since zie was born.
It’s a slap in the face.
Well apparently you couldn’t even read through that quote so..
[datum]
Transsexual and Intersex Gender Identity.
BTW, the author’s story is remarkable:
No, I asked whether that was typical or not of the trans-sexual experience. I haven’t got a real answer yet.
If you think someone is misinterpreting you, then correct them. Whining just isn’t enough.
See, this is where you show your bigotry. You’ve decided by fiat that a person remains their birth gender until they die. Those of us who are arguing with you say this is wrong, it’s incorrect, it’s not lying! If someone self-identifies as a man or a woman then that’s what they are, regardless of your opinions and prejudices. Sorry if reality doesn’t match your bigotry.
You seem to be the one with the problem about transexuals.
Reasonable Fellow, you need to change your ‘nym. You aren’t reasonable, you are prejudiced and prejudgemental. Try Presuppositional Fellow, which is more in line with your beliefs.
If someone self-identifies as the god neptune I am not obliged to agree with them.
@reasonable fellow
That’s not what I mean – bigoted opinions is harmful, especially when they are expressed by the majority of an oppressive society. Your dismissal of other people’s gender identity is harmful, and as you said, probably in line with the majority. The argument for the correctness of a cannot be based on majority opinion. The majority of people believe in God – that doesn’t make them right.
You have expressed an ignorance of the fluidity of biological gender, gender identity and people who are gender-queer. Educate yourself.
Oh if only this were true. It turns out that stating something like
Is not only hateful, it can severely hurt those reading it like myself. It reminds some of us how we’ll never be in precisely the body we were supposed to have, and that’s something that my own mind brings up often enough you don’t have to pile on. It’s called triggering, and doing on purpose is some of the lowest type of interaction.
You suck. Same to you Chas.
OK, thought experiment: Take two young children (one male, one female), while secondary sex characteristics haven’t kicked in yet. Swap their brains (this is hypothetical, so go with it) and let them grow up. At maturity, the boy is interested in other boys and the girl likes girls. To feel more comfortable, they become transsexuals. Are they lying to themselves?
No? If not, it is because their brains are what drive their sexuality. The brains of males and females generally have some subtle but distinctive differences in the size and organization of some sub-components. They have found that the brains of many gay men are morphologically closer to that of female brains. It is the brain, not the chromosomes or the physical sex characteristics, that determine sexuality.
Geez, this is as bad as the creationists, assuming that all living things come in “types”, and cannot change (evolve) due to some supernatural law.
gah, selfquote:
And also not a combination of chromosomes.
(in some lizards, almost all turtles and all crocodilians, sex–male or female–is determined by the temperature at which the egg is incubated.)
No, but you aren’t reasonable if you don’t. You show your prejudices if you don’t. Again, why not shut the fuck up and quit embarrassing your self. You have embarrassed your ‘nym since this topic started with your unreasonable presuppositions. Silence, saves you from foot in mouth disease…
Blech! I failed at my word salad. Meant to say that “bigoted opinions are harmful” and “The argument for the correctness of a fact.” Sorry for that.
Pol Pot had the right idea, 20% of all Kampucheans needed to be exterminated. Just my opinion.
Blacks are an inferior race, fit only for menial jobs. Just my opinion.
Jews are greedy bloodsuckers who kill Christian babies to make Passover matzos. Just my opinion.
Lesbians should be raped straight. Just my opinion.
Gays should be stoned to death. They all have AIDS anyway so killing them would be a blessing. Just my opinion.
Transexuals are lying to themselves. Just my opinion.
See how opinions work?
Hi Caine! As as ex-chef, I am perfectly happy just to be on the nomnom list. If you ever need USB baked goods, I can post an order form here on TET.
I suck because I object to redefinition of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’? I have not strengthened any systems of structural discrimination in any way, just talked about 2 words and their meanings.
Specimen:
…
Strange how my adumbration of your position is sufficient to account for your claims, no?
So, anyway: in what manner have I misrepresented your position?
Really, because being called a bigot, and pile of vomit, and a piece of shit, and that I suck, rather than engage in honest debate is really hateful to me. I just wish people would respect my feelings.
Yes it’s very important that you defend traditional
marriagedefinitions.Go fuck yourself miss.
If someone self-identifies as a reasonable fellow I am not obliged to agree with them.
That hurt. People shouldn’t be allowed to say that.
Why are you so certain that transgenderism doesn’t happen in other animals – cause I’d be really surprised if it didn’t.
We don’t use “male” and “female” to refer to our gametes. If you were in a horrible accident you would not suddenly become non-gendered. When you use “he” and “she” – you are referring to gender identity, absolutely. You don’t call women who have had surgery due to endrometriosis and ovarian cysts – “it” or something horrible.
Most males have male-typical gametes and most females have female-typical gametes – so in every-day speech a great number of people simply haven’t make distinctions.
For lack of a better analogy – it’s like how so many people use “mass” and “weight” interchangeably. Most of the time, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter until it really really matters.
@reasonable fellow
Why should intolerance be tolerated? What makes your feelings more important than the ones you’re hurting? Does your experience of being called names on the internet compare to telling trans-gendered people that they’re inherently dishonest and lying to themselves?
Kindly immolate yourself
There’s an easy fix if you don’t want to be called those things. Stop being a bigot and people won’t call you on your bigotry. Even a pile of vomit piece of shit sucking bigot should be able to figure that one out. Unless they’re really fucking stupid.
Gosh, you mean someone expressing their opinion can hurt?
Specimen:
You aren’t debating, you’re endlessly asserting your ignorant opinion and dismissing on the basis of ignorance and incredulity.
Have you even looked at any of the links provided, O declaimer of lack of honest debate?
I for one cited the Genderbread Person and A.E. Brain’s resource on Transsexual and Intersex Gender Identity.
Any comments about those?
(Others have cited other sources, you’ve equally ignored them, any comments about those?)
Then you didn’t read my post…or did you want an actual number for some reason?
Win you over? You want to be won over? For a start, you could show some evidence that you’re engaging in good faith.
Listen, some people here are actually trying to reason with you (they have more patience than I). Others are trying to get you to shut up and go the fuck away.
Personally, I don’t care much if you’re a bigotted arsewipe. As long as it’s happening between your own ears and not affecting anyone else, I really don’t give a shit. To that end, aggressive speech (to make you go away) and mockery (to put you off saying bigotted things in other contexts) serve nicely.
They haven’t worked on you yet, but they are time-tested. Blatent racism is a lot less frequent than it used to be, because people don’t dare to be openly racist any more*.
Similarly, mockery, shock, and horror will eventually stop people being openly transphobic or homophobic or whatever.
TRiG.
* This is not by any means actually true, yet. But it’s a lot more true than it used to be.
I just looked at the genderbread website. Wow, my mind is changed. How much for a t-shirt?
Ah, so calling someone a bigot is JUST as bad as being one. What a reasonable way to think.
r**s*n*bl* fellow:
Let’s say that despite the mountain of evidence that Jadehawk and John Morales have provided*, that you are correct and trans- people are just lying to themselves**.
So the fuck what? Why do you even care?
Like has been said time and time again, how someone else identifies doesn’t harm you in the slightest, even if they’re lying to themselves.
Why are you putting up this fight, r**s*n*bl* fellow? What’s your stake in all of this?
*Sorry if I missed anyone!
**Why do I feel like this was an old argument used against gay men and lesbians?
Your cogent analysis and impeccable rebuttal becomes you.
@reasonable fellow
Way to impress me with your reasonableness, honesty and integrity.
Oh, wait… What’s the opposite of impressed, again?
I’m not ‘putting up a fight’ – i’m talking. Other people are being really aggressive but that is not something I can control.
Well this is why I say fuck the skeptics
QueQuoi:
♥! Thank you, QueQuoi!
As seen on Twitter:
The more you know. . .
No really, that image of a gingerbread man was powerful stuff.
@reasonablefellow
Question: How do you find out? Particularly the chromosomes.
*Visualizes reasonablefellow’s workplace. Shudders*
Ponies were mentioned and I must comment
Pteryxx:
There wouldn’t have been any flap if the character had simply been named “Derpy”. It was the voice that moved the character from silly to offensive.
–
humble opinions:
Send this one back, I think it’s broken.
To what stuff do you refer, the which its power you concede?
Argh, I go away, watch some Tour de France, get some sleep, go to the gym, and suddenly there’s a completely new annoying troll in the thread? (yeah, I know, that never happens normally…)
I think the ‘reasonable’ nym is the same phenomenon as the German Democratic Republic, the People’s Republic of Korea, the Center for American Progress, and (for my fellow Aussies) ‘Honest John’ and ‘WorkChoices’.
Seems to be something common to authoritarian personalities to do this. And the whole “I get to decide whether you are a man or a woman, based on traditional definitions” is pretty darn authoritarian.
[meta]
PS I doubt it’s only I who has noticed the morph of “the Genderbread Person” to the “gingerbread man”.
(Oblivious people are oblivious)
r**s*n*abl*fellow:
Uh huh.
Gee whiz, it’s almost as if you pissed some of us off with your assertions that and . I mean, golly, you’ve triggered at least one poster– did you even notice that? Do you even care?
And if you’re not putting up a fight, then why haven’t you fucked right along, then?
LynM:
Just what I was thinking.
So, if I meet ‘reasonable fellow’, and claim to be a woman, he’s gonna want a blood test before he believes me, and otherwise refuse to assign me a gender?
Oh come off it.
This is a good discussion I feel.
Also, what about my other question, irrational fellow?
Why do you care if someone is lying to themselves?
(Stupid asshole. I feel sleazy just writing that out and if it weren’t because of your ignorance, I wouldn’t have had to. I’m gonna have to loofah really hard when I shower tonight.)
I’ll add ‘narcissism’ to my previous ‘authoritarian’.
@reasonable fellow
Oh, this is a good discussion? So your thoughtful and intellectual analysis of the information that people have offered you is “good discussion” and not disagreeable trolling? Could have fooled me. Come to think of it, you did fool me.
C.C.Fuss,
No, no, he’ll go by what you look like wearing clothing.
If that fails, he’ll go by what you look like not wearing clothing.
If that fails, he’ll need a cellular sample to determine your chromosomal make-up — that being the bottom line.
(It’s all very simple, really)
I don’t, as has been said many times.
@ reasonablefellow
Oh, must be so, since I didn’t agree with you.
This ^ is exactly why so many of us are under the impression that you’re a miserable sack of shit. You can’t back up any of your arguments and you’re fucking dismissing another persons feelings and struggles.
I’m supposed to think that you’re reasonable after that? Seriously? Grow a fucking empathy glad or something.
I think it’ll be obvious.
??
Am I supposed to believe your actions or your words?
You are really adept at lying to yourself, I’ve noticed.
John Morales:
Ah, yes, of course you’re right – what every reasonable person would do.
And since my clothed appearance is not as indicative of my chromosomal makeup as a reasonable person might be warranted in thinking, and he’ll never get the second and third kind of information, there will be lots of confusion. I find this quite satisfying to imagine.
(Seriously, I really do like annoying the “but how can you tell whether they’re a man or a woman?!” folks)
DO YOU NOW. How…..reasonable. And surprising.
And what if the gender that seems obvious to you does not ‘match’ my chromosomes? How will you know whether to refuse to go along with my self-described gender identity?
You only have my words to go by and i’ve repeatedly stated that I don’t care how people identify themselves. I object to being told how I must view them.
That you’re a complete douchebag? It is.
You’re an asshole, and a massive bigot. Your feelings on how you feel about that are irrelevant here, because assholes and massive bigots face no problem from society; if anything, they are bolstered by it.
Chromosomes, those giant lumps we have festooned all over us.
Is it just me or does the beginning of this statement not match the end?
No, cause the reason so many people are screaming and yelling and posting you links and freaking the hell out of you – is not JUST because they like to read themselves type – but because your particular brand of willful ignorance is so powerful it kills people.
…and even though my nephew survived and he is doing really well these days, that’s not how everyone fairs.
I was very unaware of what was going on at the time. Now I know better. I’ve actually looked into the *gasp* scientific literature about gender identity and LISTENED to my nephew who is very knowledgeable.
You don’t even seem to know what “gender identity” means and are making statements about how others must be “lying to themselves”?!
About 41% of transgender people have attempted suicide and YOUR type of attitude absolutely contributes to that.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40279043/ns/health-health_care/t/transgender-americans-face-high-suicide-risk/#.T_j9ONUkKSo
So, NO it’s not appropriate for you to insist that anyone “come off it”.
What you should be saying right now is:
“Sorry” and “Thank you”
You’ll be the angry dude in a skirt probably.
asking a skeptic to examine their baseless beliefs is literally worse than Hitler and Stalin combined
and the clock has struck Porcupine
reasonable fellow: I am being a bit confused what your position is, are you saying male/female is defined by chromosome makeup?
clueless specimen:
1. Such inanity presented as revelation!
2. You do care, at the very least to the extent you consider them liars when their identification does not match your prejudice.
Evidence: you popped in to spout how this is so.
3. No one is telling you how you must view them, but rather who they are and that a (ahem) reasonable view entails being informed.
—
(Recalcitrant defiance to addressing one’s ignorance is ignominious)
@reasonable fellow
Okay, Troll Status confirmed.
Yeah. Those things that define gender.
Wow. Okay.
It’s always nice when bigots shed their “reasonable” pretenses, isn’t it? No… not nice. Every fucking bit as disgusting.
(It seems, fellow, that you’re totes okay with how a person identifies as long as they “pass”. Am I getting close?)
What was that about not being a bigot again?
*headdesk!*
At least look up what “gender” means.
(Here’s a hint: it’s not the same as sex!)
Whatever, i’m supposed to put up with being called a piece of shit bigot. Big surprise I hit back eventually.
@reasonablefellow:
Listen, definitions matter.
Being told that you can’t “marry” because others want an unchanging definition of marriage matters. Being told you are not a real man or woman because you had a sex change matters. Just because it doesn’t affect you directly does not mean that it doesn’t matter to others. Especially when that definition is associated with discrimination and/or violence against the person so defined.
This is essentially what this thread has been about, when TF stated that the concerns of women about harassment were overblown. He wasn’t the person or group being harassed (or worse), SO HE DOESN’T GET TO DECIDE! Neither do you.
Gosh, that so stings. Imagine such a horror. And I’ll be ugly, yes?
Oh, and I am part Scots, but let’s skip that.
reasonable fellow: That was also how I understand your posts. But according to wikipedia (i am no biologist), being able to produce sperm is what define “male”. I guess I was wondering why you choose genetic makeup?
@reasonable fellow
BIG SURPRISE that you hit back on the people that commentors here are trying to educate you about. BIG SURPRISE that your assertion that you don’t care and that you’re polite about people you believe to be lying to themselves turns out to be not so true.
Way to attack the vulnerable when you get all pissy. Truly, that was big of you.
Reasonable fellow, different subject, but somewhat related…
What’s your take on so called ex-gay therapy?
True enough. I think most people are going to have great difficulty producing sperm without a Y chromosome.
Well if you’re part scottish the ugliness is implied. Thats a joke by the way.
hilarious
Because so many Scots kills themselves as a result of bigotry. I appreciate the comment that you were only joking.
Jokes never hurt.
Because being called a bigot is every bit as bad as making bigoted statements, right?
Once again, thanks for showing your true colors. Too bad they’re so fucking ugly.
reasonable fellow: Sure, sure. Actually when I think about it I think the two things are equivalent according to the wikipedia definition of “male”.
You’ve been hitting the entire time, dumbass.
FFS
oh – You had testicular cancer? How does it feel not to be male?
I mean – you looked it up on wiki….are you a cartoon?
We can only draw one conclusion from this: Wikipedia is a bigoted hate-site committed to driving transexuals to suicide through the relentless repetition of bio-truth.
*nods enthusiastically*
Yes, that’s me!
.
.
.
… or is it??? *conspiratorial look*
Maintaining honesty and integrity as a self-described ‘reasonable fellow’ defending the sanctity of outdated gender norms is hard, man.
@ CC Fuss
Hmmmmm
No, I think it’s me. I am famously a guy, and in a skirt and angry as all heck.
But we could alternate, if you like.
Melby: Yes i looked it up on wikipedia. No I am not a cartoon.
You are a toxic, vile, willfully ignorant bigot who serves less purpose than fetid pus. That’s not only my opinion, fuckwit, I have a post after post after post of evidence that is the case.
We’re all on solid ground here, douchebiscuit. It’s you who is dancing on quicksand.
Are you like a weredumbfuck, when the night gets on and the moon comes out you become someone with supernatural powers of dumbfuckery?
Lyn:
This is so punk rock.
♥
Pack that evidence into your fucking clown car and drive down to the D.As office shit for brains.
Pats pockets of poodle decorated circle skirt
I have some cybergarlic here somewhere. I swear.
Checks purse (sorry, sorry Manpurse)
There you go!
@ Audley
Is it OK that its a poodle-decorated circle skirt? I can’t manage the ponytail due to short hair, but hey, maybe I could braid my beard?
Lyn:
The circle skirt makes you even more badass. :)
Risable fellow:
You do not fit in here. You will never fit in here. You should go and find some other part of the internet where you will fit in better.
And even if you don’t find another part of the internet, you should go.
This is not the place for you.
Oh. *pouts*
….Uh, I mean, *pouts LIKE AN ANGRY DUDE*
Yayy!
And the rest of the time I can confound the super-chromosome-detecting powers of reasonable fellows everywhere by not wearing a skirt.
reasonable fellow: You certainly get that impression.
Actually the talk-page for the “male” wikipedia page contain some interesting information regarding chromosonal makeup and the physiological sex you might want to check out if you are interested.
@ Audley
Welllll, then, I also found some bowling shoes, white ankle socks and a bowling bag I appliqued with scots terriers, one pink one blue, and a charm bracelet. I won’t even begin to list all the charms, except I think the Harley wirespoke front wheel cap is special.
@ CC Fuss
Ooooo, and MAN pout. Like wow, so totally man that I just completely believe you are a man, right down to your blue-shaded chromosomes.
That’s nothin.
Physicists have appropriated Strange (sorry Sally & Sam!), Magic (sorry everyone!), and even Flavor! (Sorry Ms. Cripdyke!)
In fact, I wasn’t going to mention this because I didn’t want to scare the McStraighterson family, but physicists are totally appropriating and redefining
Top and Bottom!!!11!1!one!!
Imagine, people in a community picking words to communicate ideas the way that they think is best even when others don’t use the word in the same way!
They even – horrors – defend and justify the practice. I’ve heard physicists (well, one) say that they want everyone to know about this freaky Top/Bottom stuff.
There’s a reason “Quark” is more than half “Queer”. I say we storm CERN with pitchforks and torches.
Lyn,
Can we please braid a pink ribbon into your beard?
@CC Fuss
Awesome. I thought you actually disappeared there for a moment, but if I squinch up my eyes, virilily and look side-ways, I can just see you.
Pretty cool power there.
@Audley
Be my guest. I prefer satin, if you’ve got it. Not so fond of sequins, though.
So, why don’t you at least look up “gender identity” as well. Cause the wiki for “male” is referring to the “male sex” as in the organisms that carries the “male” gamete in order to breed. This use is only used as the categorical male-typical when discussing reproduction. That’s it. Nothing more. At all.
It is not referring to “male” in the context of gender and gender identity.
Latching onto a specific use of the term “male” and using that definition as a prescription onto a more complex subject is a misuse.
Science, and especially science jargon, is NOT prescriptive. It describes. If you are using “male” to mean a WHOLE MESS of distinct things, that may or may not occur together, you’re just being sloppy.
A transgender man’s gender is male. He may have some or all female-typical reproductive organs, depending on if he has chosen to remove them or not. (..and it’s none of your goddamn business.)
If you are discussing GENDER and not someone’s sexual organs – their gender is the gender that they identify as. THE END.
That’s how that works.
“If you are discussing GENDER and not someone’s sexual organs – their gender is the gender that they identify as. THE END.”
AARGH
…and even if you are talking about their sexual organs…
Which you should really refrain from doing – cause it’s rude.
Counts carefully. Nods
Yep, she’s right.
Checks bowling bag for torches
I’m sure I packed a few. Sure makes for more fun “barbeques”, if you get my drift. At least that’s what I tell the cops. ;)
Melby: So in that case, one can be male (as in gender) and not male (as in sex) at the same time.
To you being a toxic, vile, willfully ignorant bigot who serves less purpose than fetid pus, I’ll add that you are utterly abysmal at the art of insult.
TESTIFY girl.
Hopes Josh notices the outfit. Jangles the Harley cap audibly.
Oooh Daddy!. . .errr. . I mean. . mommy. . I mean. . .rowr!
@ Lyn M:
LOL!
Being an angry dude in a skirt is awesome. :-D
Crip Dyke:
And don’t forget those dreadful statisticians, with their “Normal Distribution”. I mean. As if ‘normal’ could be a distribution of things and not just exactly one thing!
Oh, and reasonable fellow? Fuck off and die. You’re a scum bag and I wouldn’t turn my back on you for any amount of money. You’re the reason I have to keep my guard up for myself and my friends. You pose as an ally but you’re an enabler or worse.
Thank you, Josh.
Tosses beard over shoulder.
Well, it was a slice all. CC Fuss, get that skirt on because I’m out of here. Got me some shoppin’ to do.
And Josh, I think Momma-Daddy is pretty cool. Just sayin’.
Lyn M: Yes Sir-Ma’am!
I’M ON IT!!!
In a fashion.
However, since the terms “gender” and “sex” are used so interchangeable in every-day speech, there is a problem. We’re stuck with antiquated lingo based at one time on religiously corrupted biology (God made binary MAN and WOMAN) and the other based on pseudo-science that asserted that gender was completely a social construct. (That failed notion was based in part on a pivotal falsified study that resulted in David Reimer’s eventual suicide.)
Being referred to with a gendered-term (such as female) if a person is male; even if you are using the term “sex” to define the category should simply be avoided. The reason being is that nobody uses the strict definition of “sex” to refer to a person, in fact, in strict definition it doesn’t even make sense to use it to refer to an individual.
“biological sex”
“real sex”
blah blah blah
Are all considered really rude – and understandably so. They are also problematic in their connotations. For example, it reinforces the myth that gender identity has no physiological basis and promotes the dehumanizing concept of not being a “real” man or woman if you are transgender.
So: the accepted terms (that are in use currently) are:
cis-male
cis-female
transgender male
transgender female
If someone is cis, that means that the gender that they identify as is the same gender as the one they were assigned at birth, usually due to their outward physical appearance.
If someone is trans, that means that the gender that they identify as if a different gender as the one they were assigned at birth, usually due to their outward physical appearance.
When you are referring to someone with a gendered term – you just use the one that the person prefers. You don’t judge hir or assume what’s in hir head or hir pants. Most of the time, people want to be referred to with a gendered term that best represents their gender identity.
I’ve also heard good arguments for simply retiring the term “trans-sexual”; and I tend to agree.
nigel wanders in, looks around. The room is filled with friendly, smiling, familiar faces, as comforting as a pillow pressed to the face. But something is off. He smells putridity as some people sniff farts.
Oh, hi, reasonable fellow! It’s such a surprise to see you here, among all us skirt-wearin’* angry dudes. You did have a point somewhere, didn’t you? Or were you just happy to see us?
Please, accept my gracious invitation to fuck right the fuck off. It’s for tomorrow, a Sunday morning affair. The dress is casual, the location is any-fucking-where but here. Libations will be served, as long as you provide them, to drown your grief.
Also, too, there will be a heapin’ helpin’ of We Don’t Give A Fuck. So please, dress accordingly, drive soberly, and arrive promptly at fuck-you-o’clock.
You’re welcome!
* As if that’s a bad thing. Access is the word! As is the cool breeze up among all the hot-and-sweaties.
Good night.
miniatures are drying. let’s have a peek, shall we?
chas, you’re such a hypocrite. The gamete-based definition is the newer definition, and it’s specifically only applicable to reproductive biology. It’s neither the universal, nor the most common, nor the original definition, but rather it’s a definition derived from the broader, plain-English word for man, being its adjective (not the other way round, as you claim). It’s no more the One True Definition of “male” than the one for computer parts is. So basically, you constantly whine when you notice specific social-science jargon that isn’t synonymous with plain English, but you want plain-English words to conform to specific reproductive-biology jargon? That’s bullshit. Hypocritical bullshit. Unwarranted hypocritical bullshit to boot, since the existence of the gamete-based definition is evidence for changing biological definitions as more knowledge of biology flows in. otherwise, it would never have been extended to things that aren’t bepenised animals in the first place.
Also, claims about exceptionalism in this case are also bullshit, since no one claimed other animals can’t be trans (animals that act as if they were the other sex are after all not unheard of).
And lastly, knowing your on sex is not “psychological self-identification” any more than me knowing which arm is mine and which is yours is “psychological self-identification”.
– – – – –
1)you’re lying again. It’s been explained to you that if these opinions never left your head via words or actions, they wouldn’t matter. This is still the case, and you claiming again that it’s about the thinking despite repeated corrections is a lie.
2)it’s evidence for willful ignorance,when Christians continue saying this after being corrected
3)saying it is a form of erasure. You don’t actually believe that actual transness exists, any more than these Christians believe that atheists really exist. Spreading that view by voicing it publicly makes it look like people advocating for atheist (or trans) rights are asking for special favors for their silly flights of fancy. This hinders progress.
this is a factually wrong statement, since trans people are never unambiguously “biologically” one sex or the other, since the exhibit characteristics of both. You’ve already admitted that you don’t really use chromosomes for identification of sex (or else you wouldn’t claim intersex people are a “difficult” case), so you don’t actually have anything factual left to stand on; all you have is your irrational need to defend your prejudice from fact, exemplified by your refusal to look at the articles (especially the science articles I linked earlier) provided to you.
this is incorrect. You are prejudiced against transsexuals by denying that they can ever be the biological sex their brains have always been. This denial of who they are, and calling them liars, is harassment, and it’s an example of how you’re denying them a right that you already have.
amazing how the words that are supposedly being put into your mouth are synonymous with what you say right after complaining about it.
nothing, it just doesn’t mean “person who lies to themselves about which sex they are”. It means “person whose brain is a different sex than other body parts”.
this is factually incorrect. Here are two examples of how publicly stated opinions cause harm:
Stereotype threat
Microaggressions
you’re lying. And you’re doing this because you were also lying when you said you determine sex by chromosomes, since intersex people wouldn’t constitute a “difficult” case if you really thought chromosomes determined sex.
and
you’re very ignorant and very dishonest. None of the things people were calling you or saying to you were “punching down the power gradient” and thus cannot trigger the effects (like stereotype threat and microaggression) of oppressive speech.
Also, you’re the one not engaging in honest debate, since you’ve not read any of the articles and evidence provided to you. Nor have you addressed most of the arguments presented to you in-thread. Instead, you do non-honest, non-discussion bullshit like this:
you’re putting up a fight. Specifically, you’re being defensive of your prejudice, and are refusing to read and address the evidence provided to you.
you’re an egocentric, callous, and ignorant fuck to blithely dismiss the harm you’ve done directly to at least one person, to call a conversation that is causing such harm “good”, and to call a conversation in which you’ve not engaged with a single argument or piece of evidence a “discussion”, nevermind a “good discussion”.
another bit of evidence that when you said it was about chromosomes, you were not telling the truth. Chromosomes are not “obvious”. Sometimes (but not always. I’m surrounded by androgynes of various genders and sexes), the effects of hormones are obvious, but they need not correspond to any particular chromosomal combination. So when you say that it’ll be obvious, you are saying that you will be judging them by external secondary and tertiary sexual characteristics. Not chromosomes.
your words, the act of typing them and hitting send, your participation in this conversation, are actions.
you’re lying, since it’s your actions, not your thinking, that has been criticized. And this fact has been pointed out to you repeatedly.
this comment is pure transphobia, trying to insult/dismiss someone in this fashion.
1)stop lying. If you actually believed that, you wouldn’t call intersex people a “difficult” case, since they often have no chromosomal anomalies.
2)chromosomes don’t define gender. They don’t define sex either, that would be hormones (in humans)
using transphobic insults is not “hitting back” for being called a bigot. It’s just proving us right.
this is still factually incorrect. And seriously, are you surprised that a crowdsourcing site promotes the most common and popular, rather than the most accurate, view on something?
C.C.Fuss, backup angry dude in a skirt:
That was quick.
Love the ‘nym. It’s quite dashing.
Though I have to admit, I’m not sure what is required for something to be “dashing,” other than to hurl it into the fireplace.
Yeah. You are supposed to put up with it fucker. Because you are a piece of shit bigot. You don’t have to be, and you can change, and lots of us have been pieces of shit bigots before we got smacked upside the head with empathy.
Who cares if your babyish reactance causes you to “hit back?” Be a human being and take it on board.
where the fuck is DDMFM? I need to know what “angry dude in a skirt” is in French.
I am not going to stick around to see how this comment thread ends or even where it goes from here, but I wanted to offer this in the spirit of, oh I don’t know, pissing into the wind perhaps (not that I would know how that usually turns out..):
More original minds than mister fellow’s have pondered the relationship between “sex” and “gender” and “biology”. I would suggest extending the critique to the current cis-mythology of chromosomal determinism so often trundled out to excuse discursive ignorance concerning sex and gender in human cultures.
If that’s too heady, try Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender. It’s not airtight, but it is skeptical (in the strong sense) enough to get you started.
Caine, your effort to educate that whiny sheepguy was noble and brave and I hope the landing was not as painful as it looked from here.
I am going to move on to more recent posts now as reading this thread in its entirety has completely exhausted me, but for the record, watching the social and political evolution at Pharyngula over the last year has been really, really sweet. You know, in case people are getting the idea that most lurkers are still knuckledragging “skeptics” who have no clue how to examine an assumption.
I was just wondering that, Jadehawk. Where the hell IS David? Is anyone in contact with him?
It has, hasn’t it? Despite how bloodying it’s been (and it has been). Thanks for saying so and for that reminder.
oh, d’oh. he’s probably digging for prehistoric critters in Poland. I forgot. and by “forgot” I meant I repressed it, because I’m envious as fuck.
eriktrips:
I hate to post just to say, “Me too,” especially since I’m not technically a lurker, but, “Me too.” I’ve really enjoyed (and grown from) the evolution* of Pharyngula. I think I am a better person because of some of these discussions.
* Pun intended, sorta.
Heheheh:) Thanks Jadehawk.
Melby:
I hear you.
NigelTheBold:
Why thank you! *preens*
*then stops preening to wonder about hurling nym into fireplace*
Ummmm. Something like “mec furieux dans une jupe”
But my French is really rusty, especially my grammar.
(I think “qui portent une jupe” might also be right but I’m not sure whether either is idiomatic)
Another example of how bigotted attitudes towards trans people can hurt?
Possible trigger warning…
In Sweden a trans-woman was assaulted and her attacker ripped off her pants in a fairly obvious prelude to raping her before a witness intervened and the police arrived and arrested the attacker. This is bad. But the bit that has caused outrage is that the judge dropped the ‘attempted rape’ charge because it was not a cisgender woman then she couldn’t have been raped even if it had not been stopped because she was a ‘physical man’ (ignoring of course the fact that men can and do get raped) and thus the attempted rape charge was dropped (the attacker still got jail time for the assault charge and a fine).
Eriktrips:
I’m bouncy, all is good. :) Thank you and thank you for your post.
Can’t. Hold. Breath. Any. Longer.
Was hoping to be able to stay underwater so no one would notice I was there, but my lung capacity is what it is.
Maybe I needed one of those air hoses the “mermaids” at Florida tourist traps, er, attractions use.
*grumble* Knew I should’ve learned to scuba.
People, remember:
No matter how the apologists try to spin it, being asked for coffee when it is unwelcome and perceived as harassing is no different from being raped.
Get the fuck out of here and don’t come back.
Nope. See, we live in reality, unlike fuckwitted assweasels like you.
Gad, you’re boring. Go back to your pit, Cupcake, until you can come up with something that is at least amusing.
You’ve got to strawman your opponents! It’s the only way to win!
FOR STRAWVICTORY!!
moshiachone wrote:
Oh, is that the game we’re playing now? Can I try?
People remember:
Asking men not to corner women in elevators while asking for sex is no different from forced castration and the extinction of humanity.
How’d I do?
moshiachone:
Bwah?
Where the fuck did that come from?
Or is that an intentional strawman of the story in which a guy makes a clumsy pass at a woman in an elevator (basically objectifying her), and the woman uses that incident as a side note in a presentation about sexual objectification and she says, “Guys, don’t do that”?
Because, really. No matter how the apologists try to spin it, being told, “Guys, don’t do that” is no different from a call for universal castration.
ckitching:
Curse you for stealing my line! That’s no different from lobotomizing me.
I fucking hate people. And for “people”, read: menz, mostaccioli.
When building a strawman, it’s important to ensure that it’s properly secured to the ground. This is usually done by placing at least a small amount of the actual position you’re attempting to weaken on the base. Here you can see a strawman that has not been secured properly. The creator has attempted to secure it with the word ‘coffee’, but alas, that is woefully inadequate to prevent it from being blown apart by the winds of howling laughter before a match can even be struck.
“mec fache en jupe
Imagine an accent egu over the E in “fache”
Huh? I just said exactly what you people say.
I guess I gotta remember to throw in a lot of witticisms like “fuck” and “fuckwit” and tell people to “get the fuck out,” and other such clever turns of phrase.
Don’t forget “And die choking on my own dick.”
Sweetie, if you’re going to lie, at least TRY to make it a bit subtle.
moshiachone:
Ah! I see your problem here.
You failed to establish your actual position. What you presented was, in fact, a literal representation of what some have actually claimed. So any intended irony in your post was lost in what can possibly be called the Poemuda Triangle™. (Yeah, I’ve trademarked that.)
But, yeah. A couple of “fucks’ woulda helped.
Ah, thanks!
I never really had occasion to learn which of the different ‘angry’ words were best in what context.
…One of these days I need to relearn all my lost French.
As the individual straws used in the construction of the strawman spiral through the air, the creator expresses confusion at its premature destruction. How could it be, it is wondered, that my absurd misrepresentation of a fairly well established and thoroughly discussed chain of events was so easily dismantled by nothing more than the breath of a few guffawing humans? If only this aspiring straw engineer had taken the time to ground their creation with the slightest appearance of actually understanding the position they built their strawman from, all of this could have been avoided.
For at least two minutes. DON’T let this happen to you!
@ C.C.
“gene” (again with the accent) would also work. Might even be better. It’s been a while for me too. But I think “fache” is good.
Lying scum.
Nigel:
.
+8 with a tentacle on top.
_____________
Oh, poor scarecrow. Didn’t anyone tell you that you need a brain to play here?
moshiachone:
So, I’m confused. Perhaps it’s because it’s 2:20 am. Perhaps it’s because I just watched Battle: LA. Maybe it’s because I’m a bit slow to cognate. It might be that you’ve not communicated precisely what you intend.
In any case, I’m confused.
Do you mean that we have literally said being cornered in an elevator is no different from rape? Or are you implying you agree with us that that is an extreme strawman of the situation, and you were originally having a go at humor?
If it’s the latter, you don’t have the caché to pull it off. If the former, you’re a willfully ignorant douchepie. In either case, you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.
Or, you could just flee, and post here no more.
faché?
(faché)
And I see the strawmanspinner is either extremely ignorant, or extremely dishonest. The first will be remedied by actually going and learning about what happened. The second, well, it depends on whether it is a chronic condition, but if this is the case then they can just fuck off until they are prepared to be honest.
Yeah, thanks Ariaflame.
moshiachone wrote:
{{Citation needed}} The only people I ever see saying that kind of nonsense have been drive-by MRA trolls. It’s not us that turned Rebecca’s remarkably tame criticism into this straw feminist argument that flirting is rape.
It’s so sad that this elevator incident is even being discussed today. She didn’t really say anything that ought to be that controversial. I guess we can look forward to Anita Sarkeesian having increasingly ridiculous words inserted into her mouth for months, and months, and years to come.
“Seeing sexist depictions of women in videogames is EXACTLY LIKE BEING RAPED WITH A CACTUS.”
Shit, now I’ve done it.
moshiachone:
By the by, we’re still waiting on those clever turns of phrase. We’ve provided many examples, several of which were devoid entirely of any derivation of “fuck.” (My favorite is chiptuneist at #355.)
Or was this simply another poor strawman? If so, you might attempt a course in underwater basket weaving or somesuch. Y’know, to build your straw-construction skills.
I really hope you’re more skilled in your chosen vocation than you are in straw construction. Valhalla forbid you are an actual engineer.
ta daa
Nice, Jadehawk! Ya like my new one?
nice. anything specific that occasioned it?
Not really. Just liked Audley’s remarks about Femi-Fascists and wanted to emphasis the extreme important of man
fee-feespee-pees.Also, curious to see if any trolls peg to the “silicon” and realize I’m posting in drag.
People, remember: Using superglue to attach important components is exactly like using bolts.
sigh
All right. Who broke our troll? I know it was passed around like a joint at a Grateful Dead concert (only with a bit more joyous shaking). But seriously. This one lasted two posts. That’s it.
Aren’t they better constructed, mostly?
(nigel looks at the fine print on the bottom of the troll.)
Designed and built by moshiachone?
LOL, I’ve got nothing that’s going to be better than that. You win.
No way. You’ve been crackin’ my shit up like rocks at hard time on the chain gang.
Oh no, it couldn’t be…
*peers at nigel’s shit*
DAMN YOU MOSHIACHONE!
*snort*
Oh, I’d like to think I have higher grade shit that that.
At least, that’s what I’d like to think.
Now I think I must trudge off to bed. While this will never get old (thanks to your strawman instructional videos [which I seriously think you should make]), I myself am. (Getting old, I mean.) (Which means I gotta get to bed, as it’s after 3am. And I’m old.)
G’night, y’all. Leave some bits of the trolls for me, if you can. I’ll be back someday.
See, that’s what’s so fun about the echo chamber.
Previously, when I brought up that a point minutely dissenting from the received wisdom of this august panel, I was literally told a story about anal rape (which of course had nothing to do with coffee, elevators, harassment). From you reasonable people. And no other reasonable person thought that that was out of line or extremist, because, of course it wasn’t and isn’t.
Now, when I agree with you, and say, sure, a coffee invitation is just like rape, you turn on me and say: stop making a strawman, it’s nothing like rape.
You have got to be more consistent. How can an adherent absorb the party line if it keeps wavering back and forth? Be as strident as possible.
Your inability to fucking read is not our problem. Get the fuck out of here.
@ SamStrange:Femi-Fascist with a (silicon) pee-pee
I get the horrible impression you missed the little picture thingy I made for you. (Linky)
moshiachone, your trolling is feeble and your lies ludicrous.
(rebarbative you are)
Imagine that. Naturally you have a link.
@ Theophontes
No I missed that. Thanks!
No! Literally???
And this was literally an assertion that elevator propositioning and rape are the same thing?
Well, that’s us told.
….So did you have problems with allegories as a child? Or, for that matter, now?
Awwww. What did I do wrong?
[OT]
C.C.Fuss, use the q tag by itself for your formatting Gumbyspeak — it’s been set up for just that, here.
Are you sure it wasn’t figurative? Perhaps metaphorical? Maybe a figment of your woeful imagination? Because if someone actually told you a story, in the literal sense, I’m absolutely sure that anyone with a dram of integrity would happily provide a link to said story. Just sayin’.
mushy chode wrote @ #382:
It’s so echoey, it has nearly 1,400 posts of spirited debate! It’s echolicious!
Also: why are you still posting here? Are you a lesbian?
Awesome! Thank you!
*Sniffles*
The accent thingy didn’t wooooork in my nym. That hurts nearly as bad as being called an angry dude in a skirt. I mean, whoa.
I’ve forgotten the code for the actual actual gumby stuff I think it involved code tags and blockquote tags, and opening and closing stuff before starting the blockquote, but I don’t think I bookmarked the page. :(
Also moshiachone – Link, or it didn’t happen.
[OT]
Lyn, you’ve tried to use a HTML entity, rather than a character.
Cut and paste it, the standard font supports it.
(Check out theophontes #384 for an example)
Lyn M
Looks like you forgot the ; on the end of the acute. If that doesn’t work, copy and paste the actual character.
é gives é
Cut and paste. Dang. I thought of that, but then I thought, nooooo, code it.
Thank you, John. Once again, right.
I think that worked.
Happy once again.
*Braids more ribbon into the beard.*
@ Orange Utan, I had thought the ; was some deformed smiley.
@Lyn M
When used in a smiley, it’s a wink ;)
For html entities, it’s basically a closing tag.
That had been my impression, yes. And it worked a treat, thanks.
Not sure I want to put my muck-wading boots on to get caught up. Not sure my muck-wading boots even go high enough. I will answer this from Moshiachone :
I’m a man. I always feel welcome. I want everyone to feel welcome. Maybe you meant to say “PZ’s blog is no longer a he-man woman-haters club.” It never was.
The “party line” doesn’t waver; the patriarchal undercurrent of human society is responsible for all of the misogyny. ALL of the misogyny. Everything from shit-heads who think propositioning lone women in elevators or handing conference speakers their Super Special Swingers Card is A-OK, to death sentences for rape victims and infibulation. Said undercurrent must therefore be choked off, and the Order Of Things that springs from it re-ordered, if equality is to be realised.
It’s like having a mole in your garden. You can go out, every single day, with a big steel mallet, and crush all of the little molehills with extreme prejudice; but until you tear the whole thing up by the roots and evict the mole, nothing will ever change.
But not TOO strident; you might hurt my Privilege Bone and provoke Angryman Response Mode (now with extra gender slurs!), which will, of course, be YOUR OWN FAULT for being too strident to listen to my PRATTs and logical fallacies!
Caveat: Obviously, I will make an exception for not being welcoming to derailers, trolls, enablers, privilege-blinds, sexists, axe-grinders, liars, JAQers, gaslighters, shit-stirrers, etc.
As a regular reader of much of this blog since the Dover trial, I see a lot of good commenters here get battle-weary from onslaughts. They will not have patience, nor should it be expected, for people who generally mean harm and cannot back their arguments up, nor for anyone who is willing to pontificate about history when they don’t know the story, or those that wilfully misrepresent facts. That they would block you, or call for your ban, or choose intense vitriolic insults against you when your intent is to disrupt, is 100% understandable. This is not bullying. Being banned or shouted at or having your views exposed as unconvincing is an outcome of discourse. You should expect that outcome if you step over a line.
I’ve seen how these arguments go down, I know how future ones will go down, because the responses to new names is always: to first, show that they’re wrong, or to tell them that this has been addressed. Then if they have crossed a line, they would be told about it (when inadvertant) or to be cleverly insulted were it intentional. Then the combative person either digs in deeper or flounces while tone-trolling. It’s like a choreographed routine, and I’ve found that, for the most part, regular commenters here can be patient, even with the most irrationally obtuse, and more often than not will kill the hateful with kind words.
All of this lends itself to an environment where myself and others can feel welcome – racism, sexism, ableism and bigotry are checked and met with large vocal opposition, as it should be. And when mistakes in judgment happen, pharyngulites or FTBers or the Borg are the first to apologise. This is the rarest occurrence of all because they’re mostly right.
I fucking hate that the word ‘bully’ is being applied to FTBers It makes me want to tear my hair out in frustration that anyone could make the claim that people are being silenced for simple disagreements. No, they’re being kicked out of an area of the internet where they are no longer welcome due to their own attitudes and approach to discussion. Not for their dissent, but for being tireless vapid dissenters with no substance or validity.
fredsalvador:
No, it’s an instantiation, not an undercurrent.
Propositioning a lone woman one has followed into the elevator in the wee hours after a lengthy time mingling at a bar where decent coffee was available after a long day’s conferencing after a talk relating to the experiences of women at conferences and her position and after said woman has stated she’s tired and off to bed and invited for a coffee in one’s room supposedly because their talk was interesting was found to be inappropriate and the woman in question found it a bit creepy and asked men not to do that, yes.
(You are one of your referenced eponymous shit-heads, no?)
You’re no mole, but merely a troll.
(bah)
Because they don’t know what words mean.
July Molly nom for QueQuoi here
Perhaps I’m just in a really good mood because of the recent beard braiding, but I thought fredsalvador had backed down from some positions, and then tried to be supportive. He did post one comment I took as sarcastic, too. This one seems straight up, if possibly over- stated, although I can’t think of misogyny not caused by some aspect of patriarchy.
If I’m hallucinating here, someone hand me a platter of ice cubes. I’ll dump them down my cleavage myself for a waker upper.
[meta]
Lyn, I been around a long time.
(Trolling is trolling, though it may ostensibly be poeing)
Or, indeed, “the Lucky Country”.
Yes, John, you have.
Just checking if I missed a posting or other indicator, because I was surprised not to agree with you right off the bat.
*squints*
hmm
can’t tell if honest or very subtle sarcasm. maybe I should go to sleep and try again in the morning.
If I have been taken in, so be it. Time will tell.
So, can someone show me the way to the nym changing-rooms? I’m just dying to try this adorable little number on.
Why is common sense so uncommon?
Should be part of a banner headline, can hover cursor and then click on edit profile.
Ok, threadrupt from ~#1000 to ~#1400, I just want to reply to Karpad at #990 (#490 previous page):
Karpad,
ZOMG I forgot The Friend! You are absolutely right! Nasty crusty dead friend who deserved death because she did The Wicked Things.
You are of course, right. Thanks for the addition.
Louis
Aww, never mind. Jadehawk beat me to it, and lawd knows turning up to the ball in the same nym just isn’t done.
/grumbles
Bloody hell. I spent half my weekend’s spare time (of which there wasn’t much; had a wedding, an opera and theatre-at-the-cinema) jousting with idiots on Twitter and haven’t been checking in here so have missed what I’m guessing is yet another onslaught of dimwits begging for a clue-by-four.
Oh, well. No doubt there’ll be another before too long.
By the way, Jadehawk, Dr. Bunsen is right. I hope you don’t mind my all but duplication. I was too preoccupied by the whole ampersand thing to notice.
Aaaaahhh found it. It’s right above this box, where it says “Logged in as [nym]”
*this box meaning the text entry box.
Hello, new nym.
*sashays through the room twirling hir fancy new nym*
Nevermind. Thought of a way around this.
Wowbagger, that looks simply darling on you. I insist you keep it.
Ooooookay. Now I ask Dr Bunsen if my nym is OK with him. Not too close?
en jupe caniché of death
\o/ :D
Pas du toût, chérie, pas tu toût.
Merde. Un sufit des accents.
Real late to this party. I do think, on the face of it, it’s kind of a pity TF was kicked out before this recent flareup had a bit of time to cool off. But some are suggesting backroom stuff I’m not aware of gong on, so I dunno.
I was going to add, and I doubt I’m the first, that it is rather irritating seeing TF trot out the “Rebecca Watson is just a whiny drama whore” thing in that recent video. That it’s not rape and death threats, it’s just trolls, lol, man up.
Particularly irritating when not so long ago he took rather vague threatening language from Dawah Films very personally indeed, and people backed him up. What Dawah Films said is nothing compared to what RW gets (and I believe they are often from the same people, so saying DF is different because of pre-existing escalating animosity or whatever doesn’t seem to fit. Happy to be proved wrong, of course.)
Besides, poodle skirt > pretty summer frock
Merci, Dr. Bunsen. I am quite proud of the accent grave, actually.
Lol! If you say so. I can picture the poodle skirt with patch pockets and all. A pretty frock, well I’m not so clear, although I’m thinking peau de soie, perhaps in eau du nile? If that captures your eyes, of course.
I feel so franshe, tu sais?
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
People have made good attempts at this, but I thought I’d still throw mine in…
not least because I believe (though I could be wrong) that fâché uses a circomflex over the A.
So…
How about:
1. un type fâché dans une jupe… (literal, but perhaps not idiomatic. I don’t think I’d phrase it this way; I’m just taking off from the English.)
or
2. un type fâché habillant d’une jupe… (perhaps still not the best, but it’s what I would have come up with on my own.)
or
3. un type fâché portant une jupe… (it’s just not what I’d say with the folks with whom I speak french).
None are perfect, though I’m partial to #2. . I’m not sure “type” and “dude” are really synonymous, but it’s close. I tend to think of “type” as “guy”, but with a little more dudebro than “guy” carries in English. Also, when dealing with trans stereotypes, I’m not sure what image would really carry the same meanings. This is a pretty good, though with “type” not perfect, literal translation. It’s the imagery of which I’m unsure. And I don’t have any trans friends who speak French that I can call on right now.
I never use “mec”. I’ll have to ask friends about it and the connotations it carries. More learning – that’s always good!
…
Also, Jadehawk, did you say miniatures were drying? You paint gaming minis, maybe? I have done, though I haven’t recently. Got 200 unpainted minis in my art room just waiting for me to have about 3 years of free time.
Not a jedi mind trick. A jedi mind truth-by-four.
Crip Dyke
I have to agree about un type. It doesn’t sound as dudebro to me either, but since I just made up canichè out of whole cloth, I thought what the hey. It differentiates the nyms.
You are right about the circumflex.
Oh hell. This entire half-ounce is made up of massive buds on stems.
Bah. Happy fun times to all who have slogged it out this far. -lights up and passes a joint to the next interested pitizen stomper-
Ok I have caught up with the thread….wow. Some many fuckwits, so little time. Well done to all of you labouring in the salt mines against a tide of dumbfuckery.
There is one (entirely unserious) thing that I have to contribute to the trans conversation though:
In my life there have been a very large number of great big, ugly men, myself included, who have been regularly seen in public wearing skirts, dresses, lingerie and sundry feminine garments. We call these people “rugby players”.
These “people”* are not normally transexual, cross dressers proper, or intersex. I do feel that people like “reasonable fellow” should approach one of us and tell us we are not male when we are so attired.
I believe the results would be interesting.
Louis
* I’m not sure I can claim we Gentlemen Who Play With Odd Shaped Balls are really people. I mean we look human, sort of, but we do sing a wide variety of badly scanning songs about women’s genitals and masturbating monkeys (separate songs I assure you), and attempt to drink our body weight in neat alcohol on a daily basis.**
** This is in no way to blot out the fact that men wrestling around in mud together, showering with each other or getting together in a giant tiled bath and singing about women in an oh-so-not-compensating way is massively homoerotic.*** That’s right out and completely false I want that understood from the get go.
*** Because this isn’t true and therefore doesn’t need blotting out, all right? Clear?
Setar,
I’ll take a hit if that’s okay, I haven’t had any good grass in a while.
Louis
P.S. Bugger…now I want a real joint. There’s a real problem with being upper middle class, when one approaches a gentlemen in a public hostelry and delicately enquires if they are willing to sell one some cannabis of some description, the gentleman in question usually mistakes one for a member of the constabulary. Why does no one feel my pain?*
* #1%problems
[OT]
Louis, I knew a rugby player, once.
He had a double-barreled name and a prodigiously capacious urine bladder, the which would, if not intimidate, then shock ordinary mortals when emptied in the usual way.
(The other two rugby players I’ve known were Maori; their missing incisors kind of a trademark of the nature of the sport sans mouthguards)
Louis, surely you can send one of your people out for tedious errands of that nature?
I’ve changed my nym a couple of times. While that presents no problem at Pharyngula, several other FTB blogs assume I’m a new commenter and put my posts in moderation. So I’m using the stripped down version of my nym for ever and ever or until FTB (or my computer) gets wonky, whichever happens first.
FYI, it has been argued elsewehere (and convincingly, by my measure) that the wearing of skirts and dresses by macho manly mcdudebros (and rugby players) contributes to the mocking and belittlement of transfolk. Co-option, and all that.
Hello entity, by which pronoun set and subset shall i refer to you?
Here’s a picture for unreasonable bigot to hoggle over.
Since this seems to be the thread for this kind of thing, I too want to delurk and offer a heartfelt thank you to the brave, patient, witty, and frickin’ smart denizens of the Pharyngula horde who never give up fighting the good fight (as a group, although individuals (understandably) occasionally may need to take a break).
I have been reading Pharyngula (and comments) since the .org days, and it has been (and continues to be) quite an education- and on several occasions, lol entertainment.
I don’t post much myself because… well, I don’t feel that witty, nor that smart. But I am another person who IRL has become significantly less willing to put up with shit, and much MORE willing to call people out on obnoxious behavior. Thanks to all of you, I have increasingly good arguments to back up what I say.
When moshiachone showed up on this thread, I slumped a little inside, thinking “oh, not again!!!!” And if I felt that way as a reader, I can only imagine what you commenters must feel. (Well, I suppose there’s probably an element of “sniny!”.)
Anyway, that feeling of “slump” is what prompted me to delurk to say: I am another person for whom you make a difference. And since I am a teacher, I like to think the difference you make gets multiplied to some small extent, every single semester.
I love this place. Thank you for making it what it is.
I haven’t been reading as long, but I agree with you, Sphex, that this place is special.
I, myself, felt like I couldn’t take on moshiachone tonight. But I also knew for a fact that I didn’t have to. That feels really, really good.
@ sphex
Welcome to the shark tank, sphex. You’ll find the water is just fine. It’s some of the denizens you have to watch out for.
@Tis Himself
But which one is the boy and which the girl? I see no chromosomes.
I think we’d have to ask them what they identify as first.
I don’t think there is any “we” about it. You’re just going to ignore them if they get it wrong, by your lights.
Silly Lyn, in the picture at 446 they’re both women ’cause they’re both wearing skirts or dresses. Here’s a picture of two men wearing jeans.
Mandatory gene mapping now, is it? Great! We can all know what chromosomes we have, then go on to Not Care like we all do anyway because gender is a mental thing.
If I were to JAQ off for a moment…
reasonable fellow, if you were to have genetic testing done and find out that your chromosomes didn’t match your perceived sex, would you instantly consider yourself no longer a man?
unreasonable dimbulb:
Which part of FUCK OFF did you miss?
‘Tis
D’oh! I am like that. It’s the breeze beneath my skirt. Makes me all silly.
Louis #440: come to Vancouver, we don’t bite and the pot is better than most other places. =D
How about you don’t refer to anyone as anything unless you have something cogent to say to them? Pretty passive-aggressive of you to downplay the impact you had on them by jokingly claiming you want to defer to proper pronoun usage at a point where someone has told you the negative effects it had on them. You’re just looking to press buttons in that case. You could start by saying “I’m sorry that I’m an unempathetic asshole and bigot.”
@’Tis #453
Link didn’t work for me… am I doing something wrong?
Unreasonable fellow is still unreasonable. What else is new…
All i’ve said is that identifying as a male doesn’t necessarily make you male. Its hardly a bigoted or fringe position.
FIFY
When it comes to gender it is all about what you identify as. Self identification is at the very core of the definition of gender.
How come you do not know this ?
sphex #459
You didn’t miss anything. It was an advertising picture of a male model and female model wearing jeans.
YAWN, bigot still defending his idiocy? Not a REASONABLE FELLOW, as it refuses to use reason. Not surprising, and typical of those who use reasonable in a ‘nym. They are presuppositionalists.
I don’t think it is. I know people have tried arguing seriously about this, but I found the idiots throwing shit too distracting. So, tell me again. Why should self-identification trump biology and societal standards?
Nerd, if old reasonable there can’t get it after all the times it has been explained and linked to, then he just can’t get it.
Where can’t means won’t, of course.
Tough. You are wrong, deliberately so it would seem.
If its a decent point it can probably be summed up in a few paragraphs. This “GO READ FUCKWIT” mentality reminds of conspiracy forums.
Yawn, if UNREASONABLE FUCKWIT was going to convince us, that would have happened last night. No new evidence, so the chances of convincing us of anything new: zero. Typical of unreasonable blokes to double down when they lost. You aren’t losing, you lost last night.
If no one had explained, linked or talked to you, I might just think you made a point.
And of course, this IS a conspiracy forum. Also an echo chamber and all kinds of fail, and this because many of us are tired of holding your dear little hand and explaining again, until you decide we are mean.
*near fatal eyeroll*
By stating that, honestly, you’re not fucking helping the people who identify as male or female. You’re just a reminder that they will not live up to your strict biological definition, that others will see them in even less favorable terms than you. Your semantics games are hurtful. You should spend some time thinking about what it’s like for someone to hear that “You’re a [wo]man (but not really a [wo]man)”. It’s a psychological mindfuck and you don’t care, so long as you’re semantically correct. That is what makes you a bigot.
I’m happy for people to self-identify as whatever they want. I’m not going to attempt to deny people their rights.
Its the aggressive insistence that them self-identifying as something means that I should also agree with them. Not only in words, but in thought. Semantics don’t really matter to me. I just don’t like being pushed around.
reasonable fellow
If someone describes themselves as happy or sad, would you believe yourself entitled to ignore that and decide on your own description?
Because a person is who they think they are. Just because you think transgender* is icky is no reason for you to deny them their personality.
And I know you’ve claimed that you don’t care what they claim. Well guess what, asshole, your continued arguing that a person’s gender is decided by their birth gender assignment (an assignment done by others) tells us loud and clear that it does make a difference to you. So you need to examine your own lying before you make statements about transgenders lying.
*Just in this thread I’ve become convinced that “transsexual” is incorrect terminology and “transgender” is preferred. So thought modification is an ongoing thing, even for old guys like me.
They will though. If i’m a bigot according to the posters on this forum the outside world should actually be terrifying and its much less open to the discussion than I am.
I empathize with that, but you’re not going to change peoples minds by screaming bigot at them.
Again:
fellow. If you were to find out your chromosomes didn’t match your gender, would you immediately reject your gender and accept a new one?
I’d call myself a trans-sexual or trans-gendered person and be done with it.
reasonable fellow,
Would you really regard people with Androgen insensitivity syndrome as men ? You have heard of AIS I trust.
We’re not trying to change your mind. You’re a lost cause. You’ve decided that you hate and despise transgenders and nothing we say will change your hatred of them.
What we’re doing is showing lurkers that hatred and fear of transgenders is wrong and hurtful to actual human beings, using your hatred and fear as an example. You’re a training aid, nothing more.
We aren’t trying to change your fuckwitted mind Unreasonable fuckwit. We are trying to get you to see that you have no chance of changing ours due to lack of evidence and lack of empathy. You need to come to grips with the fact you lost the argument last night before you even started it. The bigotry bullshit is just the unreason you are still continuing your futile efforts to win us over. It’s not working…You don’t have the right evidence.
Of course, i’d make a judgement based on their behavior. Though if somebody outright came out and said “i’m happy” that’d be enough reason alone for me to doubt it. Whats your point again?
Since it’s 9 o’ the clock, it’s time for me to go sailing. I’ll be back in several hours.
Nerd Of Redhead. If you aren’t interested in talking to me then why not just shut up yourself and stop addressing me.
Dr Bunsen, #442,
I have sent The Boy to Dealer McDope’s Drug Mart.
and re: #444,
Yeah, I had a paragraph in that post that I deleted about that. I was being deliberately silly with the post, so I took it out. You are right though, I think that angle could be/has been successfully argued.
The last lecture I ever had as an undergrad we celebrated by getting out a comedy inflatable sex sheep and lobbing it about. The lecturer was Welsh and none of us had made the connection. It was an honest piece of unthinking tomfoolery. He didn’t take it well…
I’m sure that the cross dressing by Dudebros and Rugby Players does indeed contribute to the climate of discrimination against transpeople. It might be a cultural phenomenon, i.e. a bit of parochial British colour, but the comedy cross dressing of men as women and women as men has a decent legacy here. I doubt it’s entirely innocent, in fact I know it’s not, and that Intent is not Magic, hence why I mentioned the insult I inadvertently gave to a Welsh lecturer who I admired.
I think this sort of thing does present We Folk Of Comedy Nature with a genuine problem. It’s pretty tough to do anything that doesn’t end with the accidental or incidental treading on someone’s toes. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try not to tread on toes, of course we should try to avoid that. Nor does it mean that when toes have been trodden on we shouldn’t try to make amends, apologise and strive not to do so in the future. Of course we should try to minimise any and all contributions we make to the general oppression of vulnerable groups.
This does play into a few conversations that have been had recently, notably above. If people call people “stupid” or use “herp derp” or “idiot” etc, these can be used as unambiguous referents to genuinely vulnerable groups. Not that their use has not evolved from those prior uses, as M A Melby and others have pointed out above, there are varying shades of grey here. It’s trickier than I think we suppose sometimes.
Even in the case of racism, which I’ve been on the receiving end of a few times (understatement of the decade!*), I try to give people the benefit of the doubt where comedy is concerned. That is an entirely personal choice by the way, no one else has to make it, and yes I realise it is an extension of my awesome privilege in most arenas.
Irony is the classic example. I think SGBM (or whatever his current incarnation is) linked a really fascinating study about it (I might be mistaken about that). It’s so easy for a comic to make an ironically X-ist joke and for a proportion of his/her audience to take the joke at face value whilst another proportion sees the irony.
I also think it depends on what question one is asking. If one is asking “do my toes hurt after this person trod on them?” then yes, I think intent is not magic. If one is asking “did this person mean to hurt my toes even if they did hurt them, and does this affect how I should respond?” I think it is valid to take intent into account. I also think their separate questions. So whilst my wife’s aunt’s racism infuriates me, some clueless twit asking me “where I’m from” (despite my very British accent etc) is still racist, it’s just crap racism.
I’m not sure there is An Answer. I think it’s up to the individual to decide what they will put up with. I’m totally convinced even the most innocently intended “joke” can harm, I’m not totally convinced there is only one way to deal with humour (and I know you’re not saying there is).
Sorry to have rambled, it’s just something that interests me and my views are in flux about.
Louis
* My wife’s aunt who is currently seriously ill in hospital and giving me a moral quandary because I hate racists with a passion, refers to me as “the half breed”. Not within earshot. She’s not that stupid. This is just one of the many exciting things I’ve enjoyed!
And then when someone didn’t agree with you and called you something less than pleasant, you would feel just hunky dory.
Day in, day out. Year in, year out.
Person after person, not willing to accept you as you present yourself.
But that’s OK, because … chromosomes? These other poeple are the majority? Your perceptions and identity just don’t count?
After all, if your perceptions and identity did count, wouldn’t it be pushing those others around to have them accept it?
At least according to your comments, that would appear to be so.
If you continue with your fuckwitted and unreasonable campaign to muddy the waters, you will be show to the third group here, the lurkers, just how much of a liar, bullshitter, and bigot you are. And that is the group I am talking to. I can’t talk to you, your mind is as closed as that of a Calvinist, and you know that. I’m pointing out to the world you presuppose your answer, and no amount of evidence will change your mind. Which is exactly what is happening.
Pharygulites, I have to call it a day. I’m due to leave tomorrow morning about 6:30 ish and I have things yet to do.
Catch you later.
Aggressive? I’ll tell you something about aggressive.
Through junior high and high school I had a friend who identified as female. The jokes and the tear-jerking de-stressing sessions we went through stick with me to this day. She was seen as male, biologically speaking, and that one fact was an excuse to slam her against lockers, push her down stairs, grope her, pull her pants down and point at the penis, put laxatives in her drink then prevent her from using either of the restrooms and other myriad of distasteful shit. The assaults happened because those people did not see her as a female, but an easy target for ridicule due to non-conformity. You’re lending credence to those assaults by saying that they are not conforming to their “true” gender.
You claim be all for people having their rights to identify as whatever they wish. But your insistence that your birth gender is the one you really are does not take into account the wiring of the brain. How presumptuous of you to identify someone as their bits and dangles and chromosomes. You’re contradicting yourself when you say they have a right to identify as that, yet don’t afford them the luxury of being correct about their own feelings about who they are. Brain trumps penis. Brain trumps vagina. Every time.
Oh, and Unreasonable Fuckwit, you always have the choice of ceasing to post here. Make use of that before you get laughed out as terminally stoopid.
Right. So you’d call yourself something else, but would you start acting differently? Would you ask people to stop calling you ‘he’ or ‘she’? Would you continue to perceive yourself as you always had, seeing as nothing had in fact changed for you apart from a clarifying of the biological facts of your body?
My guess is nothing would change. The gender you identify as is the one you feel yourself to be. Refusing to accept someone else’s gender because it doesn’t match your own idea of gender expression is as absurd as anyone else doing the same to you. The reasons behind it don’t matter.
Your biological sex is entirely separate from your gender. Yes, most people are cisgendered – they identify as male or female and have those primary sexual characteristics. The fact remains that some DO NOT. These people’s gender may differ from their biological sex. This isn’t some sparkly new feminist agenda item, it’s simply how things are. People are only starting to learn about it now as we slowly chip away at the stupid old-fashioned notions of sex, gender and orientation being inextricably linked, but it’s there.
Either learn about it or be left behind, that’s all there is to it.
You haven’t tried. You’ve made an assumption of my character and nothing will change your mind on that. Keep going. For the lurkers. It must be nice for you to think that you’re actually doing some good.
Have a good one Lyn M. We’ll keep some muppets warm for you!
Louis
I’m not lending credence to any assaults. I don’t think people should be assaulted for any reason.
Reasonable Fellow,
You’ve been linked to a variety of materials of varying degrees of technicality and yet you appear to be reluctant to engage with those materials and instead maintain your original opinion in the face of readily available evidence.
Does that sound like a sceptical attitude?
Louis
Actually, your lack of acceptance of the evidence presented to you does that. Evidence you aren’t listening, have made up your mind, and intend to bully us into submission. Look and laugh lurkers. The Unreasonable fuckwit is nothing but a bully without an argument. Just attitude.
I’ve already requested that they be linked again. The thread was moving fast last night and i’ll be damned if i’m going to read through that crap again.
You’re agreeing with the bullies. You use the same rationale they do. Do you think bullies see your caveats? Nope, all they hear is “not really [fe]male.” You and those like you enable the assaulters a peace of mind.
Your refusal to budge on this issue is mind-boggling. What kind of investment do you have with this issue? If it’s purely intellectual then fuck right off. Real world, real issues. Stop trying to be an ivory tower “ally” against bigotry. You’re not, and you’re not helping.
Is the brain not a biological organ, now?
No, their rationale is “this person is different from us, and in a weaker position so we can do whatever we want”. That’s not my rationale at all.