It is common to hear a transwoman claim (indeed, even occasionally here on HN) that anything other than recognizing them as equal to ciswomen is an act of violence and prejudice against them, and at worst, they utter some invective about “TERFs”. So, suggesting the recognition of a new gender is unlikely to satisfy at least those strident individuals.
These aggressive activists do more to inflame anti-trans sentiment than any other. I'm fine with live and let live. Call yourself what you want, wear what you want, marry who you want -- no problem. But today's trans-activist is not satisfied with that; they also want to bully people and organizations into absurd things like having a person who lived and developed as a man for 35 years competing in strength sport against biological women.
It's not safe to say in liberal workplaces anymore, but this dynamic of transwomen activists forcing their way into women's spaces is creating exactly the same dynamic as men dominating women in other areas of life. As a woman, I'm tired of it. The latest example from my life: At my company all the women's groups are being rebranded to "gender minorities" groups to accommodate the wishes of a few activists deploying the usual bully tactics. If you disagree at all, you are labeled a TERF and they try to get you fired. So who, exactly, is creating the hostile workplace?
From first principles, transwomen feel like they should be just as much of a woman born biologically female, but they just happened to be born biologically male. This dysphoria causes a great deal of angst and I don't think the benefits of othering them as any kind of second-class woman can outweigh that.
If I have clinical depression, saying "you're completely normal and do not have depression" doesn't make the depression go away or subside in any way.
Gender dysphoria is oftentimes treated via transitioning in some fashion. Having groupthink on online spaces doesn't alleviate symptoms.
I've never heard anyone except trans activists talking about the specifics of someone's trans-ness in an open setting. Certainly not something someone who's just trying to go about their day would even care about, let alone making a point that "hey by the way you're not biologically a woman, peace".
It's such a weird argument to me. Then again, I'm a dirty "transmedicalist" as labelled by the twitter trans community, so what do I know.
>If I have clinical depression, saying "you're completely normal and do not have depression" doesn't make the depression go away or subside in any way.
This is really not a good analogy. An identity-linked issue like this would be closer to someone not being included into a certain in-group.
For example an African-American who grows up in a predominantly caucasian could be called "not black" or "not black enough" by someone trying to hurt them based on the way they speak or act differently.
You can imagine that this would be alleviated by people not putting up arbitrary rules on who "can be called black".
I did not claim it was not a mental disorder. I said it is linked with identity in a way which is dissimilar to the depression analogy.
Is it far-fetched to say that the severity of negative emotional and mental effects on a person depends on how accepting the culture is of those who do not fit into the majority?
No, but that's not what you insinuated, and I feel as though you missed my point - I was simply talking about the reaction by others to a mental condition: saying "you're a biological woman" to a trans woman does about as much good as saying "just be happy" to a depressed person. It doesn't solve anything, and it reduces the very real condition and the effects of said condition down to talking points and virtue signalling.
Having gender dysphoria isn't a thing to be ashamed of, just any other mental health condition is not something to be ashamed of. Saying "you're a biological woman sis" is like saying "we're just going to act like you don't have it because it's shameful".
It doesn't make any sense from me, nor does it make sense to most of the trans individuals I follow. It seems, yet again, to be the allies that cause the most misinformation (just like we faced with the gay marriage debates).
'Feel'. My confusion comes from the fact that these people were not born female and so can have no idea what it is to 'feel' like a woman any more than I can 'feel' like a wolf.
This then reduces womanhood to a state of mind, rather than any physical and/or chemical criteria, which I think is wrong. Why should natural born women have their identity diluted?
It also seemingly reinforces the 'two genders' claim by categorising trans people as one or the other.
Like I said at the top, I am a bit confused by it all.
This is a really interesting philosophical problem, about qualia generally, but specifically "what it's like to be a something". See the classic essay by Nagel[0].
In today's language (in the US at least), gender is a state of mind, precisely because talking about the mental aspect of gender/sex is very useful both for talking about transgender people and for studying how mental gender identity affects people's lives. As for "feeling" a certain gender, I get it. What you say makes sense, but humans aren't creatures strictly operating by logical principles. Sometimes, what our brains tell us doesn't make sense. But, if you spend every day of your life fighting the nagging feeling that you don't actually identify with gender you're "supposed to" identify with, are you going to trust logic, or your own experiences? You can't just say to yourself, "guess I'm being illogical, I'm gonna stop feeling this way now". I recently happened to watch a video by a trans woman where she summed up her experiences with trying to understand why she felt this way as:
"And why am I a woman? Because I'm a woman. That's it. I mean, I can describe my experiences and my feelings to you to help you understand better, but I can't logically prove anything. And I'm super fucking sorry if you can't handle that mankind was set adrift in an absurd world. That must be super fucking hard for you. Tell me all about it."
This was after spending years of her life trying to find a more satisfying explanation and failing to be convinced by any.
As far as reinforcing the gender binary, trans women are just as able to be girly girls or tomboys as cis women are, and the same goes for trans men. On top of that, there are plenty of non-binary people, which depending on who you ask, either fall or don't fall under trans.
Gender is confusing, I agree, but the fact that there are so many people feeling this way means that we can't just simplify and say "you can't really know what it means to feel like a woman" when the lived reality of these people is much more complex and something they've been struggling with for a while.
> But, if you spend every day of your life fighting the nagging feeling that you don't actually identify with gender you're "supposed to" identify with, are you going to trust logic, or your own experiences?
Do you support applying that same logic to transracialism? E.g. white woman identifying as a black woman?
I don't know much about transracialism at all, but it makes sense to me if you look at it as a cultural identification kind of thing. Both my brother and I were born in and grew up in the states, but I identify more with American culture while he identities more with the culture our parents are from, so culture at least is a mental identity thing rather than a physical reality.
If it's purely a racial/ethnic kind of thing that's about your genetic heritage, I agree it doesn't make sense to apply the same concept. It's like the distinction between sex and gender I mentioned above, trans people identify as a specific gender regardless of their sex, and I think people can identify with a specific culture regardless of their race/ethnicity. To better complete the analogy, I could definitely imagine a white person growing up in Japan their whole life and feeling a general unease about the mismatch between their cultural identity (Japanese) and their race/ethnicity (white), and in cases where that unease is severe enough, potentially being willing to go through surgery to better reflect their identity. Dysphoria over racial/cultural mismatch (if it even exists, idk) seems much less common than gender dysphoria, but I don't see why you wouldn't apply the same logic to both.
White/black may be widely viewed as preposterous but things like Hispanic/white are often a matter of self identification and culture more than genetic reality.
Thanks for your response; I was expecting to be on the receiving end of downvotes/abuse.
> you spend every day of your life fighting the nagging feeling that you don't actually identify with gender you're "supposed to" identify with
I have no problem with believing that some people aren't the gender they physically represent. But, in my mind, arriving to the conclusion that 'I don't identify as a male, therefore I must be female' isn't right.
> And why am I a woman? Because I'm a woman
Again, they don't actually know that they're a woman. They know they're not male, for sure, and I'm fully on board with that. But insisting that they're female... I'm not sure. Is 'trans woman' not sufficient?
Benjamin Boyce has a YT channel that deals with some of this stuff that I watch occasionally to try help understand.
> But, in my mind, arriving to the conclusion that 'I don't identify as a male, therefore I must be female' isn't right.
I think for trans women, it isn't so much a conclusion following from not identifying as male as it is simply 'I identify as female', but this runs into the same issue that you brought up in your first comment of not actually knowing what being female is. But then again, doesn't knowing they're not male imply they know what being male is despite not being male? I think it's just too philosophical of a point for most trans people to concern themselves with when they're dealing with who knows how many other issues.
I recommend either reading or watching more stories about trans people's personal experiences if you want to get a better sense as to why people feel that way, as different people probably have different reasons. I don't personally have any recommendations (the quote I mentioned earlier was a small comment from a video on a completely unrelated topic), but thanks for the recommendation for Benjamin, I'll check him out!
Anddd that’s proving his point. Assuming you’re not a troll making a satirical post, this is pretty much textbook toxic behavior. You respond with aggression when instead you could be nice. People respond with an equal and opposite reaction so when you come out swinging you lose an opportunity where you could educate them instead of spreading more hate.
Reminds me of a funny story where I was informed that transgendered[0] isn't a word. And in fact you can see a definition on Urban dictionary where someone has said it is "a word that doesn't exist". It turns out that while the word was once used widely it has recently become forbidden for grammatical reasons.
It's not surprising this debate is so broken when basic terms aren't even constant.
> Judging parents is much easier than actually raising children.
I have seen this line used often. However, from an anti-natalist perspective, actually raising children is a mistake. Therefore, no one should actually expected to actually raise children, and simply judging those who do without that firsthand experience is perfectly reasonable.
I'm not sure why you think the thread stemmed from an anti-natalist perspective.
Even then, raising children is not what anti-natalism condemns. It's bringing children to life. It's not reasonable to condemn a care giver who didn't beget the child (and it's usually impossible to know whether they did).
Depending on your social circle (or that cross-section of the general public that one encounters on Twitter and Reddit), then we may be entering – as society does cyclically – an era where any “escape” from modern problems is viewed as offensive. I have seen this recently even in literature forums where poets who wrote abstract modernist verse are now labeled as problematic because their work does nothing to tackle the problems that BIPOC and LGBT face. It would be no surprise if gamers, too, were challenged for the games they play being supposedly unhelpful.
The EU standard was developed for the purposes of avoiding additional quarantine or testing during cross-border travel, not going to pubs within one’s own country. For domestic use of proof of COVID vaccination, some countries developed their own internal standards alongside the EU standard.
Experts generally regard fruit consumption as beneficial due to the fiber, not so much the rest of it, and squeezing the fruit for its juice (or drying it) is viewed as a risk of excessive sugar intake.
In any event, in the case of coffee its consumption bears little resemblance to what would ordinarily be regarded as a fruit.
Phytochemicals literally just means "chemicals from a plant", which include the infamous antioxidants as well as toxins, hormone disruptors, GABA agonists and other poisons in general.
Some fruits have some compounds, along thousands of unspecified others, which seem to have a beneficial effect, most often in-vitro.
Regarding polyphenols, there is no hard, concrete evidence that any have actual positive health benefits.
One thing is for sure, the marketing surrounding these "5 a day to be healthy" is extremely strong and widespread.
> Experts generally regard fruit consumption as beneficial due to the fiber,
This is an outdated theory, that is no longer supported by the current state of the research. The health benefits of fruits and vegetables is primarily driven by phytochemical, not fibers.[1]
I suspect that the majority of project maintainers who are hurting, do not “literally cry out for help”, especially if they regularly read news fora like this which underscore how meagre an amount of donations rolls in even when the maintainer cries out for help.
The WHO yellow fever certificate is not digital, it is just a piece of paper. Plus, many of the countries which ostensibly require it don't check it carefully or at all (and in West Africa, it is not unusual for the soldier checking it to be illiterate and unable to actually grok the details on it). So, this old-school vaccine proof doesn't pose the risk of being used for ad targeting that worries the GP.
Yes, in rare cases that might happen but in general that sounds like a trope. In fact, I've heard stories of people being denied entry and also getting vaccinated on arrival in a back room at the airport, which is as dodgy as it sounds.
Yes, I speak from repeat personal experience in both Africa and South America. That checking of the certificate in South America has dwindled is well known. Sure, some people may have bad luck, but there is a reason that many holidaymakers are no longer even aware that there is a rule on the books.
The certificate is commonly checked in Africa, but as I said, often the official on the border checking it is not capable of understanding the details – they just look for the paper with the familiar color and logo. Also, it has been common for travelers unable to get the yellow fever vaccine in their home country (historically supplies in Eastern Europe have been scarce, for instance) to simply forge the certificate, which is easily done. The WHO is aware that some amount of certificates will be forgeries, but nevertheless believes that the policy of requiring vaccination will be enough to reduce the risk of outbreaks.
Wasn’t one of the MIT students seeking to strip Stallman of his positions, claiming that she had only heard of him acting inappropriately (as she was too young to ever interact with him herself), yet when challenged on the matter, refused to provide any specifics?
Yes, IIRC the Medium post that made the situation go viral beyond MIT was written by a student that just compiled other peoples' stories about Stallman, not based on any of her own experiences. Personally I can't imagine initiating calls for someone's head without first hand knowledge, but I don't think she had any hidden incentive to make the post. My guess is she had her own negative experiences with someone else in the past and thought she was doing the right thing by speaking out for others here. I recall the post reading as very emotional, like a rant you might send to a private group chat of friends. So definitely not manufactured.
Perhaps you are being too charitable in assuming that the student was calling for Stallman’s head out of past trauma. It could be that the calling for his head was a performative act for her own benefit, boosting her in the eyes of others.
Maybe to the extent that anyone who participates in social justice mobs is being performative, but it definitely did not help her career or result in any material gain. She also had no incentive to take down Stallman specifically, of course she didn't even really know who he was when she made the post. I wouldn't be surprised if she was trying to get a bit of street cred with her in-group, but to me that's just an extremely human, often somewhat subconscious thing. I would be surprised if that was literally the only motivation though - the post comes across as legitimately emotional, not faux outrage.
That doesn't mean she was right to make the post obviously, I just don't think it was any sort of active ploy on her part. I don't even think the anger was fake, from her or most of the initial responders. As it propagated maybe the outrage was more manufactured, but believe me I know people that felt just as heated as she did at the time, only expressed it in private chats. In some cases these were chats with just a handful of friends that had a spectrum of opinions on the issue, so no reason for it to be posturing.
I hate cancel culture, and I understand feeling like some instances are very manufactured. But I feel it is more dangerous when it is organic, because it is very hard to deal with legitimate human emotions. I think usually when the organic mobs misfire it is a "straw breaking the camel's back" type situation: some minor offender becomes the target of pent up rage from a larger issue, and the punishment ends up being way disproportionate for the one, while many others get off scot-free.
>> Perhaps you are being too charitable in assuming that the student was calling for Stallman’s head out of past trauma. It could be that the calling for his head was a performative act for her own benefit, boosting her in the eyes of others.
A lot of people who do the later actually have unresolved trauma issues. It's just harder for people to empathize with them because of their behaviour. The claim in psychology is that narcissistic people are actually using that to protect a deeply fragile ego. But then maybe psychologists just want to say everyone suffers from the same thing. We'd all be peace loving, sharing, commie hippies by default if nobody screwed us up ;-)
Before the Web 2.0 internet made people’s real names so public, it was in fact quite difficult for things many people did to affect their employment. Your employer simply wouldn’t have been aware of how you were acting somewhere else outside their direct purview. Now, however, if an opponent knows that you are employed at X, they can bring pressure on X to fire you in an extremely public way, such that your employer will buckle to the social pressure lest it affect their bottom line. That simply would not have happened so often prior to about 2007 at least.
Not only did Tumblr activity collapse after the NSFW ban, but in the subjects I follow, activity seems to have settled on a niche of transwomen blogging about hobby or interest X, where their posts are mainly about being a transwoman interested in such things and not the hobby or interest itself. I understand that Tumblr has value for those transwomen wanting to express themselves and build community with others, but it has become a network relevant to only a tiny, tiny percentage of the population.
No, it’s just that intellectual subjects on Tumblr always attracted a certain share of neuroatypical people, and once the majority of users left Tumblr, only the neuroatypical remained.
Tumblr has plenty of discussion about hobbies, TV shows, anime, video games, etc. If you like a certain thing, tumblr is a great way to be exposed to people discussing it, making text jokes about it, making fanart about it, etc. That has been literally unaffected by the NSFW ban in the many fandoms I follow on it.
There are people like you describe, but it doesn't dominate the platform imo. It's easy enough to get a lot out of tumblr.
