Man, I hate that - it is not bigotry to be intolerant of bigotry!
Bigotry - intolerance for no good reason.
Bigot-bigotry - intolerance for a damn** good** reason.
It’s not “personal sovereignty” when it costs someone their job - that’s taking it a little beyond personal opinion, isn’t it?
The reason you’re getting a lot of heat mswas is that you are presenting yourself as extremely ignorant. Your defense of bigots is supported by nothing but your own distaste or lack of understanding of the transgendered condition. The responses you got were well-informed and well-argued. What more can you ask for? Also, the aspersions on your character were mostly on point, IMO.
Sorry, sweetie! Look at the time stamp on my post… I’d been up all night and it took several tries to write coherent English sentences, my brain was taxed just bringing my thoughts into presentable order, I knew I was leaving out names of helpful people… but after 6 pages of thread some details started to blur in my memory. Looking back over it, you really have contributed lots of good debate. One thing I wasn’t clear about–is there really a Sally?
Any of y’all reading the Pit thread about Paul Cameron’s anti-gay hate mail? Because Mr. Stable Definition had a pretty interesting post in that thread:
So when it comes to respecting transexuals right to self-identify, mswas refuses on the grounds that “woman” has a distinct, immutable, and widely agreed upon definition. However, when it comes to the word “faggot,” which has a definition every bit as fixed in the English languages as “woman,” he gets to invent his own meaning of the term that has absolutely no relationship to how it is used by anyone else anywhere, in the entire history of the fucking planet.
Any chance of you honestly re-evaluating your position in this thread in light of this obvious double standard, or should we just resign ourselves to another extensive session of back and filling while you try to explain why it’s okay when you do this, but not when anyone else does it?
Thanks. I didn’t intend to get pestery about it, I’ve just noticed that my posts tend to get glossed over a lot. Depressing, I tells ya.
I’m just using Sally as a theoretical person in the debate, but I do have a very close friend and coworker in the middle of transitioning that I’m trying to support as much as possible. Please forgive me if I err on the side of giving too little information, as it’s not my story to tell, but after six months she’s coming along beautifully. People she interacts with presume she’s female now, even when she gives her male name (if they’re not paying close enough attention, anyway).
Nothing I have said is factually incorrect, no one has presented good enough information to change my opinion on that. I have learned much from the points people have made, but none of the things I learned provided a good argument to counter any of the ones I’ve made.
The tolerance for its own sake argument is valid, but mostly what I am getting is projection like yours above. You think I have some extreme distaste for transexuals, I do not, that is not the point. I’ve said from pretty early on that wasn’t the point, many have gotten that. I am arguing about an issue of the ‘individual vs society’. It is not personal for me the way it seems to be for a lot of the people I am arguing with. I am exploring an abstract side of a philosophical problem that intrigues me, and if you care to pay attention you will see underlies a lot of my posts on many different subjects. You clearly do not seem to care to pay attention even when I point it out plain as day.
I am arguing a side that I want to explore, so I am playing the role from that side in order to understand it. So that I can fight ignorance, my own if no one else’s. Now you can project motivations based upon your own personal subjective bias, or you can go a step past tolerant and try to be understanding, particularly when I explain it to you.
I am arguing about it from the point of view of a society that is being disrupted, a society that needs a certain level of social continuity to remain a coherent body politic. This is a battle, I really have no stake in as far as the precise topic goes. In fact, as I have stated with many personal anecdotes, I’ve met and hung out with a few throughout my life, in addition to many other variants of the species. I don’t back socio-political entities when the actual outcome of the battle is irrelevant to my life. I am for respect of personal sovereignty and a supporter of evolving in whatever manner is available to you. That is not the issue. It’s not about me.
It’s about having a people that are not terrified and suspicious of one another all the time. How do we encourage such an equilibrium? I certainly do not see it as arguing that empathy is only reserved for the one with the identity crisis, as though the ripple of smaller identity crises she causes around her do not rate as important enough to discuss.
But of course it’s just easier to lock the bigots in boxes and forget that they are human beings. To do more than that might require people to have to know more kinds of words, and that could get complicated.
But look at me, I am having expectations of behavior in other people as well. I guess none of us is innocent right? Being that none of us are, then do our feelings deserve to be counted amongst the deciders of the will of the body politic, or must we all be purefect first?
No, incorrect. They are free to identify themselves any way they want, as I am free to identify them any way I want.
When using the term ‘faggot’ I am referring derogatorily to a particular group that I haVE identified. The ‘evil’ faggots as I saw it. I know lots of good homosexuals who I love. It’s akin to calling someone an asshole. I am not identifying the meaning of the word, I am identifying the group to which it is directed when it comes from my lips. See most of us are capable of using words ‘contextually’, it’s a handy skill. I have no desire to offend a group of people beyond those I identified. If someone is offended they are hopelessly insecure when an insult that is not being applied to them is levelled.
It works like this. A word is a word is a word. It is the symbolic representation of an idea. Take sword for instance. The word sword represents a metal blade used to kill people. Many Celts were killed with swords, as many swords were built for that purpose. However, if I go to kill George Lopez for being a crappy comedian, that doesn’t mean that I am killing all comedians or even all crappy comedians, or even Latinos as he might say it was about.
An epithet works just like that. See, thinking that the Republican party has a bunch of evil faggots who are willing to support an agenda that has hating homosexuals at the top of its domestic priorities does not mean that I think that all homosexuals are Republicans or evil or faggots. It doesn’t mean that I think all Republicans are homosexuals even. However, I feel that the term is suitable in that particular case.
Of course you can fixate on the word choice and not the underlying meaning if you like. Go ahead indulge, it’ll help you to understand what it’s like to be a Biblical Literalist.*
*biggotted comment against both Christians and Atheists in one shot. Can I get an Amen?
Miller To be blunt. I have no respect for a group that thinks that freedom to be a homosexual is something reserved for the elite, that other homosexuals are a convenient foil at which to direct animosity when the public consciousness needs to be focused on something irrelevant to make the people forget about the things that really matter.
Yeah, those guys are faggots.
But you haven’t provided any evidence whatever that having a very small minority of individuals changing their gender identification really does “disrupt” society, or endanger its minimum necessary “level of social continuity to remain a coherent body politic”.
You seem to have simply assumed that because a small influential minority of residents in the city of Largo disliked the concept of transgender enough to fire a competent and well-liked municipal officer merely for having a sex-change operation, that indicates that the municipal officer was “disrupting society”.
Why are you so sure that it wasn’t actually the anti-transgender City Commission members who were “disrupting society” by indulging their sexual prejudices against a competent worker who had deserved no punishment for her actions?
Nobody’s saying that negative reactions to transgender “do not rate as important enough to discuss”, or that we shouldn’t have any sympathy for people who can’t help feeling “terror and suspicion” when confronted with a transgender person.
We are saying, though, that “terror and suspicion” about transgender are not a good enough reason to fire a competent transgendered employee from his/her job. I can’t understand why you’re trying to argue that such behavior is okay.
Heck, there are still plenty of people who personally feel “terror and suspicion” about blacks, Muslims, or atheists, for example. Would you support the firing of competent black, Muslim, or atheist employees just because some “terrified and suspicious” members of the community regard them as too “socially disruptive”?
Can you rephrase this “explanation” in a manner that makes any sense at all? You seem to have forgotten that you started out talking about the word “sword” and arbitrarily switched to talking about the word “kill”.
The thing is, you come across as bigoted and hateful when you use terms like “identity crisis” to belittle the medically accepted and psychologically devastating disorder known as Gender Identity Disorder. (Please correct if this isn’t a current cite.) You keep citing strict definitions but refuse to acknowledge the definitions that are important.
People were/are terrified of gays, blacks, people with tatoos, foreigners, etc. You can’t regulate against that. There is a difference between actions that harm people and being something that upsets people. In the former case, legislation is appropriate, in the later, education and understanding. But you don’t get to trample someone’s rights in the process.
On preview I see you digging yourself into a deeper hole about definitions of words and what they mean. You seem very comfortable with mutable definitions of the word “faggot” (even though no one else has used the term like you do) but uncofortable with the idea that the definition of “woman” and “man” can be changed through usage. If you presented this as simply your opinion, no one would care. But you keep presenting your definitions of certain terms as immutable and definitive, when they are neither.
Well, I certainly hope I count as one of the good niggers in your book.
Did I say niggers? I meant faggots, of course.
However, you’ve managed to completely miss (or, more likely, deliberatly sidestep) the entire point of my post, which was not, “mswas is a dirty, dirty homophobe!” Rather, it was to provide yet another example of your almost total lack of consistent philosophical and intellectual consistency. You have argued in this thread, explicitly, that the operative definition of a word is determined by popular usage, and that “stable” definitions of words should not be challenged on that basis. Except, of course, when it’s you who wants to use common words in idiosyncratic ways.
Have you noticed that, in this thread, begbert and Urgk. have not met with a fraction of the scorn and derision you have encountered, despite holding positions that are not markedly different from your own? That’s because they don’t do shit like this. However much I might disagree with their opinions, at least they come by them honestly.
Also, I’d like to nominate this:
as the most crack-addled analogy I’ve ever read on the boards.
Well, I don’t necessarily believe it to be true for one. I wanted to see the argument that people presented.
He disrupted something. You can look at it on many levels, which is sort of what I was hoping for. Your arguments admittedly have been some of the best. You and Bricker I think had the best arguments.
I’m not sure of that, they might very well have. Maybe this Stanton was an incredible administrator, and Largo will suffer for removing competence from government, which we all know is a precious commodity. Your argument about the people of Largo being against it is compelling.
I disagree, saying ‘bigots don’t deserve our empathy’, seems pretty straight forward to me.
Reasons of social continuity, the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. That’s the crux of my argument.
Well, I don’t know that I see it as categorically the same. If for no reason other than people have had longer to acclimatize to racial assimilation. Thousands of years of history have worked out that one. Spontaneously changing your apparent gender is relatively new.
There should have been ‘with a sword’ in there in a couple places.
If three thousand years ago counts as “relatively new,” I suppose you have a point.
But this interpretation assumes that the “needs” on both sides are equally important or valid.
That’s not necessarily so. For example, if a large crowd of people are angry at you and feel they need to paste you one in the smush, and you feel you need to be safe from physical assault, do you want the law saying to the crowd “Well, there’s lots of you and only one of him, and the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, so go git 'im”?
No, you don’t. You would argue that your “need” not to be physically assaulted is more important, and more deserving of legal support, than somebody else’s “need” to physically assault you, even if there are more of them.
In the Stanton situation, you’re taking it for granted that the so-called “need” of some City Commission members to avoid dealing with a transgender person is just as important or valid as the “need” of Ms. Stanton not to be undeservedly fired from her job. But you haven’t in the least demonstrated that this assumption is actually justified.
There is no disruption that can be attributed to the transgendered condition. The social continuity isn’t coming apart because of the transgendered community or any individual member of that community. I’m not sure where you’re getting your information, but it is erroneous.
Huh? Are you saying that a transgendered identity crisis causes others within a society to have them as well?
You say you’re exploring this subject, but your mind is already set on antiquated definitions. Society, as a whole, including authority subsets within our society, have accepted that gender definitions have changed from the cut-and-dried genital identification method to one that encompasses a variety of aspects of a person’s total being. You are the one arguing that you don’t have to accept it, but you haven’t convinced anyone why that would be wrong. This isn’t a new idea; the conversation has been on the table for a couple decades and people accept this change in language because it makes sense.
The jury is still out. Conflating historical struggles of self-determination with your own is so 90s. Get over it.
No, I said they can use the words in idiosyncratic ways. I just said I don’t have to agree with the point they are making when using them.
They didn’t start the thread. Again, I am being completely consistent in the rules of behavior I apply here. Your ‘version’ of honesty is simply your opinion. Calling someone a liar because you radically disagree with what they are saying is pretty cheap. You disagree that woman has a stable meaning, even though you rely on that stable meaning to make your point. Who is being dishonest here? You said that people can call themselves whatever they want, and that I might even play along if I disagree. So not only YOU get to use words the way YOU want to, I get poetic license as well.
I’m gonna have to agree with you here.
Not necessarily, and the case to be made is what are the factors that show that society needs to protect the rights of transsexuals to work, how does this provide a net benefit to society, as opposed to pushing them to the fringes where teh negative impact is mostly upon them instead of distributed amongst the group.
I would like whatever is to my optimal benefit to be true in that situation.
Certainly, I would.
Well, what I DID, was take a position that would facilitate debate on the subject to see where it would lead. I am not unwilling to be convinced by arguments of needs and how they are being allocated. To deny that this is a relative need of the people to be secure in their paradigm, is unfair IMO. Sure they will survive their paradigm shift, but what if it created an incredibly hostile work environment where there previously was none? We are talking about local politics here. Politicians can get nastier than anyone when they are on the attack. Perhaps it was easier to expel the deviant from the power structure than to tolerate her. With the press this is getting, I am of the opinion that the answer is probably not. However, there are times when the need of an individual to be accepted is outweighed by the need of the collective. Regardless of who is morally wrong in this case, the health of the municipality depends upon its people being able to work together. Again, I do not necessarily assume that this is true, only presenting one side of it.
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
There is no disruption that can be attributed to the transgendered condition. The social continuity isn’t coming apart because of the transgendered community or any individual member of that community. I’m not sure where you’re getting your information, but it is erroneous.
We aren’t talking about the entire aggregate but a tiny subsection, ie the City of Largo as an organization, not necessarily a body politic.
No, this is a misreading of my position. You are clearly an incompatible format.
End transmission.
No, you have said, explicitly, that our definition of woman is not valid because it is not how most people use the term, and you have further stated, explicitly, that if our definition became widespread enough, that you would adopt it. But, for reasons that I suspect are unclear even to yourself, this does not apply to how you want to use the word, “faggot.”
So?
No, you are not. Not in any way. You have personally violated every single principle and standard you have brought to bear to support your arguments in this thread.
And yet, I have not called begbert a liar, even though I disagree with his opinion every bit as vehemently as I disagree with yours. Why is that, do you suppose? Because he’s not the OP? Or because he’s at least able to articulate a consistent rationale behind his arguments, without contradicting himself in every other post?
Probably the OP thing. That would make the most logical sense.
Where have I done that? I’ve pointed out that there are physiological differences between the brains of the transgendered and the non-transgendered that mirror the differences in the brains of men and women, but only as a counter to the argument that transexuality is purely a psychological defect, or that it is undertaken on a whim. But I have at no point in this thread insisted that biology be the final determiner of gender. My argument has consistently been that every individual is entitled to determine their own place on the gender continuum, and that no one has a right to tell them that they are wrong. Can you point to a specific place in this thread, or the other one, where I have argued differently?
You’re slipping into gibberish again.