I suppose the issue, to the extent that there is one, is that most of the time when people say “men” everyone knows what “men” are - cismen, biological men, people with XY chromosomes and penises and testicles who identify as men. As here -
Everybody knows this doesn’t mean transmen. Of course this is for GD, not GQ.
The SDMB has put a lot of effort into the suggestion that “all men are XY chromosomed and have a penis” is at the least an opinion. Maybe the title of the mass shooting thread should have referred to “biological males”, but that seems like nitpicking. In the context of that thread, in GQ, it seems clear enough.
Last I heard, something like 1% of the population is transgender. And most of us know a lot more than 100 people, so yes, most people would be expected to know someone who’s transgender. But how many mass shooters are there? More to the point, how many have there been since transgenderism has been sufficiently recognized that we’d know if a shooter was transgendered? Especially since most mass shooters die in the course of their shooting, and so cannot be further questioned afterwards? And further, how close is the difference between male and female mass shooters (by any definition)? Even if one did manage to find a handful of transgendered shooters, regardless of whether one counted them as male or female, it would remain true that the significant majority of mass shooters are male.
I thought it was deserved. You had already received the warning by the time I read your post, but if I hadn’t seen a warning I would’ve reported the post.
There is a place for discussion of gender issues, but challenging every post that uses the words “man” or “woman” is trolling.
Bullshit. Your contention that the subject that men and women might (on average) differ in some ways is anathema simply makes me more convinced that you were trolling.
Wow. One of those few times where I don’t have an opinion. As the acceptance of transgender status has just recently been widely recognized as a thing, I think that it is important in these discussions, if we stand by the idea that male and female are not biological constructs, to explore the idea of what it means for men to do this or women to do that.
However, it would be pretty tedious to have every.single.discussion about men and women to have to have a side discussion about trans issues. But then again, that’s what you ask for when you say that biological females can be males. So…
The Mods (2) have made an unsupported claim that basically there would be insufficient sample size to get meaningful statistical data for this, further more implying that also should be obvious to everyone. Some posters here seem to not accept the Mod’s premise at face value and question it, thus negating the Mod’s contention that it is obvious to everyone. Chronos actually tries to defend his position that people should intrinsically know this by explaining why they should intrinsically know this - oh the irony that one needs to explain why someone should already know something. I agree it should be reversed and should have been a non-infraction guidance action instead.
The fact that some people that you want to think of as men are actually women and vice versa does not mean that there is no difference between men and women. In fact, it means the opposite; transgendered people are demonstrating that there is a difference between men and women by transitioning from one to the other.
What would get tedious is having to re-explain this simple concept in every single discussion where men or women are mentioned because some people can’t handle the reality of it. So the OP was justifiably warned not to bring it up in a discussion where it wasn’t a relevant issue.
Out of 434 mass shootings in 2019 (some of which included multiple shooters), or 0.2%. (The incident did qualify as a mass shooting, which is based on the number of people shot, not the number of fatalities.)
The statement on its own seems disingenuous, simply because it’s bringing it up in a situation where it is both irrelevant and the answer already known. But throw in the OP’s history on this particular topic, and it becomes obviously an attempt at a gotcha.
What I hate the most, though, is this thread. You can’t just ask it once as a gotcha. You have to pretend that it was sincere and challenge the Warning. Posts like yours are why it’s so easy for the mods to assume that everyone is lying to get out of being in trouble.
If it were up to me, furthering the charade to try and not get in trouble for it would get you in further trouble. Though I do understand the mods’ reluctance to do this, as not all cases are as obvious as this one.
I agree and I think that’s a very valid point. For the kind of statement made by the OP, it should get a warning just because of how it was stated in GQ. A question like that can very easily be taken as trolling, so it should be phrased in a way to make clear it is a genuine question relevant to the discussion. This kind of post in GQ, in and of itself, should garner a warning:
The obvious assumption is that it’s meant as a threadjack. If the question is being asked earnestly, then there should be more context around it to avoid that very reasonable mis-assumption. If the OP had included some stats about many mass shooters were cis- versus trans- gendered, the question might be more relevant. I thought it was trolling when I first saw it, and the convoluted explanations being offered up now are just confirming what I initially thought. I’m really glad this side discussion ended up here rather than derailing the original thread. Especially in GQ, if someone can’t phrase their questions in a way to avoid these kinds of derailing arguments, they really need to reconsider what they post.
If I were a moderator (which I am not), I would have modded you with either a hijack or trolling. You seem to argue in this thread that you were hijacking the thread, not trolling. Both hijacking and trolling are expressly prohibited by the same GQ rule #1, so I don’t know what you are trying to accomplish here.
I can’t imagine how someone answering those questions would bring anyone closer to an answer to the question being posed. For example, the question “How do you define male?” Does the OP have a substantive answer that relates to why certain definitions of male relate to mass shootings, but other definitions of male lead to a different set of facts? If so, then it certainly is relevant… but my, what are the odds that the OP or anyone else has such information at their disposal?
It is possible that the OP needed answers to the questions he posed so that he could follow up with some substantive answers to the General Question. If that’s the case, Ají de Gallina, if you shared the information that you were preparing to use to inform us why men seem to be the vast majority of mass shooters, pending answers to your questions, then I would agree that it is clear that you were not trolling and your questions were intended to bring everyone closer to a clearer understanding of the issue.
However, I must admit my suspicion that you don’t actually have anything substantive to contribute, otherwise I think you would have addressed that in this thread. If that’s true – that you have nothing to contribute to improve anyone’s understanding of men and mass shootings – then it seems that you were just soliciting information from certain posters to use as ammunition in other debates, which to me seems like some variation of hijacking/trolling/being a jerk.
