Anyway, to summarize the thread, it looks like the speech referred to by the OP isn’t going to be banned.
That doesn’t mean we have to give it a pass without debate.
This is pretty much where I’m at. But I will say that even without designating something as hate speech, there’s plenty of space to moderate if things become in our view uncivil. A gentle correction may apply in the case of the example in the OP, with instruction to modify behavior in various ways. Things will flow naturally from that.
And I should have said, if they really wanted to beg the question, they’d drop the whole “trans” business and just call themselves “men” and “women”.
Keeping the “trans” signifies there is a distinction relevant for some reasons, mostly personal. The point is their biology and identity aren’t in agreement. And it’s likely that their biology isn’t in agreement with itself (chromosomes vs gene expression, genital vs brain development, etc). Accept them for their identity, and let them worry about the physiology.
As for intersex, I’m not informed enough on that topic to express an opinion, other than try to respect their chosen identity. In other words, the same thing as above.
I appreciate that you don’t think it’s any of your business and don’t go around dumping your opinion on people willy nilly. I, respectfully, think you are underinformed about the biological aspects.
Sex expression is more than just XX or XY (and ignoring the special cases like XXY, etc). Gene expression is controlled by more than just the presence or absence of a gene. There is also epigenetics at play. Epigenetics “is the study of heritable phenotype changes that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence”. Briefly, many factors (such as environmental interaction with chemicals) affect which genes become active and which dormant. Physiological development involves stages of different hormones being triggered by different genes, each wave of hormones affecting the biological development of different parts of the anatomy. That’s what often leads to intersex people - one wave of development goes male and another goes female, for whatever reason. Thus, you get mixed genitalia.
There is reason to think that gender identity may be affected by a biological underpinning of how the brain forms, due to influence from different hormones during development. This would be yet another round of different genes expressing differently during development, leading to one set controlling genitals and another brain state.
So to say what someone is “biologically” is to overlook some of biology. What you’re really saying is you see visual development as more significant than identity.
I mean, we’re just disagreeing as to semantics. What word would you use to describe a mental/physiological abnormality that may itself be benign and natural but may also be correlated with negative effects? I would think abnormality is even more disparaging than disorder.
Well, that’s the thing. It’s not a disease if almost everybody has it, and it’s not “pathological” if it’s not a disease. (my definition of “disease” also requires abnormality)
In fact, the word I would use for a disorder with negative effects is “disease”.
Sound rationale if you ask me, assuming the goal is for people to be happy.
~Max
Found it really padded out, confusing, etc., actually. Just get to the point and stop bringing up the “bimodal” aspect as a key point.
So, maybe 2% of the population doesn’t “fit” into the simplistic picture. You can either accept that there’s a “none of the above” check box or you can make the lives of those 2% a living hell.
Making the lives of others hell just because they don’t “fit” seems to be jerk behavior.
Usually, that is the case. But it is not always the case. A person makes a claim about themselves and a group they belong to. I disagree. Surely there are some situations where I can voice my disagreement, no matter the subject area, without being disrespectful?
For example, I might explain why I (respectfully) disagree during a civil debate about the validity of that very claim. I concede that they have an opinion, and that the claim matches reality and is valid in their opinion. My dissenting argument is that their opinion is wrong. No disrespect.
Depending on the debate, I might even concede that they and their opinion exist - but that’s not necessarily a prerequisite to a respectful debate.
You have to realize that there is at least one place where it may appropriate to correct people who refer to their adoptive parents as “mum” or “dad”: during a debate over whether to call adoptive parents “mum” or “dad”.
This person you mention isn’t a jerk because he or she disagrees with adoptees. Neither does a person necessarily become a jerk because he or she tells adoptees not to call their foster parents “mum” and “dad”. The person becomes a jerk because he or she tells adoptees how to address their foster parents at a time and place where it is absolutely inappropriate to do so. To then “follow adopted people around” and repeatedly do so only makes him or her even more of a jerk.
This goes for any disagreement, by the way.
I personally think Annoyed’s comment is reprehensible, off-topic, fallacious, and disparaging of a protected class (people who have undergone sex reassignment surgery). But in Annoyed’s defense, the gist of the post is that sex reassignment surgery (especially of children) is immoral. It is disparaging to imply that transgender people who have undergone SRS are immoral, but I wouldn’t call that hate speech.
~Max
For the record, whether an arbitrary number of people hold an opinion or not has no bearing on whether I consider it to be hate speech.
ETA: Excepting the definition of hate speech
~Max
To make it hate speech, there would need to be some hateful element, some sort of verbal attack of their person. For example, “therefore, they aren’t people/they are lesser beings” or “and immoral people should be [insert harmful act]”.
I do not consider an attack on someone’s beliefs - religion, gender identity, racial affiliation, nationality - to be an attack of their person.
~Max
Well that’s fucking gracious of you m’lord ;). But how do you propose debating at all, much less with respect, if you a priori posit that the other person’s opinion does not, in fact, exist (and they are, in effect, unpersons) ?
Beyond that, and out of basic civility regardless of your personal Views ; if someone tells you they’d really rather you call them John and you keep purposefully calling them Max, you’re being a jerk. No ifs, ands or buts.
Yes. And I did specify there were some specific (and rather limited) contexts in which the precision matters or even clarifies what is being talked about. In the overwhelming majority of contexts, however, nobody will, nor should, pry about something that’s personal and private and doesn’t concern you in any way nor is meaningful wrt what “a family” is or is represented as.
Yeah, I know. It’s a perennial problem: a word with an innocent-enough denotation becomes polluted with the connotations that become embedded by the attitudes of the many biased people who express themselves using originally neutral terms.
See: “deviance”. I’d wince at “deviant”, the same as those other terms, and yet I do realize it merely meant “to deviate”, and yeah we deviate from the norm.
But see also the proverbial “N-word”, about as loaded a pejorative as can be conjured up in the English language. It is a badly Anglicized pronunciation of a Spanish word meaning “black” – BLACK Is its original denotation, the pejorative functions being due to the connotations given to it over time.
I would not suggest that you embark on using it to refer to the people who call themselves by the English language denotative equivalent. Semantics, and people’s feelings, do matter.
shrug I don’t really see the point in splitting hairs that razor fine. I just wish someone would get on with the reprehending already.
It is possible to converse with one’s self, or with very complex machines, and that is how I would rationalizes human interaction if I followed a certain kind of solipsism.
These two paragraphs appear to contradict each other. First you write that intentional misidentification is never okay; then you admit that there are some specific (limited) contexts in which it is okay to essentially do just that.
A thread on this forum could very well be the exception. But there are no exceptions to hate speech - if you classify something as hate speech, then under no circumstances should we the board permit it to go unpunished. Maybe you have a different understanding of hate speech than I do.
What I am saying is that I could start a thread debating the validity of trans gender identity and do so respectfully, just as I could start a thread debating the validity of adopted children addressing their foster parents by “mum and dad”. An incredulous foster parent could jump in and ask, “how dare you tell me my children are wrong for calling me mommy!” And my response would be, “my opinion is no more worthy than your own, but I would be delighted if you could explain why you think that is a proper way to address a foster parent, because it seems inappropriate to me”. And she might respond, “A mother, a real mother, is the most wonderful person in the world. She’s the angel voice that bids you good night, kisses your cheek, whispers ‘sleep tight’…”
I don’t want to make a thread like that, especially since I have no reason to dispute the validity of trans gender identities or motherhood, but I am interested in having a forum where that kind of thread can exist, provided that people try to have a civil debate. I take no pleasure in reading expletive-laced back and forth ad hominem attacks and recycled talking points.
~Max
Okay, but I still need a way to express myself. I don’t carry political correctness so far as to prevent me from articulating my views; if my views are bigoted, there’s no amount of lipstick that can fix that. Attempting to do so only pushes the “neutral” terms down and down into the gutter.
Could you clarify, are you suggesting I start calling disorders “deviances”? You can’t see me behind this screen, but I’m wincing, too.
I wouldn’t compare “disorder” to the “N-word”. One is clearly worse than the other. Somebody who claims to use that word in its original eighteenth century sense is pulling your leg. More importantly, there are better words to use, like “black”. You will notice that sometimes “black” also has somewhat of a racist connotation. Nevertheless there are plenty of situations where no other word so concisely expresses the thoughts you want to express. There are some situations where no other word can express the same concept - black does not always mean African American. And so “black” is still a part of our language.
And so “disorder” is still part of my vernacular.
~Max
All right. Three direct and unsupported attacks crosses into the realm of harassment. Feel free to open a thread in The BBQ Pit, but refrain from this sort of personal attack in a non-Pit thread.
[ /Moderating ]
Because its not hate speech. Offensive speech, sure.
*Hate *speech or *threatening *speech? There’s a distinction.
There is no such thing as hate speech.
What is the distinction?
In the United States there is no such thing as hate speech laws, that is true at least.
In other nations that do have such laws, not only does hate speech exist but it’s legally defined. It’s a factually incorrect statement, like saying that there is no such thing as pizza.