That would most likely not be moderated at all, assuming the change was not insulting or misleading in some way. If you quoted another poster, and changed the attribution to My Favorite Poster or A Really Smart Guy, or simply left the attribution off altogether, you would not be in violation of any board rule. The intent of the rule here is not about “respecting identities,” so much as not attributing things to other posters that they didn’t actually say. It’s not really a useful comparison for this particular situation.
My mistake.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you’re welcome to your Liberal “free marketplace of ideas” thing but it comes with a social cost at the expense of minorities. I’m not saying there aren’t valid discussions about trans issues (trans people talk about gender constantly and no it’s not all groupthink), and likewise for other groups. The thing most people don’t get is the sheer amount of mental energy it takes to wade into a discussion about your validity or rights. I have 3000 places I could hang out on the internet and at a certain point “inertia” is simply not a good enough reason to put up with transphobia, misogyny, rape apologia, ableism, and other things that don’t affect me but affect dear friends of mine like racism.
Some people may have noticed when I write about trans issues I always write in a neutral tone, using “they” as if I’m talking about some vague group of people I’m studying from afar instead of relaying personal stories. Some of this is just to give it a more academic tone, some of it is I’m AMAB, identify as agender (she/her pronouns), but formerly identified as a woman and it’s really awkward to work in all the nuances of identity and experience when this board is at such a basic level, but most of this is complete fucking fear. I’m honestly terrified I’m going to get harassed, if not on the board then off it. It’s happened here before to trans women. I’ve honestly gotten PMs from trans women, including ones who used to be active, completely baffled I’m still here.
Like, look, this board is waaaay behind most circles I hang in on trans stuff. I can adapt to a certain degree, it’s kind of funny to me how this board has evolved from how it used to be to the level of transmedicalism which is super out of vogue in most lefty places now but progress in the weirdest way (I attribute this somewhat to Una, who, great as she is, being of the older variety of trans women, was heavily transmed herself). Honestly I’ve had to adopt positions that are far less nuanced or a bit more extreme than I actually believe because the full position isn’t even comprehensible at the level this board works at. But I’m happy to work at that level, to a degree, “intro to trans 101” can be important work when you have the mental energy. And honestly if the level of “transphobia” here were people, especially older feminists, who are in that realm of “kind of on board with the whole thing but have vague concerns about a lot of stuff and can see what people are mad about” that I’ve seen around, it’d be fine. Exhausting, but fine.
And, honestly, I can even tolerate some amount of disagreement around the validity of trans identities, in very small doses. But that’s not what’s happening, people are straight up allowed to use really demeaning language, or deliberately misuse terms to muddy the conversation. Hell, people have made out and out jokes in trans threads and not gotten moderated even after reports, though it has gotten a little bit better.
I am legitimately sensitive to the desire to have open discussion, I really, really am, but know that a certain degree of openness ensures you’re severely limiting the people affected by certain rhetoric from weighing in. If you’re a cis het white allo man, who is an ally, sure, it may be frustrating, but start changing any of those factors and it suddenly becomes your life on trial and you’re just not going to want to give your basic-ass watered down perspective to a bunch of people whose response is going to be somewhere between active contempt or adopting a more watered down version of your already simplified opinion. In essence, people are allowed to post somewhere by the rules, but heavily disincentivized by the culture. I’ve been in so many communities with similar rules and philosophies to this one and they all end up spiraling towards being solely populated by cis het white allo men with only a few exceptions because everyone else is just tired and has more fun with people who actually respect them.
Sure, everyone may not leave, but you’re basically fixing it so the only ones left are the excessively thick-skinned, or “one of the good ones” (as in the ones willing to trade throwing others of their class under the bus to get respected by people who otherwise wouldn’t respect them).
Will I come back? Fuck, I don’t know. Probably? I don’t even really come here to post recreationally anymore. The gaps between me reading this board are getting longer, and at this point 90% of the time I just search permutations of “trans” (or occasionally women’s or sexual assault or mental health issues) and see if there’s anything I need to fucking try and correct course on with an opinion from an actual trans person before the conversation degrades further. It’s moved from enjoyment to some weird self-imposed community service. Not to say I don’t like some members here, but it is just not fun a lot of the time.
P.S. I don’t really give a shit, but a lot of trans people will get very mad if you don’t put a space between “trans” and what it’s modifying. E.G. “trans people” and “trans women”, not “transpeople” or “transwomen.” I don’t personally find it a huge deal, but it is a shibboleth and the ones without spaces are signifiers that can make it fairly obvious you’re not well informed/tapped into the issues. It’s viewed as creating a new class of people, i.e. by typing “transwomen” you’re marking them as their own group separate from women rather than a sub-class of women (basically what Urban Redneck was saying). Yes it’s kind of dumb and more or less a linguistically indefensible argument. Don’t try to apply logic to it, it makes about as much sense as any euphemism treadmill, just thought I’d note.
Yes that post was meandering, repetitive, and a poorly edited stream of consciousness. My apologies. Didn’t feel like spending a couple hours on this one.
What is “allo”? That’s a new one to me.
With forums like Great Debates and Politics how are you going to avoid topics and the uncensored language that accompanies said topics that millions of people who are sensitive about that topic for whatever reason are going to find offensive? Religion, politics, whatever wars are going on, abortion, criminal justice and punishment, medical and other vital service rationing, free speech, right to self defense, freedom of association, sexuality, nationalism vs globalism vs _________ism etc and etc are all topics that are bound to be really offensive to someone.
Language associated with transgenderism is not settled and to expect it to be settled everywhere at the same rate is completely unrealistic. What is tiresome, imo, are the extortionate demands to moderate a particular way or everyone is just going to go home. Well, the only thing capitulating to a threat does is lead to more threats.
Appears to be the opposite of asexual. Not sure how you can be het and not allo.
Thank you,** Jragon.**
Allosexual is an ad-hoc negation of asexual. It’s kind of awkward because “allo” is the French word for “queer” used in that Francophone queer community, and it technically means “other” so it should mean “all identities other than hard asexual”, but in practice it means “the band of sexual desire not on the asexual spectrum”. Explaining the whole ace spectrum is basically its own thread, unfortunately.
lol this is missing my point immensely, especially characterizing it as a threat. I’m literally just describing why people from marginalized identities do not frequent certain places, and why there’s been such an exodus from here esp by trans people. Obviously language won’t change at the same rate everywhere, I kind of… heavily acknowledged that.
It’s due to asexuality being a spectrum. For instance, demisexuality is considered “ace spectrum”, and characterizes someone who doesn’t feel sexual attraction without an emotional connection to someone (in this thread I’m uninterested in explaining the mechanics of how this is different from “lol i dont fuck on the first date” which is understandably most peoples’ first reading of that, just to prevent a hijack). You can be heterosexual and demisexual, which is essentially saying you’re only attracted to the opposite sex, but even then only when you have an emotional connection.
I read the first page and a half and then just got irritated.
This much discussion over whether someone should have corrected them to use “genetically male” and “genetically female” in the future? Someone should have seen and understood that was the problem with post and corrected them, and moved on with the discussion. I don’t have the most up-to-date education on the subject of gender and sex, but I took a class or two back when dinosaurs were trying to romance your ancestors. I’ve encountered trans people since before I really understood that either gender and biological sex existed, much less that there was a difference – my mom was a telephone operator, and trans folks could get jobs there without much hassle, so I met many in my youth. Gender and biological sex aren’t the same thing at all.
<stupid almost unrelated rant about gender and sex>I think gender is dumb, I’m a tender, caring, irritatingly manly man who will wear dresses and makeup if I feel like it*. But if you buy into the idea of gender, I’m not gonna cross you and tell you you’re doing it wrong. But if a trans male starts to complain about their prostate problems**, I’m going to wonder how they arrived at that conclusion, possibly reflexively roll my eyes unless I have some reason to suspect that they’re unusual in the chromosome department. </stupid almost unrelated rant about gender and sex>
tl;dr: I wasn’t around to correct the wrong people quickly, but you are smart folks, possibly universally smarter than I. Someone needs to start telling folks to differentiate between gender and biological sex and the rest of the group can move on with the actual fucking discussion.
*And yeah, sometimes I have. A certain type of girlfriend wants to do it, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s still not very convincing. Even when I’m clean shaven, you’ve obviously shaven and dressed up a very tall Tolkien dwarf. I’m gonna wear makeup of my own volition this weekend, but it’s so close to Halloween (and I’m a pseudo-entertainer) no one will really question it.
**Nope, absolutely not a real complaint I’ve heard a trans male voice. It’s a hyperbolic example in order to illustrate the difference between the sexes. I have known many trans persons in my adult life as well, the medical problems that they have communicated to me (I don’t know why, people get comfortable and decide I’m the well they can pour the voice of their problems into. I hope my sympathy leads somewhere) have not always been the same as their gender contemporaries. If my experience would indicate anything, this would be a specialized area worthy of study in the future.
Yeah, I don’t know if I illustrated the minefield or stepped in it at this point. I’m also kind of drunk. Have a good night folks! Try to differentiate between the two. It’ll probably become more important as time goes on.
You’ll run out of words trying to define sexuality that way. Human emotions defy such simplistic ontology.
I’m going to try to keep this short to avoid a big hijack. Queer language has moved way past being just descriptors of a marginalized sexual or gender identity for political solidarity reasons, or communication of ideas between separate parties. Queer identity nowadays is largely fluid, contextual, and often only individually meaningful. While it still has a twin purpose in some cases of enacting political and social change, the language is used as a better way to describe and understand oneself, and the labels are created and provided knowing that many people who fall under them may or may not find them useful tools for understanding their own identities, and invites them to eschew labels or create ones that are more meaningful for themselves as long as it has meaning to them and facilitates their own self understanding. This is why there are so many, and why there are often many that mean more or less the same thing. I’ve considered doing a thread on this, but it’s a bit outside the comfort zone of most of the board because it involves a lot of stuff that doesn’t make sense unless you’re in the Zoomer/Millenial queer community.
I do recommend reading this article which tackles the idea of fluid, contextual, individually meaningful identity through the lens of data science, esp. big data, being against the interests of queer people.
Thank you Jragon for joining the thread.
(Also, it’s very easy for an antagonistic party to maliciously read things into it such as “so what you’re saying is men CAN just say they’re a woman and walk into a restroom or play women’s sports whenever they want!” This is part of what I’m talking about with watered down opinions. Like, to be overly reductive, a lot of queer people, even binary trans people, are in this sort of implicit philosophical stance of radically degendering society entirely, in a way that addresses a lot of the issues people have with, say, trans stuff, but without the whole framework you can make individual components look very socially problematic within the more mainstream political context)
(And to be clear, very few trans people would argue for what I stated, so the malicious reading is solely malicious, not just correct but in the wrong framework. And there’s a huge distinction between longterm philosophical implications and what anyone wants to or thinks will happen within any timescale even as long as their lifetime).
You have defined “disorder” as a minority attribute. By that definition, having red hair is a disorder of the hair.
And you yourself seem to have spotted the flaw in your second argument. If society persecutes people with some minority attribute, then of course people with that attribute will tend to have a higher incidence of anxiety and depression. Until quite recently being gay was considered by mainstream psychiatry to be a disorder for precisely this reason. That changed in 1974, and it’s now viewed as simply part of the natural range of variation in human personality.
It sounds like you don’t want to spend all of your time debating what you consider basic transgender rights. I wouldn’t think this to be a problem if you keep away from threads that are clearly about transgender rights. There’s certainly a lot more stuff going on in the Straight Dope Message Boards - I think this is the second ever thread I’ve read about transgender rights, the first being Ronald Raygun’s thread. There’s one about kids in IMHO but I haven’t read that yet.
If the only reason you visit the board is to seek out transgender-related debate threads, you are kind of asking for it. If you are looking for a safe place to debate something related to transgender anything, but want to condition debate on a few core assumptions, put those ground rules in the OP. The current state of society is that lots of people don’t accept transgenderism, so unless you precondition your debates on the acceptance of transgenderism, expect it to be called into question when relevant. Perhaps society shouldn’t be that way, and we can debate that too; but if debating transgenderism makes you uncomfortable, that’s not a debate you can have without being uncomfortable.
Now if you’re over in the Game Room talking about baseball and someone uses your gender identity to discredit your passion for that game, I’m all for censuring that someone. If transphobia is popping up all over the place where it has no business, that’s a problem I can get behind. If you are being harrassed, if people are insulting you or a class of people you belong to, that’s not OK. If someone advocates harm to you or transgender people, that’s crossing a line.
If someone says gender incongruency is a disorder or disease? If someone says sex-based affirmative action shouldn’t apply to transgender females? If someone says transgender females shouldn’t qualify for girls-only sports unless they undergo substantial medical tests? I don’t think those are insults until someone makes them insults. Context matters, even when implying another poster has a mental or physical disorder.
All the above in my opinion, which is not set in stone.
I had no idea, personally I have only heard the terms as [a derogatory term], “transvestite”, “transgender man”, and “transgender woman” before this week.
~Max
I don’t see this as a hijack at all. Your post and the cited article are important to understand.
So I have, and so I do. I could, if you like, redefine “disorder” to mean a minority attribute which causes some change in the corresponding system’s function. Under that criteria, red hair would not be a disorder because hair color does not affect the function of hair (warmth?); baldness still qualifies. Whether gender incongruence I’m not sure whether or not biology causes some sort of stress or if it is all social. Thanks to your prompt, I now realize that I am only assuming that the structure of the body causes some sort of problem.
The question is whether the stress is all social, or if any of it is biological.
Re: homosexuality. You and the APA may hold different and wiser opinions than I, but homosexuality ultimately produces a functional change in the reproductive and/or nervous systems, and is a minority trait, and thus qualifies under both of my definitions of disorder.
~Max