Will you refer to her as he now?
Because she told you so? Wiki already complied and erased her whole history as a she with only he. Who knew you could circumvent 32 years of she into he in one day.
shareBecause she told you so? Wiki already complied and erased her whole history as a she with only he. Who knew you could circumvent 32 years of she into he in one day.
share[deleted]
Nah, you'll get called a bigot or someshit. I have the answer to the pronoun problem...
Bring back 2nd Person speech! Thou, Thy, Thee, and Thine are non-gendered pronouns. Sure, you'll sound like your a medieval nobleman, but you don't have to bend to their bullshit, nor use "it".
Win-win
I'll be referring to Elliot as a he. That's what he prefers. It's no skin off my nose, I'm not religious or in any way concerned with how others live their lives as long as they aren't hurting anyone.
shareSuppose you had a neighbor that liked to walk naked in his front yard, then take a dump, and then jack off for everyone to see. He ain't he hurtin' nobody, right? That's your only criterion is it?
shareI'd categorise that as offensive behaviour to others personally. Someone walking around saying call me he or him, not so much.
shareYeah, that what you the self-appointed arbiter of what's offensive and what isn't would say. The guy taking a public dump on his own lawn might very well think he's doing something perfectly natural that should be celebrated.
There are plenty of religious individuals who find the entire idea of men or women claiming to be in the "wrong body" offensive (i.e. an offense on God's creations; this spans all religions). I'm offended by the idea because grand claims are made that are entirely specious, claims that are exploiting the momentum of other civil rights groups and piggybacking their way to federal policies. These are claims that for which disagreement can get you publicly harassed, doxxed, shamed, and all that good stuff in which tolerant social justice warriors specialize. For example, claims that other women have nothing to fear in bathrooms, locker rooms, or prisons from men who identify as women. You will hear people say, "Well, there's no known cases of any problems like this, so..." (no longer true, btw) That logic is idiotic to any person who uses devotes the necessary oxygen to brain activity. I find this to be an offense to my sense of reason and logic, and thus offensive in its stupidity and arrogance to me personally. Like I said, I'd be polite in the face of surprise requests to use particular pronouns, but when this general tolerance eventually leads to public policy changes I do have a problem. One particularly outrageous example, in my opinion, is allowing self-identifying formerly male women compete in women's sports. Most kind hearted people who support this seem completely ignorant about the highly imperfect processes (maybe forever imperfect) involved in the biology of transition.
I agree on the sports point. We have a weightlifter from the country I live in that lived as a male for close to 40 years and is now out there dominating women's weightlifting. That is an absolute joke.
The bathroom thing I'd imagine is no different to the regular threat any female is under using a public bathroom, unfortunately. I'm sure in some cases crossdressers could relatively easily slip into the other genders stall so I also don't see a common sense way of eliminating that risk even if it was increased.
I think Jordan Peterson's stance on this is the correct one. If I met her/him/it/whatever personally and this request was politely made, I'd honor it in the name of basic civility. If there was a law compelling me to do so, as so many fools in Canada insist upon, I'd defy it and go with the more sensible biological definitions.
shareNo. I'll refer to her as "Elliot" but the pronoun thing is an attempt at coercion.
shareI wonder how you'll describe such a person if the person itself was a criminal. This would be so confusing to the person trying to describe the suspect.
If gender is a construct, why can't color be as well? We can decide to see color as a kind of material fact outside of our perception of it - in which case you could say that ‘red’ is a a type of light with a 620–750 nm wavelength and this is an objective fact.
Color doesn’t exist out there in the world, light only becomes ‘color’ per say, when it hits your retina and then is processed by the visual cortex. Objectively there is only stimulus which our brains then subjectively synthesize into experience.
With this said it seems obvious to me that the method by which your brain processes this information is heavily informed by the context in which your brain developed, ie: society.
This goes far beyond the actual naming conventions of colors, i argue that societal norms regarding the interpretation of color produce a kind of filter through which we experience color.
ok try hard philosopher
shareShe was born a woman and will be one till the day she dies, no matter what cosmetic alterations she decides to make (name, looks etc) and no matter how loud the alphabet brigade & supporters squeal about, "lEtTiNG peOpLe bE wHo THeY wAnT tO Be".
So no.
She grew a penis? That's amazing!
shareeven if you think page is silly, or sick, or deluded or whatever, if you ever met him in person, you should still call him elliot and use the pronouns he prefers.
because there's always something to be said for being a big person, and not being a dick.
There's also something to be said for skepticism and not being a naïve fool. As in, not letting "not wanting to be a dick" lead to rubberstamping state and federal policy changes based on utterly unproven claims. For example, that no former man identifying as a woman would ever, ever consider using his/her/whatever strength advantage to rape other women in prison. Because they say so, we should allow former men to roam freely in women's bathrooms, women's locker rooms, women's prisons, or any other areas that women have long considered safe spaces for their gender exclusively. Any objection to this, or even questioning, and you're excommunicated from the new church of tolerance and righteousness.
shareYou know whats funny about that? I've not heard about a single case of a trans person attacking, raping, or spying on anyone in a bathroom, yet 60% of trans individuals have reported harassment, and assaults using public washrooms.
shareIt is funny that you've never heard anything about trans people attacking anyone. It's called confirmation bias. You've of course completely ignored all the other issues I've brought up, such as what to do with trans people in jail (for which there have been numerous cases of predatory newly minted "women" raping other inmates). All that aside, the real issue is safe spaces. Irrespective of any bathroom crimes committed by trans people, there are plenty of women and men who don't feel comfortable with the opposite biological gender sharing their restroom space (not to mention locker rooms, competing against opposite bio-genders in sporting events, etc). Why does the comfort of trans people supersede those of non-trans? It's the end of the world for those poor trans people if they use bathrooms of their biological gender? That sort of dismissive argument is basically what's tossed at anyone who objects to your viewpoint.
shareI was referring to public washrooms, not prison.
I didn't ignore what you said, I think that everyone needs to feel safe using those spaces, but I thought that you forgot to mention that it's usually trans people who are attacked, not the ones doing the attacking. Again, I said usually, not always.
I think that public washrooms should be redesigned. Many new ones that I have been in, in both malls, and restaurants have stalls which have 4 walls, floor to ceiling. I also don't have an issue with having 3 washrooms. Our swimming pools have 3 change rooms, and the family change room is for anyone, you just can't walk around naked. Everyone has to change in the stalls.
I'm not ignorant to how people can feel uncomfortable around trans people, but I don't check who is in the locker room or the washroom with me, so honestly, if it's not obvious, I won't know. But what I do know, is that I don't want to be assessed by someone to see if I belong in the ladies room.
The extent to which trans people are attacked in bathrooms is entirely irrelevant to the issue of whether they should be legally permitted to use gendered bathrooms based on their new identity. I think the fact that few trans people have committed bathroom crimes is being disingenuously used as justification for new civil rights laws, and is just as disingenuous as exaggerated concerns about bathroom safety. Safety is much more of an issue for prisons. Competitive integrity and fairness is the central issue with trans in sports. For bathrooms and locker rooms, I think the central issue is what men and women (women especially) consider to be traditional expectations of inter-gender privacy. If a trans "woman" is dangling around a locker room au naturale, who are you or I to insist that the large swath of women uncomfortable with that need to reprogram their instincts? Maybe trans individuals should reprogram their expectations instead.
shareDo you honestly think that a trans woman is safe in a men's washroom?
I'm not talking about prisons. I don't know what country you are in or what your prison system is like, but I do think that public toilets are similar throughout the first world. If an individual is in a stall, no one should know what equipment they have between their legs.
Again, I don't walk around a change room naked, at the gym or at the pool, and a lot of women don't either. I would like to know how many trans people have been walking around locker rooms naked? I don't think that in most places they would feel safe to do so, and I think they would be correct. I think there should be change stalls in locker rooms for those who do not wish to get naked in front of others.
I don't think that that is an unreasonable compromise. I don't know if you are a man or a woman, but I will ask you if you think that a transwoman would be safe in a men's locker room? I don't.
pissy attitude aside, i'm pretty sympathetic to most of what you've said here, in that i think a healthy dose of skepticism really needs to be interjected into the conversation.
i am certainly not from the 'gender is a social construct' school. if humans are the only animals whose behavioral differences between sexes were due only to culture & external influences, that would be an absolute miracle.
i'm all for pushing back in certain areas - prisons for sure, and i absolutely think kids need to be treated very differently than adults here.
but page is an adult, & he/she/whatever has made this call as a person well into his 30s. as far as i know, no one has shown any proof that she's dangerous or sick or unstable.
so i think we should treat that decision the way we'd treat every other individual - give him the respect we should show to every other person who's freely trying to make his way through life.