A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities • Hacker News Board

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#561

Post by josteink » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote: post #316

drenvuk wrote: post #268

Can someone please tell me how important this topic based on the amount of news time and eyeballs it attracts relative to the number of people that it affects? The numbers I can find for US citizens is: 0.6% or 1,988,696 out 331,449,281 of people total for the entirety of the US in 2021. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Unite... In the UK where the featured article took place the latest poll I…

> I don't mean to downplay what is happening because it is happening but do you not think the amount of outrage this topic generates surpasses the level of impact we can have assuming we fix it? It just feels like we're being distracted. But downplaying it is exactly what you are doing, literally. To answer your main question, though: the very small community that we are talking about is disproportionately being subj…

> the very small community that we are talking about is disproportionately being subjected to murder, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and widespread discrimination.

Citation needed.

From what I can tell they are being given more leeway than any other group, and anyone who dares argue against their “rights” risks losing their job.

Trans-people does absolutely not to seem to be at risk anywhere.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#562

Post by jhrmnn » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

scubbo wrote: post #530

btilly wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a claim about ideology. You made a claim about medical professionals. That is not particularly relevant to what I claimed. I stand by my claim. The online echo chambers that children, including my own, seek out very much push the ideology that any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. And that the person who is making the claim should have the right to any treatment t…

> any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. And that the person who is making the claim should have the right to any treatment that they wish, up to and including surgery. I can understand some caution around the latter part of this quote, given how traumatic, invasive, and costly surgery can be. It is a defensible and reasonable position that there should be _some_ barrier-…

I think your last paragraph hints at the root cause. Many people simply have a trouble seeing gender purely as self-image since it has originated from sex, which is objective. And this development is quite recent.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#563

Post by selimthegrim » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

jollybean wrote: post #233

metalliqaz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Enforced group-think is going to be the death of these universities." How?

By expunging, shaming, expelling, disinviting, cancelling, eschewing, not offering positions, denying grants, avoiding publication, demoting those that don't meet the requirements of a radical orthodoxy. Noam Chomsky of all people (!), and a bunch of other staunchly centre-left luminaries had to take out a full page ad in Harper's to make the point. [2] How far would an ugly trend have to exhibit itself in order for…

The late (devout Christian!) William Stuntz wrote an entire book (in front of me right now) about the overbearing justice system and and never got cancelled for it.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#564

Post by dalbasal » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

I'm surprised that the article isn't more sports-centric.

This "battle," has been mostly an elite-ish, university-centric one this far. Gender studies departments were always known as bastions of avant garde quirkiness. The Germaine Greare's of the world have always been at war with someone, name-calling and whatnot. Theatrical protests aren't new, and neither is their intensity.

Leakage into the real world was indirect at best, and leakage into the elite world was usually in the form of recreational rhetoric. When ordinary people hear about it, it's usually from the politically polar... reaching for examples of crazy social progressives.

Sports though... sports is something people actually care about. That's where "gender ideology" is now, and this is where things start to get serious... where we see what sticks and what doesn't.

Prisons and shelters... those are bystanders, one way or another.

^ I'm not talking about the actual changes or lack thereof affecting trans people. I'm talking about the war over abstract philosophical points.. which manifest in specific areas such as prisons, sports, etc. The "fat man on a rail cart" scenarios.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#565

Post by read_if_gay_ » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

bjoli wrote: post #503

tomp wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took a lot of mental self-awareness on my part, and reading a lot of such statements, to recognise how strongly I've been mentally programmed (brainwashed) by society to think of men as evil , and not even flinch when I used to read statements like the one above (implying / assuming that men are, by default, extremely violent and dangerous, and that everyone is justified by judging every man as such). It's easier…

I am a man, and I don't want to go in to the same bathroom as 5 other men, especially not of they are a group and drunk. The reason is simple: I have found it much more common for men to take pleasure in having power over other people by threat of violence. They are assholes of course, but that shit is pretty common. I would even claim that anyone that says otherwise probably never did more than 4 pub rounds. Or went…

There’s also actual data that black people commit an outsized percentage of violent crime in the US yet any statement like this with “black” substituted for “men” would be downvoted into oblivion. The common argument is that it’s really society’s mistreatment of black people which is to blame for the criminality. Why is that same argument not applied here?

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#566

Post by koonsolo » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #181

fungiblecog wrote: post #92

I think the irony of the current battle around identity is that we have been making steady progress based on the idea that personal characteristics shouldn't matter. However this whole debate is reversing that by not only saying it matters a great deal but that other people should be forced to defer to others personal choices even when it directly affects them

This was ironically one of the things that was hardest about coming out as gay, for me. Nobody ever treated me the same way again. I was either uncomfortably praised or silently judged, with practically no in-between. Suffice to say, my sexuality is on a need-to-know basis, now.

> my sexuality is on a need-to-know basis, now.

Ideal solution, because the people who don't care also don't care to know. And those who do care definitely don't need to know.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#567

Post by seany » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #386

btilly wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is hard to say. In a world full of discrimination against trans folks, who knows how many people who would prefer being trans have failed to be identified? But the topic is much bigger than that. You see, the ideology being pushed says that everyone who has gender dysphoria should be assumed to be trans. But a LOT of teenagers, particularly girls, go through a period of gender dysphoria when they hit puberty. Wh…

>> "and well-meaning attempts at gender reassignment surgery for them" This isn't actually a thing. Certain factions who would prefer trans people cease to exist push this idea that kids are on this hot new meme of getting their bits flipped before reaching the age of consent, but it is simply not a thing. No top surgery, either. It just isn't a thing. It's a wild fantasy. The only thing kids can go on are puberty bl…

This is just false. I personally know people in the states that make it false, and other evidence is very easily accessible.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#568

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

metalliqaz wrote: post #104

throwaway284534 wrote: post #36

There’s a lot that’s already been said in this topic but I feel compelled to bring up the damage imposed by TERF talking points. The conversation goes something like this: “Transgender women possess an innate maleness that carries a non-zero threat to female spaces.” They believe that dictionary definitions of woman are prescriptive, declared at the chromosomes during birth, rather than descriptive, as in how one pre…

Sorry to break it to you, but chromosomes are prescriptive. You cannot simply ignore that there are differences between X and Y chromosomes. Society's distinctions between the sexes is not arbitrary. Why do we have separate bathrooms in public but not at home? Why do we have segregated sports? Why do we celebrate feminists but not MRAs? It's because there is a real-world difference.

[deleted]

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#569

Post by mkl » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #265

MyHypatia wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how it is unreasonable for a female inmate to be uncomfortable sharing sleeping quarters with a person who has a penis (regardless of how that person identifies). The fear that cis-women have of rape is real. The fear that transgender women have of rape in a men's jail is real. I think the fairest thing to do is take both of these fears seriously and house intact trans-women in a space where they neither…

Why would trans women have any greater fear of rape (by men) than (smaller, weaker) men have?

There are a lot more straight male rapists than non-straight male rapists, just because there are a lot more straight people. Yes, there is also situational homosexuality, but trans women change the situation.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#570

Post by meetups323 » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

scubbo wrote: post #530

btilly wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a claim about ideology. You made a claim about medical professionals. That is not particularly relevant to what I claimed. I stand by my claim. The online echo chambers that children, including my own, seek out very much push the ideology that any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. And that the person who is making the claim should have the right to any treatment t…

> any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. And that the person who is making the claim should have the right to any treatment that they wish, up to and including surgery. I can understand some caution around the latter part of this quote, given how traumatic, invasive, and costly surgery can be. It is a defensible and reasonable position that there should be _some_ barrier-…

The point is clearly that we should discourage folks from undertaking any permanent life alterations while they're still in the "it could be just a phase" stage. To use your analogy, we're dissuading the person from tattooing "I hate broccoli" on them until they've reached age 18 or whatever. Nobody is saying we should deny them their self-image outright.