471–480 of 860 posts
He does some throat-clearing that help address some of these complaints.
It is a very bad essay that says "I am unfamiliar with the target of this essay, but I felt strong emotions when I read bits of it, which qualifies me to pontificate and condemn".
You should have finished reading PG's essay. It's really quite narrowly scoped. There's no indication I could see that he doesn't still hold the same basically liberal politics (he included explicit disclaimers, for all the good that did); he might still be fine with transgender identity. He just wanted to talk about how the particular loudmouth brand of annoying leftist came to prominence. He even had a decent defin…
> “he might still be fine with transgender identity” How extremely generous!
Be charitable.
I was genuinely afraid of this post hitting HN, but thank you for the kind words.
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This is genuinely absurd. 99.99% of the time the issue of 'where do female identify rapists belong' is brought up, it's because someone who disagrees with the broader point is trying to create some kind of gotcha. It happens constantly online. Leftist A will say something about respecting gender self-identification and then rightwinger B will manipulate the conversation so that the leftist is now trying to defend put…
This isn't a gotcha either. When the horrific outcomes of males being transferred into women's prisons is brought up, it's typically being done to explain why gender self-id policy is so harmful to women.
Often, the person advocating for gender self-id hasn't spent any time considering this impact at all. The detriment to women and girls isn't even on their radar. So it's worth explaining.
It changes views, too. I've personally witnessed several people rapidly undoing their support for gender self-id when they see evidence of the deleterious consequences. Though more in real life than online.
Conversations like those are the reason why support for policy that prioritizes gender identity over sex is dropping like a stone.
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Or you could just call people what they want to be called when it does not inconvenience you in the slightest.
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I thought this was better than most essays in this vein. I do fundamentally disagree with the author. People can think poorly of you for whatever reason they want. If someone hates trans people, they can, and you can't stop them. The whole "war on hate" thing was a bad idea; you can't forbid hatred. It predictably didn't work, and it's good that we're turning away from it. Adding on, the trans issue isn't simple. The…
It seems you didn't read their post. Also, yes, if someone hates you, you can definitely change their minds. The weapon in the war on hate is love. And there is a lot of love in the author's essay. Love for others in their position.
So you too can join the War on Hate by showing love to the author and letting PG know he is wrong, so very wrong.
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That analogy doesn't work. A closer analogy would be a vegan refusing to talk to a coworker who eats meat. That would be unacceptable to me, too.
Could you explain why you think your analogy works, please?
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Self-congratulatory, self-righteous prigs are all over the place within human society. When people complain about them, the substantive content of their complaint is the context in which they issue it. For example pg is complaining about the prigs who nag everyone about transgender acceptance, but not the prigs who nag everyone to reject and abuse transgender people. Matters of speech, manners, and decorum are conven…
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Or you could just call people what they want to be called when it does not inconvenience you in the slightest.
Personally, agree with calling people what they want to be called. That said, here's a thought experiment: What if someone is inconvenienced? What if someone feels uncomfortable using pronouns that don't match the sex of the person? What about uncommon "neopronouns" like "zhe", "xe", or "fae"? Whose comfort gets priority in this situation?
Obviously there's no easy way to reason these cases from first principles. As it is, I'm aware that being affirmed in their gender identity is recognized as therapeutically important for trans people. On the flip side, I'm not aware of any condition that causes people to suffer significant distress due to using a particular pronoun. So in this case, I feel like it's a pretty easy decision.
EDIT: The "neopronoun" question was added after I replied, or I missed it. I have never met a person who expected me to use them, nor have I ever encountered a workplace environment where policies required their use, so I haven't formed an opinion.
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That analogy doesn't work. A closer analogy would be a vegan refusing to talk to a coworker who eats meat. That would be unacceptable to me, too.
The analogy in my comment was about adherence to philosophical beliefs, in response to what appeared to be a suggestion by you that such beliefs should be ignored if someone else finds them to be an inconvenience. Could you explain why you think your analogy works, please?
Your right to untrammeled adherence to your philosophical beliefs ends the moment that those beliefs result in conduct affecting other people. After that point, some form of balancing occurs.