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A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

economist.com

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Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#161

Post by at_a_remove »

adventured wrote: post #150

The same has occurred in regards to race. For decades the ideological left preached, quite aggressively and consistently, that we must move to a post racial society, that race should not matter. This was the clear majority belief on the left as recently as the beginning of Obama's first term. My entire childhood was filled with that preached gospel: a person's character is what matters, do not pay attention to their…

That's been my feeling -- one of them had to be wrong. And if you're wrong once, you can be wrong again, so perhaps it would be wise to be less certain of oneself.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#162

Post by onemoresoop »

waterhouse wrote: post #82
tetranomiga wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no historical reason to think that not supporting extreme speech will lead to fascism. There are historical reasons to think that curbing extremist speech protects democracy (see the Weimar Republic).

> There are historical reasons to think that curbing extremist speech protects democracy (see the Weimar Republic). You think the Weimar Republic is a point in favor of that claim? In my research, I looked into what actually happened in the Weimar Republic and found that, contrary to what most people think, Germany did have hate‐speech laws that were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played…

I did not know that, thanks for pointing out.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#163

Post by bachmeier »

foolinaround wrote: post #38

while this article focusses on the gender ideology issues, IMHO the censorship in universites is on a wider range of issues, with the common denominator being the viewpoints espoused in far-left circles (not passing judgement here on whether they are right or wrong) Enforced group-think is going to be the death of these universities.

> Enforced group-think is going to be the death of these universities.

I've been working at universities for a couple decades now and have never experienced "enforced group-think".

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#164

Post by TaylorAlexander »

textgel wrote: post #94
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don’t like their identity being debated. Bringing up trans women in sports as a talking point would be pretty upsetting to most trans women as it is likely to feel like you’re invalidating their personal experience of being trans. There’s this thing with marginalized communities where people outside of the communities “just want to have a discussion” but the stakes of that conversation are way too high for mar…

Yes funnily enough those who wanted to "Just have a discussion" were the ones who forced us into this mess in the first place. People might not like "having their identity being debated" but people also don't like having their opportunities taken away or being forced into situations they don't feel comfortable in or ones that threaten their safety. I think the best thing for you to do in situations like this is quiet…

Trans people are not “reaching for” anyone’s lives they just want to be able to exist in society without being harassed.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#165

Post by dang »

bachmeier wrote: post #135
dang wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is for topics that gratify intellectual curiosity, not "software development". Please see the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . You're certainly right that this is an inflammatory topic with strong political and ideological overlap, and as the guidelines explain, we don't want flamewar here, and we don't want ideological or political battle. The site exists for intellectual curios…

> HN is for topics that gratify intellectual curiosity I think that's the problem with a topic like this on HN. There will be little learning going on, with many statements made with certainty by individuals that have never studied any of these concepts in any detail. The level of dismissal in the comments is itself a reason to pull the plug.

That's certainly a big problem, but HN can't be a site for intellectual curiosity and at the same time exclude every story with political or ideological overlap. People sometimes imagine that that would be better, but only in the context of a specific story or thread they don't like. If you try to imagine it as a general policy it breaks down altogether. Nor would this community accept such severe restrictions on the range of topics. I don't think we have any choice but to patiently work together at having more thoughtful conversation.

I've written extensively about this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490.

If anyone has a question that hasn't been answered there, I'd like to know what it is, and if you know a better way for HN to relate to political topics while fulfilling its mandate of curiosity, I'd really like to know what it is. Just please familiarize yourself with the past material first, because if it's something simple like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've answered many times already why it won't work.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#166

Post by burnished »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #7

I don’t know if this article is describing this phenomenon accurately, as the first paragraph contains an obvious falsehood: “ A flyer with an image of a gun and text reading “shut the fuck up, terf” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a slur) was circulating. ”. TERF isn’t a slur. No one has successfully beaten and killed a woman while calling her a TERF and then got away with it in court like the gay panic defens…

It seems like the critical thing at stake in this thread is what 'slur' means. Like you, I think of slurs as being only the words associated with minority violence, maybe curse-words+, the sort of thing that would make me feel uncomfortably speaking aloud due to the associations. Evidently other people feel that it means something more like 'insult'. I can't say what this means in the broader context, but it might be a good signal to re-evaluate how you interpreted its use-age in the article.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#167

Post by edrxty »

tetranomiga wrote: post #14

Gender politics is a cancer on the left, even though I agree with it, it takes up so much time and energy away from things that would benefit everybody including trans people, like universal healthcare, better employee protection laws and better, more available education. Such a small percentage of the population has been the center point of so much discussion and debate, and for what benefit? All I see it doing is g…

Gender politics are interesting because they are mostly just a source of in-fighting within various factions of the left [1] but because they cover a set of topics that seem so foreign to the right, it gives them lots of ammunition for cruel memes to distract themselves from their own internal struggles.

That said, it's a nuanced issue that touches a lot of aspects of life and effects more people than one would initially assume. It's very much worth sorting out, but it's the kind of issue that's easily going to be derailed by toxic personalities because much like guns and religion, it's an attack on one's self image. If you're a billionaire wanting to cause havoc to prevent wealth taxes or environmental regulation, throwing money at either side of this cause seems like a pretty good way to get high political-chaos ROI.

[1] - https://xkcd.com/1095/

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#169

Post by at_a_remove »

danielodievich wrote: post #138

One of my favorite sci-fi authors is Ian M. Banks (discussed here on HN with regularity). His Culture series describe a post-scarcity interstellar society of human(oid)s who among many, many things can change their own gender just by thinking about it. After suitable body alteration time, you can be a male, female, or even something in between (that happens to be important part of one of the characters in one of the…

Sort of a star-bellied sneetches deal, yes.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#170

Post by briffle »

mike00632 wrote: post #124
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

Do you feel the same way about nicknames? If you call someone by a nickname that they don't like and they let you know they prefer their own name then do you consider it too onerous to defer to them about it?

I had this exact same argument with a family member who's legal name is William, but has gone by 'Bill" his whole life...
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