[dead]
Lynn Conway has died
401–410 of 429 posts
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you can say that about anything. There are people whose whole expertise is one area of, say, film production. You can talk about films and critically analyze them without doing a deep dive into how props are made. It’s OK to have separate contexts. It isn’t a “gotcha” that “everything is political” - it just doesn’t matter when trying to do most things. It’s distracting and pointless; it’s a null statement. You c…
It’s not null, it’s true and profound
In the “I’m 14 and this is deep” way, maybe. Nothing more.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#403Her life sounds like an interesting one (in good and bad ways). I would like to read a biography, or even see a biographical or dramatized film about it.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#404Re: Lynn Conway has died
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So if you're a cis man, try to imagine you were a trans man; born female, raised a girl, expected to conform to your local female beauty norms, be expected to bear children, less body hair and muscle mass, curves in places unfamiliar to you, flirted with by men, etc. Is it weird if I suspect that it wouldn't bother me? I'd have been raised from birth to expect those things so they wouldn't be surprising to girl-me,…
I've heard the phrase "cis by default" used to describe this experience (which I mostly share). Essentially, the intensity of feelings regarding gender can vary widely from person into person and so a lot of people are fine with the gender they were born as not because they strongly feel like a woman/man, but precisely because they don't have strong feelings about it. (And therefore being transgender is the intersect…
That sounds like my experience. I didn't really begin questioning what I really "was" until I got beyond thinking that my desire to dress in women's clothing was more than just a "fetish," and I decided to see what I'd look like with a full feminine presentation. The answer was: I looked like me. And I turned out to be far more "passable" than I thought.
(There's always going to be people that recognize me for what I am. But, for the most part, they don't insult me about it to my face, or even mention it at all.)
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#406[flagged]
No religious flamewar, please. The other flamewars are bad enough already.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#407Re: Lynn Conway has died
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
And trans people still existed, just had impossibly harder lives than now. Why do we want to return to that?
I think it's possible to have a simpler social classification system without treating trans people poorly. There are many other rare mental issues that we can't treat well and that we don't bend all of society to try to alleviate for the victims. That doesn't mean we have to hate on the victims or treat them poorly. There are a a few pretty big upsides I can think of to using a simpler social gender classification sy…
Simpler than "treat people how they look and act, update your assumptions if corrected"?
This system can break down for some trans people (although I bet most make excessive effort to present as their preferred gender), but it also breaks down for effeminate males and masculine women (and I bet this is the larger category). Despite these difficulties, it's worked for literally all of history until people started pretending they don't know how pronouns work. Test it yourself by taking a look at Lynn's picture and asking which pronouns you'd use.
I'm not sure how invoking genetics simplifies anything. Have you had your sex chromosomes checked? I haven't, and triple-X and KS are often undiagnosed! I'd hate to have to update my drivers license to "unclassified" in my 30s.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's possible to have a simpler social classification system without treating trans people poorly. There are many other rare mental issues that we can't treat well and that we don't bend all of society to try to alleviate for the victims. That doesn't mean we have to hate on the victims or treat them poorly. There are a a few pretty big upsides I can think of to using a simpler social gender classification sy…
Simpler than "treat people how they look and act, update your assumptions if corrected"? This system can break down for some trans people (although I bet most make excessive effort to present as their preferred gender), but it also breaks down for effeminate males and masculine women (and I bet this is the larger category). Despite these difficulties, it's worked for literally all of history until people started pret…
Yes, it's simpler because it's immutable. It's the mutability of identity that causes so much confusion and complexity. In Lynn's case she was a man the first 30+ years of life and even married and had kids. Then later switched genders, names, and pronouns. That's anything but simple since now every person and computer database that ever knew her now has to track and reconcile 2 identities. It's incredibly confusing when people change their identities later in life, especially if you are out of the loop. Even more confusing if people change identities multiple times.
I actually don't really care too much which classification system is used (chromosomes vs. observable genitalia at birth vs. something else), I just think the pros of collectively treating certain aspects of identity as immutable such as gender, race, and possibly even name, outweigh the cons of making a tiny fraction of the populace slightly more uncomfortable.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#410R.I.P.