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The Trans History of the Wild West

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61–70 of 71 posts

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#61
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like working backwards. Up this thread, people have suggested that the reason is that gender matters more to society than height (this is why we don't announce people's height). When this argument is defeated by race, it switches again to what "seems reasonable". What evidence, beyond "this seems reasonable" is there for this argument?

Sometimes multiple things are true, and none are "defeated". It seems beyond obvious that our ancestors 1000 years ago did a lot more gossiping about who was going to marry who, than about anything we'd today describe as racial distinctions.

I'm not debating whether it was true 1000 years ago. I'm saying that today, it is a linguistic quirk of English. Of course English is a language that was in use in some form 1000 years ago - and we don't use all the same words we did then, because some of them don't have value to us today. (Singular you, for instance, was much rarer back then!)

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#62
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were probably people saying very similar things around the time when the “thou”/“you” distinction was being replaced with always using “you”. Both changes of the language make some changes, but not very large changes, and you’ll probably get used to it.

The big difference, though, is that most people have no use for this usage of “they” because most people don’t deal with non-binary people on a regular basis, if ever.

Do you have evidence to back up that claim?

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#63
post #61
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes multiple things are true, and none are "defeated". It seems beyond obvious that our ancestors 1000 years ago did a lot more gossiping about who was going to marry who, than about anything we'd today describe as racial distinctions.

I'm not debating whether it was true 1000 years ago. I'm saying that today , it is a linguistic quirk of English. Of course English is a language that was in use in some form 1000 years ago - and we don't use all the same words we did then, because some of them don't have value to us today. (Singular you, for instance, was much rarer back then!)

Sure, but order 10^3 years is the right time scale to think about linguistic features. People lived in villages and farmed. They speculated about other people's sex lives a lot. Argued about legitimate descendants and inheritance. Could not afford to ignore the difference between cows and bulls. And many (though not all) of their languages have gender deeply built in.

None that I'm aware of have anything resembling our modern idea of race built in. For the obvious reason that approximately nobody in said village had been 100 miles, nevermind to another continent. If a language had such a feature, the next generation would probably never have heard it used, and thus would not know what it meant. (I wonder whether any languages have grammatical markers for slavery or caste? That would be the closest thing I could imagine, divisions that many people would have talked about every day for millennia, in some places.)

Forgetting features seems to happen much quicker than acquiring them. Post-1066 English lost a lot of complication which German retained (including grammatical gender of nouns, IIRC). As you say, singular you is much younger than that, but importantly it's about forgetting a distinction we used to make. I'm not an expert on why this happened, but I didn't think it was some great shift in what needed to be communicated, just a mutation/simplification.

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#64
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the first-principles argument: Most people grow up and learn the language in a family group, which has a mix of ages and of sexes. Saying "he" vs "she" here usually cuts the number of people you could be talking about in half, it's very informative, one bit! It will often let you omit the name, or shorten the sentence elsewhere. Whereas always marking what continent you're all living on, or what race you all a…

This sounds like working backwards. Up this thread, people have suggested that the reason is that gender matters more to society than height (this is why we don't announce people's height). When this argument is defeated by race, it switches again to what "seems reasonable". What evidence, beyond "this seems reasonable" is there for this argument?

Gender matters more than race or height (I.e., race doesn’t make one markedly stronger or un/able to birth children or any of the social roles that emerge out of those properties), and as I mentioned elsewhere, multiracial societies weren’t a universal reality (and aren’t today) such that it would leave a mark on grammar.

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#65
post #48

It's so nice to learn that back then, as now, trans people at some point in their live transitioned and then tried to live out their lives as the other gender, and were successful at it. Some only being found out after death or by becoming really ill. Luckily we're more open about it now. Also, now, as back then, most trans people just want to fit in and not be labeled 'other', or 'trans' for that matter.

When society doesn't believe you exist, or that your existence is simply an expression of mental illness or moral degradation, then such labels are useful to establish an identity around which to build a cultural and political movement, particularly to counteract and attempt to replace the typically negative or hostile labels provided by that society. But yes, it is also useful to be able to abandon those labels alto…

> such labels are useful to establish an identity around which to build a cultural and political movement, particularly to counteract and attempt to replace the typically negative or hostile labels

Ehm, does that actually work however? I see what you say happening, but does it bring the desired goal?

I also kind of find it stroking with a way to broad of a brush to say that "society" puts "hostile labels" on groups. This isn't always the case. I'm part of society, but I for sure aint doing that, and I don't really want to be put in the same box with people who do.

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#66
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When society doesn't believe you exist, or that your existence is simply an expression of mental illness or moral degradation, then such labels are useful to establish an identity around which to build a cultural and political movement, particularly to counteract and attempt to replace the typically negative or hostile labels provided by that society. But yes, it is also useful to be able to abandon those labels alto…

> such labels are useful to establish an identity around which to build a cultural and political movement, particularly to counteract and attempt to replace the typically negative or hostile labels Ehm, does that actually work however? I see what you say happening, but does it bring the desired goal? I also kind of find it stroking with a way to broad of a brush to say that "society" puts "hostile labels" on groups.…

>Ehm, does that actually work however? I see what you say happening, but does it bring the desired goal?

I think it does, albeit slowly and not necessarily without backlash. The alternative to having LGBT people assert their own identity is to have their identity asserted for them, by people who may not understand them or who may be hostile to them, and that sort of thing never goes well.

And the desired goal is to remove the stigma of LGBT existence and have it be accepted as being normal. One way to facilitate that normalization is for LGBT people to simply not be hidden, and to participate in society, and the most obvious way to do that is as part of a culture that can be easily recognized by an outgroup.

It's progress for people to simply complain about there being too much gay representation in the media, rather than for it to be illegal to represent it as anything but an illness (as was the case under the Hayes code.)

>I'm part of society, but I for sure aint doing that, and I don't really want to be put in the same box with people who do.

This seems to trip a lot of people up when discussions about the intersections of race, gender and culture come up. It's difficult to argue that, for instance, toxic aspects of masculinity can exist without people interpreting that as a claim that all masculinity is toxic and that, therefore, all men are toxic. Likewise, discussing rape culture leads to people dismissing the concept entirely because they, themselves, are not rapists. Yet both are criticisms of group dynamics, systems of power and identity politics, not of individuals or of all members of a class.

Individuals can differ in the way they respond to the influences of society, but its influence still exists. Speaking at the level of abstractions rather than individuals is important because those abstractions are what form people's concepts of normality, decency and justice, and because people act both as individuals and as conformist (or non-conformist) members of a group. Men who don't display toxic masculinity are still participants in the culture of masculinity, and men who don't rape are still participants in rape culture. Women participate in both as well.

Likewise, it's entirely possible to correctly claim that society puts hostile labels on LGBT groups, and for that not to apply to you personally. If so, that's fine, but not relevant, and there's no need to be defensive about the premise.

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#67
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big difference, though, is that most people have no use for this usage of “they” because most people don’t deal with non-binary people on a regular basis, if ever.

Do you have evidence to back up that claim?

The prevalence of gender dysphoria seems to be extremely low:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria#Epidemiology

This usage of 'they' would then be further restricted to the subset of people with gender dysphoria who identify as neither male nor female.

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#68
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like working backwards. Up this thread, people have suggested that the reason is that gender matters more to society than height (this is why we don't announce people's height). When this argument is defeated by race, it switches again to what "seems reasonable". What evidence, beyond "this seems reasonable" is there for this argument?

Gender matters more than race or height (I.e., race doesn’t make one markedly stronger or un/able to birth children or any of the social roles that emerge out of those properties), and as I mentioned elsewhere, multiracial societies weren’t a universal reality (and aren’t today) such that it would leave a mark on grammar.

Wealth, education, and any number of other categories also matter a ton. We exclusively use gender and perhaps age to label people. Why?

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#69
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gender matters more than race or height (I.e., race doesn’t make one markedly stronger or un/able to birth children or any of the social roles that emerge out of those properties), and as I mentioned elsewhere, multiracial societies weren’t a universal reality (and aren’t today) such that it would leave a mark on grammar.

Wealth, education, and any number of other categories also matter a ton. We exclusively use gender and perhaps age to label people. Why?

Because education didn't exist for most of the last few thousand years. Wealth did, but I guess it wasn't worth modifying your speech of every day to encode that today isn't the one day a year you happen to encountered a nobleman.

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#70
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gender matters more than race or height (I.e., race doesn’t make one markedly stronger or un/able to birth children or any of the social roles that emerge out of those properties), and as I mentioned elsewhere, multiracial societies weren’t a universal reality (and aren’t today) such that it would leave a mark on grammar.

Wealth, education, and any number of other categories also matter a ton. We exclusively use gender and perhaps age to label people. Why?

We don't. We use titles like 'Professor', 'Captain', 'Pastor', 'Doctor', and 'Congressman'.
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