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Pronouns are different from names because there is a very strong correlation between pronouns and certain physical aspects of people.[0] What is being asked of

Pronouns are different from names because there is a very strong correlation between pronouns and certain physical aspects of people.[0] What is being asked of people in the gendering debate is to go against this correlation sometimes. Our minds are built on pattern matching and working with such correlations, so it really shouldn't be a surprise that asking people to go against it is going to tick some of them off: you're asking them to enter into a state of cognitive dissonance, which can be unpleasant. Names, on the other hand, are really quite arbitrary and independent of physical attributes. So yes, there's an important difference. [0] I believe these kinds of correlation are what people intuitively mean when they talk of biological gender and the like, which make most of the responses against this argument miss the point...

claudiawerner 7y ago
In civil society we forgo our intuitions all the time - our moral intuitions are frequently superseded by law, our intuitions about what atoms look like are superseded by a university Physics course, etc. - but your response I see repeatedly, you don't say we should give into intuition, you say that some people would be "ticked off" by being asked to do something against intuition. Part of the movement to get people to use the correct pronouns to refer to someone is really just the movement against the epistemic authority of some forms of intuition. As an aside, in Western society names are generally not independent of physical attributes, and most names are gendered as well. I know very few people with unisex names.
- fatbird 7y ago
  This shouldn't be downvoted; it's a very good point addressing a basic problem with the "call 'em as I see 'em" side of the argument.
chipotle_coyote 7y ago
"What is being asked of people in the gendering debate is to go against this correlation sometimes." Yes. Exactly. That's what's being asked of them. To follow someone's request out of courtesy. Again: why is this difficult?
- atq2119 7y ago
  In your quote, you conveniently left out the part about cognitive dissonance. That's what answers your question. It's possible that you personally don't feel this cognitive dissonance, or that you feel it but it simply doesn't bother you. People's subjective experiences can be quite diverse, though, and you need to accept that. Let me put it another way. Person X asks person Y to take person Z's feelings into account. Sounds reasonable, right? But what if, in doing so, person X doesn't take person Y's feelings into account? I'd say that'd make person X a hypocrite. There are different goods that need to be weighed against each other here, and person X pretends that this isn't the case. This is what's happening here. Z = (some) transgender people, Y = (some of) the people expressing concern about pronoun enforcement, X = people taking your current position in this discussion. In the weighing of different goods against each other, you can reasonably come to the conclusion that person Y should just suck it up because person Z's feelings are simply more important in this case. That's fine, stuff like that happens all the time in society, though you'd be wise to use more reconciliatory language when talking to an actual person Y. You need to be honest about what you're doing. What isn't fine is to essentially "erase" Y's feelings by pretending that you aren't overriding them for Z's benefit. Because that is what you're doing. (Or maybe you aren't even aware of person Y's feelings. I'm not sure what to consider worse...) (And yes, the hypocrisy is genuinely what I find most grating about the position you're taking here: the position is often taken by people who claim to champion diversity, inclusiveness, and the equal validity of people's subjective experiences -- but then turn around and selectively decide to not take into account others' subjective experiences when they happen to be inconvenient, and in doing so essentially exclude those others.)
  - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
    The choice here is: (1) Bob suffers cognitive dissonance when he calls Angela, a transgender woman, "she". (2) Angela, who has suffered the cognitive dissonance of gender dysphoria for years, has that revisited on her by Bob's insistence on calling her "he". So, yeah. I'm privileging Angela over Bob here, because it is his mild discomfort versus her lived-in experience. Bluntly, nobody has been driven into lifelong therapy and suicidal depression by having to refer to someone by a different set of pronouns. If you want to insist I'm a jerk for denying that these two experiences of "cognitive dissonance" are equivalent, you know, so be it.

claudiawerner 7y ago

In civil society we forgo our intuitions all the time - our moral intuitions are frequently superseded by law, our intuitions about what atoms look like are superseded by a university Physics course, etc. - but your response I see repeatedly, you don't say we should give into intuition, you say that some people would be "ticked off" by being asked to do something against intuition. Part of the movement to get people to use the correct pronouns to refer to someone is really just the movement against the epistemic authority of some forms of intuition. As an aside, in Western society names are generally not independent of physical attributes, and most names are gendered as well. I know very few people with unisex names.

fatbird 7y ago
This shouldn't be downvoted; it's a very good point addressing a basic problem with the "call 'em as I see 'em" side of the argument.

chipotle_coyote 7y ago

"What is being asked of people in the gendering debate is to go against this correlation sometimes." Yes. Exactly. That's what's being asked of them. To follow someone's request out of courtesy. Again: why is this difficult?

atq2119 7y ago
In your quote, you conveniently left out the part about cognitive dissonance. That's what answers your question. It's possible that you personally don't feel this cognitive dissonance, or that you feel it but it simply doesn't bother you. People's subjective experiences can be quite diverse, though, and you need to accept that. Let me put it another way. Person X asks person Y to take person Z's feelings into account. Sounds reasonable, right? But what if, in doing so, person X doesn't take person Y's feelings into account? I'd say that'd make person X a hypocrite. There are different goods that need to be weighed against each other here, and person X pretends that this isn't the case. This is what's happening here. Z = (some) transgender people, Y = (some of) the people expressing concern about pronoun enforcement, X = people taking your current position in this discussion. In the weighing of different goods against each other, you can reasonably come to the conclusion that person Y should just suck it up because person Z's feelings are simply more important in this case. That's fine, stuff like that happens all the time in society, though you'd be wise to use more reconciliatory language when talking to an actual person Y. You need to be honest about what you're doing. What isn't fine is to essentially "erase" Y's feelings by pretending that you aren't overriding them for Z's benefit. Because that is what you're doing. (Or maybe you aren't even aware of person Y's feelings. I'm not sure what to consider worse...) (And yes, the hypocrisy is genuinely what I find most grating about the position you're taking here: the position is often taken by people who claim to champion diversity, inclusiveness, and the equal validity of people's subjective experiences -- but then turn around and selectively decide to not take into account others' subjective experiences when they happen to be inconvenient, and in doing so essentially exclude those others.)
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  The choice here is: (1) Bob suffers cognitive dissonance when he calls Angela, a transgender woman, "she". (2) Angela, who has suffered the cognitive dissonance of gender dysphoria for years, has that revisited on her by Bob's insistence on calling her "he". So, yeah. I'm privileging Angela over Bob here, because it is his mild discomfort versus her lived-in experience. Bluntly, nobody has been driven into lifelong therapy and suicidal depression by having to refer to someone by a different set of pronouns. If you want to insist I'm a jerk for denying that these two experiences of "cognitive dissonance" are equivalent, you know, so be it.