21 ms·

This is, I think, the key detail. Everything else is subjective enough that it's easy for people inclined to dismiss the whole thing to make a reason up. There'

by mkr-hn 5y ago

This is, I think, the key detail. Everything else is subjective enough that it's easy for people inclined to dismiss the whole thing to make a reason up. There's really no way to misunderstand those things. He's declared an allegiance with people who spend all their time on Twitter and forums dehumanizing trans people, often using the same insinuation that being a woman is the same as doing blackface. Maybe he's ignorant of what he's really saying, but that's not an excuse.

da39a3ee 5y ago
Does "being a TERF" mean that you side with women like J.K. Rowling defending traditional positions on gender debates rather than siding with a minority of vocal pro-trans activists who are deliberately causing trouble and don't represent all trans people? If so then I'm a TERF, my mom's a TERF, in fact all mom's I know over the age of 50 are TERFs. Furthermore pretty much everybody in every non-western country is a TERF. So I don't think it's surprising that Dave Chapelle might be a TERF and I don't see why you're talking about TERFs as if they are somehow to be looked down upon or despised.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  this is the same exact reasoning people use to justify being homophobic
  - Joeboy 5y ago
    Going with that comparison, it's like having an especially vicious rage towards feminist women who are homophobic, despite almost everybody else also being homophobic.
    - mkr-hn 5y ago
      Transphobia is contradictory to any definition of feminism rooted in the actual history of feminism. TERF ideology depends on the belief that trans women are confused men, trans men are confused lesbians, and nonbinary people are just confused.
      - Joeboy 5y ago
        Well, I've been hanging around feminist women for some decades and my perception of events is that a significant proprtion of women who used to just be called feminists now get dragged for being TERFs.
        mkr-hn 5y ago
        My feminists can beat up your feminists. Seriously, what is this, third grade? Yes, some people latch on to movements without really understanding them. Not everyone reads theory. It's inevitable with movements that try to be inclusive, and preferable to the alternative. They can still call themselves feminists, and I can call them bad feminists.
        Joeboy 5y ago
        > My feminists can beat up your feminists. They in fact have in the past.
        mkr-hn 5y ago
        I promise more cis women have attacked trans women than the reverse. Sometimes they even go after women they assume are trans! A weird side-effect of the new wave of transphobia is that even people who consider themselves cis but present in a non-conforming way are being attacked in bathrooms. And not by trans women.
        Joeboy 5y ago
        Well that sounds bad if true. I have never heard of this happening and the only violence I'm aware of in my circles has been in the other direction (there is an actual criminal conviction involved).
        gaganyaan 5y ago
        Do you have sources/links for that?
      - 5y ago
  - da39a3ee 5y ago
    The difference being that pro-gay activists are not doing any of the bad and absurd things that pro-trans activists are doing: attacking freedom of speech, denying the biological basis of sex in the ape species Homo sapiens, ending people's careers who disagree with them, attacking feminism, damaging pro-gay movements, canceling people, etc. You don't get to assume that people aren't angry about the behavior of pro-trans activists or are too scared to say so publicly: they have behaved awfully in recent years.
    - micromacrofoot 5y ago
      this is basically the “angry black man” defense - just because some people aren’t protesting in a way you approve of doesn’t mean it’s ok to hate the group indiscriminately
      - da39a3ee 5y ago
        I hope this doesn't need saying, but it's the activists I am criticizing -- the majority of whom are not trans. I have no criticisms whatsoever of anyone on the basis of their gender identity or sexuality. But yes, if the activist community fails to disassociate itself from / speak out against radicals who are harming people, then that activist community is going to receive criticism.
        micromacrofoot 5y ago
        it’s not a singular community, there’s no spokesperson - this is like trying to hold “anonymous” accountable… it’s the same old rhetoric people have been using to discredit all activists
        Joeboy 5y ago
        That'd also go for TERFs (or GC people or whatever), right? I sort of agree, in that the groups are composed of individuals and it's not entirely fair to hold them responsible for things they didn't personally do. I also think if you see a political community as having some sort of problematic culture it's reasonable to say so.
  - da39a3ee 5y ago
    No, you must surely can see that these are not symmetric: no-one questions whether gayness exists, and no-one questions whether people exist who identify with a gender that's not their birth sex. But there's HUGE disagreement across the world about whether to use the word "woman" for a person born male who identifies as female. Even if you are very clear where you personally stand on that question, you surely see that vast numbers of people across the world believe the answer is "no"? There's no analogous question regarding homosexuality.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sigmar 5y ago
  >Furthermore pretty much everybody in every non-western country is a TERF. I don't think you know a lot of the meanings of words you're using. Firstly "TERF" ideology is pretty new and not the "traditional position of gender debates." It branched off of recent feminist movements. Most of non-western countries are not TERFs, probably not even feminist by most current definitions, and definitely not radical.
  - da39a3ee 5y ago
    The definition being used is in the first sentence of my post. Yes perhaps it's non standard, but "TERF" is a pejorative invented by pro-trans activists.
    - plorkyeran 5y ago
      TERF was a term coined by TERFs who then backed away from it when it started being used derogatorily.
      - da39a3ee 5y ago
        Oh, OK, sounds like you know more about it than me. I'm just talking about the position of retaining a concept of women meaning humans with two X chromosomes who can bear children, and being a feminist meaning recognizing that the group thus-defined has been severely mistreated by men over the centuries and to the present day. I honestly can't really believe that any of this needs explaining, it's just surreal.
        greyface- 5y ago
        > women meaning humans with two X chromosomes who can bear children This definition also excludes: * humans with one X chromosome (1 per 2000 to 5000 humans born [1]) * humans with three X chromosomes (1 per 1000 women born [2]) * infertile women (6% of married women under 45 in the US [3]) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_syndrome [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisomy_X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisomy_X [3]: https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/infertility/ https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/infertility/
- Omnitaus 5y ago
  I am trans. The debate is that I would like to live, and they do not want me to live. Either I'm a human being or I'm not, but framing it as a debate does very little to conceal the violence. Netflix platformed violence which didn't surprise me, what does surprise me is the extent to which people play it off as just jokes or bring out the same tired token minority friend defense
  - da39a3ee 5y ago
    I'm not talking about people who don't want you to live. I'm talking about people somewhere near JK Rowling in the debate; I'm talking about the majority of people who simply don't accept all aspects of the new language relating to gender that a small but vocal minority are attempting to force on them.
  - xdennis 5y ago
    > [...] but framing it as a debate does very little to conceal the violence. Netflix platformed violence [...] Comedic irreverence is not violence. You're only making others to not take you seriously when you say that speech can be violence. Some speech can lead to it, but it's most certainly not violence.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    > The debate is that I would like to live, and they do not want me to live This is a lie. Nothing of the sort was said in Chapelle's comedy. > Netflix platformed violence And you are lying again
    - dang 5y ago
      Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please review the site guidelines and stick to them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - fallingknife 5y ago
        I see nothing in the guidelines against calling out a lie. I don't see how any sensible rules of discussion could possibly ban that. Why are you coming after me instead of the poster I replied to who is making false accusations?
- dnsco 5y ago
  > Furthermore pretty much everybody in every non-western country is a TERF. Many non-western nations traditionally had third gender (Hijras in India, Kathoey in Thailand, many Native American Two-Spirit Identities). When these places were colonized these identities were used as a justification, and generally punished harshly. The argument that "only people in western nations tolerate this", is bad-faith, and doesn't recognize that anti-trans hostility in a lot of the non-western world was largely created by the colonial overlords this argument is meant to rebuke.
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    I've been excited to see a growing movement by indigenous people to reclaim their ancient understandings of identity in general, and gender in particular now that colonizers have lost the energy they had for suppression in past decades and centuries. A lot of it is just gone, but the nice thing about a living culture is it can rebuild and recover and build new concepts in the gaps.
    - elgernon 5y ago
      >reclaim their ancient understandings hopefully not the human sacrifice though, there are some indigenous traditions better left in the past
      - loudtieblahblah 5y ago
        We only talk about the good things the conquered did and the bad things the victors did.
  - throwaway32091 5y ago
    The hijra cult in India kidnaps children and brutally castrates them, then pimps them out. Western gender theorists using hijras to justify their ideology is one hell of an own goal. https://www.rediff.com/news/1998/oct/20hijra.htm https://www.rediff.com/news/1998/oct/20hijra.htm https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/19940515-determined-group-of-forcibly-castrated-men-file-criminal-charges-against-their-abductors-809139-1994-05-15 https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/1994...
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Furthermore pretty much everybody in every non-western country is a TERF. Not everyone outside the West is a feminist, much less a radical feminist, trans-exclusionary or not. (Though, to be fair, most people accused of being “TERFs” are at most moderate bourgeois feminists rather than radical feminists, but still even that is pretty unusual in lots of non-Western countries.)
brnt 5y ago
> He's declared an allegiance with people who spend all their time on Twitter and forums dehumanizing trans people That's how you could interpret the TERF joke, but then you did ignore the rest of the show where he basically says the opposite.
david38 5y ago
Not agreeing that you belong to a biologically defined community that has a unique set of issues is about as far from from dehumanizing as it gets. By this argument, blacks are dehumanizing by not accepting whites who want to be black, even though any biologist can tell you “race” doesn’t exist in any meaningful way. In fact the left successfully used this argument to defeat the popularity of far-right white supremacy groups.

by mkr-hn 5y ago

da39a3ee 5y ago

Does "being a TERF" mean that you side with women like J.K. Rowling defending traditional positions on gender debates rather than siding with a minority of vocal pro-trans activists who are deliberately causing trouble and don't represent all trans people? If so then I'm a TERF, my mom's a TERF, in fact all mom's I know over the age of 50 are TERFs. Furthermore pretty much everybody in every non-western country is a TERF. So I don't think it's surprising that Dave Chapelle might be a TERF and I don't see why you're talking about TERFs as if they are somehow to be looked down upon or despised.

micromacrofoot 5y ago
this is the same exact reasoning people use to justify being homophobic
- Joeboy 5y ago
  Going with that comparison, it's like having an especially vicious rage towards feminist women who are homophobic, despite almost everybody else also being homophobic.
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    Transphobia is contradictory to any definition of feminism rooted in the actual history of feminism. TERF ideology depends on the belief that trans women are confused men, trans men are confused lesbians, and nonbinary people are just confused.
    - Joeboy 5y ago
      Well, I've been hanging around feminist women for some decades and my perception of events is that a significant proprtion of women who used to just be called feminists now get dragged for being TERFs.
      - mkr-hn 5y ago
        My feminists can beat up your feminists. Seriously, what is this, third grade? Yes, some people latch on to movements without really understanding them. Not everyone reads theory. It's inevitable with movements that try to be inclusive, and preferable to the alternative. They can still call themselves feminists, and I can call them bad feminists.
        Joeboy 5y ago
        > My feminists can beat up your feminists. They in fact have in the past.
        mkr-hn 5y ago
        I promise more cis women have attacked trans women than the reverse. Sometimes they even go after women they assume are trans! A weird side-effect of the new wave of transphobia is that even people who consider themselves cis but present in a non-conforming way are being attacked in bathrooms. And not by trans women.
        Joeboy 5y ago
        Well that sounds bad if true. I have never heard of this happening and the only violence I'm aware of in my circles has been in the other direction (there is an actual criminal conviction involved).
        gaganyaan 5y ago
        Do you have sources/links for that?
    - 5y ago
- da39a3ee 5y ago
  The difference being that pro-gay activists are not doing any of the bad and absurd things that pro-trans activists are doing: attacking freedom of speech, denying the biological basis of sex in the ape species Homo sapiens, ending people's careers who disagree with them, attacking feminism, damaging pro-gay movements, canceling people, etc. You don't get to assume that people aren't angry about the behavior of pro-trans activists or are too scared to say so publicly: they have behaved awfully in recent years.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    this is basically the “angry black man” defense - just because some people aren’t protesting in a way you approve of doesn’t mean it’s ok to hate the group indiscriminately
    - da39a3ee 5y ago
      I hope this doesn't need saying, but it's the activists I am criticizing -- the majority of whom are not trans. I have no criticisms whatsoever of anyone on the basis of their gender identity or sexuality. But yes, if the activist community fails to disassociate itself from / speak out against radicals who are harming people, then that activist community is going to receive criticism.
      - micromacrofoot 5y ago
        it’s not a singular community, there’s no spokesperson - this is like trying to hold “anonymous” accountable… it’s the same old rhetoric people have been using to discredit all activists
        Joeboy 5y ago
        That'd also go for TERFs (or GC people or whatever), right? I sort of agree, in that the groups are composed of individuals and it's not entirely fair to hold them responsible for things they didn't personally do. I also think if you see a political community as having some sort of problematic culture it's reasonable to say so.
- da39a3ee 5y ago
  No, you must surely can see that these are not symmetric: no-one questions whether gayness exists, and no-one questions whether people exist who identify with a gender that's not their birth sex. But there's HUGE disagreement across the world about whether to use the word "woman" for a person born male who identifies as female. Even if you are very clear where you personally stand on that question, you surely see that vast numbers of people across the world believe the answer is "no"? There's no analogous question regarding homosexuality.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sigmar 5y ago
>Furthermore pretty much everybody in every non-western country is a TERF. I don't think you know a lot of the meanings of words you're using. Firstly "TERF" ideology is pretty new and not the "traditional position of gender debates." It branched off of recent feminist movements. Most of non-western countries are not TERFs, probably not even feminist by most current definitions, and definitely not radical.
- da39a3ee 5y ago
  The definition being used is in the first sentence of my post. Yes perhaps it's non standard, but "TERF" is a pejorative invented by pro-trans activists.
  - plorkyeran 5y ago
    TERF was a term coined by TERFs who then backed away from it when it started being used derogatorily.
    - da39a3ee 5y ago
      Oh, OK, sounds like you know more about it than me. I'm just talking about the position of retaining a concept of women meaning humans with two X chromosomes who can bear children, and being a feminist meaning recognizing that the group thus-defined has been severely mistreated by men over the centuries and to the present day. I honestly can't really believe that any of this needs explaining, it's just surreal.
      - greyface- 5y ago
        > women meaning humans with two X chromosomes who can bear children This definition also excludes: * humans with one X chromosome (1 per 2000 to 5000 humans born [1]) * humans with three X chromosomes (1 per 1000 women born [2]) * infertile women (6% of married women under 45 in the US [3]) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_syndrome [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisomy_X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisomy_X [3]: https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/infertility/ https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/infertility/
Omnitaus 5y ago
I am trans. The debate is that I would like to live, and they do not want me to live. Either I'm a human being or I'm not, but framing it as a debate does very little to conceal the violence. Netflix platformed violence which didn't surprise me, what does surprise me is the extent to which people play it off as just jokes or bring out the same tired token minority friend defense
- da39a3ee 5y ago
  I'm not talking about people who don't want you to live. I'm talking about people somewhere near JK Rowling in the debate; I'm talking about the majority of people who simply don't accept all aspects of the new language relating to gender that a small but vocal minority are attempting to force on them.
- xdennis 5y ago
  > [...] but framing it as a debate does very little to conceal the violence. Netflix platformed violence [...] Comedic irreverence is not violence. You're only making others to not take you seriously when you say that speech can be violence. Some speech can lead to it, but it's most certainly not violence.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  > The debate is that I would like to live, and they do not want me to live This is a lie. Nothing of the sort was said in Chapelle's comedy. > Netflix platformed violence And you are lying again
  - dang 5y ago
    Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please review the site guidelines and stick to them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - fallingknife 5y ago
      I see nothing in the guidelines against calling out a lie. I don't see how any sensible rules of discussion could possibly ban that. Why are you coming after me instead of the poster I replied to who is making false accusations?
dnsco 5y ago
> Furthermore pretty much everybody in every non-western country is a TERF. Many non-western nations traditionally had third gender (Hijras in India, Kathoey in Thailand, many Native American Two-Spirit Identities). When these places were colonized these identities were used as a justification, and generally punished harshly. The argument that "only people in western nations tolerate this", is bad-faith, and doesn't recognize that anti-trans hostility in a lot of the non-western world was largely created by the colonial overlords this argument is meant to rebuke.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  I've been excited to see a growing movement by indigenous people to reclaim their ancient understandings of identity in general, and gender in particular now that colonizers have lost the energy they had for suppression in past decades and centuries. A lot of it is just gone, but the nice thing about a living culture is it can rebuild and recover and build new concepts in the gaps.
  - elgernon 5y ago
    >reclaim their ancient understandings hopefully not the human sacrifice though, there are some indigenous traditions better left in the past
    - loudtieblahblah 5y ago
      We only talk about the good things the conquered did and the bad things the victors did.
- throwaway32091 5y ago
  The hijra cult in India kidnaps children and brutally castrates them, then pimps them out. Western gender theorists using hijras to justify their ideology is one hell of an own goal. https://www.rediff.com/news/1998/oct/20hijra.htm https://www.rediff.com/news/1998/oct/20hijra.htm https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/19940515-determined-group-of-forcibly-castrated-men-file-criminal-charges-against-their-abductors-809139-1994-05-15 https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/1994...
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Furthermore pretty much everybody in every non-western country is a TERF. Not everyone outside the West is a feminist, much less a radical feminist, trans-exclusionary or not. (Though, to be fair, most people accused of being “TERFs” are at most moderate bourgeois feminists rather than radical feminists, but still even that is pretty unusual in lots of non-Western countries.)

brnt 5y ago

> He's declared an allegiance with people who spend all their time on Twitter and forums dehumanizing trans people That's how you could interpret the TERF joke, but then you did ignore the rest of the show where he basically says the opposite.

david38 5y ago

Not agreeing that you belong to a biologically defined community that has a unique set of issues is about as far from from dehumanizing as it gets. By this argument, blacks are dehumanizing by not accepting whites who want to be black, even though any biologist can tell you “race” doesn’t exist in any meaningful way. In fact the left successfully used this argument to defeat the popularity of far-right white supremacy groups.