4 ms·

Can you explain what it means to "deny the existence" of someone? I see this expression often, but I'm genuinely puzzled by what it means in practice. I agree

by pikma 4y ago

Can you explain what it means to "deny the existence" of someone? I see this expression often, but I'm genuinely puzzled by what it means in practice. I agree with you that "purposely misgendering one's colleagues" should lead to firing, but I think this article isn't about that. It's about people who are tolerant of others and in general try to be nice people, but just disagree about certain things - for example, how criminal transgenders should be incarcerated, or whether affirmative action is a good way to help disadvantaged people.

tedivm 4y ago
>I agree with you that "purposely misgendering one's colleagues" should lead to firing, but I think this article isn't about that. I do think the article is about that. I think it was purposefully left vague so he could take advantage of people giving the benefit of the doubt. I don't think people's pronouns should be up for debate, and I believe PG does.
- tlogan 4y ago
  This is the problem of this “free speech”. They think it is “free speechl to call one “he” even if that one prefers being called “she”. Anyway, maybe GP is talking about other “heresies”.
- Ste_Evans 4y ago
eadmund 4y ago
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  In case anyone is genuinely confused: this is the kind of bigotry people expect to get away with sans consequence, and complain about “heresy” when they’re called out on it.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Exactly! And the fact that I found GP comment, which is discussing this in good faith flagged and dead, proves the point being made.
  - throwaway385746 4y ago
    Somewhere in the last 10 years a norm emerged that transgender identity is sacrosanct and its doubters are bigots, but transracial identity is a lie and people like Rachel Dolezal are frauds. GP's brusque language aside, can there be any amount of uncertainty on either of these points? Doesn't it seem a bit arbitrary that these two new norms are opposite to each other?
    - jakelazaroff 4y ago
      Even though gender and race are both social inventions, they’re not really interchangeable like that. To cite one example: race is considered heritable, and there have historically been harsh consequences of that lineage. In the US, the one-drop rule ensured that anyone with even a single Black ancestor would be subject to the legal discrimination that status entailed (this is called “hypodescent”). So the idea of someone saying “I identify as Black” is… fraught, to say the least.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  You're simply using a completely different concept of gender to this person. I'd argue that not only do you both have reasonable points of view, your assertions don't actually conflict! You can both be correct. I don't think it is reasonable for you to hold that your definition of gender is the only correct one.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Society deems it so? If you were of the opinion you were a cat the diagnosis would be that you are delusional. Still, if there is no other negative effects, then accepting them as a different gender seems like a simple way to ‘heal’ the condition. Certainly in the absence of a way to fix it in the other direction. I don’t think a lot of people would be well served by accepting that someone is a cat.
  - vecplane 4y ago
    It is not compassion to lie to people and pretend they are what they are not. Gender dysphoria is real, social contagion is real, and we shouldn't accept or embrace a self-destructive ideology that radically derails the lives of teenagers and younger. Adults can behave however they want, but it should be considered child abuse to foster transgenderism and transsexuality in minors.
- vecplane 4y ago
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    You should be a kind person.
    - vecplane 4y ago
      It's kind to say the truth. It is unkind to go along with an obvious lie. The best outcome is when people overcome the dysphoria, not when we all pretend it's ok.
      - UncleMeat 4y ago
        If people don't perceive your actions as kind, can they actually be said to be kind? We observe much worse acute and long term outcomes, across a variety of dimensions, when transgender people are not permitted to transition. Homophobes insist that they are telling "the truth" when they insist that all gay people are going to hell and that marriage should not be allowed for gay people. Racists insist that they are telling "the truth" when they insist that black people are simply more violent than white people and that black people should be treated differently by the justice system. Sexists insist that they are telling "the truth' when they insist that women are not capable of holding positions of leadership in business or politics and that their role is only to raise children. I see no reason why transphobia would be different.
        vecplane 4y ago
        I don't think any of those examples are good analogies. None of those involve 'pretending to believe obvious lies' or self-mutilation. The harm of social transition is relatively minor and easily reversible. It's not as concerning, but it still perpetuates the phenomenon as 'tolerable'. The harm of physical transition is permanent and devastating. We should consider the precautionary principle when engaging in irreversible actions. Puberty blockers, sex hormones, mastectomies, and the rest are not compassionate treatments for dysphoric youths, but children are being fast-tracked into these decisions without much thought for how likely they'll be to regret it. Certainly many do, and it's an awful tragedy. As all humans have before two seconds ago, we should let children grow into their bodies, and then they can make better-informed decisions as adults. My main point being: this stuff is absolutely unacceptable for children, and adults are free to behave however they want, but I won't 'accept' it or go along with it.
- pikma 4y ago
  You can believe that gender is irrelevant and only sex matters, but you should still make an effort to be polite and nice to your coworkers - for example call them by the name they go for even if it is different from the one on their ID, use the pronouns that they prefer, etc. Of course, like all things related to politeness, there is no absolute rule - if I change my pronouns every week I shouldn't expect people to keep up. But it should not be surprising that you can be fired for not making a minimal effort to be nice to your colleagues.
ModernMech 4y ago
> Can you explain what it means to "deny the existence" of someone? Here's an example: "There's no such thing as a trans person. Trans is not a real thing, it's a mental illness and a delusion that needs to be cured. " If you hear that and you are trans, then you are bound to feel like someone is denying you actually exist. Its a strange feeling that someone whose existence has always been validated by society cannot really relate to. I imagine that's why you are puzzled by its meaning.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  I mean that hypothetical argument doesn't really make sense. Are mental illnesses not real ? And shouldn't we try to cure these people, in the most extreme cases by sex change surgery + hormone therapy ? (Or what kind of cure would that be ?) (Is it more about denying trans people's suffering perhaps ?) I guess that this dismissal of mental illness (and here also of trans people) also comes from equating "anormal" with "bad". At least I can see where the conservatives are coming from with this, but I have much more trouble to understand it when progressives fall into this trap !
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    Just replace trans with gay. We've been through this whole thing before, and the only reason we are having this debate about trans people at all is because conservatives have so thoroughly lost the culture debate over gay rights, yet the animus that motivated the debate persists. But back then we heard all the same things. "Oh, we can't have gay men teaching young boys because they are sexual predators and they are trying to recruit our young children to be gay." Or that "being gay is a mental disorder that needs to be cleansed through re-education". It's just striking to me how similar the arguments are, right down to the legislating intimate space use like bathrooms and locker rooms, and the moral panic over children (who are yet again being used as moral shields). It used to be you couldn't even be gay in the military. Now they let gays in and it turned out to be not a big deal at all. But without missing a beat they've recycled the same baseless arguments but crossed out "gay" and filled in "trans", seemingly without any recognition or reflection about how badly their anti-gay arguments aged.
rendang 4y ago
Interesting - I would never knowingly refer to someone by pronouns other than those which correspond with their birth sex, it would violate my conscience to do so. Obviously not a majority position in SV but also not an extremely rare position to hold in the world more largely. I suppose that means you would fire me and others of the same opinion if you had the chance. I don't know whether this is the kind of example Graham had in mind, but it does seem that the particular zeal that some have to exclude from normalcy even widely-held minority views is relatively unique to our time.

by pikma 4y ago

tedivm 4y ago

>I agree with you that "purposely misgendering one's colleagues" should lead to firing, but I think this article isn't about that. I do think the article is about that. I think it was purposefully left vague so he could take advantage of people giving the benefit of the doubt. I don't think people's pronouns should be up for debate, and I believe PG does.

tlogan 4y ago
This is the problem of this “free speech”. They think it is “free speechl to call one “he” even if that one prefers being called “she”. Anyway, maybe GP is talking about other “heresies”.
Ste_Evans 4y ago

eadmund 4y ago

jakelazaroff 4y ago
In case anyone is genuinely confused: this is the kind of bigotry people expect to get away with sans consequence, and complain about “heresy” when they’re called out on it.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Exactly! And the fact that I found GP comment, which is discussing this in good faith flagged and dead, proves the point being made.
- throwaway385746 4y ago
  Somewhere in the last 10 years a norm emerged that transgender identity is sacrosanct and its doubters are bigots, but transracial identity is a lie and people like Rachel Dolezal are frauds. GP's brusque language aside, can there be any amount of uncertainty on either of these points? Doesn't it seem a bit arbitrary that these two new norms are opposite to each other?
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
    Even though gender and race are both social inventions, they’re not really interchangeable like that. To cite one example: race is considered heritable, and there have historically been harsh consequences of that lineage. In the US, the one-drop rule ensured that anyone with even a single Black ancestor would be subject to the legal discrimination that status entailed (this is called “hypodescent”). So the idea of someone saying “I identify as Black” is… fraught, to say the least.
nicoburns 4y ago
You're simply using a completely different concept of gender to this person. I'd argue that not only do you both have reasonable points of view, your assertions don't actually conflict! You can both be correct. I don't think it is reasonable for you to hold that your definition of gender is the only correct one.
Aeolun 4y ago
Society deems it so? If you were of the opinion you were a cat the diagnosis would be that you are delusional. Still, if there is no other negative effects, then accepting them as a different gender seems like a simple way to ‘heal’ the condition. Certainly in the absence of a way to fix it in the other direction. I don’t think a lot of people would be well served by accepting that someone is a cat.
- vecplane 4y ago
  It is not compassion to lie to people and pretend they are what they are not. Gender dysphoria is real, social contagion is real, and we shouldn't accept or embrace a self-destructive ideology that radically derails the lives of teenagers and younger. Adults can behave however they want, but it should be considered child abuse to foster transgenderism and transsexuality in minors.
vecplane 4y ago
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  You should be a kind person.
  - vecplane 4y ago
    It's kind to say the truth. It is unkind to go along with an obvious lie. The best outcome is when people overcome the dysphoria, not when we all pretend it's ok.
    - UncleMeat 4y ago
      If people don't perceive your actions as kind, can they actually be said to be kind? We observe much worse acute and long term outcomes, across a variety of dimensions, when transgender people are not permitted to transition. Homophobes insist that they are telling "the truth" when they insist that all gay people are going to hell and that marriage should not be allowed for gay people. Racists insist that they are telling "the truth" when they insist that black people are simply more violent than white people and that black people should be treated differently by the justice system. Sexists insist that they are telling "the truth' when they insist that women are not capable of holding positions of leadership in business or politics and that their role is only to raise children. I see no reason why transphobia would be different.
      - vecplane 4y ago
        I don't think any of those examples are good analogies. None of those involve 'pretending to believe obvious lies' or self-mutilation. The harm of social transition is relatively minor and easily reversible. It's not as concerning, but it still perpetuates the phenomenon as 'tolerable'. The harm of physical transition is permanent and devastating. We should consider the precautionary principle when engaging in irreversible actions. Puberty blockers, sex hormones, mastectomies, and the rest are not compassionate treatments for dysphoric youths, but children are being fast-tracked into these decisions without much thought for how likely they'll be to regret it. Certainly many do, and it's an awful tragedy. As all humans have before two seconds ago, we should let children grow into their bodies, and then they can make better-informed decisions as adults. My main point being: this stuff is absolutely unacceptable for children, and adults are free to behave however they want, but I won't 'accept' it or go along with it.
pikma 4y ago
You can believe that gender is irrelevant and only sex matters, but you should still make an effort to be polite and nice to your coworkers - for example call them by the name they go for even if it is different from the one on their ID, use the pronouns that they prefer, etc. Of course, like all things related to politeness, there is no absolute rule - if I change my pronouns every week I shouldn't expect people to keep up. But it should not be surprising that you can be fired for not making a minimal effort to be nice to your colleagues.

ModernMech 4y ago

> Can you explain what it means to "deny the existence" of someone? Here's an example: "There's no such thing as a trans person. Trans is not a real thing, it's a mental illness and a delusion that needs to be cured. " If you hear that and you are trans, then you are bound to feel like someone is denying you actually exist. Its a strange feeling that someone whose existence has always been validated by society cannot really relate to. I imagine that's why you are puzzled by its meaning.

BlueTemplar 4y ago
I mean that hypothetical argument doesn't really make sense. Are mental illnesses not real ? And shouldn't we try to cure these people, in the most extreme cases by sex change surgery + hormone therapy ? (Or what kind of cure would that be ?) (Is it more about denying trans people's suffering perhaps ?) I guess that this dismissal of mental illness (and here also of trans people) also comes from equating "anormal" with "bad". At least I can see where the conservatives are coming from with this, but I have much more trouble to understand it when progressives fall into this trap !
- ModernMech 4y ago
  Just replace trans with gay. We've been through this whole thing before, and the only reason we are having this debate about trans people at all is because conservatives have so thoroughly lost the culture debate over gay rights, yet the animus that motivated the debate persists. But back then we heard all the same things. "Oh, we can't have gay men teaching young boys because they are sexual predators and they are trying to recruit our young children to be gay." Or that "being gay is a mental disorder that needs to be cleansed through re-education". It's just striking to me how similar the arguments are, right down to the legislating intimate space use like bathrooms and locker rooms, and the moral panic over children (who are yet again being used as moral shields). It used to be you couldn't even be gay in the military. Now they let gays in and it turned out to be not a big deal at all. But without missing a beat they've recycled the same baseless arguments but crossed out "gay" and filled in "trans", seemingly without any recognition or reflection about how badly their anti-gay arguments aged.

rendang 4y ago

Interesting - I would never knowingly refer to someone by pronouns other than those which correspond with their birth sex, it would violate my conscience to do so. Obviously not a majority position in SV but also not an extremely rare position to hold in the world more largely. I suppose that means you would fire me and others of the same opinion if you had the chance. I don't know whether this is the kind of example Graham had in mind, but it does seem that the particular zeal that some have to exclude from normalcy even widely-held minority views is relatively unique to our time.