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The erasure of women from online pregnancy literature
- renewiltord 4y agoRegardless of everything else, "chestfeeding" is just a hilarious term. It brings to mind the middle-stage of a xenomorph.
- oifjsidjf 4y ago
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
- bacchusracine 4y ago
- socialismisok 4y ago
- jdrek1 4y ago
- malcolmgreaves 4y agoA good time to learn something new! Gender is a pure social construct (e.g. man, woman) and sex is more biologically derived social construct (e.g. male is xy, female is xx). But this doesn't cover all of the known sex chromosome phenotypes, hence there's still a strong social component here too.
- Vecr 4y agoI think that depends on your view of sex and what's more important about it. If you view reproduction as the most important (or foundational I suppose, I'm not a philosopher I don't know what this stuff means) aspect of what sex is, there would be two sexes, male and female. If you want an exact representation of all theoretically possible combinations of phenotype and genotype, including everything from surgery to accidents/birth defects and environmental conditions to intentional genetic modification, you are going to have to create a pretty sophisticated "sex" theory (in the scientific sense), but that's not what most people mean.
- krastanov 4y agoHonest question here: are there trans men that want to get pregnant? What fraction of trans men want to get pregnant? I get this is tangential to the discussion and I get I am betraying my ignorance, but it is not particularly easy to find information on this question and it seems somewhat pertinent to the practicalities of this issue.
- klarstrup 4y agoYeah, there are men who want to have kids. Many such cases.
- krastanov 4y agoAre you purposefully misphrasing my question? Most men want to have kids, everyone knows that. That is very different from a trans man that wants to have kids by being pregnant themselves, after they have gone through all the hard work necessary to live their life as a member of a sex that can not have kids. I am absolutely incredulous that there are *many* trans men that want to be pregnant.
- rejectfinite 4y ago
- reddog 4y ago
- smoldesu 4y agoGeorge Orwell was truly known for his harsh opposition of individual rights and self-recognition.
- jdthedisciple 4y agoYou can self-recognize as a donkey if you wish but that doesn't mean I, too, have to consider and call you a donkey.
- smoldesu 4y agoThat's fine, loathe am I to stop you from embarrassing yourself in front of others.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- civilized 4y ago> After lugging around two fetuses that won’t stop kicking my bladder, I have no patience left for gender activists who pretend that men can give birth. Why does this woman's personal experience of pregnancy make her so offended by how other people who can give birth think of their gender? I do agree with the author that the existence of trans people shouldn't mean we can't use the word breastfeeding anymore. But I don't think that's the fault of people who want to say that men can give birth. Here's an idea - why not have resources with different language for cis women and trans men? Just like pages come with different language versions and you can switch in the nav bar. This would also be medically helpful, as I'm sure the birthing experience is not identical for the two populations.
- peterpost2 4y ago
- rejectfinite 4y ago
- eganist 4y ago> Yes, just namecall :) hey rejectfinite, it's a representative acronym, not an insult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF
- rejectfinite 4y ago
- davesque 4y agoI feel that the likelihood of a discussion about this not devolving into a flame war is low.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
- socialismisok 4y agoMost folks agree on biological facts, and the science is fairly consistent at this point. There remains a group who refuses to accept that we've improved our understanding of the human condition over the past several decades, unfortunately.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
- smoldesu 4y ago> I guess, I will be leaving a place that doesn't allow civil discourse. You should buy Hacker News for $44 Billion, then you can publish whatever you want!
- systemvoltage 4y ago
- smoldesu 4y agoTruly tragic that Hacker News has moved away from politics.
- socialismisok 4y agoIt's honestly a bit shocking it's even made it to the front page.
- cbeach 4y ago
- hobbitstan 4y ago
- andirk 4y ago
- rootusrootus 4y agoThis won't ever be resolved so long as there is insistence on equating biological sex with what gender someone identifies as. Biological differences are real, regardless of what your brain tells you to feel.
- socialismisok 4y agoThe concept of "biological sex" is not even a binary, and it's treated differently in different parts of the world. So we haven't settled on definitions of biological sex outside as a species yet.
- cbeach 4y ago
- houstonn 4y agoBiology is crystal clear on this. There are 2 sexes, one with small mobile gametes and the other with large, immobile ones. It's binary.
- socialismisok 4y agoThat covers approximately 99% of cases. But are you willing to write off the 1% of people that doesn't cover? I'd rather make sure that the language I use includes them where possible.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago> I'd rather make sure that the language I use includes them where possible. Man/Woman does. As do Male/Female. Disorders of Sexual Development are disorders, not new sexes. A woman without breasts or with an extra X chromosome is a much a woman as a man without arms or with an extra toe is still a man. > are you willing to write off the [people] that doesn't cover Those are weird made-up scare words. Nobody is writing them off. What does what even mean? We just don't recognize their identity or their identity terminology as being meaningful, in the same way an atheist feels about their religion. They're just as welcome, or not, as they were without it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- krastanov 4y ago
- scatters 4y agoLots of people want to reproduce and become parents. Being trans doesn't prevent that.
- krastanov 4y agoOf course, but that is not what I asked. How many people that are born female but have both physiological and social need to be male desire to reproduce in a typically female manner? That is what I am surprised by. I am sure that it exists, but it would be informative to know how often it happens. And no, I am not suggesting that these people should step forward and speak for the whole group: they should be respected and recognized either way.
- amanaplanacanal 4y agoNo doubt some would be grossed out by the idea. Others might be fine with it. Assuming they haven't had bottom surgery, stopping hrt might be all that's needed.
- eganist 4y ago> How many people that are born female but have both physiological and social need to be male desire to reproduce in a typically female manner? I understand the prompt, but I'll challenge it with the following: Until functioning testes can be synthesized (complete with a chromosome swap, one X for one Y), what means of biological reproduction would they have? We'll defer the distinction between performing this operation rather than keeping the existing set for another day, but for now this question is hypothetical only, so dwelling on it yields nothing. With that in mind, I'd say the question is better posed as: "How many people that are born female but have both physiological and social need to be male desire to reproduce[...]?" and I'd guess the answer to this would be "a lot."
- lostlogin 4y ago
- hindsightbias 4y agoPaul Graham told us to keep our identity as small as possible.
- manmal 4y agoThat’s the exact opposite of what a therapist would tell you. Putting all your eggs in one basket makes you way more prone to identity crises and trauma. Diversification is often a clever thing to do.
- joemazerino 4y ago
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- amanaplanacanal 4y agoBeing upset about changing language is a story as old as humanity, probably. This feels a lot like "old man yelling at clouds".
- ClassyJacket 4y ago
- whateveracct 4y agopeople who can get pregnant people who menstruate people with uteruses these people all have commonality, but they have been stripped of a unifying word for themselves
- detaro 4y agoPlenty cis women are not in the group of people with all these characteristics (and while there attempts to deny them womanhood on that basis, those are also generally considered a very bad thing to do)
- wang_li 4y ago
- nicoburns 4y agoIt's true that binary concepts of gender are gross oversimplifications. But that's just as true of binary gender defined by identity as it is of binary gender defined by sex. My take it that we ought to be ought be consistent and allow either both or neither.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- codefreeordie 4y agoAnd how do you know that these women identify as "cis"? Just because you want to assign the word "cis" to some women doesn't mean that they identify that way
- detaro 4y agoStatement remains true if you exclude all women who don't consider themselves cis.
- anon291 4y agoWhat does it possibly mean to 'deny' womanhood? There's no womanhood department that hands out womanhood or manhood in little goodie bags. This is a completely meaningless term.
- labrador 4y agoI think it's interesting that Lewis Carroll described this battle over language many years ago ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
- LeroyRaz 4y ago"to protect transgender men and women, a class of people who are supposedly more “oppressed” than biological women. Even if this were true (and I’m deeply skeptical)" I thought trans people being oppressed was clear statistically and unambiguous. I am surprised at her skepticism. Are the statistics not clear? One can quibble over causality, but my understanding is that they are a group with massively higher rates of suicide and depression, and so a group that would likely benefit from support.
- lo_zamoyski 4y ago
- QuantumPain 4y agoI find this claim surprising could you provide a source?
- angry_octet 4y agoThey can't provide a credible source because the evidence is exactly the opposite.
- golemiprague 4y ago
- 762236 4y ago"at a time in my life when I have never felt more essentially female, more debilitated by a physical condition directly attributable to my biological sex, more in need of clear, informative language describing what I’m going through, journalists and medical authorities are hard at work seeking to obfuscate the differences between male and female bodies."
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 4y ago
- ClassyJacket 4y ago
- notadev 4y agoDoes the tech field seem to be highly represented in the T part of LGBT? I can’t count how many times I’ve see a woman’s name as the maintainer of some software and thought, wow it’s awesome to see a woman working on something as low-level or esoteric or whatever and it almost always ends up being a trans woman. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, just an observation.
- smoldesu 4y agoIt's more that the tech industry is recovering from centuries of raising women to avoid engineering roles.
- eganist 4y ago> Does the tech field seem to be highly represented in the T part of LGBT? I can’t count how many times I’ve see a woman’s name as the maintainer of some software and thought, wow it’s awesome to see a woman working on something as low-level or esoteric or whatever and it almost always ends up being a trans woman. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, just an observation. Possibly, or also possibly likely that people are more likely to come out when they feel less constrained to societal expectations (i.e there may be more LGBTQIA+ who are closeted outside of tech because of nonconformity-related fears). Whether it's one or the other (or both), these populations have always gravitated towards tech because tech was always the outcast thing to do.
- golemiprague 4y ago
- alphabettsy 4y agoThat hasn’t been my experience, but possibly the over-representation of males in the industry means trans people in tech are more likely to be trans women.
- detaro 4y agoTech has lots of places tolerant of people falling outside the "mainstream normal", pays well (which is quite useful for people who want to medically transition), and until quite a short time ago, niche online communities were probably one of the main avenues for people to understand what's going on with them and what they can do about it.
- balderdash 4y agoBeing accommodative of small minorities seems to be a kind, and thoughtful thing to do. However having large majorities(95%+ of the population) make concessions in order to accommodate a small group imposes a cost (however small) born by many to the benefit of a few. My questions is how do you decide where to make that trade off? What’s the cost benefit analysis? At some point where do people say the cost of accommodating this 1/100k/1m people by another 300m+ people is not a worthwhile use of societal resources?
- JBits 4y agoThe issue is that the costs of accomodating trans people are greatly exaggerated to push for discimination. This article is focused on language which is obviously of great importance to everyone involved. I support the writer's hurt feeling but you can't justify not accomodating people because it requires looking at words differently.
- dmix 4y agoIt's worth asking whether anyone is actually being excluded merely because the words aren't generic enough. We can accept that a very small portion of the population doesn't fit into the definitions we commonly use without having to abandon them. It's obvious with good intentions but it seems like a silly hill to die on. Why can't we just accept as a community that when you say male/female there will always be a little [*] attached to it for the exceptions?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- socialismisok 4y agoI am deeply uncomfortable in gendered spaces. Many places offer gender neutral spaces (eg restrooms that are all genders). I don't require everyone to make me comfortable, but I do positively notice when someone does. If I go to my office and there are men's rooms, women's rooms, and all gender rooms, I do feel much less excluded. Not everyone is like me, but thousands or millions are. I do feel excluded by gendered language, and it does impact my ability to get work done, navigate social situations, etc.
- robot_no_421 4y agoThis seems to be a big hullabaloo about nothing. Language is a tool for communicating meaning; as long as the other person is understanding what you're saying then it's not that big a deal how the message was delivered. People get so offended over nothing. If some people don't want to use the words "mother" and "brestfeeding", so be it. I personally still use those terms because they feel right to me, and I don't plan on changing. But it doesn't bother me that other people are making the change. If we just learned to communicate with each other and understand intent instead of getting so micro-aggrieved over how language is semantically used, we'd all be better off.
- Latty 4y agoIndeed, literally no one is saying people can't use these words if they identify with them either, it's just about using the most inclusive terms in the general sense by professionals trying to communicate with broad groups that will include edge cases. This isn't even a "gender" issue, saying something like "people with a uterus" when it is the most accurate term helps cis women who have had hysterectomies know it isn't relevant to them. Of course, we should always inspect the impact of words: (e.g: maybe some people won't know their biology to know if they have a uterus, so we should clarify for them if that's a potential case), but the goal of being accurate rather than just making assumptions based on gender is obviously reasonable and beneficial as a base idea.
- orand 4y ago> Language is a tool for communicating meaning; as long as the other person is understanding what you're saying then it's not that big a deal how the message was delivered. People get so offended over nothing. Would you be okay if a new religion came along that started casually referring to non-believers as heathens, pagans, and infidels? And referring to believers as "the saved"? And if such language were enshrined into law, and you could lose your job if you refused to use it?
- robot_no_421 4y agoObviously not because the intent and the message behind those words would be clear. They would be choosing those words because they want to discriminate against non-believers by branding them as inferior. There is no good faith argument to be had in why a religion would choose "heathen" as a description of a non-believer unless they mean it in a negative way. The message itself is clearly bad and the chosen language reflects it. That's not the same as me calling a pregnant person a "pregnant woman" or someone else calling them a "uterus having pregnant person". The meaning in both cases is a biological female human who is carrying a baby in pregnancy. You can find people who will get offended by either phrase, but why? I don't get it. Neither phrase is meant to be disparaging or trivializing towards other people. If you hear "pregnant woman" you should assume that "woman" is meant in a biological sense and not a gender sense.
- captnFwiffo 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lo_zamoyski 4y ago"Are Women Adult Human Females?", Alex Byrne, MIT. [0] https://philarchive.org/archive/BYRAWAv5 https://philarchive.org/archive/BYRAWAv5
- QuantumPain 4y agoTLDR: Author believes that women = "adult human females" and provides "proofs" that "show" a distinction between being treated as a woman and actually being one. The author of this does not seems to understand how iff statements work which is hilarious.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throwaway22032 4y agoI don't understand the table in this article which refers to replacement words for e.g. "penis" or "breast". My first instinct is to think that it must obviously be some sort of parody. I am male. I have a penis and no breasts. If I were to transition into being a woman, I assume that would involve me having breasts and a vagina (in the final state). At some point in the process I imagine that I would have some set of physical attributes that don't correspond neatly into being either e.g. a "penis" or a "vagina", unless it's a one and done operation. At that point using either term would be inaccurate, but the terms themselves would not be inaccurate. At no point in that process would any of the words "penis", "vagina", "chest", "breast" etc cause me offence. They quite obviously are good descriptors, both for myself (past, present and future) and for others. What am I missing? Why do the terms need to be replaced, what is gained by doing so?
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y agoI think the original reasoning went like this. When you refer to a black person standing by a tree, it is preferable to say "That guy in a blue shirt/in glasses" and omit the skin color. Similarly here, you omit the names of body parts that could be used to identify the biological sex and therefore infer the gender of the person you refer to. But I'm not convinced it's actually beneficial to the people in question.
- throwaway22032 4y agoBut, to use your analogy there, the table is simply replacing "myopic person" with "person who wears glasses". The terms are specifically being used to refer to the same things, just with some sort of bizarre euphemism for basic terminology. It feels like saying "the colour at the low energy end of the spectrum" instead of "red". Are people offended by the mere utterance of the word "breast"?
- another_story 4y agoWhy is using a defining characteristic of someone offensive in and of itself? If you're in Asia you might say "that white guy over there" because it's the most easily recognized characteristic when picking a person out. If you're in a minority, no matter the characteristic, it's a matter of convenience for others to use it to denote you. The priest, the tall woman, the handicapped person, etc...
- antiterra 4y agoWhy does this argument give trans men short shrift? Apart from saying she dated trans men, their concerns aren’t even discussed, and all the blame for the change in language is placed on ‘biological men.’ Is the experience of being a trans man largely that other people don’t even believe you exist?
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
- Spivak 4y ago> Is the experience of being a trans man largely that other people don’t even believe you exist? 10000% yes. Once you look for it you can’t unsee the amount of public discourse that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever if you acknowledge that trans men exist.
- goldenchrome 4y agoTrans men are typically former lesbians, and the existence of lesbians have also been largely ignored in society. I don’t think this is anyone’s fault—I think lesbians naturally try to keep themselves out of the limelight.
- neilv 4y agoIf you were in online techie chat communities since at least "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog", you might think at least 10% of people were trans. I figured the disproportionate representation was because it was easier to "pass" online, and/or easier to find acceptance. And other people came to just treat them as people. We also learned, from daily casual conversations, that being trans (like being gay, or other minority) can be really, really rough. Partly because the Real World wasn't nearly as accepting. Whether it's strangers who flip out and try to physically harm them, employers who don't want to hire them, or their own families. To fix this, I think the Real World will have to swing the pendulum a bit, while everyone figures out how to be accepting and supportive. I don't know what the answers are, but I assume some mistakes will be made, some of the loudest people will turn out to be mistaken, there will be some miscommunication as everyone gets to the same baseline understanding, some people will try with the best of intentions but do things that they later see as silly and counterproductive, a lot of people will have the rough right ideas and uncertainty but will be drowned out, etc. Eventually, we'll hit critical masses of understanding, find the right notes and conventions, etc., and we'll collectively have advanced as people. I suspect that the biggest risk in the figuring-out period in the US is actually politicians promoting news calculated to cause backlash. Consider a political operator/outlet a few years ago that decides to make the public bathroom sex/gender access (and spinning it in an awful way) a big news story right before elections. I could be mistaken, but I thought at the time that an actual trans rights activist would've been making a grave error to pick just before elections to make their big media push -- I didn't see it getting concessions from Democrats looking for the transgender vote nor generating much sympathetic understanding, but I did see it riling up some Republican voters, to get to the polls over "culture war". We've come so far with accepting people as people, and supporting people how they need. Don't get discouraged from keeping doing that, by learning periods and malicious actors.
- Animats 4y ago> If you were in online techie chat communities since at least "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog", you might think at least 10% of people were trans. Actual number: 0.39%.[1] [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/transgender-population-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/transgender...
- Animats 4y agoThe "transgender bathroom rights" issue coming up just before Trump's election may have pushed Trump votes over the top. This might put DeSantis into the White House.
- lossolo 4y agoIndeed, it's a pendulum effect. There is a radical right and there is a radical left. I'm centrist, I do not identify with either side, I have nothing against abortion or gay marriage or calling people they/him/her/it or how they want but I have something against small group of people imposing on the whole society how we can use word women in context of pregnancy, especially in a world in which only biological woman can give birth to a child.
- snoozing 4y ago>but I have something against small group of people imposing on the whole society how we can use word women in context of pregnancy, especially in a world in which only biological woman can give birth to a child. This. There’s a difference between asking for respect (I’ll use the name you want) versus fighting to call breastfeeding chest feeding. Seriously, the world has bigger problems than to debate over language. If the general public cared half as much about world hunger (or child hunger!) as it did about debating the definition about the word “women” the world would be a better place.
- Volundr 4y agoI read this whole article, and I find the entire premise... strange. It seems like she feels like all of this language is to pretend "biological males" can have babies, in fact she even says at one point: > And if being a trans-inclusive feminist means re-embracing classic female self-negation to make biological men happy (didn’t we all agree this was bad decades ago?), then I’ll gladly trade in my feminist card so long as I can stop pretending that Lia Thomas is a feminist hero. Yet it seems pretty clear it's the opposite. The point of not inherently assuming pregnant people are women is to avoid misgendering trans men who happen to be pregnant and calling them women. Given that she goes out of her way to indicate her support for the trans community, it seems like she'd also agree that trans-men should indeed be called men and not women. There's plenty I can get behind in the article, plain language is almost always easier to understand than weird synonyms, and I don't think that a trans man is going to struggle with the fact that they will indeed have to give birth through their vagina, but the entire article seems to be railing against a pretense that isn't happening.
- next_xibalba 4y agoWhat is ratio of women who give birth to trans men who give birth? I’ll guess it is 99.9:0.01 or greater. Does that seem a wise basis for which we should reform a language?
- Volundr 4y agoI actually wasn't making any claims beyond noting that the author appeared to make an incorrect assumption about why people were using these terms, but when you put it that way... Yes actually. Precision in language, especially when talking medical has significant value.
- drekipus 4y agoLanguage is often not precise, even in medical context (which internet articles are not a part of).
- 4y ago
- pyuser583 4y agoOne major issue is that you don’t see the same thing for men. From the NYTimes: “In Chicago, a New Approach to Gay and Bisexual Men With Prostate Cancer.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/health/prostate-gay-sex-cancer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/health/prostate-gay-sex-c...
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoI don't understand how your link relates to the topic, but a similar concept in sexual health is the use of the phrase "men who have sex with men" because they have specific health needs but if you ask them to tick a box that says "homosexual" or "gay" then some of them won't identify with those terms.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- t0bia_s 4y agoBecause when you accept idea that sex is social construct, you cannot explain what is a women or man. I guess it wouldn't be possible to push this ideology without social media and different way of communication in our society. Virtual world easily spread tribalism that could be around most ridiculous things we can think of, because of lack of confrontation with reality. IRL there would be laughing, denial, fear, explanation why those ideas are nonsense... But all of that is not there if you lock yourself in bubble of virtual people that share same ridiculous ideas. Of course they will eventually dominate field where they invest most of their time - internet. We know from history (or China, Russia, North Korea) what was a purpose of control peoples tongue and what they should think about. We should learn from it. I still believe that this ideology is pushed by small, very loudly screaming group of people. Majority don't care.
- thiht 4y ago> when you accept idea that sex is social construct I can’t accept something wrong though. Sex is not a social construct, gender is. Bearing a child is something exclusively reserved to the female sex, no matter what their preferred gender is. Articles related to pregnancy should not talk about « internal gonades » instead of « ovaries » to be more inclusive. You might identify as a a gender other than female, if your sex is female, you have ovaries, period. It doesn’t invalidate the gender in any way. And ironically it becomes a bit more exclusive of 99% of the female population which is not familiar with this newspeak.
- Spivak 4y ago
- next_xibalba 4y agoWhat percentage of people experience these cases you describe? These seem like nits, not definition destroying counter-evidence.
- Spivak 4y ago
- im3w1l 4y agoI don't get what it means to identify as a woman. As we have all come to understand in recent years, women can give birth, but women can also have a penis. They can have breasts, or they can lack them. They can be bold or they can be shy. They can be strong or they can be weak. They can be short or they can be tall. What does the word woman mean? It seems like a word that doesn't mean anything at all? It's just an arbitrary group of people with nothing in common?
- QuantumPain 4y agoI would highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT4WjLWRRrw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT4WjLWRRrw (specifically "part 2: Gender" and "Part 3 Labels"). If you want ramblings continue reading but really the video is much better. The answer that I have come to is that the term 'woman' is vague, it means different things to different people, and that's ok. Defining a group based on difference like you have makes things needlessly complicated, for example what is chair?: As we have all come to understand in recent years, CHAIRS can HAVE WHEEL, but CHAIRS can also HAVE LEGS . They can have a BACK, or they can lack them. They can be WELL BUILT or they can be WEAK . They can be strong or they can be weak. They can be short or they can be tall. What does the word CHAIR mean? It seems like a word that doesn't mean anything at all? A chair is something you perceive as a chair and a woman is someone you perceive as a woman. Thus, to identify as woman means you would like to be perceived as a woman with whatever baggage comes attached with the person's concept of women. To that end you 'do woman'
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago> As we have all come to understand in recent years, CHAIRS can HAVE WHEEL, but CHAIRS can also HAVE LEGS . They can have a BACK, or they can lack them. They can be WELL BUILT or they can be WEAK . They can be strong or they can be weak. They can be short or they can be tall. What does the word CHAIR mean? It seems like a word that doesn't mean anything at all? You sit on it (butt don't take it with you). Next question, please.
- cyberbanjo 4y ago
- PhasmaFelis 4y agoI can't quote from the article because I accidentally reloaded the page once and triggered its paywall, but that's an impressively on-script rendition of the classic "I'm not racist, I have lots of black friends, I just don't believe they're actually oppressed" bit. I mean, she literally did say that cis women are more oppressed than trans people. That's a pretty impressive claim from someone who was trumpeting her LGBT-friendliness a couple paragraphs earlier.
- smartbit 4y agosee archive link here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33676832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33676832
- jer0me 4y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20221118053855/https://quillette.com/2022/11/18/the-erasure-of-women-from-online-pregnancy-literature/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221118053855/https://quillette...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ngcc_hk 4y agoA link to a subscriber based site and cannot understand from what is available. Any chance to explain what is going on.
- jamesfisher 4y ago"This article is for paying subscribers only" - have the 303 upvoters actually subscribed, or are they just upvoting the title?
- brigandish 4y agoSometimes I upvote a submission because the discussion beneath is good. I also think it's possible there are more reasons for upvotes than just these.
- SilverBirch 4y agoI saw this article posted earlier and was going to comment but thought “you know what, this is obviously not HN material, I’ll just flag it”. 12 hours later, loads of upvotes and hundreds of comments. Fine. HN news is discussion about technology, start ups, and creating stupid moral panics to stir up hatred against groups you want to oppress. In this case I actually have first hand experience of this topic, my wife is currently pregnant. Not once have I seen any price of advice or information that in any way has been less useful because of inclusive language. This whole article is attacking a problem - using inclusive language - that only exists if you hate the people being included and don’t want them included. Which apart from being obviously morally repugnant is also something that seems like an odd discussion to have on a tech website. I guess we’re interested in ethics in game journalism again…
- brigandish 4y agoWhy would or should men be included in something they are excluded from by nature, by biology, and by logic? Especially when it's regarding medical information. For example, you're not included in my family, not legally, not biologically. If you ask/demand to be in my family simply because you say you feel like you are I'll say no but it will not mean I hate you, you're just not one of my family. My saying you're not is not anti-you or you-phobic. Your saying it wouldn't harm anyone to allow you and/or others to identify as being part of my family is simply nonsense, especially if my family disagree. Thus, I'd like to see some justification for your claims.
- thelopa 4y ago> Why would or should men be included in something they are excluded from by nature, by biology, and by logic? Especially when it's regarding medical information I think you made the classic mistake of assuming that terms such as “birthing parent” are a way of including trans women. They aren’t. They’re for the benefit of trans men and non-binary individuals who are able to give birth. This isn’t about including people incapable of giving birth. It’s about including people who ARE.
- 4y ago
- peanutcrisis 4y agoThere's accommodating to minorities, then there's the enabling of a totalitarian group that terrorizes others under the pretext of diversity and inclusion. Most people are reasonable and willing to accede to the former. On the other hand, people who claim that a small change in language can't harm are missing out the point that they're doing the latter. This is not a hard dichotomy to understand, but somehow people are failing to do so, and then it's us vs them and going at each other's throats.
- f137 4y agoThis article is for paying subscribers only. It baffles me. Do people wish to pay to read stuff like that? I mean, what the point to write a polemic article and severely limit the access to it?
- Smithalicious 4y agoThe point, I presume, is making money.
- kqr2 4y agohttps://archive.ph/qZCuJ https://archive.ph/qZCuJ
- MollyRealized 4y agohttps://archive.ph/20221119221625/https://quillette.com/2022/11/18/the-erasure-of-women-from-online-pregnancy-literature/ https://archive.ph/20221119221625/https://quillette.com/2022...
- MollyRealized 4y agoFor what it is worth, I wanted to provide a transgender woman's opinion on this article. I am only speaking for myself here, not all transwomen, especially since I have only come to a realization I am transgender earlier this year. I have hardly had to live most of my life subject to discrimination, although this year I may have lost a job and definitely lost a friend due to it. Reading the author's article, I couldn't help but think about this situation as it relates to other minority groups and how it relates to the growth and change of language over the years. I am not a linguist, but I can say that some words that were commonly accepted in my adolescence in the 1980s could now end careers and friendships, and rightfully so. MLK said the long arc of history bends towards justice, and I think our language has moved certain injurious words into the trash bin. I think that certain people react to the language changing as they do to many other aspects of social change: by planting their flag and declaring they won't stand for it. I think such plantings have as little effect as prior plantings have: life is going to change, whether you like it or not. I think the author's reasoning is suspect in, at the very least, two particular issues. First, she declares outright that she is not bigoted nor a social conservative, and uses as backup support that she's not evicted transgender students from her class (despite the fact that would've opened her up to a lawsuit, most likely), that she almost worked for a transgender woman, and that she's dated trans men. It feels like a list of credentials that lets her exempt herself from examining with self-awareness the actual beliefs she holds for bigotry or social conservatism, especially when she goes on to describe Dylan Mulvaney as "an adult biological man going through a grotesquely stereotypical transgender girlhood." It's interesting that in the exact essay she references, Orwell cites a "lack of precision" as one of the problems of the English language. Yet she demands that lack of precious, which Orwell rails against! Orwell goes on to note that words must be consciously chosen: "[a]fterward one can choose – not simply accept – the phrases that will best cover the meaning," saying, moments later, that when choosing that word, above all else, "[b]reak any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous." "Politics and the English Language," to me, can be accurately read as a caution not to let legalese and rote phrases enter your head and flow out of your fingers without self-examination. But that essay also, to me at least, is very much for the accuracy of language and for not limiting its growth: "[t]he defence of the English language [...] has nothing to do with [...] the setting up of a ‘standard English’ which must never be departed from. [...] What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about." And look at Orwell's other essay, "The Politics of Newspeak," speaking of how (in a '1984' dystopia) words are eliminated and definitions stripped away from them. The author's essay, though, seems to be based on a very significant misstep that I'm surprised no one caught before this went to print, unless I'm very much mistaken: she seems to be attacking trans women who were AMAB. (A common abbreviation today is AMAB and AFAB - assigned male/female at birth.) Perhaps someday, a trans woman will be able to have a uterus implanted and be able to bring a child to term. But the vast majority of the accommodations she complains about, she seems to think is somehow aimed towards accommodating AMAB trans women who, right now, cannot give birth ("making biological men happy", "while almost no one actually believes that men can get pregnant", etc.). But these accommodations in wording are aimed at AFAB trans men, who can biologically get pregnant. Trans men, depending on the choices they have made up until that time, CAN become pregnant and give birth. But they are men. To call them 'biological women,' or to argue that they must be called biological women and not trans men, is "barbarous" ('characterized by savagery; very cruel'). It is also factually imprecise, in that it does not accurately reflect the gender identity of the individual in question. I hesitate to get personal, but I feel that her essay is mostly about screaming from a visceral level of her being that this trauma she's experiencing is hers and hers alone. But she uses this trauma to branch off into a very fervent diatribe that demands that AMAB trans women should not be referred to with inaccurate wording, while ignoring the existence of AFAB trans men who could experience the very things she describes as dealing with. In the very first paragraph of her essay, the author relates the origin of these opinions as coming to her (and perhaps contemporaneously being written?) in the midst of a time where she was experiencing what sounds like very severe physical and emotional trauma with badly weakened access to her support system. That doesn't excuse anything on her part. Trump had a truly horrifying childhood, but that does not excuse what he's done to other people during his life. Abuse doesn't excuse being an abuser; trauma doesn't excuse becoming one who traumatizes.