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Being accommodative of small minorities seems to be a kind, and thoughtful thing to do. However having large majorities(95%+ of the population) make concession

Being 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 ago
The 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 ago
  It'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 ago
    I 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.
    - nadieyninguno1 4y ago
      > I am deeply uncomfortable in gendered spaces. I'm not trans or any of that sort - I'm generally uncomfortable around people. What I don't understand is, why impose upon others? To me, that's my cross to bear.
      - socialismisok 4y ago
        I literally said I don't impose it on others. Others make attempts to accommodate me and I feel more included as a result. If your workplace said, "we've got some private rooms to work if it would make you more comfortable, it'd be something you positively regard and would make you feel more included, right?
        bequanna 4y ago
        Ah, but the whole genesis of this discussion is that many people are trying to impose it on others. I have absolutely no problem with gender neutral bathrooms. But I have a big problem with the name calling (“transphobe”), bullying, and shaming in some attempt to push an agenda where the upside is only fewer hurt feelings.
        socialismisok 4y ago
        If I choose to say "pregnant people" and I explain that I'm choosing that word to intentionally include both pregnant women and pregnant non-women, is that shaming or bullying? If I then go to my peers and say, "heads up, the phrase 'pregnant women' might not include everyone who is pregnant", and they say, "oh, that makes sense, let me adjust my own language!", I think that's probably not shaming or bullying either. If, over time, those conversations spread and we see a general public movement to use "pregnant person", this again seems like good intentions without any particular agenda besides, "oh, of course. If we recognize trans men, then we should probably make sure we say pregnant people". I don't think changing the language is bullying, shaming, or pushing an agenda - it's people making changes that are logically consistent with how they experience the world. Again: if trans men exist, then pregnancy must occur in men and women. The reason you hear people react strongly is because they believe they have a simple logic, and people come in and say, "I deny that trans men exist, or I deny trans men are men." That's a pretty strong thing to say and a pretty strong thing to hear.
  - Latty 4y ago
    When it comes to medicine, people not realising something applies to them can have negative health outcomes. Trying to produce the language that ensures everyone can understand if something applies to them is valuable. To be clear: I don't think that just means using inclusive language, you may need to specify more to help people understand that language if it isn't in common use, or whatever. I don't think there is a simple one-size-fits-all solution, but I think just assuming gendered language is good enough is clearly sub-optimal, and best terms that clarify the specific group in question are the best starting point.
  - JBits 4y ago
    This aligns with my opinions so you're not really disagreeing with me. Most of the comments here never established what's actually being discussed. Personally I think a big source of contention is that a lot of people don't accept exceptions to words.
- adastra22 4y ago
  But the gender-inclusive language is not clear. It was downright confusing to be honest. If I were pregnant, anxious and trying to find info online, I wouldn’t want to wade through that either. The purpose of language is to communicate clearly, not to make you feel included.
  - SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
    >The purpose of language is to communicate clearly, not to make you feel included. My brother was mentally ill his whole life; she is trans now. I showed her this comment and we both agreed. It’s a good way to put it. We can try and do both, but clearly has to come before feelings.
  - anon291 4y ago
    My wife left her online breastfeeding support group after several incidents of obvious males (self identified trans women) would join, despite not even having children. They just wanted to observe the moms breastfeeding. It's just not a comfortable space anymore. Very sad.
    - cluedos 4y ago
      That is disgusting, but sadly not unexpected these days. The elephant in the room is that many 'transwomen' identify as so because of sexual fetishism; these men want to become the pornified image they have of women. It's easily witnessed in their forums, for example the 'MtF' subreddit, there are countless posts of men asking if it's normal to be sexually aroused while cross-dressing, fetishising their own breasts, talking about their longing to be a 'hot woman', and so on.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    Deferring to how people want to be called seem like the non-asshole default.If you prefer to go by "Ty": people ought to call you Ty- it may be inconvenient looking you up in AD (is it Tyler, or Tyson?) If someone who's pregnant wants me to address them as "sir" or "them", that's exactly what I'll do, even if the author of TFA may be offended.
- LightHugger 4y ago
  If you can just look at words differently... then the people being "accommodated" can just do exactly the same thing, in this case, and there is no reason to waste time energy or resources doing any of this.
- concordDance 4y ago
  Note that the benefits of using the new language and terms are also greatly exaggerated. Only the most fragile of people are going to commit suicide because of talk of "women" in pregnancy resources. And frankly with that level of fragility they probably weren't long for this world anyway.
- bradleyjg 4y ago
  I support the writer's hurt feeling but you can't justify not accomodating people because it requires looking at words differently. You can. This is feelings all the way down. Specifically whose feelings are going to be accommodated.
  - JBits 4y ago
    Accomodation to receive good medical treatment is more important than accomodating feelings about words.
    - bradleyjg 4y ago
      Those things don’t trade off against each other. What trades off is accommodating some people’s feelings about words vs accommodating other people’s feelings about words. Since these different feelings are about the same words both sets of feelings can’t be accommodated. When we as a society make our choice between two incompatible options we express our values.
    - jimbokun 4y ago
      Yes, why it is important to use clear words referring to biological sex, as that has far more important ramifications for medical treatment than gender identity.
      - JBits 4y ago
        I'm not sure what the best words to use are, as if many cis women find these gender neutral terms offensive, they have a right to complain and push back. However, trans men have a right not to be ignored, for their view in what they're called to be taken into account by the medical literature and for their existence and needs to be reflected in the medical literature.
  - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
    Feelings vs Fatalities When men are allowed into women's spaces - washrooms, rape shelters, and prisons - women and children die. We have single-sex spaces for a lot of very good reasons.
- ouid 4y ago
  In what way is this language accomodating trans people? English has a right to a word that means, "those who can get pregnant". Moreover, that word is women. You seem to want a new word that means, "i want people to treat me the way society treats women/men". This is not a problem with the language, you might argue that its a problem with society, but consider exactly what it is that you're asking for. Do you really have a right to be treated differently from other people? Its pretty easy to argue that men and women should be treated more equitably, but theres also a fair amount of structure in place to treat men and women differently to further that aim. Do you really think you have a right to opt into the perceived benefits of this attempt? It sounds like you really value the social divisions between men and women.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Assuming you mean all of this in good faith. > English has a right to a word that means, "those who can get pregnant". Moreover, that word is women. Yes, but language has to evolve with new information. We discovered and are now socially recognizing the existence of a different kind of human. We now have XX women, XY women, XX men, and XY men. So now XX women, XX men (and in the future potentially XY women) can get pregnant so there’s a desire to adapt to this new information and genericise the term. > Do you really think you have a right to opt into the perceived benefits of this attempt? If that’s how it worked that would be a good point but it isn’t. Trans folks didn’t choose to be trans. A trans woman is and always has been a woman and can’t just opt in to being a man. If you’ve ever talked to one you would know most of them try and fail because it destroys their mental health. And this should be intuitively obvious because if a gay trans woman could just choose to be a straight man they probably would without hesitation. No hormones, expensive surgeries, no extreme difficulty dating, being the political punching bag de jour, don’t have to worry about being hatecrimed or discriminated against. > It sounds like you really value the social divisions between men and women. No, in fact it’s the opposite. Trans people are some of the biggest proponents of abolishing gender roles and pointlessly gendered stuff. Trans people are all about breaking down those social divisions. Wanting to be seen and treated as the gender you are is not the same thing as reinforcing or valuing the divisions between genders. Again, it really comes down to that not being able to choose thing. If people could choose and trans men were really just masculine women then you would have a point. This also should be intuitive because there are feminine trans men and masculine trans women. If they could choose and it was based on presentation wouldn’t it have been a heck of a lot easier for them to not be trans?
- jimbokun 4y ago
  > I support the writer's hurt feeling but you can't justify not accomodating people because it requires looking at words differently. Why does that only apply to trans people and how they want to be addressed? What about cis-women that want to be addressed as women, but now the medical profession is refusing to grant them that basic request for dignity?
  - JBits 4y ago
    I never said that cis women don't deserve this right. If you look my other responses in this thread you'll see that I have expressed that they do multiple times. I also don't just mean accomodation in terms of words: if trans men have any needs different to cis women, then medical literature on pregancy must include this when in circumstances where it's appropriate.
    - tanseydavid 4y ago
      > if trans men have any needs different to cis women, then medical literature on pregancy must... Serious question: do you suppose that that trans men have different needs than cis women (in a medical sense) with regard to pregnancy?
      - autoexec 4y ago
        They might find they have increased problems with gender dysphoria as their body changes during pregnancy. It might cause a number of problems that should be considered/monitored/treated by their doctors.
      - foldr 4y ago
        If they’ve undergone medical transitioning procedures (e.g. hormones), then yes, quite possibly.
      - JBits 4y ago
        I'm not familiar with the topic so I don't know, but it seems reasonable that the question at a minimum needs to be asked. That said, if they've transitioned they (I think) need to stop taking testosterone, which points out that hormone stuff could perhaps be different. There's also the social aspect of a man attending/needing typically women only support.
Mandatum 4y ago
Consider that the next time you see a wheelchair ramp.
- yunohn 4y ago
  People with physical disabilities are a massive % of the population, and could potentially include any person at some point of their lives. Being a trans birth giver is infinitesimally less common.
- LightHugger 4y ago
  Wheelchair ramps are important. They serve an obvious physical function, kinda like the bits that allow pregnancy, and clear language that means things to people with the necessary biology to utilize that information safely. The people in favor of a lot of the erasures would want the wheelchair ramps removed, if people with functioning legs were the minority. It should not be entertained. It's asking for the removal of accommodations for women.
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    "The people in favor of a lot of the erasures would want the wheelchair ramps removed, if people with functioning legs were the minority" This is a perfect analogy, thanks for it.
- izacus 4y ago
  No, this is equivalent of removing all stairs and talk about stairs because some people need the ramps. No one is arguing against removal of accomodations.
- balderdash 4y ago
  The question was what is the framework to do the cost benefit analysis? (I’d say giving access to essential services, basic social participation for >10% of the population is pretty easy to justify, but very expensive).
- rags2riches 4y ago
  Please say wheelchair-stairs. They are real stairs too.
Latty 4y ago
Whenever people make this big deal about undermining the meaning of biology by using gender identity as the center of everyday language, all I can think is it's literally no different to adoption, which we all accept. An adoptive parent is a parent. We don't specify "adoptive" all the time, and it'd be rude to refuse to refer to adoptive parents as parents because they aren't biologically related to their children in the same way. We have done exactly this kind of language change in schools over that issue too, teachers often prefer "guardians" to "parents" in some contexts these days because some children won't live with parents, things like that. To pretend this hurts people is just counter to these examples we see in reality, it's just trying to use the words that apply to everyone, not just the most common case. The cost is so small, the attempts to push back on it seem actively spiteful, because there is no reason to contest it generally. The thing it brings to mind is the "but marriage means a man and a woman" argument from the attempts to stop marriage equality.
- concordDance 4y ago
  The costs are small but so are the benefits.
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    Treating others with respect, dignity and kindness is a small cost for us, but could mean the world to a person who faces discrimination.
    - erosenbe0 4y ago
      I agree but I also see low hanging fruit with real data backing it that I'd like to see addressed with more urgency than this. My buddy who is a lefty factory worker complains that it is more dangerous for him to operate certain equipment. And indeed studies seem to suggest this. But the talking heads don't get into this much.
      - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
        I am somehow more interested in people who commit suicide, face work and housing discrimination over some OSHA violations, on the other hand, and unlike you, I can't see why those orthogonal issues can not be tackled in parallel. Care to enlighten me?
joe_the_user 4y ago
Using language that includes a group isn't a cost that is born by those not in the group. Notably, many people not in the group may OK or even encouraging of the changes. I'm not terribly pleased by extremely vague bureaucratic language. But the arguments that try to turn such into an actual harm or cost to those not in the group being protected here are engaging in language that's far more deceptively vague.
- kurtreed 4y ago
  > Using language that includes a group isn't a cost that is born by those not in the group. Often it is. Simply changing from familiar terms to artificial terms is a cost.
  - vkou 4y ago
    All of language is artificial.
  - joe_the_user 4y ago
    My point is that inclusion isn't like a check written out to an excluded group. Inclusion benefits society by making things run more smoothly, it benefits various bureaucracy since the bureaucracies can deal with more people and so-forth. And the cost is a small amount of understandability, yes. But even that isn't necessary paid by those outside the exclude group.
    - kurtreed 4y ago
      > Inclusion benefits society by making things run more smoothly Big claim, little justification
- selfmodruntime 4y ago
  > Using language that includes a group isn't a cost that is born by those not in the group Exactly. Using „woman“ isn‘t a cost to the tiny majority that feels excluded by that word.
nullc 4y ago
Sometimes there are ways to be inclusive without undertaking a cost... E.g. talk about "health issues that arise during pregnancy". But those zero or low cost mechanisms don't achieve the advocacy goals that some are chasing. For advocacy purposes it needs to be visible, not silently accommodating. And then you end up with the crude, objectifying and biologically reductive alternatives to "women" like calling them "menstruators" or "breeders". One doesn't need to abandon politely accommodating to reject being made a tool of someone's disruptive advocacy.
- antiterra 4y ago
  > And then you end up with the crude, objectifying and biologically reductive alternatives to "women" like calling them "menstruators" or "breeders". What’s objectifying is deciding that women are defined by fertility.
  - xcrunner529 4y ago
    Keep reducing and they’re just people. Why the insistence on being a “woman” at all? What’s wrong with just being trans? Or you know, just an effeminate male or butch woman? When I admitted I was gay I didn’t want to still be called a straight male.
    - antiterra 4y ago
      I have a friend whose ovaries were removed when she was a child, and, as a result, she was never fertile. She's not trans, an effeminate male or a butch woman. This would be the case even if she did not receive hormone therapy. She's a woman, and it's not 'reductive' to separate being a woman from reproductive function or hormones.
      - xcrunner529 4y ago
        No but that’s a man made operation. Doesn’t change the origins biological sex. I think rather than trying to change gender from the original biological meaning, maybe (like someone else here said) treat it like a religious identity. You can have a “personality” trait of masculine, feminine, etc.
tomohawk 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  (Separately from the topic of this thread:) It looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological and political battle. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We ban accounts that do this, regardless of what ideology they favor or disfavor, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on, we'd appreciate it: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... Edit: it looks like this has been a problem for years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31786872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31786872 (June 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23367213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23367213 (May 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23305113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23305113 (May 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21263982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21263982 (Oct 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20271626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20271626 (June 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17743552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17743552 (Aug 2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15428615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15428615 (Oct 2017) Please stop using HN this way and start using it in the intended spirit from now on. Your account is way, way, way over the line here.
houstonn 4y ago
It's not even accommodation to small minorities, it's accommodation to an ideology. Activists push this conflation to make it appear about minorities and not their ideology. They present it as though minorities all have the same opinion and then weaponize your compassion to get compliance. "Oh, this is what minorities want. Ok, I'm a good person, I want to respect their wishes." What you may not realize is that many gay and trans people strongly disagree with gender ideology and do not want this. Indeed, they don't all have the same opinion! The loud, aggressive, too online activists do not speak for everyone.
- LightHugger 4y ago
  I would think ideological minority is a kind of thing that is worth considering accommodating too, but the problem is the relevant activists actively want to harm people with opposing ideology (the chosen method of enforcement is trying to get people fired and otherwise ruined). So they have no interest in ideological accommodation themselves.
  - onos 4y ago
    Great point. In other words, we are experiencing the usual failure mode to liberalism: it can be taken advantage of by non liberal actors. Not sure what the restoring force is to prevent this.
    - remarkEon 4y ago
      You ignore them. And if that doesn’t work, you politely - but firmly - ask them to leave.
      - Jiro 4y ago
        The reason that this is considered a failure mode is that these systems are set up so that you can't just ignore activists who speak for, or claim to be speaking for, an approved minority. Just saying "no, I'm going to ignore your demands" gets you hurt, because you are required to take positive action.
mynameishere 4y ago
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Hermaphrodites aren't suffering from a disorder. They're just born different than most. If you took the time to get to know some you'll see they are just as deserving of consideration as you.
  - akomtu 4y ago
    Are there actual hermaphrodites these days? Some literature about religions mentions in passing that humans were hermaphrodites eons ago, they are strongly dimorphic now, because that's the midpoint of our evolution, and we will be hermaphrodites in the far future.
  - murderfs 4y ago
    > Hermaphrodites aren't suffering from a disorder. They're just born different than most. That is the literal definition of disorder.
  - prepend 4y ago
    I’m not sure use of chest-feeding vs breast-feeding matters much for hermaphrodites.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  You can get your message through without a recourse to obscene language.
icare_1er 4y ago
We're not talking 95%/5% here, more 99.99995 / 0.00005%. And trying to even argue that men cannot be pregnant is even doing too much. It is as insane as trying to "debate" whether the earth is round.
- adammarples 4y ago
  The earth is not perfectly round, it's an oblate spheroid with a rough surface. How non-round is the earth? About 0.3%...
  - throwaway821909 4y ago
    This feels like it proves the point, I believe this is true, but yet, for all situations that aren't very specific and technical, the earth is round, and saying otherwise will cause more confusion->harm than good.
- JBits 4y ago
  We're talking about trans men getting pregnant, not trans women. While trans men are a minority, those percentages are multiple orders of magnitude too small.
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    Lets just say that while a transman is pregnant are an honorary woman. Problem solved.
a_c 4y ago
It's like one day you decided to build a company that needs a website. The first task you come up with is accessibility and i18n. Good luck with that. My heuristics is, are we serving the main audience, are we serving them well, can we expand the audience, can we expand the audience without harming the main audience. There is another comment mentioned about ramp. I think it is a good example where serving the extended audience (wheel chair user) is not harming the experience of main audience (non-wheel chair user). On the other hand, OP's article is about using gender neutral term on parenting/pregnancy websites where the main audience should be, well, women women and men men, that the article should lay its focus on. A related concept is the paradox of tolerance [1]. We demand ourselves to be ever inclusive like the dodo [2]. All the dodos got eaten at last. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo
skim_milk 4y ago
Political data would suggest that we aren't actually being more empathic or accommodating, actually, the exact opposite! Online communities are extremely disproportionally composed of people who fall into the Cluster B/emotionally dysregulated/CPTSD spectrum. Internet addiction or "Internet Use Disorder" is nearly entirely composed of people in this camp. Same goes for trans people - this isn't an insult but an objective observation that these people need mental health help. To drive the point home - my ex-girlfriend worked at a mental institution for children and the majority all of them were trans and/or had BPD/Cluster B/CPTSD etc etc. At one point, all 5 children in their unit were trans! Leadership should not use Internet communities as the north star for guiding the culture shifts of wider society, it will obviously lead to (to use a British understatement) social friction. We risk crumbling the institution of science and higher education due to catering to the wants of Cluster B, all just so these people can move on to the next subject to split into good and evil parts. The focus should be on providing help to Cluster B, NOT about letting them take control of society and crumble all of our institutions to pieces over dissociative morality plays, making everyone's health worse in the process.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Politicians, like many performers, are addicted to attention. Perhaps as much as they're addicted to power. The Internet is irresistible catnip for them and part of the reason why the chronically online are able to have so much impact on our 'leaders'.
- eternalban 4y ago
  I agree with everything here but the presumption that "Leadership" is taking its cues from "internet communities" does not compute for me. I for one am not so sure this so-called "leadership" cares for family, as a social unit. Accordingly, there is (for me at least) the possibility that this "leadership" is using a pretext to achieve related but orthogonal goals, since purely on rational, moral, and ethical basis, causing this much social division and disruption over this niche issue does not make any sense.
  - skim_milk 4y ago
isthisthingon99 4y ago
Nassim Taleb has an article about this but I can't remember the name. Something like tyranny of the minority. Worth a read. The main idea is the most vocal, intolerant minority runs the world.
- remarkEon 4y ago
  One of my favorite essays. “The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority” https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
  - isthisthingon99 4y ago
    That's the one. Nassim has blocked me on twitter so I refuse to google for his stuff.
    - remarkEon 4y ago
      Taleb is a prick, and is "right" much less often than he thinks. Still, the Incerto series is a good read.
      - isthisthingon99 4y ago
        Yes, I cannot deny that his writings have had a real influence in the way I live my life.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>My questions is how do you decide where to make that trade off? If I were dictator the first step would be to round up and deport to labor camps all the people who misrepresent "small, diffuse and hard to quantify" as zero. So much BS in modern society in all areas and subject matters is predicated on this fallacy. Second step would be to go about making an attempt at quantifying the cost.
klarstrup 4y ago
It is unclear to me what concession is being made by way of accurate language?
- HyperSane 4y ago
  What is a woman?
  - klarstrup 4y ago
    A woman is someone who sees in herself at least one attribute, which she regards as a sufficient condition for her own membership in that category. What that attribute is can vary from woman to woman. The same definition applies mutatis mutandis to men. --- Now what is the concession that's being made?
    - autoexec 4y ago
      > A woman is someone who sees in herself at least one attribute, which she regards as a sufficient condition for her own membership in that category. What that attribute is can vary from woman to woman. Now what is the concession that's being made? If we had to limit ourselves to that entirely unclear definition we'd be giving up a lot, including the ability to recognize anyone as either man or woman (or even male or female) in cases where they aren't able to communicate to us whatever they've decided using made up attributes they (entirely on their own) deem sufficient to place them in one group or another. This would include every single non-living person and anyone whose physical or mental limitations prevent them from communicating or inventing that list of arbitrary attributes and then classifying each one themselves according to some unspecified process in order to determine which term should apply to them. Even just changing the definition from something that was nearly always entirely clear, easy to define objectively, and immutable, to something that is not defined, where the determining criteria can differ from one person to the next, and where the classification for a single person can change from one moment to the next is a major concession that has wide ranging implications.
    - cluedos 4y ago
      The only reason that redefinitions such as this are being proposed (and in many places, accepted) is so that some men can claim to be women, and to twist law and policy around such claims. So, as a consequence of this, we now have men in women's prisons, men in women's sports, men in women's shelters, and so on. Is this really a beneficial concession to be made?
WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has an interesting take on these type of controversies that is hard to argue with in his essay titled, "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority." Basically, if a small percentage of the population is motivated enough and the rest of the population is mainly indifferent to the cause then the minority will get their way. Most people have other things to do than to expend any energy on this. Plus, the magnification afforded by the internet leads to what we have. But in an interesting way, the argument has turned into minority view vs minority view. I think we'll be reading about this argument for a very very long time since no single side has an advantage over the other. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
stubybubs 4y ago
Online pregnancy literature is part of medicine. Including marginalized groups is absolutely crucial and is done or should be done in virtually all aspects of medicine. Your intake forms for a child shouldn't have spaces labelled "mother" and "father" because same sex couples exist. You don't ask a woman "what does your husband do" or a man "what does your wife do" because you never know if they're in a same sex relationship, and there is a significant history of medicine treating queer people poorly and you're at risk of ruining rapport with your patient before you even get a chance to develop it. We don't call people struggling with addiction "addicts" or "junkies" because they still deserve help, and we don't want them walking out the door because they're already suspicious that you're going to abuse them. Even outside of social denigrated groups, medicine is all about accommodating that 10% or 1% or 0.01%. I spent quite a bit of time on lectures about cystic fibrosis patients considering there are only about 40,000 people living with CF in all of the US, about 1/3200 live births. It costs real money to keep these people alive, and nobody seems to have a problem with that. Somehow "pregnant people" is an absolute deal breaker though, where we start talking about "is it worth to accommodate them?" All of this boils down to people saying "you can't say woman anymore." Except you absolutely can, if you're talking about a pregnant woman, just like you can say "husband and wife" if that applies to a married couple, because those are specific situations. But when medicine speaks, it has to speak to everyone, especially those most at risk.
- selfmodruntime 4y ago
  I regularly consume parenting advice for mothers. It has never hurt me, as a man. Not once. To pretend that gendered words are harmful in such a way is really ludicrous to me
selfmodruntime 4y ago
At exactly 0. To not be racist or transphobic costs me nothing. I can do it without effort. To pretend it‘s fair for them to partake in sports or to disadvantage women in favor of trans people upsets that equilibrium when it happens to the first woman. Trans people need to be accepted, not advantaged.

JBits 4y ago

The 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 ago
It'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 ago
  I 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.
  - nadieyninguno1 4y ago
    > I am deeply uncomfortable in gendered spaces. I'm not trans or any of that sort - I'm generally uncomfortable around people. What I don't understand is, why impose upon others? To me, that's my cross to bear.
    - socialismisok 4y ago
      I literally said I don't impose it on others. Others make attempts to accommodate me and I feel more included as a result. If your workplace said, "we've got some private rooms to work if it would make you more comfortable, it'd be something you positively regard and would make you feel more included, right?
      - bequanna 4y ago
        Ah, but the whole genesis of this discussion is that many people are trying to impose it on others. I have absolutely no problem with gender neutral bathrooms. But I have a big problem with the name calling (“transphobe”), bullying, and shaming in some attempt to push an agenda where the upside is only fewer hurt feelings.
        socialismisok 4y ago
        If I choose to say "pregnant people" and I explain that I'm choosing that word to intentionally include both pregnant women and pregnant non-women, is that shaming or bullying? If I then go to my peers and say, "heads up, the phrase 'pregnant women' might not include everyone who is pregnant", and they say, "oh, that makes sense, let me adjust my own language!", I think that's probably not shaming or bullying either. If, over time, those conversations spread and we see a general public movement to use "pregnant person", this again seems like good intentions without any particular agenda besides, "oh, of course. If we recognize trans men, then we should probably make sure we say pregnant people". I don't think changing the language is bullying, shaming, or pushing an agenda - it's people making changes that are logically consistent with how they experience the world. Again: if trans men exist, then pregnancy must occur in men and women. The reason you hear people react strongly is because they believe they have a simple logic, and people come in and say, "I deny that trans men exist, or I deny trans men are men." That's a pretty strong thing to say and a pretty strong thing to hear.
- Latty 4y ago
  When it comes to medicine, people not realising something applies to them can have negative health outcomes. Trying to produce the language that ensures everyone can understand if something applies to them is valuable. To be clear: I don't think that just means using inclusive language, you may need to specify more to help people understand that language if it isn't in common use, or whatever. I don't think there is a simple one-size-fits-all solution, but I think just assuming gendered language is good enough is clearly sub-optimal, and best terms that clarify the specific group in question are the best starting point.
- JBits 4y ago
  This aligns with my opinions so you're not really disagreeing with me. Most of the comments here never established what's actually being discussed. Personally I think a big source of contention is that a lot of people don't accept exceptions to words.
adastra22 4y ago
But the gender-inclusive language is not clear. It was downright confusing to be honest. If I were pregnant, anxious and trying to find info online, I wouldn’t want to wade through that either. The purpose of language is to communicate clearly, not to make you feel included.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  >The purpose of language is to communicate clearly, not to make you feel included. My brother was mentally ill his whole life; she is trans now. I showed her this comment and we both agreed. It’s a good way to put it. We can try and do both, but clearly has to come before feelings.
- anon291 4y ago
  My wife left her online breastfeeding support group after several incidents of obvious males (self identified trans women) would join, despite not even having children. They just wanted to observe the moms breastfeeding. It's just not a comfortable space anymore. Very sad.
  - cluedos 4y ago
    That is disgusting, but sadly not unexpected these days. The elephant in the room is that many 'transwomen' identify as so because of sexual fetishism; these men want to become the pornified image they have of women. It's easily witnessed in their forums, for example the 'MtF' subreddit, there are countless posts of men asking if it's normal to be sexually aroused while cross-dressing, fetishising their own breasts, talking about their longing to be a 'hot woman', and so on.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  Deferring to how people want to be called seem like the non-asshole default.If you prefer to go by "Ty": people ought to call you Ty- it may be inconvenient looking you up in AD (is it Tyler, or Tyson?) If someone who's pregnant wants me to address them as "sir" or "them", that's exactly what I'll do, even if the author of TFA may be offended.
LightHugger 4y ago
If you can just look at words differently... then the people being "accommodated" can just do exactly the same thing, in this case, and there is no reason to waste time energy or resources doing any of this.
concordDance 4y ago
Note that the benefits of using the new language and terms are also greatly exaggerated. Only the most fragile of people are going to commit suicide because of talk of "women" in pregnancy resources. And frankly with that level of fragility they probably weren't long for this world anyway.
bradleyjg 4y ago
I support the writer's hurt feeling but you can't justify not accomodating people because it requires looking at words differently. You can. This is feelings all the way down. Specifically whose feelings are going to be accommodated.
- JBits 4y ago
  Accomodation to receive good medical treatment is more important than accomodating feelings about words.
  - bradleyjg 4y ago
    Those things don’t trade off against each other. What trades off is accommodating some people’s feelings about words vs accommodating other people’s feelings about words. Since these different feelings are about the same words both sets of feelings can’t be accommodated. When we as a society make our choice between two incompatible options we express our values.
  - jimbokun 4y ago
    Yes, why it is important to use clear words referring to biological sex, as that has far more important ramifications for medical treatment than gender identity.
    - JBits 4y ago
      I'm not sure what the best words to use are, as if many cis women find these gender neutral terms offensive, they have a right to complain and push back. However, trans men have a right not to be ignored, for their view in what they're called to be taken into account by the medical literature and for their existence and needs to be reflected in the medical literature.
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
  Feelings vs Fatalities When men are allowed into women's spaces - washrooms, rape shelters, and prisons - women and children die. We have single-sex spaces for a lot of very good reasons.
ouid 4y ago
In what way is this language accomodating trans people? English has a right to a word that means, "those who can get pregnant". Moreover, that word is women. You seem to want a new word that means, "i want people to treat me the way society treats women/men". This is not a problem with the language, you might argue that its a problem with society, but consider exactly what it is that you're asking for. Do you really have a right to be treated differently from other people? Its pretty easy to argue that men and women should be treated more equitably, but theres also a fair amount of structure in place to treat men and women differently to further that aim. Do you really think you have a right to opt into the perceived benefits of this attempt? It sounds like you really value the social divisions between men and women.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Assuming you mean all of this in good faith. > English has a right to a word that means, "those who can get pregnant". Moreover, that word is women. Yes, but language has to evolve with new information. We discovered and are now socially recognizing the existence of a different kind of human. We now have XX women, XY women, XX men, and XY men. So now XX women, XX men (and in the future potentially XY women) can get pregnant so there’s a desire to adapt to this new information and genericise the term. > Do you really think you have a right to opt into the perceived benefits of this attempt? If that’s how it worked that would be a good point but it isn’t. Trans folks didn’t choose to be trans. A trans woman is and always has been a woman and can’t just opt in to being a man. If you’ve ever talked to one you would know most of them try and fail because it destroys their mental health. And this should be intuitively obvious because if a gay trans woman could just choose to be a straight man they probably would without hesitation. No hormones, expensive surgeries, no extreme difficulty dating, being the political punching bag de jour, don’t have to worry about being hatecrimed or discriminated against. > It sounds like you really value the social divisions between men and women. No, in fact it’s the opposite. Trans people are some of the biggest proponents of abolishing gender roles and pointlessly gendered stuff. Trans people are all about breaking down those social divisions. Wanting to be seen and treated as the gender you are is not the same thing as reinforcing or valuing the divisions between genders. Again, it really comes down to that not being able to choose thing. If people could choose and trans men were really just masculine women then you would have a point. This also should be intuitive because there are feminine trans men and masculine trans women. If they could choose and it was based on presentation wouldn’t it have been a heck of a lot easier for them to not be trans?
jimbokun 4y ago
> I support the writer's hurt feeling but you can't justify not accomodating people because it requires looking at words differently. Why does that only apply to trans people and how they want to be addressed? What about cis-women that want to be addressed as women, but now the medical profession is refusing to grant them that basic request for dignity?
- JBits 4y ago
  I never said that cis women don't deserve this right. If you look my other responses in this thread you'll see that I have expressed that they do multiple times. I also don't just mean accomodation in terms of words: if trans men have any needs different to cis women, then medical literature on pregancy must include this when in circumstances where it's appropriate.
  - tanseydavid 4y ago
    > if trans men have any needs different to cis women, then medical literature on pregancy must... Serious question: do you suppose that that trans men have different needs than cis women (in a medical sense) with regard to pregnancy?
    - autoexec 4y ago
      They might find they have increased problems with gender dysphoria as their body changes during pregnancy. It might cause a number of problems that should be considered/monitored/treated by their doctors.
    - foldr 4y ago
      If they’ve undergone medical transitioning procedures (e.g. hormones), then yes, quite possibly.
    - JBits 4y ago
      I'm not familiar with the topic so I don't know, but it seems reasonable that the question at a minimum needs to be asked. That said, if they've transitioned they (I think) need to stop taking testosterone, which points out that hormone stuff could perhaps be different. There's also the social aspect of a man attending/needing typically women only support.

Mandatum 4y ago

Consider that the next time you see a wheelchair ramp.

yunohn 4y ago
People with physical disabilities are a massive % of the population, and could potentially include any person at some point of their lives. Being a trans birth giver is infinitesimally less common.
LightHugger 4y ago
Wheelchair ramps are important. They serve an obvious physical function, kinda like the bits that allow pregnancy, and clear language that means things to people with the necessary biology to utilize that information safely. The people in favor of a lot of the erasures would want the wheelchair ramps removed, if people with functioning legs were the minority. It should not be entertained. It's asking for the removal of accommodations for women.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  "The people in favor of a lot of the erasures would want the wheelchair ramps removed, if people with functioning legs were the minority" This is a perfect analogy, thanks for it.
izacus 4y ago
No, this is equivalent of removing all stairs and talk about stairs because some people need the ramps. No one is arguing against removal of accomodations.
balderdash 4y ago
The question was what is the framework to do the cost benefit analysis? (I’d say giving access to essential services, basic social participation for >10% of the population is pretty easy to justify, but very expensive).
rags2riches 4y ago
Please say wheelchair-stairs. They are real stairs too.

Latty 4y ago

Whenever people make this big deal about undermining the meaning of biology by using gender identity as the center of everyday language, all I can think is it's literally no different to adoption, which we all accept. An adoptive parent is a parent. We don't specify "adoptive" all the time, and it'd be rude to refuse to refer to adoptive parents as parents because they aren't biologically related to their children in the same way. We have done exactly this kind of language change in schools over that issue too, teachers often prefer "guardians" to "parents" in some contexts these days because some children won't live with parents, things like that. To pretend this hurts people is just counter to these examples we see in reality, it's just trying to use the words that apply to everyone, not just the most common case. The cost is so small, the attempts to push back on it seem actively spiteful, because there is no reason to contest it generally. The thing it brings to mind is the "but marriage means a man and a woman" argument from the attempts to stop marriage equality.

concordDance 4y ago
The costs are small but so are the benefits.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  Treating others with respect, dignity and kindness is a small cost for us, but could mean the world to a person who faces discrimination.
  - erosenbe0 4y ago
    I agree but I also see low hanging fruit with real data backing it that I'd like to see addressed with more urgency than this. My buddy who is a lefty factory worker complains that it is more dangerous for him to operate certain equipment. And indeed studies seem to suggest this. But the talking heads don't get into this much.
    - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
      I am somehow more interested in people who commit suicide, face work and housing discrimination over some OSHA violations, on the other hand, and unlike you, I can't see why those orthogonal issues can not be tackled in parallel. Care to enlighten me?

joe_the_user 4y ago

Using language that includes a group isn't a cost that is born by those not in the group. Notably, many people not in the group may OK or even encouraging of the changes. I'm not terribly pleased by extremely vague bureaucratic language. But the arguments that try to turn such into an actual harm or cost to those not in the group being protected here are engaging in language that's far more deceptively vague.

kurtreed 4y ago
> Using language that includes a group isn't a cost that is born by those not in the group. Often it is. Simply changing from familiar terms to artificial terms is a cost.
- vkou 4y ago
  All of language is artificial.
- joe_the_user 4y ago
  My point is that inclusion isn't like a check written out to an excluded group. Inclusion benefits society by making things run more smoothly, it benefits various bureaucracy since the bureaucracies can deal with more people and so-forth. And the cost is a small amount of understandability, yes. But even that isn't necessary paid by those outside the exclude group.
  - kurtreed 4y ago
    > Inclusion benefits society by making things run more smoothly Big claim, little justification
selfmodruntime 4y ago
> Using language that includes a group isn't a cost that is born by those not in the group Exactly. Using „woman“ isn‘t a cost to the tiny majority that feels excluded by that word.

nullc 4y ago

Sometimes there are ways to be inclusive without undertaking a cost... E.g. talk about "health issues that arise during pregnancy". But those zero or low cost mechanisms don't achieve the advocacy goals that some are chasing. For advocacy purposes it needs to be visible, not silently accommodating. And then you end up with the crude, objectifying and biologically reductive alternatives to "women" like calling them "menstruators" or "breeders". One doesn't need to abandon politely accommodating to reject being made a tool of someone's disruptive advocacy.

antiterra 4y ago
> And then you end up with the crude, objectifying and biologically reductive alternatives to "women" like calling them "menstruators" or "breeders". What’s objectifying is deciding that women are defined by fertility.
- xcrunner529 4y ago
  Keep reducing and they’re just people. Why the insistence on being a “woman” at all? What’s wrong with just being trans? Or you know, just an effeminate male or butch woman? When I admitted I was gay I didn’t want to still be called a straight male.
  - antiterra 4y ago
    I have a friend whose ovaries were removed when she was a child, and, as a result, she was never fertile. She's not trans, an effeminate male or a butch woman. This would be the case even if she did not receive hormone therapy. She's a woman, and it's not 'reductive' to separate being a woman from reproductive function or hormones.
    - xcrunner529 4y ago
      No but that’s a man made operation. Doesn’t change the origins biological sex. I think rather than trying to change gender from the original biological meaning, maybe (like someone else here said) treat it like a religious identity. You can have a “personality” trait of masculine, feminine, etc.

tomohawk 4y ago

dang 4y ago
(Separately from the topic of this thread:) It looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological and political battle. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We ban accounts that do this, regardless of what ideology they favor or disfavor, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on, we'd appreciate it: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... Edit: it looks like this has been a problem for years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31786872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31786872 (June 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23367213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23367213 (May 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23305113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23305113 (May 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21263982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21263982 (Oct 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20271626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20271626 (June 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17743552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17743552 (Aug 2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15428615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15428615 (Oct 2017) Please stop using HN this way and start using it in the intended spirit from now on. Your account is way, way, way over the line here.

houstonn 4y ago

It's not even accommodation to small minorities, it's accommodation to an ideology. Activists push this conflation to make it appear about minorities and not their ideology. They present it as though minorities all have the same opinion and then weaponize your compassion to get compliance. "Oh, this is what minorities want. Ok, I'm a good person, I want to respect their wishes." What you may not realize is that many gay and trans people strongly disagree with gender ideology and do not want this. Indeed, they don't all have the same opinion! The loud, aggressive, too online activists do not speak for everyone.

LightHugger 4y ago
I would think ideological minority is a kind of thing that is worth considering accommodating too, but the problem is the relevant activists actively want to harm people with opposing ideology (the chosen method of enforcement is trying to get people fired and otherwise ruined). So they have no interest in ideological accommodation themselves.
- onos 4y ago
  Great point. In other words, we are experiencing the usual failure mode to liberalism: it can be taken advantage of by non liberal actors. Not sure what the restoring force is to prevent this.
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    You ignore them. And if that doesn’t work, you politely - but firmly - ask them to leave.
    - Jiro 4y ago
      The reason that this is considered a failure mode is that these systems are set up so that you can't just ignore activists who speak for, or claim to be speaking for, an approved minority. Just saying "no, I'm going to ignore your demands" gets you hurt, because you are required to take positive action.

mynameishere 4y ago

paulryanrogers 4y ago
Hermaphrodites aren't suffering from a disorder. They're just born different than most. If you took the time to get to know some you'll see they are just as deserving of consideration as you.
- akomtu 4y ago
  Are there actual hermaphrodites these days? Some literature about religions mentions in passing that humans were hermaphrodites eons ago, they are strongly dimorphic now, because that's the midpoint of our evolution, and we will be hermaphrodites in the far future.
- murderfs 4y ago
  > Hermaphrodites aren't suffering from a disorder. They're just born different than most. That is the literal definition of disorder.
- prepend 4y ago
  I’m not sure use of chest-feeding vs breast-feeding matters much for hermaphrodites.
hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
You can get your message through without a recourse to obscene language.

icare_1er 4y ago

We're not talking 95%/5% here, more 99.99995 / 0.00005%. And trying to even argue that men cannot be pregnant is even doing too much. It is as insane as trying to "debate" whether the earth is round.

adammarples 4y ago
The earth is not perfectly round, it's an oblate spheroid with a rough surface. How non-round is the earth? About 0.3%...
- throwaway821909 4y ago
  This feels like it proves the point, I believe this is true, but yet, for all situations that aren't very specific and technical, the earth is round, and saying otherwise will cause more confusion->harm than good.
JBits 4y ago
We're talking about trans men getting pregnant, not trans women. While trans men are a minority, those percentages are multiple orders of magnitude too small.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  Lets just say that while a transman is pregnant are an honorary woman. Problem solved.

a_c 4y ago

It's like one day you decided to build a company that needs a website. The first task you come up with is accessibility and i18n. Good luck with that. My heuristics is, are we serving the main audience, are we serving them well, can we expand the audience, can we expand the audience without harming the main audience. There is another comment mentioned about ramp. I think it is a good example where serving the extended audience (wheel chair user) is not harming the experience of main audience (non-wheel chair user). On the other hand, OP's article is about using gender neutral term on parenting/pregnancy websites where the main audience should be, well, women women and men men, that the article should lay its focus on. A related concept is the paradox of tolerance [1]. We demand ourselves to be ever inclusive like the dodo [2]. All the dodos got eaten at last. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo

skim_milk 4y ago

Political data would suggest that we aren't actually being more empathic or accommodating, actually, the exact opposite! Online communities are extremely disproportionally composed of people who fall into the Cluster B/emotionally dysregulated/CPTSD spectrum. Internet addiction or "Internet Use Disorder" is nearly entirely composed of people in this camp. Same goes for trans people - this isn't an insult but an objective observation that these people need mental health help. To drive the point home - my ex-girlfriend worked at a mental institution for children and the majority all of them were trans and/or had BPD/Cluster B/CPTSD etc etc. At one point, all 5 children in their unit were trans! Leadership should not use Internet communities as the north star for guiding the culture shifts of wider society, it will obviously lead to (to use a British understatement) social friction. We risk crumbling the institution of science and higher education due to catering to the wants of Cluster B, all just so these people can move on to the next subject to split into good and evil parts. The focus should be on providing help to Cluster B, NOT about letting them take control of society and crumble all of our institutions to pieces over dissociative morality plays, making everyone's health worse in the process.

Mountain_Skies 4y ago
Politicians, like many performers, are addicted to attention. Perhaps as much as they're addicted to power. The Internet is irresistible catnip for them and part of the reason why the chronically online are able to have so much impact on our 'leaders'.
eternalban 4y ago
I agree with everything here but the presumption that "Leadership" is taking its cues from "internet communities" does not compute for me. I for one am not so sure this so-called "leadership" cares for family, as a social unit. Accordingly, there is (for me at least) the possibility that this "leadership" is using a pretext to achieve related but orthogonal goals, since purely on rational, moral, and ethical basis, causing this much social division and disruption over this niche issue does not make any sense.
- skim_milk 4y ago

isthisthingon99 4y ago

Nassim Taleb has an article about this but I can't remember the name. Something like tyranny of the minority. Worth a read. The main idea is the most vocal, intolerant minority runs the world.

remarkEon 4y ago
One of my favorite essays. “The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority” https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
- isthisthingon99 4y ago
  That's the one. Nassim has blocked me on twitter so I refuse to google for his stuff.
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    Taleb is a prick, and is "right" much less often than he thinks. Still, the Incerto series is a good read.
    - isthisthingon99 4y ago
      Yes, I cannot deny that his writings have had a real influence in the way I live my life.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

>My questions is how do you decide where to make that trade off? If I were dictator the first step would be to round up and deport to labor camps all the people who misrepresent "small, diffuse and hard to quantify" as zero. So much BS in modern society in all areas and subject matters is predicated on this fallacy. Second step would be to go about making an attempt at quantifying the cost.

klarstrup 4y ago

It is unclear to me what concession is being made by way of accurate language?

HyperSane 4y ago
What is a woman?
- klarstrup 4y ago
  A woman is someone who sees in herself at least one attribute, which she regards as a sufficient condition for her own membership in that category. What that attribute is can vary from woman to woman. The same definition applies mutatis mutandis to men. --- Now what is the concession that's being made?
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > A woman is someone who sees in herself at least one attribute, which she regards as a sufficient condition for her own membership in that category. What that attribute is can vary from woman to woman. Now what is the concession that's being made? If we had to limit ourselves to that entirely unclear definition we'd be giving up a lot, including the ability to recognize anyone as either man or woman (or even male or female) in cases where they aren't able to communicate to us whatever they've decided using made up attributes they (entirely on their own) deem sufficient to place them in one group or another. This would include every single non-living person and anyone whose physical or mental limitations prevent them from communicating or inventing that list of arbitrary attributes and then classifying each one themselves according to some unspecified process in order to determine which term should apply to them. Even just changing the definition from something that was nearly always entirely clear, easy to define objectively, and immutable, to something that is not defined, where the determining criteria can differ from one person to the next, and where the classification for a single person can change from one moment to the next is a major concession that has wide ranging implications.
  - cluedos 4y ago
    The only reason that redefinitions such as this are being proposed (and in many places, accepted) is so that some men can claim to be women, and to twist law and policy around such claims. So, as a consequence of this, we now have men in women's prisons, men in women's sports, men in women's shelters, and so on. Is this really a beneficial concession to be made?

WheelsAtLarge 4y ago

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has an interesting take on these type of controversies that is hard to argue with in his essay titled, "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority." Basically, if a small percentage of the population is motivated enough and the rest of the population is mainly indifferent to the cause then the minority will get their way. Most people have other things to do than to expend any energy on this. Plus, the magnification afforded by the internet leads to what we have. But in an interesting way, the argument has turned into minority view vs minority view. I think we'll be reading about this argument for a very very long time since no single side has an advantage over the other. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

stubybubs 4y ago

Online pregnancy literature is part of medicine. Including marginalized groups is absolutely crucial and is done or should be done in virtually all aspects of medicine. Your intake forms for a child shouldn't have spaces labelled "mother" and "father" because same sex couples exist. You don't ask a woman "what does your husband do" or a man "what does your wife do" because you never know if they're in a same sex relationship, and there is a significant history of medicine treating queer people poorly and you're at risk of ruining rapport with your patient before you even get a chance to develop it. We don't call people struggling with addiction "addicts" or "junkies" because they still deserve help, and we don't want them walking out the door because they're already suspicious that you're going to abuse them. Even outside of social denigrated groups, medicine is all about accommodating that 10% or 1% or 0.01%. I spent quite a bit of time on lectures about cystic fibrosis patients considering there are only about 40,000 people living with CF in all of the US, about 1/3200 live births. It costs real money to keep these people alive, and nobody seems to have a problem with that. Somehow "pregnant people" is an absolute deal breaker though, where we start talking about "is it worth to accommodate them?" All of this boils down to people saying "you can't say woman anymore." Except you absolutely can, if you're talking about a pregnant woman, just like you can say "husband and wife" if that applies to a married couple, because those are specific situations. But when medicine speaks, it has to speak to everyone, especially those most at risk.

selfmodruntime 4y ago
I regularly consume parenting advice for mothers. It has never hurt me, as a man. Not once. To pretend that gendered words are harmful in such a way is really ludicrous to me

selfmodruntime 4y ago

At exactly 0. To not be racist or transphobic costs me nothing. I can do it without effort. To pretend it‘s fair for them to partake in sports or to disadvantage women in favor of trans people upsets that equilibrium when it happens to the first woman. Trans people need to be accepted, not advantaged.