3 ms·

Maybe someone should call up "modern society" and tell them "they're doing it wrong"... Obviously, there's this correct way to "be a man", and men are "doing i

by johnea 3y ago

Maybe someone should call up "modern society" and tell them "they're doing it wrong"... Obviously, there's this correct way to "be a man", and men are "doing it wrong". This needs to be fixed! Someone should send "men" a text and 'splain it to them. In simple language of course... Again, with the meme speak illiteracy 8-( I'll go out on a limb here, and assert that there may be some men who are in fact not doing it wrong. And, at great risk to my HN social score, I would also think it's posible that some women actually are doing it wrong. In my experience, it really boils down more to being human, rather than being any particular subdivision of the species. This is the sad, racist, misogynistic reality of identityism. In fact, trying to identify as anything more specific that "human" leads to massive over-generalization, and the emergence of division and conflict. As humans, trying to view things truly objectively is impossible (since we each live in our subjective conscousness), but striving to view things objectively is essential to making any progress in understanding each other. So let's keep trying...

slowmovintarget 3y ago
> In fact, trying to identify as anything more specific that "human" leads to massive over-generalization, and the emergence of division and conflict. While I agree, in general, with your point, I think I disagree on this point. It is entirely natural, and has been for all of human history, for people to make statements about themselves like: - I am a woman - I am a physician - I am a knitting enthusiast - I am... In those ways, people sort themselves into categories, very naturally. Among the single most significant self-identifications people separate themselves into is the thing arising from their biology to produce common traits shared by distinctions of gender. If it is natural for us to say "I am a woman" or "I am a man" why would it not also be natural to speak of people in groups as men or women? What we have people struggling with is "if I am a man, as I believe, what does it mean to be a good one?" And the specificity matters, because there are traits, again driven by biology that produce statistical clusters of people who will behave differently than someone in some other group. Therefore, attempting to erase gender, or pretend that these differences don't exist and treat everyone with a single standard, is also not helpful, and in many cases harmful.

by johnea 3y ago

slowmovintarget 3y ago

> In fact, trying to identify as anything more specific that "human" leads to massive over-generalization, and the emergence of division and conflict. While I agree, in general, with your point, I think I disagree on this point. It is entirely natural, and has been for all of human history, for people to make statements about themselves like: - I am a woman - I am a physician - I am a knitting enthusiast - I am... In those ways, people sort themselves into categories, very naturally. Among the single most significant self-identifications people separate themselves into is the thing arising from their biology to produce common traits shared by distinctions of gender. If it is natural for us to say "I am a woman" or "I am a man" why would it not also be natural to speak of people in groups as men or women? What we have people struggling with is "if I am a man, as I believe, what does it mean to be a good one?" And the specificity matters, because there are traits, again driven by biology that produce statistical clusters of people who will behave differently than someone in some other group. Therefore, attempting to erase gender, or pretend that these differences don't exist and treat everyone with a single standard, is also not helpful, and in many cases harmful.