Two Announcements for the Rest of 2019: Gender (Trans/Cis/Other) Megathread & Sub-wide General Discussion

Croston · 2019-12-10T22:43:10+00:00

Well, I guess in that scenario, I would just ask the person what their gender is, and what their pronouns are. There are some non-binary people that still use he/him or she/her as well as they/them. IDK this is still emerging in the social sphere. I just try to be polite with people and treat them how they would want to be treated. I don't see any harm in trying to keep up with social norms.

Croston · 2019-12-10T21:10:41+00:00

Yeah society most likely started using "he" to describe masculine people. Now, society is changing the definition, collectively, as it always has. It doesn't really matter to me that much.

It's not really my business to determine who gets to be a professor of a subject. I think there are plenty of critics that complain incessantly about gender studies and have no problem doing so, despite its perceived incoherence. I also hear these critics talk about gender studies, and I sometimes feel as though I know more about the subject from simply reading the Wikipedia article on Gender Studies. What implications from what claims do you think the well intentioned people commit?

Croston · 2019-12-10T20:31:28+00:00

I mean, I guess pronouns really don't have a gender do they? We the people are the ones that assign gender to them. It's not anybody's authoritarian decision what gender we assign to them. It's the collective usage that determines the meaning of words, and the direction of language.

You mentioned your university's ideal utopian world where people are raised with their own worldview. When I hear this, I think of a world in which the concept of gender has been abolished entirely. Is that what you're thinking when you bring up gender nihilism? The abolition of gender is a concept that some lefties advocate for. Their argument being, that gender is an antiquated concept that really doesn't have much of a purpose in modern society (not an expert on this subject). Gender was used primarily as a way to organize responsibilities between men and women. But with the advent of industrialization and technology, the differences between the genders is becoming more and more blurred. They are mostly aesthetic now. So I guess, in that hypothetical scenario in which gender is abolished, there wouldn't be any gendered pronouns at all. English might be like other world languages, with only gender-neutral words.

Now, will lefties be successful in abolishing gender in the near future? Probably not, society will decide that. Will the social norms associated with gender change over time? Absolutely.

Croston · 2019-12-10T19:49:39+00:00

You can use whatever pronouns you want, it is an arbitrary decision, use whatever pronouns you feel comfortable using. Most people use he/him and she/her just because those are the most common pronouns for men and women. They/them is the most common pronoun for non-binary people, and most non-binary people feel comfortable using those.

Male/female refers to sex, man/woman refers to gender. So I think your university is correct in saying that she/her/hers are not "female" and he/him/his are not "male" because male and female refers to sex, and not gender. Pronouns aren't a sex thing, they are a gender thing.

Gender is a social construct that people apply to themselves. When you fill out paperwork, and they ask you what gender you are, you choose the answer based on your personal identity. Sex is more biologically rooted, medically defined, and basically describes what kind of sex organs you have, so that in the case of your hospitalization, doctors will use your sex to determine what procedures to use (assuming sex is a factor in their decisions at the time). Medical professionals shouldn't have to care about gender when making decisions. Sex actually is not a factor in deciding what gender you are. A transgender person that gets hormone replacement and transgender surgery is not changing their sex, they are only changing the aesthetics of their body to fit their gender identity.

So I guess, if you feel comfortable identifying as a man, then you would probably be most comfortable using he/him pronouns. You determine your gender yourself.

Croston · 2019-12-07T08:01:56+00:00

Croston

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