I don't think many people at all with boundaries of what constitutes valid pronoun that are arbitrarily determined, there are reasons why people think that sort of thing, whether or not you share those perspectives, some of which do note are not objective.
Is this... missing words, or something? I can't parse this.
I don't think many people at all with boundaries of what constitutes valid pronoun that are arbitrarily determined, there are reasons why people think that sort of thing, whether or not you share those perspectives, some of which do note are not objective.
Is this... missing words, or something? I can't parse this.
It was a bit mangled, I wrote on my phone. Should be good now.
None of these apply to the scenario I'm talking about.
None of these apply for you. I don't know what opinions some random person might have- they may have unnusual ones. And that's really the whole point- there are all sorts of opinions someone can have about this sort of issue while being within reason ethically and logically. Not all of them may be equally appreciated by larger society, but individuals can still have at least somewhat justifiable opinions outside of that. Democracy doesn't work if we do not accept others having not only differemt beliefs about the world, but values as to what is good.
None of these apply for you. I don't know what opinions some random person might have- they may have unnusual ones. And that's really the whole point- there are all sorts of opinions someone can have about this sort of issue while being within reason ethically and logically. Not all of them may be equally appreciated by larger society, but individuals can still have at least somewhat justifiable opinions outside of that. Democracy doesn't work if we do not accept others having not only differemt beliefs about the world, but values as to what is good.
Give me a break. Democracy would keep on working fine regardless of what pronouns people use for each other. This is completely ridiculous.
None of these apply for you. I don't know what opinions some random person might have- they may have unnusual ones. And that's really the whole point- there are all sorts of opinions someone can have about this sort of issue while being within reason ethically and logically. Not all of them may be equally appreciated by larger society, but individuals can still have at least somewhat justifiable opinions outside of that. Democracy doesn't work if we do not accept others having not only differemt beliefs about the world, but values as to what is good.
Give me a break. Democracy would keep on working fine regardless of what pronouns people use for each other.
That's not my point. My point is other people have different values than you and decrying those values simply because you don't share them is not really fair, productive or logical. I decry values when I have greater reasons, largely because I think them self destructive in practice.
I am saying democracy doesn't wotk when any value judgements an individual wouldn't make are considered automatically immoral.
That's not my point. My point is other people have different values than you and decrying those values simply because you don't share them is not really fair, productive or logical. I decry values when I have greater reasons, largely because I think them self destructive in practice.
I am saying democracy doesn't wotk when any value judgements an individual wouldn't make are considered automatically immoral.
If you have one group who finds it intolerable to be referred to by what they consider the wrong pronouns, and another group that finds it intolerable to refer to others by what they consider the wrong pronouns, you're going to have to give legal weight to one position or the other. That doesn't mean you're declaring the other "automatically immoral" - laws don't determine what is and is not moral.
If you don't want to give legal backing to the people who demand to be preferred to by their preferred pronouns, then you're giving legal sanction to the people who don't want to use those pronouns. There is no neutral position where we simply accept everyone's position equally.
If you have one group who finds it intolerable to be referred to by what they consider the wrong pronouns, and another group that finds it intolerable to refer to others by what they consider the wrong pronouns, you're going to have to give legal weight to one position or the other. That doesn't mean you're declaring the other "automatically immoral" - laws don't determine what is and is not moral.
If you don't want to give legal backing to the people who demand to be preferred to by their preferred pronouns, then you're giving legal sanction to the people who don't want to use those pronouns. There is no neutral position where we simply accept everyone's position equally.
I think your use of the term "legal sanction", though technically accurate, may connote a stronger endorsement than the law is actually giving. In fact legal nonintervention is the neutral position: "We're not picking winners here, just work it out like adults (because there are laws against harassment and violence)".
We've got one group in America who finds Hillary Clinton intolerable, and another group who finds Donald Trump intolerable -- the law gives legal sanction to people who support and vote for Trump, because of course it is legal to do those things, but it'd be ridiculous to say that the law is weighted in favor of Trump or otherwise not neutral.
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I think your use of the term "legal sanction", though technically accurate, may connote a stronger endorsement than the law is actually giving. In fact legal nonintervention is the neutral position: "We're not picking winners here, just work it out like adults (because there are laws against harassment and violence)".
We've got one group in America who finds Hillary Clinton intolerable, and another group who finds Donald Trump intolerable -- the law gives legal sanction to people who support and vote for Trump, because of course it is legal to do those things, but it'd be ridiculous to say that the law is weighted in favor of Trump or otherwise not neutral.
Of course the law supports people who want to vote for Trump - we go out of our way to protect the right to vote. And the law gives the same support to people who want to vote for Clinton. But these two aren't at odds - Alice can vote for Trump and Bob can vote for Clinton, and both get what they want. On the other hand, the law does not support people who find it intolerable for others to vote for Trump. If Bob says he doesn't want Alice to vote for Trump, that's tough cookies for Bob. The law takes Alice's side in that dispute.
Similarly, we go out of our way to protect the right to free speech - we give legal protection to people who want to say awful things. We even put it right at the top of our bill of rights. That's not "neutral" - that's taking sides with the people who want to say awful things over the people who don't want awful things said about them.
That's not my point. My point is other people have different values than you and decrying those values simply because you don't share them is not really fair, productive or logical. I decry values when I have greater reasons, largely because I think them self destructive in practice.
I am saying democracy doesn't wotk when any value judgements an individual wouldn't make are considered automatically immoral.
If you have one group who finds it intolerable to be referred to by what they consider the wrong pronouns, and another group that finds it intolerable to refer to others by what they consider the wrong pronouns
What I am saying both of these groups should respect the others opinion.
you're going to have to give legal weight to one position or the other.
Legal weight is not the only relevant weight. It is in fact the strongest possible one. And there are three legal positions, not two- mandating preferred pronoun use, implementing specific protections for free pronoun use, or neither. I am supporting neither- the most neutral option. This is not favoring free pronoun use because it means people can privately resolve the issue under social pressure.
Which is what I believe is the fairest option.
That doesn't mean you're declaring the other "automatically immoral" - laws don't determine what is and is not moral.
I wasn't talking about law, I was talking about people with very open views on pronouns not automatically decrying those with more restricted views simply because they have a different view. Disagreement of values doesn't have to produce contempt.
Legal weight is not the only relevant weight. It is in fact the strongest possible one. And there are three legal positions, not two- mandating preferred pronoun use, implementing specific protections for free pronoun use, or neither. I am supporting neither- the most neutral option. This is not favoring free pronoun use because it means people can privately resolve the issue under social pressure.
Which is what I believe is the fairest option.
We already have specific protections for free pronoun use - that's what freedom of speech is. If Alice wants to say "she" and Bob wants to be called "he", which is going to happen? Alice is going to win out, because the law protects her right to speak the way she sees fit. That's not neutrality - that's picking a winner. There is no neutral option here, because only one of the two can have their way, and the law has to say which it is.
The question of legislating acceptance is a fascinating and complex issue, and I won't pretend to be able to answer that definitively. However, there is a more fundamental (and infuriating) mistake being made in this debate - the idea that pronouns represent some sort of political or scientific 'ideology'.
The problem with this issue is that gender identity is purely subjective experience. To someone who has never reconsidered or thought about their gender, the difference between gender and sex is utterly immaterial in their experiences. Thus, When someone like Peterson hears someone say 'I'm a femmeboi and my pronouns are they/them/their', that makes no sense to him because gender identity is so subjective. But to the femmeboi person, this difference is a defining attribute about them, and to call that ideology is like calling someone's skin color or family tree 'ideology'.
One might say, however, 'You can't say that without scientific proof'. But in order to prove this, we'd have to peer into people's consciousness, which is only possible if consciousness is observable and thus material; this conclusion, while very possible, is by no means certain. If it were, philosophy would be light-years ahead of where it is and we'd probably be resolving the religion question before the end of the year. But we can't do that, and thus we don't know if consciousness is material (and thus scientifically observable) or fundamentally dualist/immaterial (and thus inaccessible by science). Thus, bringing science into the equation will, at least until we answer the question of consciousness, drag this argument further away from its own resolution.
In light of this inherent subjectivity, and in light of the fact that there is an entire section of psychology dealing with gender identity and many thousands of people discussing it in academic and social contexts every day, for someone like Peterson to go around saying that 'using the correct pronouns represents a political ideology' is utterly arrogant. To use the wrong pronouns is to say 'I don't recognize or accept your identity/subjective experience' and at the end of the day, how are we supposed to debate that? The debate devolves, every time, into people saying 'this is my experience' and others saying 'your experience is wrong' and that's an unwinnable debate. For Peterson to act like he can peer into a transgender person's head and dictate how 'correct' their identity is arrogant and offensive on so many levels - and I'm 100% cis.
Legal weight is not the only relevant weight. It is in fact the strongest possible one. And there are three legal positions, not two- mandating preferred pronoun use, implementing specific protections for free pronoun use, or neither. I am supporting neither- the most neutral option. This is not favoring free pronoun use because it means people can privately resolve the issue under social pressure.
Which is what I believe is the fairest option.
We already have specific protections for free pronoun use - that's what freedom of speech is.
Free speech protects you from legal consequences, it does not protect from anything else. Yes, either people are legally allowed to refuse preferred pronouns or they are not, but that's not the whole picture. There are different legal approaches to both those sides and there are other societal mechanisms here other than law.
Free speech protects you from legal consequences, it does not protect from anything else. Yes, either people are legally allowed to refuse preferred pronouns or they are not, but that's not the whole picture. There are different legal approaches to both those sides and there are other societal mechanisms here other than law.
Similarly, we go out of our way to protect the right to free speech - we give legal protection to people who want to say awful things. We even put it right at the top of our bill of rights. That's not "neutral" - that's taking sides with the people who want to say awful things over the people who don't want awful things said about them.
If that's how you conceptualize the conflict, sure, but if you conceptualize the conflict that way, then you have already taken a side, and your argument is question-begging. Conceptualize it a different way -- say, "these trans people are misrepresenting their gender, and the government is just letting them do it!" -- and it could just as easily be said that the nonintervention policy favors the other side. To both parties invested in a dispute, neutrality often looks like antagonism.
Britain and France go to war. Switzerland stays out of it. By not helping Britain, is Switzerland taking sides with the champions of French sovereignty and pride? Or by not helping France, is it taking sides with the last line of defense against Gallic arrogance? You could ask questions about the nature of the conflict, which country is the aggressor, who benefits most from Swiss nonintervention, and so on. But answering those questions are roundabout ways of picking a side, and Switzerland has decided as a matter of policy that it's simply not going to do that.
It's not just that sticking to the First Amendment is the neutral position in this particular case. The First Amendment -- indeed, the entire political philosophy of liberalism -- is fundamentally a doctrine of principled neutrality, just like Switzerland's foreign policy. It's the state declaring that (peaceful) disputes over words and ideas and convictions are categorically Not Its Problem, any more than the Chunnel or right-hand driving or whatever Britain and France are fighting over this time is Switzerland's problem. And saying that inaction in the dispute amounts to the state picking a winner is more than just begging the question by conceptualizing the dispute with a certain slant. It's resting on the hidden premise that this is a domain in which the state has some arbitrating authority, even though the state itself is explicitly saying that it doesn't. It's as if the Britons were outraged by Swiss refusal to join the war on their side because they expect and accept Switzerland as playing the deciding role in such wars, even though the Swiss haven't done anything like that since approximately the advent of gunpowder.
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[If that's how you conceptualize the conflict, sure, but if you conceptualize the conflict that way, then you have already taken a side, and your argument is question-begging. Conceptualize it a different way -- say, "these trans people are misrepresenting their gender, and the government is just letting them do it!" -- and it could just as easily be said that the nonintervention policy favors the other side. To both parties invested in a dispute, neutrality often looks like antagonism.
Britain and France go to war. Switzerland stays out of it. By not helping Britain, is Switzerland taking sides with the champions of French sovereignty and pride? Or by not helping France, is it taking sides with the last line of defense against Gallic arrogance? You could ask questions about the nature of the conflict, which country is the aggressor, who benefits most from Swiss nonintervention, and so on. But answering those questions are roundabout ways of picking a side, and Switzerland has decided as a matter of policy that it's simply not going to do that.
It's not just that sticking to the First Amendment is the neutral position in this particular case. The First Amendment -- indeed, the entire political philosophy of liberalism -- is fundamentally a doctrine of principled neutrality, just like Switzerland's foreign policy. It's the state declaring that (peaceful) disputes over words and ideas and convictions are categorically Not Its Problem, any more than the Chunnel or right-hand driving or whatever Britain and France are fighting over this time is Switzerland's problem. And saying that inaction in the dispute amounts to the state picking a winner is more than just begging the question by conceptualizing the dispute with a certain slant. It's resting on the hidden premise that this is a domain in which the state has some arbitrating authority, even though the state itself is explicitly saying that it doesn't. It's as if the Britons were outraged by Swiss refusal to join the war on their side because they expect and accept Switzerland as playing the deciding role in such wars, even though the Swiss haven't done anything like that since approximately the advent of gunpowder.
Switzerland has not claimed a monopoly on violence with regard to Britain and France. Once an entity has a monopoly on violence, non-intervention is not an option - it has already intervened by forbidding a subset of the actions available to those involved in a dispute. If it pledges not to use violence to stop certain acts, then it has taken a side in favor of those acts.
The question of legislating acceptance is a fascinating and complex issue, and I won't pretend to be able to answer that definitively. However, there is a more fundamental (and infuriating) mistake being made in this debate - the idea that pronouns represent some sort of political or scientific 'ideology'.
The problem with this issue is that gender identity is purely subjective experience. To someone who has never reconsidered or thought about their gender, the difference between gender and sex is utterly immaterial in their experiences. Thus, When someone like Peterson hears someone say 'I'm a femmeboi and my pronouns are they/them/their', that makes no sense to him because gender identity is so subjective. But to the femmeboi person, this difference is a defining attribute about them, and to call that ideology is like calling someone's skin color or family tree 'ideology'.
One might say, however, 'You can't say that without scientific proof'. But in order to prove this, we'd have to peer into people's consciousness, which is only possible if consciousness is observable and thus material; this conclusion, while very possible, is by no means certain. If it were, philosophy would be light-years ahead of where it is and we'd probably be resolving the religion question before the end of the year. But we can't do that, and thus we don't know if consciousness is material (and thus scientifically observable) or fundamentally dualist/immaterial (and thus inaccessible by science). Thus, bringing science into the equation will, at least until we answer the question of consciousness, drag this argument further away from its own resolution.
In light of this inherent subjectivity, and in light of the fact that there is an entire section of psychology dealing with gender identity and many thousands of people discussing it in academic and social contexts every day, for someone like Peterson to go around saying that 'using the correct pronouns represents a political ideology' is utterly arrogant. To use the wrong pronouns is to say 'I don't recognize or accept your identity/subjective experience' and at the end of the day, how are we supposed to debate that? The debate devolves, every time, into people saying 'this is my experience' and others saying 'your experience is wrong' and that's an unwinnable debate. For Peterson to act like he can peer into a transgender person's head and dictate how 'correct' their identity is arrogant and offensive on so many levels - and I'm 100% cis.
Gender identity is not always defined as such a loose, subjective, and open ended thing. If it were just thought of as that, Peterson's objections would be different (he has referenced this conflict between gender identity as something more biological versus this cultural sort of thing).
Also, something being a subjective thing of the mind does not mean we cannot test it- we have a whole discipline of psychology to play with here. It only limits our ability to test it, it doesn't mean we have no way of knowing.
Free speech protects you from legal consequences, it does not protect from anything else. Yes, either people are legally allowed to refuse preferred pronouns or they are not, but that's not the whole picture. There are different legal approaches to both those sides and there are other societal mechanisms here other than law.
So you agree that that's not neutrality?
No. The whole point there was that considering only legal allowance is an overly narrow view of a broader issue.
I think that legally allowing free pronoun use and not having any specific protections behind it's use is pretty neutral. It means people have the freedom to refuse preferred pronouns, but they aren't immune from any private consequences. People should be able to work this out for themselves.
If you want me to spell out my position in terms of only the point of legal allowance, it's not neutral, no. I don't care. I don't think people should have the right to determine how others have to address them, and in doing so create a huge barrier to contesting any and all new pronouns and their usage. If that means some people might get hurt because others don't address them like they'd wish to be addressed, so be it. There's no way of doing this that's going to make everybody happy.
No. The whole point there was that considering only legal allowance is an overly narrow view of a broader issue.
I think that legally allowing free pronoun use and not having any specific protections behind it's use is pretty neutral. It means people have the freedom to refuse preferred pronouns, but they aren't immune from any private consequences. People should be able to work this out for themselves.
If you want me to spell out my position in terms of only the point of legal allowance, it's not neutral, no. I don't care. I don't think people should have the right to determine how others have to address them, and in doing so create a huge barrier to contesting any and all new pronouns and their usage. If that means some people might get hurt because others don't address them like they'd wish to be addressed, so be it. There's no way of doing this that's going to make everybody happy.
People already have some right to determine how others have to address them, at least in certain circumstances, especially in the workplace. You can't, for example, choose to address your black coworkers by the n-word - it's creating a hostile work environment, and the government will step in. Do you think that's an unfair limitation? I think most people would agree that it's pretty reasonable.
It seems to me that in order to determine if calling someone by a pronoun they don't approve of is acceptable in the workplace or not, we have to make a value judgment about that act. We can't just pretend to be impartial, because we already have a system in which certain forms of address in the workplace are unacceptable. If we refuse to extend that to pronoun usage, we're saying that complaints about pronouns are illegitimate, while complaints about other words are legitimate.
No. The whole point there was that considering only legal allowance is an overly narrow view of a broader issue.
I think that legally allowing free pronoun use and not having any specific protections behind it's use is pretty neutral. It means people have the freedom to refuse preferred pronouns, but they aren't immune from any private consequences. People should be able to work this out for themselves.
If you want me to spell out my position in terms of only the point of legal allowance, it's not neutral, no. I don't care. I don't think people should have the right to determine how others have to address them, and in doing so create a huge barrier to contesting any and all new pronouns and their usage. If that means some people might get hurt because others don't address them like they'd wish to be addressed, so be it. There's no way of doing this that's going to make everybody happy.
People already have some right to determine how others have to address them, at least in certain circumstances, especially in the workplace. You can't, for example, choose to address your black coworkers by the n-word - it's creating a hostile work environment, and the government will step in. Do you think that's an unfair limitation? I think most people would agree that it's pretty reasonable.
Using 'the n-word' would not automatically incur consequences- you would most likely get consequences if you used it in a somewhat malicious way, or excessively. There are plenty of black people who are okay with others using it in a significant number of circumstances. Not all, sure, but it's not mandated that you can't use 'the n-word'. I think the same thing should be true with not using preferred pronouns- as long as it's done respectfully and considerately (such as being reserved about speaking to them using it, letting them know about your stance, asking for alternatives, having some willingness to compromise) it should not incur legal consequences.
Note also that you are comparing the use of a word to the refusal to use a word- that is a significant distinction.
It seems to me that in order to determine if calling someone by a pronoun they don't approve of is acceptable in the workplace or not, we have to make a value judgment about that act. We can't just pretend to be impartial, because we already have a system in which certain forms of address in the workplace are unacceptable. If we refuse to extend that to pronoun usage, we're saying that complaints about pronouns are illegitimate, while complaints about other words are legitimate.
Again, we can consider how it is done. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. We can be relatively impartial by looking to broader, already accepted principles about harassment and disruptive behaviour.
Using 'the n-word' would not automatically incur consequences- you would most likely get consequences if you used it in a somewhat malicious way, or excessively. There are plenty of black people who are okay with others using it in a significant number of circumstances. Not all, sure, but it's not mandated that you can't use 'the n-word'. I think the same thing should be true with not using preferred pronouns- as long as it's done respectfully and considerately (such as being reserved about speaking to them using it, letting them know about your stance, asking for alternatives, having some willingness to compromise) it should not incur legal consequences.
Note also that you are comparing the use of a word to the refusal to use a word- that is a significant distinction.
Right, so if someone complained or took offense at your use of the word, you'd have to either stop, or the government would step in and stop you. The person complaining is therefore empowered to restrict how you can refer to them. Doesn't that violate the principle you espoused a few posts ago?
Once an entity has a monopoly on violence, non-intervention is not an option - it has already intervened by forbidding a subset of the actions available to those involved in a dispute.
Using violence as a resolution to any dispute over speech is beyond the pale, state or no state. And even if it were not, the state is still not taking a side by disallowing violence, as both sides are capable of violence and both are forbidden from using it.
If it pledges not to use violence to stop certain acts, then it has taken a side in favor of those acts.
Both sides are performing acts, and the state is pledging not to stop any of them. Not just in this particular dispute, but as a blanket policy going back hundreds of years.
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Using 'the n-word' would not automatically incur consequences- you would most likely get consequences if you used it in a somewhat malicious way, or excessively. There are plenty of black people who are okay with others using it in a significant number of circumstances. Not all, sure, but it's not mandated that you can't use 'the n-word'. I think the same thing should be true with not using preferred pronouns- as long as it's done respectfully and considerately (such as being reserved about speaking to them using it, letting them know about your stance, asking for alternatives, having some willingness to compromise) it should not incur legal consequences.
Note also that you are comparing the use of a word to the refusal to use a word- that is a significant distinction.
Right, so if someone complained or took offense at your use of the word, you'd have to either stop, or the government would step in and stop you.
No, that's not what I said. I said if it wasn't done respectfully. A simple complaint or taking of offence doesn't indicate that the person was not being respectful. I'm saying if you're actually harassing them or somesuch, then go ahead with the consequences, but it shouldn't be all up the person being referred to as to what is acceptable. We already have laws and other mechanisms in place for dealing with harassment and bullying- we don't need to institute any further protections, we just need to ensure that we use those mechanisms. That's an issue I can get behind.
Using violence as a resolution to any dispute over speech is beyond the pale, state or no state. And even if it were not, the state is still not taking a side by disallowing violence, as both sides are capable of violence and both are forbidden from using it.
Whenever the government prohibits some speech, it's fundamentally doing so by threat of violence. If you disobey, you'll eventually be met with violence. Yes, it's a bit more orderly than punching someone in the mouth, but it's still violence. Whether it's "beyond the pale" is irrelevant - the way to stop speech is through violence. If the government holds a monopoly on violence, and pledges not to use it to stop some speech, it's taking a side in favor of that speech. The neutral act would be to let Bob punch Alice in the mouth for saying something he doesn't like. I'm not certainly not endorsing that option, but that's what neutrality looks like here.
The fact that both sides are capable of violence is also irrelevant. One side's objective does not require violence to achieve it, so prohibiting that side from using violence is meaningless. If I want to look through my neighbor's windows, and my neighbor wants to put up curtains to stop me, then the government is taking my side if it prohibits curtains. Even if it also prohibits curtains in my house.
Both sides are performing acts, and the state is pledging not to stop any of them. Not just in this particular dispute, but as a blanket policy going back hundreds of years.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. What acts are both sides performing? It seems to me that there is one act - the speech.
No, that's not what I said. I said if it wasn't done respectfully. A simple complaint or taking of offence doesn't indicate that the person was not being respectful. I'm saying if you're actually harassing them or somesuch, then go ahead with the consequences, but it shouldn't be all up the person being referred to as to what is acceptable. We already have laws and other mechanisms in place for dealing with harassment and bullying- we don't need to institute any further protections, we just need to ensure that we use those mechanisms. That's an issue I can get behind.
Somehow I doubt I'd get away with calling my coworkers the n-word, no matter how respectfully I said it. If they complained, and my defense was "yes, I said it, but I did so with respect!" I'd be fired in a heartbeat.
No, that's not what I said. I said if it wasn't done respectfully. A simple complaint or taking of offence doesn't indicate that the person was not being respectful. I'm saying if you're actually harassing them or somesuch, then go ahead with the consequences, but it shouldn't be all up the person being referred to as to what is acceptable. We already have laws and other mechanisms in place for dealing with harassment and bullying- we don't need to institute any further protections, we just need to ensure that we use those mechanisms. That's an issue I can get behind.
Somehow I doubt I'd get away with calling my coworkers the n-word, no matter how respectfully I said it. If they complained, and my defense was "yes, I said it, but I did so with respect!" I'd be fired in a heartbeat.
Doing it respectfully would include having some awareness of how others feel about it. And I contest that the situation would always get you fired- it very well could, I don't think it definitely would.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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It was a bit mangled, I wrote on my phone. Should be good now.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
None of these apply to the scenario I'm talking about.
None of these apply for you. I don't know what opinions some random person might have- they may have unnusual ones. And that's really the whole point- there are all sorts of opinions someone can have about this sort of issue while being within reason ethically and logically. Not all of them may be equally appreciated by larger society, but individuals can still have at least somewhat justifiable opinions outside of that. Democracy doesn't work if we do not accept others having not only differemt beliefs about the world, but values as to what is good.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Give me a break. Democracy would keep on working fine regardless of what pronouns people use for each other. This is completely ridiculous.
That's not my point. My point is other people have different values than you and decrying those values simply because you don't share them is not really fair, productive or logical. I decry values when I have greater reasons, largely because I think them self destructive in practice.
I am saying democracy doesn't wotk when any value judgements an individual wouldn't make are considered automatically immoral.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
If you have one group who finds it intolerable to be referred to by what they consider the wrong pronouns, and another group that finds it intolerable to refer to others by what they consider the wrong pronouns, you're going to have to give legal weight to one position or the other. That doesn't mean you're declaring the other "automatically immoral" - laws don't determine what is and is not moral.
If you don't want to give legal backing to the people who demand to be preferred to by their preferred pronouns, then you're giving legal sanction to the people who don't want to use those pronouns. There is no neutral position where we simply accept everyone's position equally.
I think your use of the term "legal sanction", though technically accurate, may connote a stronger endorsement than the law is actually giving. In fact legal nonintervention is the neutral position: "We're not picking winners here, just work it out like adults (because there are laws against harassment and violence)".
We've got one group in America who finds Hillary Clinton intolerable, and another group who finds Donald Trump intolerable -- the law gives legal sanction to people who support and vote for Trump, because of course it is legal to do those things, but it'd be ridiculous to say that the law is weighted in favor of Trump or otherwise not neutral.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Of course the law supports people who want to vote for Trump - we go out of our way to protect the right to vote. And the law gives the same support to people who want to vote for Clinton. But these two aren't at odds - Alice can vote for Trump and Bob can vote for Clinton, and both get what they want. On the other hand, the law does not support people who find it intolerable for others to vote for Trump. If Bob says he doesn't want Alice to vote for Trump, that's tough cookies for Bob. The law takes Alice's side in that dispute.
Similarly, we go out of our way to protect the right to free speech - we give legal protection to people who want to say awful things. We even put it right at the top of our bill of rights. That's not "neutral" - that's taking sides with the people who want to say awful things over the people who don't want awful things said about them.
What I am saying both of these groups should respect the others opinion.
Legal weight is not the only relevant weight. It is in fact the strongest possible one. And there are three legal positions, not two- mandating preferred pronoun use, implementing specific protections for free pronoun use, or neither. I am supporting neither- the most neutral option. This is not favoring free pronoun use because it means people can privately resolve the issue under social pressure.
Which is what I believe is the fairest option.
I wasn't talking about law, I was talking about people with very open views on pronouns not automatically decrying those with more restricted views simply because they have a different view. Disagreement of values doesn't have to produce contempt.
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We already have specific protections for free pronoun use - that's what freedom of speech is. If Alice wants to say "she" and Bob wants to be called "he", which is going to happen? Alice is going to win out, because the law protects her right to speak the way she sees fit. That's not neutrality - that's picking a winner. There is no neutral option here, because only one of the two can have their way, and the law has to say which it is.
The problem with this issue is that gender identity is purely subjective experience. To someone who has never reconsidered or thought about their gender, the difference between gender and sex is utterly immaterial in their experiences. Thus, When someone like Peterson hears someone say 'I'm a femmeboi and my pronouns are they/them/their', that makes no sense to him because gender identity is so subjective. But to the femmeboi person, this difference is a defining attribute about them, and to call that ideology is like calling someone's skin color or family tree 'ideology'.
One might say, however, 'You can't say that without scientific proof'. But in order to prove this, we'd have to peer into people's consciousness, which is only possible if consciousness is observable and thus material; this conclusion, while very possible, is by no means certain. If it were, philosophy would be light-years ahead of where it is and we'd probably be resolving the religion question before the end of the year. But we can't do that, and thus we don't know if consciousness is material (and thus scientifically observable) or fundamentally dualist/immaterial (and thus inaccessible by science). Thus, bringing science into the equation will, at least until we answer the question of consciousness, drag this argument further away from its own resolution.
In light of this inherent subjectivity, and in light of the fact that there is an entire section of psychology dealing with gender identity and many thousands of people discussing it in academic and social contexts every day, for someone like Peterson to go around saying that 'using the correct pronouns represents a political ideology' is utterly arrogant. To use the wrong pronouns is to say 'I don't recognize or accept your identity/subjective experience' and at the end of the day, how are we supposed to debate that? The debate devolves, every time, into people saying 'this is my experience' and others saying 'your experience is wrong' and that's an unwinnable debate. For Peterson to act like he can peer into a transgender person's head and dictate how 'correct' their identity is arrogant and offensive on so many levels - and I'm 100% cis.
Free speech protects you from legal consequences, it does not protect from anything else. Yes, either people are legally allowed to refuse preferred pronouns or they are not, but that's not the whole picture. There are different legal approaches to both those sides and there are other societal mechanisms here other than law.
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So you agree that that's not neutrality?
Britain and France go to war. Switzerland stays out of it. By not helping Britain, is Switzerland taking sides with the champions of French sovereignty and pride? Or by not helping France, is it taking sides with the last line of defense against Gallic arrogance? You could ask questions about the nature of the conflict, which country is the aggressor, who benefits most from Swiss nonintervention, and so on. But answering those questions are roundabout ways of picking a side, and Switzerland has decided as a matter of policy that it's simply not going to do that.
It's not just that sticking to the First Amendment is the neutral position in this particular case. The First Amendment -- indeed, the entire political philosophy of liberalism -- is fundamentally a doctrine of principled neutrality, just like Switzerland's foreign policy. It's the state declaring that (peaceful) disputes over words and ideas and convictions are categorically Not Its Problem, any more than the Chunnel or right-hand driving or whatever Britain and France are fighting over this time is Switzerland's problem. And saying that inaction in the dispute amounts to the state picking a winner is more than just begging the question by conceptualizing the dispute with a certain slant. It's resting on the hidden premise that this is a domain in which the state has some arbitrating authority, even though the state itself is explicitly saying that it doesn't. It's as if the Britons were outraged by Swiss refusal to join the war on their side because they expect and accept Switzerland as playing the deciding role in such wars, even though the Swiss haven't done anything like that since approximately the advent of gunpowder.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Switzerland has not claimed a monopoly on violence with regard to Britain and France. Once an entity has a monopoly on violence, non-intervention is not an option - it has already intervened by forbidding a subset of the actions available to those involved in a dispute. If it pledges not to use violence to stop certain acts, then it has taken a side in favor of those acts.
Gender identity is not always defined as such a loose, subjective, and open ended thing. If it were just thought of as that, Peterson's objections would be different (he has referenced this conflict between gender identity as something more biological versus this cultural sort of thing).
Also, something being a subjective thing of the mind does not mean we cannot test it- we have a whole discipline of psychology to play with here. It only limits our ability to test it, it doesn't mean we have no way of knowing.
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No. The whole point there was that considering only legal allowance is an overly narrow view of a broader issue.
I think that legally allowing free pronoun use and not having any specific protections behind it's use is pretty neutral. It means people have the freedom to refuse preferred pronouns, but they aren't immune from any private consequences. People should be able to work this out for themselves.
If you want me to spell out my position in terms of only the point of legal allowance, it's not neutral, no. I don't care. I don't think people should have the right to determine how others have to address them, and in doing so create a huge barrier to contesting any and all new pronouns and their usage. If that means some people might get hurt because others don't address them like they'd wish to be addressed, so be it. There's no way of doing this that's going to make everybody happy.
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People already have some right to determine how others have to address them, at least in certain circumstances, especially in the workplace. You can't, for example, choose to address your black coworkers by the n-word - it's creating a hostile work environment, and the government will step in. Do you think that's an unfair limitation? I think most people would agree that it's pretty reasonable.
It seems to me that in order to determine if calling someone by a pronoun they don't approve of is acceptable in the workplace or not, we have to make a value judgment about that act. We can't just pretend to be impartial, because we already have a system in which certain forms of address in the workplace are unacceptable. If we refuse to extend that to pronoun usage, we're saying that complaints about pronouns are illegitimate, while complaints about other words are legitimate.
Using 'the n-word' would not automatically incur consequences- you would most likely get consequences if you used it in a somewhat malicious way, or excessively. There are plenty of black people who are okay with others using it in a significant number of circumstances. Not all, sure, but it's not mandated that you can't use 'the n-word'. I think the same thing should be true with not using preferred pronouns- as long as it's done respectfully and considerately (such as being reserved about speaking to them using it, letting them know about your stance, asking for alternatives, having some willingness to compromise) it should not incur legal consequences.
Note also that you are comparing the use of a word to the refusal to use a word- that is a significant distinction.
Again, we can consider how it is done. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. We can be relatively impartial by looking to broader, already accepted principles about harassment and disruptive behaviour.
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Right, so if someone complained or took offense at your use of the word, you'd have to either stop, or the government would step in and stop you. The person complaining is therefore empowered to restrict how you can refer to them. Doesn't that violate the principle you espoused a few posts ago?
Both sides are performing acts, and the state is pledging not to stop any of them. Not just in this particular dispute, but as a blanket policy going back hundreds of years.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
No, that's not what I said. I said if it wasn't done respectfully. A simple complaint or taking of offence doesn't indicate that the person was not being respectful. I'm saying if you're actually harassing them or somesuch, then go ahead with the consequences, but it shouldn't be all up the person being referred to as to what is acceptable. We already have laws and other mechanisms in place for dealing with harassment and bullying- we don't need to institute any further protections, we just need to ensure that we use those mechanisms. That's an issue I can get behind.
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Whenever the government prohibits some speech, it's fundamentally doing so by threat of violence. If you disobey, you'll eventually be met with violence. Yes, it's a bit more orderly than punching someone in the mouth, but it's still violence. Whether it's "beyond the pale" is irrelevant - the way to stop speech is through violence. If the government holds a monopoly on violence, and pledges not to use it to stop some speech, it's taking a side in favor of that speech. The neutral act would be to let Bob punch Alice in the mouth for saying something he doesn't like. I'm not certainly not endorsing that option, but that's what neutrality looks like here.
The fact that both sides are capable of violence is also irrelevant. One side's objective does not require violence to achieve it, so prohibiting that side from using violence is meaningless. If I want to look through my neighbor's windows, and my neighbor wants to put up curtains to stop me, then the government is taking my side if it prohibits curtains. Even if it also prohibits curtains in my house.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. What acts are both sides performing? It seems to me that there is one act - the speech.
Somehow I doubt I'd get away with calling my coworkers the n-word, no matter how respectfully I said it. If they complained, and my defense was "yes, I said it, but I did so with respect!" I'd be fired in a heartbeat.
Doing it respectfully would include having some awareness of how others feel about it. And I contest that the situation would always get you fired- it very well could, I don't think it definitely would.
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