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.
In most current fields of science; gender most likely isn't a biological thing. The APA defines it as 'socially constructed roles... that society deems appropriate', and even among biologists,The notion that gender is a binary is under question. And in addition to these studies, we have the subjective of thousands of people online and on campuses and in the world, who tell us that they don't identify with that binary. Peterson isn't discussing an ideology, but instead he's forcing these people to somehow prove the validity of their own identity to other people.
You do make a good point about psychology, but the problem is that psychology, like all sciences operating under the scientific method, can only document observable things and must infer the causes. To prove the existence of gender identity, psychology would have to link the gender spectrum to some observable behavior and infer that it is not only a possible cause, but the only cause. For someone who can't comprehend the notion of gender identity at all, this kind of proof will probably never be accepted. Even if it is possible, the wait is far too long to continue denying people's identity until some sort of definite proof is found.
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.
Honestly, a Become Immense or Mutagenic Growth ban is WotC throwing Modern off the deep end. The format will implode in on itself.
Bant Eldrazi is the best deck right now IMO since it crushes every interactive deck that isn't itself (other than the now-tier-2-and-falling Company) while being okay against linear decks, but it isn't broken good because of its bad matchups against affinity and Infect. If Infect was put in Tier 2 through bannings, Bant Eldrazi would lose its chief predator. When decks populate 15% of an open AND lose their chief predator, things hit the fan real fast.
I think SOI and EMN were fine return sets, as long as you didn't expect original innistrad. Every set since RTR has been just worse than RTR and INN block in pretty much every metric, but as long as you came in expecting that these sets weren't bad at all. SOI had good flavor IMHO (I started during Innistrad and liked the nostalgia) as well as Nahiri to jumpstart blue in Modern, and EMN, while it overkilled the Eldrazi, had a lot of good cards and a few good ones for eternal formats.
This mechanic definitely isn't the end of magic; that said, it's kinda killing my hype for this set. Things aren't all bad, of course. The flavor of meld is very interesting, and could be more so as we see more cards; flavor is one of the things I really cherished about original innistrad block, my starting set. That said, there are a few big misgivings I have with it.
Firstly, cards with it will almost definitely see no play in any eternal format (and little play in any constructed format) due to being an automatic 2 for 1 against you, and I'm hoping for interesting Grixis modern cards out of this set (to counteract GW's Standard dominance? I can dream). Of course, there's a lot of room for those in the rest of the set, but this isn't helping anything.
Secondly, it rewards luck too much in limited since you get random upside by seeing enough of both meld cards in a pair, and while I can't profess to be a limited expert, rewarding luck more doesn't sound like a good thing.
Thirdly, (and this is definitely just my opinion) it doesn't look at all like something that magic cards should do and makes me feel like wizards is reaching the "we're out of ideas, gotta do weird things" stage of Mtg's life. In fact Wotc probably isn't nearly there, but this feels a lot like that to me on a gut level.
Overall weirded out and disappointed, but still hopeful for good things out of this set.
I was hoping that this card would be a super flavorful card with sick art that wasn't really playable at all (or at least not better than ulamog); Innistrad's flavor is great and I want more, but Tron shouldn't be any stronger than it is in Modern.
Thus, this emrakul is everything that I could have ever hoped for, and I thank wizards from the bottom of my heart.
1
In most current fields of science; gender most likely isn't a biological thing. The APA defines it as 'socially constructed roles... that society deems appropriate', and even among biologists,The notion that gender is a binary is under question. And in addition to these studies, we have the subjective of thousands of people online and on campuses and in the world, who tell us that they don't identify with that binary. Peterson isn't discussing an ideology, but instead he's forcing these people to somehow prove the validity of their own identity to other people.
You do make a good point about psychology, but the problem is that psychology, like all sciences operating under the scientific method, can only document observable things and must infer the causes. To prove the existence of gender identity, psychology would have to link the gender spectrum to some observable behavior and infer that it is not only a possible cause, but the only cause. For someone who can't comprehend the notion of gender identity at all, this kind of proof will probably never be accepted. Even if it is possible, the wait is far too long to continue denying people's identity until some sort of definite proof is found.
1
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.
1
Bant Eldrazi is the best deck right now IMO since it crushes every interactive deck that isn't itself (other than the now-tier-2-and-falling Company) while being okay against linear decks, but it isn't broken good because of its bad matchups against affinity and Infect. If Infect was put in Tier 2 through bannings, Bant Eldrazi would lose its chief predator. When decks populate 15% of an open AND lose their chief predator, things hit the fan real fast.
1
1
Firstly, cards with it will almost definitely see no play in any eternal format (and little play in any constructed format) due to being an automatic 2 for 1 against you, and I'm hoping for interesting Grixis modern cards out of this set (to counteract GW's Standard dominance? I can dream). Of course, there's a lot of room for those in the rest of the set, but this isn't helping anything.
Secondly, it rewards luck too much in limited since you get random upside by seeing enough of both meld cards in a pair, and while I can't profess to be a limited expert, rewarding luck more doesn't sound like a good thing.
Thirdly, (and this is definitely just my opinion) it doesn't look at all like something that magic cards should do and makes me feel like wizards is reaching the "we're out of ideas, gotta do weird things" stage of Mtg's life. In fact Wotc probably isn't nearly there, but this feels a lot like that to me on a gut level.
Overall weirded out and disappointed, but still hopeful for good things out of this set.
1
Thus, this emrakul is everything that I could have ever hoped for, and I thank wizards from the bottom of my heart.