Its not "norm change" thats the problem. I experience the expectation to accede to pronouns as something far more significant. The crux of my resistance is not accepting that "transsexual" is real objective phenomenon because I don't believe Homo sapiens can change sex. Humans who claim they are neither male or female are even more ridiculous. I do not believe in gender identity claims. It is my view that people who claim they have changed sex are either pretending, deluded, narcissistic or mentally ill. Therefore refusing to use pronouns is a deeply felt and profound act of principle on my part to refuse to participate in a performance I find completely offensive to my values and world view.
I think this comment pinpoints the basis for the irritation in many cases. Language is being high-jacked to implicitly establish the normative nature of novel socio/political narratives without establishing the validity of those narratives. For many, this amounts to a presumptuous attempt to put words in one’s mouth in disregard of principles of free personal expression, as well as of the pluralism and tolerance implicit in a liberal democracy.
For those who disagree with transgender ideology, even making the argument that expectation to use pronouns is a new social "norm" is a sinister proposition. The push to "norm-a-lise" pronoun use has barely been around for 10 years. Whereas the grammatical conventions for referring to males and females has existed for thousands, so I reject the suggestion using prnouns is any sort of new wdely accepted "norm".
It amounts to coerced speech for me, and its disturbing that it should be couched as rudeness or ignorance if I refuse to do so
As a gender critical feminist resistence to accepting using incorrect sex pronouns is a both a political and moral act that I will continue to maintain, regardless of insinuations that I am unkind, rude, mean, a bigot, a racist or a nazi. Those names being just a few I've been called due to refusing to engage in lying about someones sex.
I read the original article in Aeon and this was my analysis at the time. I felt that the practice of changing the language (or names of buildings) to suppress political beliefs that you might disagree with is frankly Orwellian. Insisting that I use an exotic pronoun when I refer to you might cause me to roll my eyes but it doesn't really affect me. But I experience renaming ‘mothers’ to ‘birthing parents’ as an assault on my language and on my culture. It makes me angry.
Actually that turns out not to be the case. There are people who don't conform to the standard XX or XY chromosome arrangement which is the ultimate biological difference between the two sexes. There is a small proportion of babies who are developmentally intersex and their sex is arbitrarily assigned at birth.
I have a very strong belief that neither god nor anything supernatural exists. If I was to go around insisting to believers who casually express their religious/ superstitious beliefs that god/ the supernatural doesn’t exist, would that be, in your view, “a deeply felt and profound act of principle”?
I’m an agnostic (though not until my mid 30s) and have no desire to demean others for their religious beliefs. I even like to discuss them, some of my best friends are deeply committed practising Catholics.
I think you ask this question in relation to being curious why I feel comfortable showing little respect toward those who believe in transgenderism. It is because I regard the trans agenda as a dangerous ideology with no more integrity than a cult. They believe in things that are harmful to themselves, other people and society in general along with demonstrating an authoritarian arrogance that they are entitled to force their beliefs on others (claims of hate speech and misgendering being harmful, etc). Trans rights are not “human rights”, its a travesty to claim they are. I would feel the same level of revulsion if I were compelled to make the nazi salute as I would if compelled to use language that is a lie about the reality of what I perceive. XX
Personally, given the incredible atrocities that have been and still are being committed in the name of religious identity, I think that it would be incredibly difficult to make the case that contemporary views about gender are more dangerous than religious beliefs.
Since you’re willing to respect people’s religious beliefs but not their beliefs about gender, I assume you disagree with me about this. So I’m genuinely curious: Am I right to assume that you think that contemporary views about gender are more dangerous than religious beliefs, and if so, why?
Human societies have had religious beliefs since the beginning of time and conflict between the religious has always caused strife and violence. In the West over the last 300 years the rise of liberal humanism has made the power of the secular state ascendent over the Church. Our nation states have achieved a very successful balance where institutional religion is separated from the state, serving to limit and constrain belief into the private sphere and individual rights.
From my observation over 7 years transgenderism is a contemporary social contagion, there is no science or reality to support that humans are a species outside of the biological order that can change sex at will. (if it can be changed by declaration are there any known cases of people becoming the oppopsite sex against their will?) I'm in my mid 60s and wasn't aware of "hermaphrodites" until well into adulthood. I was aware of homosexuality from my teens and in the rural community I grew up in it wasn't regarded as any sort of a problem that a few people were same sex attracted. I got to know 3 or 4 trannies during the 1980s when I worked in a brothel, they were effeminate gay men who sexually serviced male clients and dressed like women. One had had the "sex change" surgery (or claimed to, I never actually saw his genitals).
The first time I realised there were men who claimed they were born in the wrong sexed body and believed were actual women was in 2017. Shortly after that JK Rowling came out with her famous statement supporting womens rights and expressing her concern how trans gender ideology was infringing on womens rights, dignity and safety. That was when I found out that people were claiming children could be born in the wrong body and should be entitled to take synthetic opposite sex hormones and have surgery to alter their bodies to better mimic the opposite sex. This has been extremely shocking to me, I also have a lesbian granddaughter who has been bullied at school that she should become a trans man. Its disgusting, infuriating and an outrage.
I am sorry this is such a long answer, but I needed to give a bit of background to explain that I understand humans will always have religious beliefs, but in our civilised western societies we have learned to contain the conflicts so that the majority of citizens can believe or not believe without overt conflicts. But I do not believe that humans changing sex is a real thing, it is a delusion. It becomes a dangerous delusion in the way that the people who do believe in it want to make it a "human right" and therefore they regard their belief as a political issue and demand it be protected in law. To do that they have to use the law to force non believers to accede to their demands in not denying what they want. Already (in 5 of the states of Australia, where I live) we have new laws that allow people to nominate sex on their birth certificates, passports, drivers licenses, etc. This enables men who say they are women to come into the spaces that are reserved for the safety and dignity of women and to demand all the other things that are set aside for the sex class of women, such as competing in our XX sports category.
In a nutshell, I can live in close proximity with religious believers (probably not Islam, I am pretty rude to Muslims) but not with the cult of transgenderism which is trying to reframe itself into a political and human rights category.
I can personally attest to the angry authoritanism of the trans lobby as I'm one of the 100s of 1000s of women they have cancelled on social media. Over the last 5 years I have banned from Twitter (reinstated a year ago after the Elon amnesty) Patreon, Pinterest and Instagram after complaints from trans rights activists. I don't get the same kind of outrage from Catholics or Protestants though I don't share their belliefs!
So what I’m hearing, to sum up what you said, is that you think that contemporary attitudes about gender are more dangerous than religious beliefs because (1) they’re newer historically than religious beliefs, (2) they’re less familiar to you, and (3) because you have less experience with religious people being socially exclusionary and interpersonally mean to you than you have with people that hold contemporary views about gender.
Does that about sum up your argument? Or am I misunderstanding something about your views?
No, you are misunderstanding my arguments and there is a significant ontological disagreement here. To me the word "gender" describes how individuals perform sex stereotypes in culture. I believe confusing the term gender with sex has lead, perhaps intentionally, to enormous disorientation. So, to clarify - its not "contemporary attitudes about gender" that concern me, it is the suggestion that gender (a subjective concept) is more important than actual binary sex. Its the political agenda of trans ideology that a self perceived designation should override corporeal physical reality that is my concern. "Trans" - the assertion that a person can change the sex their chromosomes programmed at only a few weeks gestation - is not real. It does not happen, humans cannot change sex regardless of the claims or beliefs of some people.
People who want to mimic the opposite sex have always existed in all societies but never has any society believed the persons (98% male) have actually become the opposite sex. So its not a matter of me personally being "unfamiliar" with transsexuality, it is news to the whole world that these people have transmogrified. This belief has never existed anywhere, at any time until postmodernist activists started positing it 50-60 years ago.
Religious people dont threaten my rights in contemporary society. I would be fighting them if they did. The rights that trans gender ideologues want to claim do take away existing rights. If males can become "legal" women by claiming they feel like one, what is a woman? Permitting that legal fiction technically obliterates female as a sex class. I oppose dismantling the biological definition of woman/female because I dont want to lose the rights women are entitled to as half of humanity. Transsexuals already have all the rights they are entitled to.
Footnote 4 is my absolute favourite thing on this article. It's always lovely to be reminded that science is debate and its nature is often uncertainty at the margins. Bravo!
For me, it is moral, but in a more systemic way. For example, with the trans issues, I've had no issues using people's preferred pronouns over the years, even though I think that gender that is divorced from sex is fiction, and so on. Conversely, I have a very strong negative reaction when people try to elevate these courtesies to the status of law. A government should not be compelling me to say anything, nor should it be able to punish me for saying or not saying it. That kind of thing remains the domain of regimes like the CCP and Saudis. When I add the layer of history, where women have had to fight for equality on the basis of sex and categorically NOT gender, mandates of this kind become anti-reality, anti-woman, and anti-liberal democracy for me. So, that's wholly moral. For other terms, like illegal alien vs undocumented migrants, woke, progressive, the list goes on... I use them all. Perhaps this is because I'm a libertarian, and so have much in common with both the conservatives and the progressives (and because we are more morally ambivalent, except for systemically), but it's also because these words don't attempt to change laws, and affect society in particularly deep ways. My suspicion is that the strength of the reaction depends on how the new trends are affecting society's identity, and not just individuals' personal ideologies.
What do you mean “ women have had to fight for equality on the basis of sex and categorically NOT gender”? I’m just curious, this is an interesting point to make.
Masculine, feminine, or in between did not matter when women weren't allowed to vote, open bank accounts, etc. The thing that mattered was being female. In fact, it was sex that determined gender socialisation and pushed individuals into boxes. "You're female, so you cannot go to school and you must tend to the house." for example. That's what I mean by "on the basis of sex and categorically not gender."
I personally have no objection to any of the new phrases and whatever pronouns people wish to apply. What I object to - strongly - is when this goes hand in hand with replacing and worse, disallowing the use of woman, women, mothers, breastfeeding, i.e. terms that refer to people like me, a woman, feminist, mother who gave birth and breastfed. Together with my sisters and daughters, I fought, and continue to do so, for space, recognition, safety, justice, inclusivity, you name it, not to be told that I am no longer a woman but merely a person. This to me is a twisted new morality, when I see the often akward and in several cases, actually wrong, replacements. Can we not co-exist? Or possibly do away with the term man as well and agree on all being persons with an added whatever adjective that applies to the scenario at hand?
I’m definitely not going to sign on to doing away with “man” or “woman” as terms with meaning and value. Those distinctions are fundamental to our sense of self.
I wonder how much the rise of woke is just youth rebellion - trying to justify leaving the comfortable tolerant home that their parents have strived and given up so much to provide. Each generation has to find a lever to prove their parents old-fashioned and wrong. Then when they grow up they add that to the mix so the next generation has to find something new. But there's always something more that was previously unthinkable. We've been thru smoking, not smoking, drugs, premarital sex, not getting married, casual sex, revealing dress. Now we've reached gender dysphoria.
At worst gender dysphoria only affects a small number of people. There's a much larger number of people affected by age dysphoria (it supports a whole industry) but do the woke ever express any concern for these sufferers?
The interesting thing about preferred pronouns is that they're third person, so only used behind your back. If you're not present why do you care how people refer to you? Or is it a plea for significance? That you want to think you're sufficiently important that people actually talk about you when you aren't there?
Thanks. I'll add, though, they're also used when people are in groups. I might be talking with some friends and someone might say to the group, "I really disagreed when Paul said that he ...".
It would be weird to announce them in a one-on-one conversation though.
I think while a moral element is a factor, and is more likely to lead to irritated/defensive eye rolling (perhaps BECAUSE moral transgressions have higher social costs, as an aside, "moralisation" of politics and lifestyle is likely one if the reasons for the depth of divisions: we can live with leavers if voting for Brexit is merely stupid/ technically wrong but we can't if it's evil), I think there's plenty of "not morally wrong but still wrong" -- let's call it "competence-wise wrong" eye roll situations. Change is not just moral or conventional. And "competence-wrong" change very much leads to eye roll. I get an eye roll reaction every time I see temperature expressed in F, for example. I don't think it's immoral, but I do think it's stupid and annoying. And after 25 years in the UK I still eye roll a little when confronted with separate hot and cold water taps.
All in all though, I feel your analysis is broader and less limited overall, and pinpointing the role of moral framing is important.
For example, I think we can greatly reduce the pain of adopting a new norm that people don't accept in its core aspect by presenting it and even enforcing it as "new convention" -- this is really clear with many gender critical people who are often happy use preferred pronouns of trans people they interact with even as they refuse to acknowledge that those people are "really" their preferred gender/sex.
And I suspect had I moved to the US I'd probably stop grumbling about temperature in F and just learn to translate it quickly, *as long as nobody made me praise the merits of Fahrenheit scale.*
I think that the perception-of-immorality theory fails to account for instances where norm changes are considered annoying *despite* being considered moral.
Take the they/them norm change. I use they/them for people who identify as non-binary because I believe that generally it’s moral and right to respect people’s preferences and autonomy and to make people feel accepted, cared for, and comfortable. But I can’t help but to feel at least a bit of annoyance at times due to this norm change—despite knowing and feeling that adopting the norm change is the right thing to do—because it’s simply more cognitively taxing to use they/them in an unconventional way. Growing up, I automatized using gendered pronouns to refer to concrete, singular individuals, and only used they/them as a plural or, in some instances, to refer to abstract, singular individuals (for example, “When a doctor treats a patient, THEY should try to show THEM empathy”).
Using they/them to refer to a concrete, singular person—someone that I know and, especially, someone who clearly presents as male or female—requires me to explicitly think about my pronoun usage because I haven’t yet automatized this new norm (or, if you will, it requires me to switch from the fast and easy processing of System 1 to the slower, more cognitively taxing processing of System 2), whereas, in instances of more conventional pronoun use, I can rely on my automatic processing and don’t have to use my limited working-memory capacity to deliberately find and use the correct pronouns.
In fact, I don’t dwell on, react to, or normally express the annoyance I feel due to the norm change, in part, because I think that it’s morally right to adopt the norm change. The relatively minor annoyance I feel is a price I’m happy to pay for the sake both of making others feel comfortable/ accepted and of respecting other people’s choices, wishes, and identities.
I don’t like the term “affective friction” for a host of reasons (not least of which is the illusion of explanatory depth … why do we feel annoyance? because of the feeling or “affect” of annoyance or “friction”!), so I’d use something like “high cognitive dysfluency” to explain the annoyance itself.
In fact, as this example shows, if my moral views about the they/them norm change have any affect on me, they primarily lead me to avoid voicing the annoyance I feel, since voicing it could easily and understandably (though incorrectly) lead people to think that I’m against the norm change itself and, in some contexts, violate the moral views that led me to adopt the norm change in the first place.
I think there’s probably some complex interactions involved here—for example, people are probably somewhat more likely to view norm changes that cause cognitive dysfluency to be immoral (since too much cognitive dysfluency doesn’t typically feel very good), while moral views probably mediate how much annoyance one feels due to cognitive dysfluency. (I, for example, despite feeling some
annoyance, probably feel less annoyance at this norm change than someone who views it as immoral.) Plus, my moral views about using they/them probably leads me to use this pronoun more than someone who views it as immoral, leading me to automatize it more quickly than them, which would reduce both the cognitive dysfluency and the annoyance that results from it.
In any case, I don’t think that the perception-of-immorality theory of annoyance in response to norm changes can account for the annoyance we feel; I think that it can only account for why some people voice the annoyance they feel and why some people don’t (and, like I said, it also probably mediates the annoyance itself).
Reading this with a bleary-eyed first coffee, so maybe I missed it, but I don't see much acknowledgement that norm charges, moral or no, are also (much) about jockeying for influence. This puts the eye-rolling etc. behaviour in the same space as someone disputing a Scrabble-word-choice's legitimacy. You can then discuss differences along the singularity/plurality axis, and rate tastemakers of both political stripes for their ability to tolerate more than one game being played.
While I think affective friction is an interesting concept, I think that it is mostly a concept in search of an example here. I think that the two points Paul ends with are far closer to the truth (I like progress, but is it progress or righteousness without outcome?). I roll my eyes at some of this stuff, and I feel strongly about prejudice and unfairness. I don’t think that many of these are progress. I think that they are signals in lieu of participating in progress. In other words, sincere and insincere virtue signalling, depending bc in the individual. But what is eye rolling? I think it is a response to when we judge another of having comically inflated self worth. It’s not just moral grandstanding, we also roll eyes at the mansplainer or bossy helicopter parent. They think they are better than us, but we think they are mostly hypocrites. Nobody enjoys the ignorant proselytiser. That’s why there’s eye rolling.
I think it’s not necessarily the moral aspect that causes the eye rolling. It’s like when a grammarian like myself corrects someone’s punctuation: “You should actually use a semi-colon here instead of a comma.” Or correct their spelling. “You used the wrong ‘their.’” People’s response is usually an eye roll and the phrase “Who cares, you know what I mean.” That’s what’s going on when I say “she” about a female-presenting person and am corrected to use “they.” Cmon. You know who I mean. She has breasts. Shes wearing a dress and makeup and has long hair.
It’s the annoyance that comes when you’re mostly right about something, you’ve successfully communicated your meaning despite imperfect means, and you’re being told that you didn’t *quite* get it right.
I would argue there’s a moral foundation to that that goes something like this: “it’s good and right to label things correctly and as they really are. To do otherwise is to lie.”
Or could it be that some people (especially people with an academic orientation) are made uncomfortable by an "incorrect" use of language, such as using what is usually a plural pronoun (they) for a single person, or the use of the verb "woke" rather than the adjective "awakened"? It's hard to get used to a new coinage, even if the intentions are high-minded. Very interesting discussion--thank you!
I think there’s something to that but I wonder if the reasoning at the root of that is essentially a truth claim as I mentioned in a comment lower down (something like “it’s good and right to label things correctly (as they actually are).
Here's an alternative missing element that immediately struck me upon reading your first three examples (North American in the UK, immigrant in new country, tween at a friend's house)--these are all people in a new setting, right? They know they're somewhere new, they know it's not "their" country/house, so they at least partially accept that they'll have to adapt to new things. And meanwhile nothing is changing on their home turf. (As Kelly and Westra note.)
I'm not suggesting this is conclusive either way. In fact it might support either side. I happily accept cars driving on the left in the UK (what a charming difference!) but I'd be upset if I had to cope with a sudden switch to driving on the left in my home country: "So the issue isn't morality!" Or: This other weird difference can be written off because it's France; I don't feel personally condemned by it because nothing has changed in the views or practices of those I rely on for affirmation. "So morality is at the heart of it!"
So I guess what I'm doing is suggesting that it's a good idea to keep an eye out for other variables and avoid comparing apples with oranges. For another example of this kind of problem, do those examples of terms like illegal alien or undocumented immigrant really fit here? Rather than either of them being a norm innovation, aren't they simply examples of language that reflects certain (perhaps ideological) assumptions and identifies where the speaker stands on this issue? (But if they seem to be somehow examples of the same dynamic, then does this help shed a different kind of light on this issue?)
Yes, footnote 4 is great. That said, one comment that has drawn many responses shows that morals are at least in part cultural, as that person said their moral stance is based on beliefs. And, that is why, although it may be tried, you can't legislate morality, in that you cannot publicly compel changes in private beliefs even under a coercive system.
At the same time, you can't publicly compel LACK of change, either.
Some feminists object to these terms as they imply an erasure of womanhood outright. The tide has shifted from the inclusion of a small population into established categories, into an exclusion of women in their own domains (child bearing, menstruation, etc..). It is a perversion of the original intent. The road to hell is paved with good intentions...
The entire concept of pronouns is merely a disruption tactic. There is no reality that an individual is "them". Them is plural. I wont call you clownface or cat. I will not participate in delusion.
The entire thing has back-fired. Instead of using science, to show how testosterone changes the body, how chemicals can change the brain, and empathy and understanding of peoples differences, the idiots have made delusional lines in the sand.
The world was fine, tolerance was growing, acceptance was growing, morals where accepting, but along come the idiots to remove hard fought woman rights. Along came absurdities to deflect the conversation. Along came child abuse from idiot parents. Religion is already fucking up children, we did not need another delusion to break up families and create rifts in society.
Humans have biology. Biology involves puberty. Sometimes things get a little strange and a little difficult to understand. Humans have a mind. Sometimes it gets a little strange and difficult to understand. The mind, does not override the body. The mind of the few, cannot override the minds of everyone else, for good or bad.
I do wonder, why this movement hates woman so much. With all the men wanting to be woman, and who can never be, seem to hate themselves but project it on everyone else.
If you are confused, I am sorry, you need to seek help - privately. Seeking attention and bringing your health issues (mental or physical) to the worlds attention is not good for you. We are not designed to cope with world-wide attention on our personal lives. This entire movement is making things hard for the very people making the noise.
Despite this, I have empathy, I wish all the difficult people in difficult situations the best of luck but we need to stop making children victims of things that they would never have even been part of, if it wasnt for this dreadful and stupid movement.
Kelly and Westra make a good point: moral progress can be annoying. It can cause confusion, shame, and guilt, on the way to rejoicing. Affective friction, okay. But in general, it does not cause eye-rolling. What causes eye-rolling is when progressive intellectuals like Kelly and Westra gaslight by defining net-negative norm changes, such as "sharing your pronouns" as moral progress.
How does one know whether a norm change is "good" or "bad"? I suspect we only really know years down the line when we discover the unseen ramifications of that change. This is the blind spot with progressivism. If progress itself is moral, then it has no way to see or set its own limits.
Its not "norm change" thats the problem. I experience the expectation to accede to pronouns as something far more significant. The crux of my resistance is not accepting that "transsexual" is real objective phenomenon because I don't believe Homo sapiens can change sex. Humans who claim they are neither male or female are even more ridiculous. I do not believe in gender identity claims. It is my view that people who claim they have changed sex are either pretending, deluded, narcissistic or mentally ill. Therefore refusing to use pronouns is a deeply felt and profound act of principle on my part to refuse to participate in a performance I find completely offensive to my values and world view.
I think this comment pinpoints the basis for the irritation in many cases. Language is being high-jacked to implicitly establish the normative nature of novel socio/political narratives without establishing the validity of those narratives. For many, this amounts to a presumptuous attempt to put words in one’s mouth in disregard of principles of free personal expression, as well as of the pluralism and tolerance implicit in a liberal democracy.
For those who disagree with transgender ideology, even making the argument that expectation to use pronouns is a new social "norm" is a sinister proposition. The push to "norm-a-lise" pronoun use has barely been around for 10 years. Whereas the grammatical conventions for referring to males and females has existed for thousands, so I reject the suggestion using prnouns is any sort of new wdely accepted "norm".
It amounts to coerced speech for me, and its disturbing that it should be couched as rudeness or ignorance if I refuse to do so
As a gender critical feminist resistence to accepting using incorrect sex pronouns is a both a political and moral act that I will continue to maintain, regardless of insinuations that I am unkind, rude, mean, a bigot, a racist or a nazi. Those names being just a few I've been called due to refusing to engage in lying about someones sex.
Pronouns Are Rohypnol - https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/
I read the original article in Aeon and this was my analysis at the time. I felt that the practice of changing the language (or names of buildings) to suppress political beliefs that you might disagree with is frankly Orwellian. Insisting that I use an exotic pronoun when I refer to you might cause me to roll my eyes but it doesn't really affect me. But I experience renaming ‘mothers’ to ‘birthing parents’ as an assault on my language and on my culture. It makes me angry.
Actually that turns out not to be the case. There are people who don't conform to the standard XX or XY chromosome arrangement which is the ultimate biological difference between the two sexes. There is a small proportion of babies who are developmentally intersex and their sex is arbitrarily assigned at birth.
I have a very strong belief that neither god nor anything supernatural exists. If I was to go around insisting to believers who casually express their religious/ superstitious beliefs that god/ the supernatural doesn’t exist, would that be, in your view, “a deeply felt and profound act of principle”?
I’m an agnostic (though not until my mid 30s) and have no desire to demean others for their religious beliefs. I even like to discuss them, some of my best friends are deeply committed practising Catholics.
I think you ask this question in relation to being curious why I feel comfortable showing little respect toward those who believe in transgenderism. It is because I regard the trans agenda as a dangerous ideology with no more integrity than a cult. They believe in things that are harmful to themselves, other people and society in general along with demonstrating an authoritarian arrogance that they are entitled to force their beliefs on others (claims of hate speech and misgendering being harmful, etc). Trans rights are not “human rights”, its a travesty to claim they are. I would feel the same level of revulsion if I were compelled to make the nazi salute as I would if compelled to use language that is a lie about the reality of what I perceive. XX
Personally, given the incredible atrocities that have been and still are being committed in the name of religious identity, I think that it would be incredibly difficult to make the case that contemporary views about gender are more dangerous than religious beliefs.
Since you’re willing to respect people’s religious beliefs but not their beliefs about gender, I assume you disagree with me about this. So I’m genuinely curious: Am I right to assume that you think that contemporary views about gender are more dangerous than religious beliefs, and if so, why?
Human societies have had religious beliefs since the beginning of time and conflict between the religious has always caused strife and violence. In the West over the last 300 years the rise of liberal humanism has made the power of the secular state ascendent over the Church. Our nation states have achieved a very successful balance where institutional religion is separated from the state, serving to limit and constrain belief into the private sphere and individual rights.
From my observation over 7 years transgenderism is a contemporary social contagion, there is no science or reality to support that humans are a species outside of the biological order that can change sex at will. (if it can be changed by declaration are there any known cases of people becoming the oppopsite sex against their will?) I'm in my mid 60s and wasn't aware of "hermaphrodites" until well into adulthood. I was aware of homosexuality from my teens and in the rural community I grew up in it wasn't regarded as any sort of a problem that a few people were same sex attracted. I got to know 3 or 4 trannies during the 1980s when I worked in a brothel, they were effeminate gay men who sexually serviced male clients and dressed like women. One had had the "sex change" surgery (or claimed to, I never actually saw his genitals).
The first time I realised there were men who claimed they were born in the wrong sexed body and believed were actual women was in 2017. Shortly after that JK Rowling came out with her famous statement supporting womens rights and expressing her concern how trans gender ideology was infringing on womens rights, dignity and safety. That was when I found out that people were claiming children could be born in the wrong body and should be entitled to take synthetic opposite sex hormones and have surgery to alter their bodies to better mimic the opposite sex. This has been extremely shocking to me, I also have a lesbian granddaughter who has been bullied at school that she should become a trans man. Its disgusting, infuriating and an outrage.
I am sorry this is such a long answer, but I needed to give a bit of background to explain that I understand humans will always have religious beliefs, but in our civilised western societies we have learned to contain the conflicts so that the majority of citizens can believe or not believe without overt conflicts. But I do not believe that humans changing sex is a real thing, it is a delusion. It becomes a dangerous delusion in the way that the people who do believe in it want to make it a "human right" and therefore they regard their belief as a political issue and demand it be protected in law. To do that they have to use the law to force non believers to accede to their demands in not denying what they want. Already (in 5 of the states of Australia, where I live) we have new laws that allow people to nominate sex on their birth certificates, passports, drivers licenses, etc. This enables men who say they are women to come into the spaces that are reserved for the safety and dignity of women and to demand all the other things that are set aside for the sex class of women, such as competing in our XX sports category.
In a nutshell, I can live in close proximity with religious believers (probably not Islam, I am pretty rude to Muslims) but not with the cult of transgenderism which is trying to reframe itself into a political and human rights category.
I can personally attest to the angry authoritanism of the trans lobby as I'm one of the 100s of 1000s of women they have cancelled on social media. Over the last 5 years I have banned from Twitter (reinstated a year ago after the Elon amnesty) Patreon, Pinterest and Instagram after complaints from trans rights activists. I don't get the same kind of outrage from Catholics or Protestants though I don't share their belliefs!
So what I’m hearing, to sum up what you said, is that you think that contemporary attitudes about gender are more dangerous than religious beliefs because (1) they’re newer historically than religious beliefs, (2) they’re less familiar to you, and (3) because you have less experience with religious people being socially exclusionary and interpersonally mean to you than you have with people that hold contemporary views about gender.
Does that about sum up your argument? Or am I misunderstanding something about your views?
No, you are misunderstanding my arguments and there is a significant ontological disagreement here. To me the word "gender" describes how individuals perform sex stereotypes in culture. I believe confusing the term gender with sex has lead, perhaps intentionally, to enormous disorientation. So, to clarify - its not "contemporary attitudes about gender" that concern me, it is the suggestion that gender (a subjective concept) is more important than actual binary sex. Its the political agenda of trans ideology that a self perceived designation should override corporeal physical reality that is my concern. "Trans" - the assertion that a person can change the sex their chromosomes programmed at only a few weeks gestation - is not real. It does not happen, humans cannot change sex regardless of the claims or beliefs of some people.
People who want to mimic the opposite sex have always existed in all societies but never has any society believed the persons (98% male) have actually become the opposite sex. So its not a matter of me personally being "unfamiliar" with transsexuality, it is news to the whole world that these people have transmogrified. This belief has never existed anywhere, at any time until postmodernist activists started positing it 50-60 years ago.
Religious people dont threaten my rights in contemporary society. I would be fighting them if they did. The rights that trans gender ideologues want to claim do take away existing rights. If males can become "legal" women by claiming they feel like one, what is a woman? Permitting that legal fiction technically obliterates female as a sex class. I oppose dismantling the biological definition of woman/female because I dont want to lose the rights women are entitled to as half of humanity. Transsexuals already have all the rights they are entitled to.
If you were going to try to censor them and moderate their speech you would be out of line
I completely agree. I was raising that question to pose an analogy to the original commenter.
My point being, of course, that the trans movement, is out of line.
You’re welcome to feel the way you feel.
This comment is a total non-sequitur, though.
Footnote 4 is my absolute favourite thing on this article. It's always lovely to be reminded that science is debate and its nature is often uncertainty at the margins. Bravo!
For me, it is moral, but in a more systemic way. For example, with the trans issues, I've had no issues using people's preferred pronouns over the years, even though I think that gender that is divorced from sex is fiction, and so on. Conversely, I have a very strong negative reaction when people try to elevate these courtesies to the status of law. A government should not be compelling me to say anything, nor should it be able to punish me for saying or not saying it. That kind of thing remains the domain of regimes like the CCP and Saudis. When I add the layer of history, where women have had to fight for equality on the basis of sex and categorically NOT gender, mandates of this kind become anti-reality, anti-woman, and anti-liberal democracy for me. So, that's wholly moral. For other terms, like illegal alien vs undocumented migrants, woke, progressive, the list goes on... I use them all. Perhaps this is because I'm a libertarian, and so have much in common with both the conservatives and the progressives (and because we are more morally ambivalent, except for systemically), but it's also because these words don't attempt to change laws, and affect society in particularly deep ways. My suspicion is that the strength of the reaction depends on how the new trends are affecting society's identity, and not just individuals' personal ideologies.
I agree that changing the law to enforce a new norm that is not actually normal doubles my level of resentment.
What do you mean “ women have had to fight for equality on the basis of sex and categorically NOT gender”? I’m just curious, this is an interesting point to make.
Masculine, feminine, or in between did not matter when women weren't allowed to vote, open bank accounts, etc. The thing that mattered was being female. In fact, it was sex that determined gender socialisation and pushed individuals into boxes. "You're female, so you cannot go to school and you must tend to the house." for example. That's what I mean by "on the basis of sex and categorically not gender."
Interesting discourse.
I personally have no objection to any of the new phrases and whatever pronouns people wish to apply. What I object to - strongly - is when this goes hand in hand with replacing and worse, disallowing the use of woman, women, mothers, breastfeeding, i.e. terms that refer to people like me, a woman, feminist, mother who gave birth and breastfed. Together with my sisters and daughters, I fought, and continue to do so, for space, recognition, safety, justice, inclusivity, you name it, not to be told that I am no longer a woman but merely a person. This to me is a twisted new morality, when I see the often akward and in several cases, actually wrong, replacements. Can we not co-exist? Or possibly do away with the term man as well and agree on all being persons with an added whatever adjective that applies to the scenario at hand?
I’m definitely not going to sign on to doing away with “man” or “woman” as terms with meaning and value. Those distinctions are fundamental to our sense of self.
I wonder how much the rise of woke is just youth rebellion - trying to justify leaving the comfortable tolerant home that their parents have strived and given up so much to provide. Each generation has to find a lever to prove their parents old-fashioned and wrong. Then when they grow up they add that to the mix so the next generation has to find something new. But there's always something more that was previously unthinkable. We've been thru smoking, not smoking, drugs, premarital sex, not getting married, casual sex, revealing dress. Now we've reached gender dysphoria.
At worst gender dysphoria only affects a small number of people. There's a much larger number of people affected by age dysphoria (it supports a whole industry) but do the woke ever express any concern for these sufferers?
The interesting thing about preferred pronouns is that they're third person, so only used behind your back. If you're not present why do you care how people refer to you? Or is it a plea for significance? That you want to think you're sufficiently important that people actually talk about you when you aren't there?
Thanks. I'll add, though, they're also used when people are in groups. I might be talking with some friends and someone might say to the group, "I really disagreed when Paul said that he ...".
It would be weird to announce them in a one-on-one conversation though.
I think while a moral element is a factor, and is more likely to lead to irritated/defensive eye rolling (perhaps BECAUSE moral transgressions have higher social costs, as an aside, "moralisation" of politics and lifestyle is likely one if the reasons for the depth of divisions: we can live with leavers if voting for Brexit is merely stupid/ technically wrong but we can't if it's evil), I think there's plenty of "not morally wrong but still wrong" -- let's call it "competence-wise wrong" eye roll situations. Change is not just moral or conventional. And "competence-wrong" change very much leads to eye roll. I get an eye roll reaction every time I see temperature expressed in F, for example. I don't think it's immoral, but I do think it's stupid and annoying. And after 25 years in the UK I still eye roll a little when confronted with separate hot and cold water taps.
All in all though, I feel your analysis is broader and less limited overall, and pinpointing the role of moral framing is important.
For example, I think we can greatly reduce the pain of adopting a new norm that people don't accept in its core aspect by presenting it and even enforcing it as "new convention" -- this is really clear with many gender critical people who are often happy use preferred pronouns of trans people they interact with even as they refuse to acknowledge that those people are "really" their preferred gender/sex.
And I suspect had I moved to the US I'd probably stop grumbling about temperature in F and just learn to translate it quickly, *as long as nobody made me praise the merits of Fahrenheit scale.*
I think that the perception-of-immorality theory fails to account for instances where norm changes are considered annoying *despite* being considered moral.
Take the they/them norm change. I use they/them for people who identify as non-binary because I believe that generally it’s moral and right to respect people’s preferences and autonomy and to make people feel accepted, cared for, and comfortable. But I can’t help but to feel at least a bit of annoyance at times due to this norm change—despite knowing and feeling that adopting the norm change is the right thing to do—because it’s simply more cognitively taxing to use they/them in an unconventional way. Growing up, I automatized using gendered pronouns to refer to concrete, singular individuals, and only used they/them as a plural or, in some instances, to refer to abstract, singular individuals (for example, “When a doctor treats a patient, THEY should try to show THEM empathy”).
Using they/them to refer to a concrete, singular person—someone that I know and, especially, someone who clearly presents as male or female—requires me to explicitly think about my pronoun usage because I haven’t yet automatized this new norm (or, if you will, it requires me to switch from the fast and easy processing of System 1 to the slower, more cognitively taxing processing of System 2), whereas, in instances of more conventional pronoun use, I can rely on my automatic processing and don’t have to use my limited working-memory capacity to deliberately find and use the correct pronouns.
In fact, I don’t dwell on, react to, or normally express the annoyance I feel due to the norm change, in part, because I think that it’s morally right to adopt the norm change. The relatively minor annoyance I feel is a price I’m happy to pay for the sake both of making others feel comfortable/ accepted and of respecting other people’s choices, wishes, and identities.
I don’t like the term “affective friction” for a host of reasons (not least of which is the illusion of explanatory depth … why do we feel annoyance? because of the feeling or “affect” of annoyance or “friction”!), so I’d use something like “high cognitive dysfluency” to explain the annoyance itself.
In fact, as this example shows, if my moral views about the they/them norm change have any affect on me, they primarily lead me to avoid voicing the annoyance I feel, since voicing it could easily and understandably (though incorrectly) lead people to think that I’m against the norm change itself and, in some contexts, violate the moral views that led me to adopt the norm change in the first place.
I think there’s probably some complex interactions involved here—for example, people are probably somewhat more likely to view norm changes that cause cognitive dysfluency to be immoral (since too much cognitive dysfluency doesn’t typically feel very good), while moral views probably mediate how much annoyance one feels due to cognitive dysfluency. (I, for example, despite feeling some
annoyance, probably feel less annoyance at this norm change than someone who views it as immoral.) Plus, my moral views about using they/them probably leads me to use this pronoun more than someone who views it as immoral, leading me to automatize it more quickly than them, which would reduce both the cognitive dysfluency and the annoyance that results from it.
In any case, I don’t think that the perception-of-immorality theory of annoyance in response to norm changes can account for the annoyance we feel; I think that it can only account for why some people voice the annoyance they feel and why some people don’t (and, like I said, it also probably mediates the annoyance itself).
Reading this with a bleary-eyed first coffee, so maybe I missed it, but I don't see much acknowledgement that norm charges, moral or no, are also (much) about jockeying for influence. This puts the eye-rolling etc. behaviour in the same space as someone disputing a Scrabble-word-choice's legitimacy. You can then discuss differences along the singularity/plurality axis, and rate tastemakers of both political stripes for their ability to tolerate more than one game being played.
While I think affective friction is an interesting concept, I think that it is mostly a concept in search of an example here. I think that the two points Paul ends with are far closer to the truth (I like progress, but is it progress or righteousness without outcome?). I roll my eyes at some of this stuff, and I feel strongly about prejudice and unfairness. I don’t think that many of these are progress. I think that they are signals in lieu of participating in progress. In other words, sincere and insincere virtue signalling, depending bc in the individual. But what is eye rolling? I think it is a response to when we judge another of having comically inflated self worth. It’s not just moral grandstanding, we also roll eyes at the mansplainer or bossy helicopter parent. They think they are better than us, but we think they are mostly hypocrites. Nobody enjoys the ignorant proselytiser. That’s why there’s eye rolling.
I think it’s not necessarily the moral aspect that causes the eye rolling. It’s like when a grammarian like myself corrects someone’s punctuation: “You should actually use a semi-colon here instead of a comma.” Or correct their spelling. “You used the wrong ‘their.’” People’s response is usually an eye roll and the phrase “Who cares, you know what I mean.” That’s what’s going on when I say “she” about a female-presenting person and am corrected to use “they.” Cmon. You know who I mean. She has breasts. Shes wearing a dress and makeup and has long hair.
It’s the annoyance that comes when you’re mostly right about something, you’ve successfully communicated your meaning despite imperfect means, and you’re being told that you didn’t *quite* get it right.
I would argue there’s a moral foundation to that that goes something like this: “it’s good and right to label things correctly and as they really are. To do otherwise is to lie.”
Or could it be that some people (especially people with an academic orientation) are made uncomfortable by an "incorrect" use of language, such as using what is usually a plural pronoun (they) for a single person, or the use of the verb "woke" rather than the adjective "awakened"? It's hard to get used to a new coinage, even if the intentions are high-minded. Very interesting discussion--thank you!
I think there’s something to that but I wonder if the reasoning at the root of that is essentially a truth claim as I mentioned in a comment lower down (something like “it’s good and right to label things correctly (as they actually are).
Here's an alternative missing element that immediately struck me upon reading your first three examples (North American in the UK, immigrant in new country, tween at a friend's house)--these are all people in a new setting, right? They know they're somewhere new, they know it's not "their" country/house, so they at least partially accept that they'll have to adapt to new things. And meanwhile nothing is changing on their home turf. (As Kelly and Westra note.)
I'm not suggesting this is conclusive either way. In fact it might support either side. I happily accept cars driving on the left in the UK (what a charming difference!) but I'd be upset if I had to cope with a sudden switch to driving on the left in my home country: "So the issue isn't morality!" Or: This other weird difference can be written off because it's France; I don't feel personally condemned by it because nothing has changed in the views or practices of those I rely on for affirmation. "So morality is at the heart of it!"
So I guess what I'm doing is suggesting that it's a good idea to keep an eye out for other variables and avoid comparing apples with oranges. For another example of this kind of problem, do those examples of terms like illegal alien or undocumented immigrant really fit here? Rather than either of them being a norm innovation, aren't they simply examples of language that reflects certain (perhaps ideological) assumptions and identifies where the speaker stands on this issue? (But if they seem to be somehow examples of the same dynamic, then does this help shed a different kind of light on this issue?)
Yes, footnote 4 is great. That said, one comment that has drawn many responses shows that morals are at least in part cultural, as that person said their moral stance is based on beliefs. And, that is why, although it may be tried, you can't legislate morality, in that you cannot publicly compel changes in private beliefs even under a coercive system.
At the same time, you can't publicly compel LACK of change, either.
Some feminists object to these terms as they imply an erasure of womanhood outright. The tide has shifted from the inclusion of a small population into established categories, into an exclusion of women in their own domains (child bearing, menstruation, etc..). It is a perversion of the original intent. The road to hell is paved with good intentions...
The entire concept of pronouns is merely a disruption tactic. There is no reality that an individual is "them". Them is plural. I wont call you clownface or cat. I will not participate in delusion.
The entire thing has back-fired. Instead of using science, to show how testosterone changes the body, how chemicals can change the brain, and empathy and understanding of peoples differences, the idiots have made delusional lines in the sand.
The world was fine, tolerance was growing, acceptance was growing, morals where accepting, but along come the idiots to remove hard fought woman rights. Along came absurdities to deflect the conversation. Along came child abuse from idiot parents. Religion is already fucking up children, we did not need another delusion to break up families and create rifts in society.
Humans have biology. Biology involves puberty. Sometimes things get a little strange and a little difficult to understand. Humans have a mind. Sometimes it gets a little strange and difficult to understand. The mind, does not override the body. The mind of the few, cannot override the minds of everyone else, for good or bad.
I do wonder, why this movement hates woman so much. With all the men wanting to be woman, and who can never be, seem to hate themselves but project it on everyone else.
If you are confused, I am sorry, you need to seek help - privately. Seeking attention and bringing your health issues (mental or physical) to the worlds attention is not good for you. We are not designed to cope with world-wide attention on our personal lives. This entire movement is making things hard for the very people making the noise.
Despite this, I have empathy, I wish all the difficult people in difficult situations the best of luck but we need to stop making children victims of things that they would never have even been part of, if it wasnt for this dreadful and stupid movement.
Kelly and Westra make a good point: moral progress can be annoying. It can cause confusion, shame, and guilt, on the way to rejoicing. Affective friction, okay. But in general, it does not cause eye-rolling. What causes eye-rolling is when progressive intellectuals like Kelly and Westra gaslight by defining net-negative norm changes, such as "sharing your pronouns" as moral progress.
How does one know whether a norm change is "good" or "bad"? I suspect we only really know years down the line when we discover the unseen ramifications of that change. This is the blind spot with progressivism. If progress itself is moral, then it has no way to see or set its own limits.