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My daughter just went to a Drag(on) party (sp???):
literally a pre-wedding party for two guys (and there was a stage drag theater contest).
My questions (being an old guy trying to fit into a new world)
1. Is it husband and wife or husband and husband (wife and wife for lesbians)?
2. Why do people do drag? and why don't they dress that way all the time if they like doing it so much?
3. I knew a 'flaming homo' in Toronto (did not know him well enough to ask questions like this): why do some guys act straight and some so feminine to outright flaming in yo' face?
Will probably remember some other questions later... does anyone have a primer?
Honestly asking.... this is all new to the guy who grew up (small town) saying "Ha...you're a homo!" without really knowing what that meant (when told about a 'circle jerk' i wondered why a bunch of guys would want to do that while thinking about women, lol).
Let the flaming begin!
**A side thought:
In the future there WILL be sex bots:
.....there will also be 'child sex bots' (and will/can child sex bots be made illegal?)... thinking about this is kind of disturbing, but i know it IS coming, sooner or later.
Will something like that take care of a pedo's needs or lead to something worse?
If you had a fully functioning sex-bot that looks/feels real with wonderful AI, would you consider never having a relationship (such as marriage) again or just stick with sex-bot?
If my wife died and i had a bot/AI that was acceptable, i might just stick with it, methinks.
Damn, my mind is going tonight!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 27 2018, @02:46AM (16 children)
If you think of and treat people as individuals, all those questions become irrelevant. They're only relevant if you play the identity politics game.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday August 27 2018, @10:26AM (15 children)
But have you seen THIS sh*t?
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-bartolomei/drag-and-pronouns_b_3384512.html [huffingtonpost.com]
WTF?
I'd be sitting at the table laughing my arse off trying to figure out what's going on and who is what!
I know, I know...just go fishing and stop worrying, lol.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 27 2018, @11:17AM
Pretty much, yup.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @12:55PM (13 children)
You've stumbled upon a question that is at the heart of the culture war, this could serve as a primer. [firstthings.com] When a project begins to unravel, we return to first principles and retrace the steps with a view to correcting the errors. The elevation of group identity over individual rights is widely seen as one such error and you're sure to be labeled with every other "-ism" and "-phobia" under the sun if you dare point that out. [huffingtonpost.co.uk] Trying to equate liberalism and individualism with racism, transphobia and Islamophobia is ridiculous when they are the absolute antithesis of group politics.
When we get to the issue of gender identity and appropriate pronouns why should we care? Why should the preferred pronouns of an individual identifying as gender #299,351 be of other peoples concern? We treat one another as individuals and retain the right to free association, we don't walk on eggshells around the childish and narcissistic projection of third party self-identity into our personal space. Those expecting people to accommodate this nonsense are being flat-out rude. We don't have to be assholes in rejecting it but we do have to reject it because it is social absurdity approaching farce.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @01:57PM (12 children)
"why should we care?"
You should only care as much as you respect the individual in question plus the social repercussions of going with/against the person's wishes.
Religion as an outside example
Every religion that I've learned about contains fantasy nonsense that is worthy of ridicule. That being said, I extend the respect I have for particular individuals to cover their religion (I won't disrespect the religion for the individual's sake). Even if I don't respect the individual, I may still tolerate the fantasy because others may impose a social cost for intolerance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @02:15PM (11 children)
I agree but where is the intolerance if someone is insisting you entertain their delusion? Likewise, respect being mutual; should you care about social repercussions when dealing with a socially inequitable transaction?
Being able to stand your ground morally and intellectually is irrelevant against the same levels of circular argumentation employed by Creationists. You're going to be slandered for refusing to defer to the baseless, assumed fallacies of people who are incapable of supporting their position in good faith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @03:20PM (10 children)
"where is the intolerance"
If someone prefers that you refer to them as "she" and you refuse to do so, then you are demonstrating that you don't respect their beliefs about who they are. In other words, you do not tolerate the fact that their definition is different from yours or you insist that you know better than they do.
"should you care about social repercussions when dealing with a socially inequitable transaction?"
You'll have to deal with the repercussions whether or not it is fair.
Religion is a simple example where you may not share someone's beliefs, but you do not bother arguing with them whenever gods come up and you do not make your lack of respect known. People who don't tolerate religion (e.g. using "sky wizard" or calling religious people delusional) are often judged as rude by society and worse by the religious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @04:45PM (3 children)
Rubbish! If Donald Trump walked into the room and began demanding you address him as "God Emperor" would you do it? You cannot demand that someone refer to you as something you are not, that is the very definition of narcissistic intolerance. Where does this assumption that people are feeble minded enough to surrender their personal autonomy in acquiescence to the ego needs of others come from?
The fear of repercussions is worse than the reality. If someone wants to be silly, they can explain themselves to the court.
If you don't want your beliefs challenged, keep them to yourself. I explicitly mentioned creationism in relation to attempts to place it on the public school syllabus, the parallels should be obvious. [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @06:15PM (2 children)
"demanding you address him as "God Emperor""
That's a bad analogy for a number of reasons (closer examples would be how some refuse to acknowledge him as president or don't consider him a "real" Christian) and the topic has too much baggage.
"Where does this assumption that people are feeble minded enough to surrender their personal autonomy in acquiescence to the ego needs of others come from?"
I don't really understand why you're making this such a big deal. There isn't some gender-identity Room 101 that will torture you until your feeble mind cracks and you truly believe that someone is really a "she", even if they were born with a penis. You don't need to change your mental definition in order to be polite around others.
This is about social interaction not beliefs and that's why I keep stressing how these decisions depend on the social repercussions. You don't avoid social consequences by arguing semantics, logic, or nitpicking the denotative meaning of words.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @07:11PM (1 child)
No, it's exactly the same but let's go again. Somebody walks up to you in the street and starts a conversation before insisting you respond to their imaginary friend? You wouldn't want to be rude would you?
What if my definition of myself includes not allowing others to manipulate me into telling lies on their behalf?
In order to socially interact with others, I should dismiss my own beliefs while appeasing theirs? To be clear, we're discussing unwarranted insistence that one party in a social interaction defers to the self-identity or persona [wikipedia.org] of the other. That's not how healthy social interactions work, it contravenes the unwritten assumption of mutual respect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @08:24PM
"insisting you respond to their imaginary friend?"
Again not the best, but I'll try to run with this one. The answer depends on the social context and how much you care.
I'll give some examples to illustrate (in rough order from positive to negative repercussions) the consequences of not playing along:
1. You're with a group of like-minded in-group peers and come across a loner out-group person with an imaginary friend. You ridicule them because they're crazy and %rival sports team% sucks. +2 points for your social status among your group.
2. You're with a mixed group of peers and come across a single homeless person with an invisible rabbit friend named Harvey. You ridicule them and gain +1 from the less compassionate and -1 from the more compassionate peers.
3. You're with a group of peers and come across a child, who has an imaginary dog named "Red", and ridicule them. -1 point from your group and -5 from the kid's family.
4. With a mixed group, you come across a pastor with an imaginary friend called "Jesus". You ridicule the pastor and lose -3 from the Christians, -2 from the Muslims, -1 from the religious that don't believe in Jesus, and gain +1 from the former-Christian atheists.
5. You come across a friend walking with some family members. The friend's grandmother is with them, but she has dementia and believes that her dead husband is walking with them, though invisible. You ridicule the grandmother and she becomes a hysterical crying mess. You lose -20 points from the friend and family and an additional -5 from any within their social sphere.
"telling lies on their behalf?"
It's mainly a difference of definition and not fact.
For example, your definition of gender identity may be strictly limited to the outward presence of reproductive organs at birth, while theirs may depend on what reproductive organs they have now. Obviously, if they didn't have a penis at birth they wouldn't be considered a "he" to you no matter what happened afterwards. At the same time, even though they believe they are a "he", they don't dispute the fact that they didn't have a penis when they were born. If you argue with them about their identity and insist that they conform to your definition, then don't be surprised when you fail to change their view and only lose social points with them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 29 2018, @01:04AM (5 children)
Which on that last part, let us note, may be correct. What's missing here is the matter of reasonable expectation. As the other AC replier noted, if Donald Trump walks in a room and demands to be addressed as "God Emperor", then there's no reasonable expectation to call him that (unless he has an army of trigger-happy goons around to make the unreasonable reasonable in order to survive).
There isn't automatically a reasonable expectation set up merely because someone insists on a particular set of gender pronouns (or any other characteristic mentioned so far in this thread), particularly, if the set is unique and hard to remember.
One thing to note here is that a strategy for dealing with this is to play a different game. Open racists do this all the time. There's too often merely talk of why these are bad people and little talk of why the strategy works (namely, because the social costs of being acceptable to a group with picky standards can be higher than the social costs of their displeasure).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @02:54AM (4 children)
It's more reasonable to take someone's word on their gender than on a title (doctor, lawyer, general, emperor, god, etc.), especially if the title imposes some subordinate status to you (call me daddy, master, boss, sire, etc.).
What really changes if they are "wrong" about their gender anyway? Besides the awkwardness of following a conversation when they clearly mean something different when they say "she", what is so bothersome that it is equivalent to calling the "God Emperor"?
"play a different game"
It's the same game, just a different in-group with different social norms. You do bring up the obvious conclusion for when you don't respect the individual enough or care about others who share the same in-group: join another group. In your example, this would be the racist making the minority and minority-sympathizers an out-group and joining the openly racist social group.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 29 2018, @12:26PM (2 children)
Generally, but not always. Part of the reason complaints exist in the first place is the demand for exotic gender pronouns (like here [wikipedia.org]) that are difficult to remember and at best would apply to a small number of people.
Except that makes the game different. For example, due to those different social norms one no longer needs to care about exotic gender pronouns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @05:10PM (1 child)
Your problem is not that they're "wrong" about their gender, but that they ask to be called something that isn't intuitive to you and/or difficult to remember (non-typical pronouns)?
I feel you pain a bit on that because I'm horrible at remembering names. Names are, obviously, non-intuitive semi-unique identifiers that people are expected to remember in social settings. It's simple enough to just avoid speaking about people I don't remember or use much more general pronouns when they come up in conversation. I haven't actually interacted with someone preferring anything other than the normal pronouns (he, she, they) in person. How many times has this happened to you?
Besides our confusion over the word "game", we both understand that social groups have different norms/rules and that one of the ultimate consequences of not following norms is rejection.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 30 2018, @04:09AM
Indeed. It's important to note that there are significant cognitive constraints that make remembering a lot of gender or other preferences hard. For most people, they appear and behave in a way characteristic of their preferred gender (of the traditional two). That makes it easy to remember their preferred gender.
I'm not going to wait till it's my turn at the rhetorical or public theater guillotine before I start complaining about this particular thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @12:30PM
No, narcissism is about control and social dominance, don't let them through your interpersonal boundaries, don't subordinate yourself by accepting fantastical delusions.