Society does not exclusively associate women with biological females, obviously. That. Is. The. Point. Read the definition. Stop being an ignoramus.

You're defining biological sex over which there is no debate, not gender. We all know what biological sex is.

Here's gender:

"the condition of being a member of a group of people in a society who share particular qualities or ways of behaving which that society associates with being male, female, or another identity"

From the same dictionary.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/gender

Get it now? A potential contradiction between gender and biological sex is socially recognized, including in our dictionaries. Your ignorance of reality cannot make it disappear.

Now define "female" and "male". You'll soon discover how silly and self-defeating your approach is.

>>A "man" is what is socially recognized as a man. A "woman" is what is socially recognized as a woman. Since there is no overwhelming social consensus, it's up to us to argue one into existence. Denialism is unlikely to be the winning formula, nor is, at the other extreme, pure self-identification which reduces gender to the status of an ice cream flavour.

The sociology of gender relates primarily to social facts concerning gender, which are linguistic in nature and absent in animals. So, yes, animals have a social life but no, they are not a subject of sociology, which studies human social relationships and under which the remit of gender relations falls. And the psychology of gender relates primarily to the identity function, described earlier by @Michael, which is also absent in animals. Only biological sex has any relevance to animals. And that's not an issue here. We all know what it is. The issue is about finding a social solution to a contradiction between psychological identity and biological identity. Your Billy goat won't help us with that.

I think that's fair comment. The topic here concerns reactions to the attack and what conclusions, if any, can be drawn from those. It's a difficult enough question without a bunch of distractions that seem to be aimed at mitigating the injustice of what was done to Rushdie. If someone wants to start a thread on whether we should get behind stabbing an artist in the face because a leading religious extremist took offence to his book, they can try that elsewhere. Preferably on a forum that caters to that sort of thing.

When it comes to Trump, @NOS4A2 is mostly here for comic relief. On other topics, he says the odd sensible thing though.

It's OK for Street to label Christians rapists or defenders of rapists ("Christians", read it, not "the Catholic Church") but completely unacceptable for Hanover to ask if this attack is consistent with Islam? And all this adds up to us getting things backward? OK, sure.

As I said if you want to open a thread, feel free. Future off-topic comments will be deleted.

Nonsense, we banned one of the best posters we've ever had, @Streetlight, partly for bigotry against Christians and we've banned others for Islamophobia too. E.g.

Also, I hope no one thinks that this type of thing:

I take it for granted that Christians are vicious, vacuous, shells of human beings who actively ruin everything around them when they are not busy raping children or defending those who do.
— Streetlight

is acceptable. If you do, please do us all a favour and leave now. — Baden

Enough said.

(If you want to debate this, you can open a feedback thread but please stay on topic here. )

I did that and also saw lots of popular support in the press, which suggests broad public support.

many evanhellical groups etc all seem to be thriving pretty well today. I suppose these groups do just deliver annoying 'bee stings' to the human race when viewed as a totality but too many bee stings can kill you — universeness

E.g. About a third of Brazilians are now evangelical and this is partly why Bolsanaro still has such hardcore support even while threatening to ignore the results of the upcoming election, de facto threatening a coup.

I think the secular world must in the final analysis remain willing to fight hard against religious extremism when all other alternative non-violent approaches have been tried and have failed. — universeness

The problem is the situation is so nuanced. Religious extremism isn't standing in the middle of a field waiting to be lanced by the Knight of secularism. It's either concentrated in countries whose cultures the secular West has little or no influence over or chaotically distributed in secular countries among non-extremists who have no responsibility for it. And if we're believers in liberal democracies, we're believers in religious freedom. You can't entirely cure liberal democracies of religious fundamentalism without killing the patient along with the disease.

Other reasons for lack of condemnation among some clerics could be, e.g.:

1) Political: There is no religious justification for the act but my condemnation would be unpopular with my flock.
2) Principled: I don't want to suggest an association between the act and (my version of) Islam when no such association can be made.
3) Personal: I dislike Rushdie and those who insult Islam.

Maybe more. Anyhow, it's absolutely justified in my opinion to examine official reactions to this one way or the other.

I'm not so pessimistic. But I think it's important because if an unwillingness to condemn is for relgious reasons, i.e. If some Islamic cleric believes a condemnation would put him in conflict with his religion then by defnition he's lending credence to the idea that the attack is consistent with his religion. No need to sugarcoat that.

I think you are engaging in religious bigotry. — T Clark

I don't agree. An artist was stabbed in the face because of an official decree of a leading cleric of a major branch of a world religion. There's a lot of complexity and nuance beyond that but this cannot go unopposed and questions should be asked, so I applaud @Hanover for bringing the subject up even if I don't agree with the angle he came at it from. The angle I would take wouldn't focus excusively on Islam but use this event as an example of a wider problem--extreme religious fundamentalism, which is a stain that bleeds across different religions in different ways and is destructive in different ways. But getting back to the OP, I think it's absolutely right to expect loud condemnations from Muslim clerics worldwide.

Maybe he was drunk/stressed/hacked or maybe a mad scientist put a microchip in his brain to make him say bad things or maybe he's just exactly what he appears to be. Another of life's mysteries that the rules don't care about.

gay people are nasty plane and simple — MAYAEL

Oh, the irony...

It doesn't have to be interpreted as a negative take or mod judgement on the subject. E.g. We could say it's more convenient and efficient to have everything in one discussion. Anyhow, it took me years of careful consideration and preparation to come up with this cunning plan, so I'm not for backing down now.

This discussion was merged into Life Sucks: (General Anti-Life Thread)

the Mod comment in the OP asked for answers only. But if you wish, start a new thread, or even a debate - I'm fond of debates. — Banno

:up:

“The greatest trick the collective ever pulled was making you think it’s not you”

McStalin

Biology > Hey, my body is different to yours (yay!/we're all “individual” an’ shit)
Society > But other people’s bodies control my body (scary collective voodoo!/my hormones have a mind of their own!)
Language > And wait a second, where’d I get these words from? (scary collective voodoo!/my thoughts have a mind of their own!)

Biology/Society/Language = Your shit sandwich, aka Individual sans scare quotes aka subject.

Biology = e.g. Fruit Flies (true individuals (yay!))
Biology/Society = e.g. Ants (no, no, commooooonism!!!!)
Biology/Society/Language = People (individual expressions of the collective that can consider themselves “individuals”)

Political aspirations to a fruit fly state of being are belied by the sociolinguistic construction of the subject from those lumps of squealing flesh we call babies to those lumps of conflicted flesh we call persons.

You can’t even want to be “free” unless the "collective" allows you to so want. And when “freedom” becomes an ideology that puts itself in conflict with forms of social organisation that work well on the basis that they're not ”individual” enough then the collective's got you and your buddies by the balls and you’re collectively singin’ its tune.

But yeah, @”apokrisis” is right.

@Tate

Yes, we need to be careful about moderating stuff we're involved in. I haven't been perfect in that area either. But the consensus seems to be that the posts were off topic. So, I don't see any further action being required here.

So you agree that this was abuse of mod power. — Tate

I do... ?

How about the posts he deleted out of the climate thread. Can you review those and explain why they needed to be urgently deleted? — Tate

No. I accept the reason given that it was due to them being off-topic. If another mod deems this worthy of further investigation, I have no objection. But I don't see why you must post in a way that an OP writer says, apparently with some justification, isn't on topic.

He also deleted my posts in this feedback thread where I posted his PM's to me. I guess that's ok too? — Tate

I checked and the deleted post was a PM telling you that further off-topic posts in the climate thread would be deleted. If a mod PMs you something egregious or insulting, I think it makes sense to quote it here. Otherwise, I don't see the justification for posting a routine private message from a mod. Maybe just paraphrase it.

EDIT: To clarify, if you really must post a PM from a mod, you can. In this case though I don't see the need to resurrect the deleted post because the content is routine.

Baden was present. — Tate

For as long as it took to write those posts and then I wasn't. I may have showed up online because the tab is open, but it pretty much always is. Online doesn't mean available.

Anyhow, we tend to defer, within reason, to an OP writer's analysis of what is relevant in their discussion, whether they are a mod or not. And I don't get why it means so much to you to focus on the ice-age angle in a thread where the point is of such questionable relevance.

Do you think that's a fair assessment of what I did? — Tate

I'm just trying to clarify what being 'on topic' means — Baden

For informational purposes.

I didn't mod the thread. I'm just trying to clarify what being 'on topic' means. There's some flexibility there but that's the general thrust of it.

For example, I could start an OP asking if Napoleon's invasion of Russia was his greatest strategic blunder. If you answer with general information about Napoleon that doesn't address that specific question, you are off-topic.

Were you addressing the focus of the OP? Because it is an argumentative OP that is specifically focused on the question I mentioned. Did you attempt to answer the broad or specific questions in the OP?

The topic is not just the general subject but the focus of the OP. The topic question concerns whether it is too late to stop climate change. If you're not focusing on that argument but talking about climate in a more general way, you are off-topic.

And I agree with NOS that President Hunter Thompson is a disgrace and should be impeached (though his books are a lot of fun).

It was twenty point seven not "two point zero seven". Dude should go to jail for mathematical illiteracy.

Banned @Leghorn for refusing moderation/ignoring warnings.

:naughty:

I'm sympathetic to both sides here, if not every specific argument. I hope you all don't unnecessariiy make enemies of each other over this.

If you define a fool as anyone Street flamed, or every member of every group he made bigoted comments about then yes, but that would be foolish.

It's nice that both supporters of Street and his detractors have found a way to complain here. Maybe y'all should go camping together or something. :kiss:

If you see any members called "deletedmember" + some combination of initials, that means they requesting banning or membership removal. Otherwise, it was us that initiated it.

I don't think it's appropriate to psychologize someone who's not around to defend themselves.

:100:

Including me. I will miss his substantive posts, can't we just bring him back and force all his posts through to mod approval while deleting all the hyperbolic aggressive sanctimonious bullshit? — coolazice

No, we don't babysit posters. They follow the rules or they get banned. It's that simple.