Too simplistic, there's more to the story, but it's not that free speech/expression ought to be ditched of course. (Once upon a time I'd have said that the only way to respond to speech is more speech.)

Not really. It’s an important point because censors ban speech, as if it was the speech that cause this or that problem. But speech has no such causal factors. The speech ought to be left alone.

My words are so consequential that you can only write in questions and sarcasm.

You didn’t even make an argument, and resort to sarcasm when challenged. Not even clever.

So a woman comes to a dinner party at my house and starts saying derogatory things about gay people, I can't ask her to leave? So I run a business and one of my employees spouts Nazi slogans in the lunch room, I can't fire him? So a member of the YMCA curses, swears, and uses inappropriate language, they can't revoke his membership? Of course speech has consequences.

It’s up to you. That’s the point. You determine your actions, and therefor any penalties you dish out are the consequence of your principles and decisions, not of the words. Sorry, but speech does not have the consequences you claim it does.

No, that’s not what I’m saying. A figurative statement is not to be taken literally.

What do you think I’m saying?

But you said it is something the Chinese say, when one can go out and ask Chinese people if this is true and find various opinions. At any rate, Methodological collectivism is no more than the application of hasty generalizations.

That’s the necessary result in that kind of thinking, and yours. One can say with more confidence that that is not what the Chinese say, but what communists say.

Well, we’re all of a certain species, is basically what I’m saying.

According to me.

James Baldwin’s “Giovanni's Room” was replete with white people, his protagonist a blonde-haired, white man. “Who cares,” in my opinion—we ought to be able to relate to and empathize with people who do not look like us—but as I recall it caused a bit of controversy among identity politicians, which is by now to be expected, and in my encouraged. The culture lines should be erased, not drawn.

free speech doesn't itself mean free of consequences

I’ve always despised this statement. It’s untrue and is often used to justify censorship.

Free speech does mean speech is free from consequences, and it ought to be treated that way. Censorship, for instance, is the consequence of people who do not like some kinds of speech. It is not the consequence of the speech itself, nor could it be. Being “called out” or “de-platformed” is the consequence of the censor, not the speaker. The censorship of Socrates was not the consequence of his speech, but of the fear of lesser men.

Parler was denied access to the app stores, to Amazon web servers, and the concerted effort to suppress its rise worked quite well.

The irony is that to identify with group identities is to misidentify, to find affinity with some ideal or stereotypical identity in order to disguise one’s real identity, which can be described in greater detail with any state I.D. card.

There is an interesting inversion there. Mishima saw suicide and death in battle as an act of solidarity with the group, a sort of morbid collectivism. I’m not sure how much his views on suicide extend to the culture at large, but retaining or regaining one’s honor through suicide, like Seppuku, similarly implies a primacy towards group dynamics. On the other hand, Western conceptions like those found in Plato or Aquinas regard suicide as unfavorable to the group, bad for the State, and so on.

Mishima’s Sun and Steel hints that suicide, or death in battle, was an aesthetic and romantic act. His philosophy on the topic is nebulous but quite profound, in my mind, at least as much as its English translation affords me.

The subtle contradiction between self-awareness and existence began to trouble me.

I reasoned that if one wants to identify seeing and existing, the nature of the self-awareness should be made as centripetal as possible. If only one can direct the eye of self-awareness so intently towards the interior and the self that self-awareness forgets the outer forms of existence, then one can “exist” as surely as the “I” in Amiel’s Diary. But this existence is of an odd kind, like a transparent apple whose core is fully visible from the outside; and the only endorsement of such existence lies in words. It is the classical type of existence experienced by the solitary, humanistic man of letters. . . .

But one also comes across a type of self-awareness that concerns itself exclusively with the form of things. For this type of self-awareness, the antinomy between seeing and existing is decisive, since it involves the question of how the core of the apple can be seen through the ordinary, red, opaque skin, and also how the eye that looks at that glossy red apple from the outside can penetrate into the apple and itself become the core. The apple in this case, moreover, must have a perfectly ordinary existence, its color a healthy red.

To continue the metaphor, let us picture a single, healthy apple. This apple was not called into existence by words, nor is it possible that the core should be completely visible from the outside like Amiel’s peculiar fruit. The inside of the apple is naturally quite invisible. Thus at the heart of that apple, shut up within the flesh of the fruit, the core lurks in its wan darkness, tremblingly anxious to find some way to reassure itself that it is a perfect apple. The apple certainly exists, but to the core this existence as yet seems inadequate; if words cannot endorse it, then the only way to endorse it is with the eyes. Indeed, for the core the only sure mode of existence is to exist and to see at the same time. There is only one method of solving this contradiction. It is for a knife to be plunged deep into the apple so that it is split open and the core is exposed to the light—to the same light, that is, as the surface skin. Yet then the existence of the cut apple falls into fragments; the core of the apple sacrifices existence for the sake of seeing.

When I realized that the perfect sense of existence that disintegrated the very next moment could only be endorsed by muscle, and not by words, I was already personally enduring the fate that befell the apple. Admittedly, I could see my own muscles in the mirror. Yet seeing alone was not enough to bring me into contact with the basic roots of my sense of existence, and an immeasurable distance remained between me and the euphoric sense of pure being. Unless I rapidly closed that distance, there was little hope of bringing that sense of existence to life again. In other words, the self-awareness that I staked on muscles could not be satisfied with the darkness of the pallid flesh pressing about it as an endorsement of its existence, but, like the blind core of the apple, was driven to crave certain proof of its existence so fiercely that it was bound, sooner or later, to destroy that existence. Oh, the fierce longing simply to see, without words!

The eye of self-awareness, used as it is to keeping a watch on the invisible self in an essentially centripetal fashion and via the good offices of words, does not place sufficient trust in visible things such as muscles. Inevitably, it addresses the muscles as follows:

“I admit you do not seem to be a illusion. But if so, I would like you to show how you function in order to live and move; show me your proper functions and how you fulfill your proper aims.”

Thus the muscles start working in accordance with the demands of self-awareness; but in order to make the action exist unequivocally, a hypothetical enemy outside the muscles is necessary, and for the hypothetical enemy to make certain of its existence it must deal a blow to the realm of the senses fierce enough to silence the querulous complaints of self-awareness. That, precisely, is when the knife of the foe must come cutting into the flesh of the apple—or rather, the body. Blood flows, existence is destroyed, and the shattered senses give existence as a whole its first endorsement, closing the logical gap between seeing and existing... And this is death.

In this way I learned that the momentary, happy sense of existence that I had experienced that summer sunset during my life with the army could be finally endorsed only by death.

Western conceptions of suicide, I fear, are so much influenced by religion, that the aesthetic, romantic, and interesting qualities have all been stripped away. The Stoics had a better conception of suicide than the ancient Greeks and the Christians, in my mind.

I would argue that “injustice” suffers the same problem as its antonym. It has no referent, but we know it when we see it. Better to reason about states of affairs in practical terms, with focus on individual cases, on human behavior, rather than building institutions with some ideal in mind.

I don’t expect you to get on board. I could care less what others believe. I’m just saying compassion isn’t a feminine trait, but a characteristic of both men and women.

Compassion is a characteristic of men and women, and therefor not a feminine trait. End of story.

I’m talking about biological characteristics and traits. An Adam’s apple or chest hair is not feminine. Those are masculine traits, in other words, characteristic of a man. I don’t think a man with those or any other masculine traits ought to be called a woman. Anyways, that’s all I’ve been trying to say.

Dictionaries record usage, “trends” in definition, and “feminine” means “having the qualities or appearance considered to be typical of women; connected with women” (https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/feminine_1). It is synonymous with “womanly”.

Sure, the word can be applied to man, to stereotypes, to objects, and so on, but it will always be figurative. It will never be accurate.

Grammatical gender is different than natural gender. Grammatical gender is a feature of language, a way to classify words, going back thousands of years (Protagoras?).

Colours, tables, houses … the list goes on.

But the point was that it is an old term (like ‘race’) that has morphed into some other meaning depending on context.

I always understood that something is feminine if it is characteristic of, or appropriate or unique to women.

What is it that really defines a man or woman, the question seems to be. Sex alone doesn’t seem to cut it, particularly in less liberal perspectives. For instance, if a man were to act too feminine in a very macho culture they may not be considered a man and it wouldn’t be at all unusual for them to be told directly that they’re “not a man.”

If not a man, then what? Some other sex?

Feminine does not mean female any more than masculine means male.

What is feminine supposed to describe, if not females? What other objects in the world ought to be described as “feminine”?

Is your sex contrived?

I walk around and see the sexes, the biology, often despite the performative and contrived.

I imagine a feminist would know what a woman is.

I'm talking about characteristics like being aggressive or submissive, competitive or cooperative, etc

I’m just saying that’s not what I was talking about. By “acting like a woman”, I thought you meant he was effeminate in his mannerisms and dress, not adhering to your stereotypes.

But language conventions change over time, in particular English language conventions. And what you are seeing is not the eschewing of language conventions, but the change of them.

And since that change reflects societal changes happening among younger generations, I think the language changes in this instance will stick.

I also think people who grew up with the old conventions will find the new ones jarring and odd. But newer generations will take up the new conventions, and the circle of life will continue.

Perhaps it will stick. Perhaps it won’t.

So for instance a woman can only pretend to be more rational than emotional and they can't actually be more rational than emotional, going by common stereotypes?

Indipendent? It makes you wonder who comes up with these.

Anyone can alter his mannerisms, behavior, and dress to appear feminine, but acting can only go so far.

The funny thing is, if a man behaved like a women, for instance, wouldn't you tend to think of them as being feminine rather than masculine, despite what you see on the outside?

I would tend to think of them as acting feminine rather than being feminine. There is nothing feminine about chest hair or an Adam’s apple, for example, at least as far as I’m concerned.



Eschewing language conventions because one can seems to me a terrible idea, at least if we are to share a language. The same goes for pronouns. Of course, one can use whatever pronouns one likes, so long as he is willing to accept how jarring and odd it might seem to his interlocutors, but to expect others to conform to such usage is absurd.

Words are always evolving. Language belongs to the people, not to lexicographers and grammarians.

It's easy to see the distinction between gender and sex - if you look with a charitable heart.

Take the words, for all I care. One can read the distinction between gender and sex until the cows come home, but one cannot really see it outside of that domain of rhetoric, is my point.

There is some interesting confusion about the distinctions between sex and gender, between states of affairs and states of fantasy. In the mouths of trans activists and their fellow travellers the term “gender” always evokes grammatical gender, the last vestiges of old English. It’s all about pronouns and words like “women”. But in the outer display of it all, in the behavior and dress, the mimicry revolves around sex, to the point where one might seek to alter his biology, his mannerisms, his voice, to better resemble that of a female, even removing sex organs, fashioning new ones, and replacing hormones.

But even the most thorough and precise surgeries cannot erase the reality. The reification of “gender” betrays any distinction between itself and “sex”. Better to return to the language, I suppose, where some ground can be gained. It makes sense to me; along with the decline of grammatical gender in the English language, prudes would start using the term “gender” to refer to sex because of the increasing sexual connotations. Then by the disco era, feminism gets a hold of it to include roles and such. Then gender identity enters the scene. Now males can be women, females can be men, erasing any link to the origin and history of these words.

The discussion is so nuanced that it is almost unintelligible.

It looks like the commies are having a tough go of it.

“As well as the footage from Zhangjiang, other videos have captured “big whites” wrestling people to the ground and kicking them; screaming, yelling and even throwing things at residents who refuse to comply with instructions; and beating a dog to death after its owner was sent to isolation.”

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-shanghai-residents-pleas-for-help-in-covid-19-lockdown-result-in-their/

It doesn’t matter to me if you feel restricted by my definition, or that you believe my rhetoric can somehow exclude your reflection. These are your personal problems. At any rate, the aspect of my position you seek to draw attention to is pulled from thin air.

The biology, the history, the etymology lead me to one direction. No one has convinced me of another. If excluding my definition, impugning my motives, and torturing the plain meaning of language serves to preserve your penchant for nuanced discussions, have at it, but from this angle I grow closer to concluding that the suppression of an inconvenient truth is the highest duty of your kind of thinking.

“Case in point” is an illustrative example of your assertion “Stipulating a criteria, one way or the other, is a political act”. But you were unwilling or unable to say how that is the case. A poor argument.

It cannot be done for the same reason disembodied brains show no mental states. Mental states are a one-to-one ratio to states of the body as a functioning whole.

Yes. A trans woman is referred to as her/she because it makes sense to say that not because I believe they are female nor would I say they are female. ‘Woman’ is not how we refer to people anymore than man is in general conversation other than to say that ‘woman’/‘man’. In such a situation, for clarification, I would say that trans woman.

It is really not that complicated.

It’s complicated because such pronouns refer to women, not men.

We’ve seen where that has gotten us, though. Men are being allowed to compete in women’s sports, or to disrobe in their change rooms, for example. We’re forcing people to use language we would never use otherwise. We’re cutting off people’s genitalia and feeding hormones to children. We are sacrificing much more than truth.

At what point do you say, “no, that’s not a woman”?

I say that because you said that you know they are not a woman, but are willing to treat them and speak about them as if they were. Have I read it wrong?

I’m not sure it is ethical to lie for my boss, or any other person above me in any hierarchy.

I didn’t say you said anything about sacrificing truth, but you are willing to knowingly utter a falsity to preserve someone’s feelings, with little consideration to the feelings of others who identify as the opposite. I just think that behavior is less than ethical, more of a ploy to avoid confrontation than anything else.

To what extent are you down with sacrificing truth to protect someone’s feelings? I might convey in manner and dress that I am a king, but would you refer to me as “lord” and treat me as such in case you might offend my delusion?

Yes, just as a doe is an adult female of the deer species. Nothing political to see here.

His was a strange criticism and a political act at the same time. It’s no wonder truth suffers around issues such as these.