Are you concerned that trans men are going to rape women? — Leontiskos

No. I'd be more concerned about the trans man in the woman's prison, honestly. Women's prisons are brutal for assault.

Do you think someone without a natural penis can rape a woman? — Leontiskos

Legal status in Scotland no, they can't. It's "just" sexual assault {even if it's penetration} so long as a dick isn't involved. No dick, not legal rape here. Women have absolutely no trouble sexually assaulting each other in prison. The idea that penetrative sexual assault ought be considered a lesser crime than rape is also a bit specious, but I don't know if you were actually saying that.

(And if we are concerned with neither rape nor abuse, but merely "perceptions," then we have created a world with infinite potential complaints where realism and pragmatism do not even exist.) — Leontiskos

The issue has never been about the reality of rape nor abuse, as the lobbyists never gave a damn. They are instead entirely concerned with perceived personal safety of a small group of non-trans women. A tiny group of lobbyists who for some reason feel uniquely threatened by, in their view, effeminate men mainlining oestrogen who often wear dresses. And in contravention to robust estimates of real risks. The lobbyists don't give a damn about the safety of trans women or men in equal access or gendered spaces.

Instead they're weaponising the trope of women's unique vulnerability in order to express disgust for a tiny minority group.

The GRC was already an excellent screen for "foul play" for all practical purposes.

Trans men in women's prisons means there are no predators there (in terms of the 'perception'). — AmadeusD

You believe that these lobbyists see Buck Angel as a woman?

Imagine you're in a woman's prison and Buck Angel walks into the showers. A musclebound, steroid using, bodybuilder with a sixpack and thick bodyfur walks into womens' collective showers... The lobbyists absolutely short circuit when you ask them about trans men. They just haven't thought about it.

Similarly imagine you're in a bloke's prison and Remy Lacroix walks into the showers. Someone with tits walks into the bloke's showers.

Yeah, I don't see the issue. That is not what they wanted but it is socially acceptable concesssion. — AmadeusD

Well if you're willing to bite the bullet of allowing the buffet of masculinity that is Buck Angel into a space where people are terrified of men there isn't much I can say.

No one is afraid of David Smashfucker. — AmadeusD

I imagine that's where we disagree. Every single lobbyist I spoke with in the street - on their stalls - is principally concerned about women's perceived safety. They don't want trans women in women's prisons because they see trans women as latent rapists and predators - and so they'll put trans men in women's prisons, despite the fact they're putting someone they allegedly see as a woman in with a bunch of criminals and predators. They don't want trans women in women's toilets - so David Smashfucker will emerge from the ladies toilets cubicles.

The only sensible explanation is that they'd be afraid of David Smashfucker for the same reason as they'd be afraid of any man in these spaces. Because they count socially as a man, and appear as one.

There was a world where "trans woman" was a distinct protected characteristic from "woman" and the original equalities legislation was rewritten sensibly with this in mind. We don't live in that world.

The GRC perspective that Scottish courts advocated was an excellent middle ground - it isn't a subjective gender identity, you really need to put in work to get that GRC. The lobbyists had no idea how tough it was to get a GRC and also forgot trans men existed.

For real though. The lobbyists' position has resulted in the following:

1 ) Natal sex determines whether someone can receive the "woman" protected characteristic.
2 ) Trans men have female natal sex.
3 ) Trans men have the "woman" protected characteristic.
4 ) David Smashfucker is a trans man.
5 ) David Smashfucker has the "woman" protected characteristic.
6 ) If you have the "woman" protected characteristic, you are entitled to attend women's spaces.
7 ) Domestic abuse survivors groups are women's spaces.
8 ) David Smashfucker is entitled to attend domestic abuse survivors groups.

I mean David Smashfucker is in all likelihood a normal trans man, because it's not like trans men are criminals or risks or whatever, it's just that a group of people who are nervous around men are then going to be in a group therapy session with a slab of MMA practicing beef with a beard.

Which is absolutely not what they wanted. They totally forgot trans men existed.

I have. I've been across this particular issue for about a decade, quite deeply. It may seem wild that someone with as much, or more experience than you in an area might have a differing opinion, but there we are... I do :) And that's fine! — AmadeusD

Don't you live in New Zealand?

Jesus dude, cannot imagine being as totally out of touch with reality as you seem to be. Ah well. — AmadeusD

Eh. I'd trust your opinion if you'd've talked with the lobbyists as much I have in the streets. They were everywhere here.

What direct of trans would have anyone giving a fuck about any of that? — AmadeusD

The lobbyists that forced this issue in the UK courts were principally concerned with not allowing rapists in vulnerable women's spaces. If that sounds like it's totally irrelevant to anything regarding the social construction of gender or whether it's biologically essential, it is. But them's the breaks. The decision was made by and for fuckwits.

Hence, David Smashfucker the Iron Pussy attending the domestic abuse survivors group using their womanhood protections being quite funny.

While you're right in saying that there are an infinite number of infinities, the size of infinity of the fractions is a smaller infinity than the size of infinity of the reals. Moreover, this "every pair of numbers has a number strictly between them" property is a slightly different one than infinite size. That property is called density or denseness.

It was a very silly ruling. I'm sure the lobby groups intended it to work like this: trans bodybuilder who practices MMA attends domestic abuse counselling group, can't be removed due to legal protections. Terrifies people who are terrified of men, because in their hearts, guts and eyes he counts as a man.

I'm going to arrogantly say very little and assume I've solved all the thread's problems.

1 ) Physical != preceded by an event, the timing of beta decay events is random, they only have a cause in an abstract sense rather than a preceding event sense.
2) Preceded by an event != caused, even in how we use cause in explanations. People want to say things like "the tendency of a system towards its ground state causes...", even when that's not talking about a precedent event, it's talking about a "law" {an abstract generality} causing an event {a concrete particular}
3 ) Mathematised != determined, compare Norton's Dome in Newtonian mechanics {arbitrary rolling point} and any quantity associated with a distribution {anything that can be represented with a wavefunction has a wavefunction squared...}
5 ) Measurement != thought, OP grants this, so already undermines the premise in the title. This already means measurement dependence does not negate mind independence.
6 ) Physical != part of a mathematical model, like bouncing balls' amplitudes following a geometric decline only stopping in the limit.
7 ) Physical != part of a physical theory - maths objects are parts of physical theories, but not physical in the same way as quarks and chairs. The way in which an integral transform is part of a physical theory is different from the way in which an electron is, and it's this latter difference in sense that determines what is physical and what is not.
8 ) Relational != causal - come on you lot, an electron's trajectory through space is related to is charge, but its charge doesn't count as an event, so doesn't count as a cause. In the specific context of a measurement fixing an entire history of what's measured, it fixes the history of interactions, and you're going to need to equate interaction with relation with causality through some other set of arguments if you want to say relational = causal on this basis.

If these conclusions are wrong (they seem abhorrent) then the ethical value of infants is not reducible to the sentiment of parents and other "interested parties," but must be secured by something greater. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Whether they're capable of being harmed, I think, is what Practical Ethics Singer espouses. His discussion of infanticide in the book follows a related logic. The calculation done regarding the euthanisation of an infant is whether its life is substitutable for another - if the parents commit 100% to having another child and that child would almost certainly not have a deleterious health condition, then his logic regarding harm minimisation kicks in.

I don't think there's much reason to believe he'd consider the infants in your OP differently. You can already think of them in terms of potential lives in his framework - OP provides no reason to trigger the logic that Singer uses, with lots of caveats, to talk about infanticide.

excessive promotion of the ideal, — Leontiskos

To be fair to myself, I wasn't promoting any ideals, I was complaining that ideal havers are full of crap and that people who forsake unrealistic ideals are evil.

Don't get me wrong, but didn't you have more than one angle on issues in your head back then too? And it's less the landscape of thought that's different, just the distribution of beliefs through it.

That was a yikes moment. — Jamal

And you can read your old posts! We've been having the same discussions for a decade.

If I don’t like it, I won’t get very far. — T Clark

There are great diagrams.



"The Dogon Egg, and its distribution of intensities"

I imagine you'd hate him.

but I get the sense that Deleuze was doing something like this. — Jamal

I believe he was engaged in such a project in his Capitalism and Schizophrenia era. I don't know if he was before that.

knowingly fictional, — Jamal

...but a little more seriously than that. It lives in a liminal space between "self expression" and serious organization of thought. — Pneumenon

If you're approaching metaphysics like that, I think the hope is to find moorings in how things are - or how things are accepted to be -, so that your ramblings can de-fictionalize themselves in that context. You can find people trying to model plant rhizomes as Deleuze rhizomes in graduate seminars, or addicted bodies as living examples of bodies-without-organs, seemingly because those things exemplify {or otherwise "express"} the philosophical ideas.

I believe it's a trick philosophers pull when they make analogies and draw examples. The analogy and the example are secretly generative of their landscape of thought, a bit like dirt in an oyster, rather than exemplifying it. Like Simondon and his crystals, or Deleuze and his roots.

Domestically - removed the vote from lots of married women. Deporting critics of Israel. Removed the right to due process. Ignored a unanimous supreme court order.

So even though stock prices are dominating the headlines, the real, scary action is in the bond market. The nightmare scenario, which we saw play out in 2008, is that falling asset prices cause a scramble for cash, which leads to fire sales that drive prices even lower, and the whole system implodes. Suddenly, that scenario doesn’t look impossible.

And that's exactly what happened today isn't it. Hedge funds selling their treasury bonds. It's absolutely wild. The VIX is up to 2008ish levels (50ish today vs 60sh peak in 2008).

This is just a rant. Basically I think @180 Proof's diagnosed the causes. A freight train of privitization and ineffective, or corrupt, government let the rich siphon off all the wealth that working and middle class families had from the 50s through to the 2000s. A combination of Thatcher's housing policy, and her union busting politics, created a timebomb for Brits that laid dormant up until 2008, at which point disaster capitalists bought everything. Increasing privitisation of government assets - including housing thank you Thatcher - has meant that the type of people who owned assets now own what used to be government assets. And that's pretty much oligarchy. The trend is a toward Dickens.

The latest area is a plan for the government to take control of the NHS? — Jack Cummins

Yeah. NHS England is/was dissolved, and replaced with some undefined government body. That new government body also has less staff. There are further cuts to the NHS, meaning less staff to do more work.

It seems to me, so far anyway, that the government's plan doesn't change the day to day operations of the NHS in any structural fashion - it makes the government take on the old role of NHS England with less staff. So far it needs to use all the old administrative and logistical mechanisms which contributed to the bloat they want to cut.

How much of the reasons for change resistance in the NHS are due to lack of funding? Probably lots of it.

As I see it the problem is that so much money has been spent on welfare and healthcare, especially since the pandemic. Obviously, this is a large problem but quick-fix solutions are likely to be superficial and not address factors leading to increased sickness. — Jack Cummins

Our population - and especially our children - are substantially less healthy and well off than they were 30 years ago. Our life expectancies actually dropped recently, and child mortality increased. Our median government salary worker will never be able to afford a house, substantial asset holdings, on their own means.

This is largely down to years of ballooning asset prices, stagnant real wages, and more recently {last 5 or so years} massive increases in grocery prices. The CPIs say 2-5%, which is bull, supermarket staples have gone up 10-30%. Open market rent's about 50% increased in two years in some areas {in Scotland}, it's still at like 75% of a worker's income pre-tax and insurance contributions. People are stopping having kids because they can't afford them, and kids know the future's that bleak. 20% of them have long term mental health conditions. Our schools in poor areas have food and clothebanks on them, they are running out of material.

Job market wise, there's far more applicants than jobs. Entry level positions for nonspecialist, non-trade roles are at like 50-100 applications per callback. Entry to mid level specialist, but non-trade positions, which get publicly posted on the internet, can fill with applicants to interviewer capacity in less than 24h. There are people applying for hundreds of jobs a week, for years, that are qualified for - or even experienced in - roles and receive rejection after rejection. For a job that will barely make them rent. Some letting agencies screen out minimum wage workers now, despite it being paradigmatically the most common age and disproportionately the age of young workers.

This environment potentiates health and employment for no one. And I've not even talked about the long term impacts of covid. Something like 1 in 7 people in the 30-50 age bracket have been off long term sick due to complications from covid, it was mismanaged here, and our population is full of comorbidities that made it more likely. Our government's unemployment figures are fudged a bit, since if someone's been off work for more than two years {can't remember exactly how long} they get removed from the total population for the calculation - they're "economically inactive". To my understanding this got redefined to hide the full extent of the shit Britain's in.

The government believes it's fucking broke - it is - and can't spend anything - it can though. Any effective redistributive measures, and investing in the construction of social housing, and tight rental regulations especially on price in line with the Nordics would help. Our energy regulator can also get tae fuck, record profits for our providers for years, and the elderly being unable to put their heating on, and kids shivering in the night.

Edit: here's something stark for you. If you check the life expectancies in a city, between rich and poor areas... the discrepancy is now over a decade.

Enter the autonomous drones? — BC

Yeah I think they'll be rolled out as automated border police, initially, then the communities will shrink. North and South Korea already have this tech, it's also already around some military restricted zones in the USA.

Climate change is going to create increasing immigration pressure to habitable zones that have resource access. There will be a race between genetic engineering and deployment of change robust crops and the destruction of farmable land through instabilities and warming, the deployment of climate stable crops from the research centre to its periphery creates a new vector for financial colonisation. Water processing technology will be similarly distributed, the old dams burst in freak floods.

The elderly will die in droves during the summer months from heat related illness - this already began a few years ago. The demographic timebomb from plummeting global birthrates in the political north - the research centre of climate robust technology - will increasingly centralise and ultimately undermine the levers of power for climate adaptation, leading to broad popular unrest in response to starvation and growing fascist sentiment. Stymieing hopes for further adaptation.

This leaves the former rich slumped dead in their air conditioned gated communities, their corpses watched over by autonomous drones. The drones' targeting systems misfire on the piles of sunburnt bodies strewn at the gate, mistaking every leathered rictus-grin for anger.

Finally, under the sun, we rot together in absolute biological equality.

Do you have any evidence for the claim that no one is using it? That no one is reporting or recording non-crime hate incidents? — Leontiskos

Only anecdotal evidence. Almost no one I know is even aware of the law.

Love this one.

I've got a few links if you are interested, certain journalists have been following these scandals for years, but getting no interest from the mainstream media till recently. Different parties involved in policing, child services, different areas of the country have explicitly said that we didn't want to pursue these cases for fear of seeming Islamophobic. The principal journalist behind this, name escapes me currently, was coming at this from a second-wave feminist angle. — Jeremy Murray

Yeah that's fair I was mostly shit testing you to see if you said something racist, sorry. Should've just trusted.

He got famous for resisting compelled speech, a completely different thing. And he was right too, a few years after, Trudeau tried to pass a law making 'future thought crimes' illegal. — Jeremy Murray

Aye. I understand his intentions were good. I don't think its provisions were broad enough to warrant much worry about it - no one's been punished under it right? Last time I looked into it a couple of years ago anyway.

But we had a similar bill recently in the UK which I disliked. It's an anti hate speech bill which you can report someone based on hearsay, no witnesses required. Your name goes on a registry. No one uses it though. I live in a neighbourhood full of sectarian conflict, and there's racist football chants on game nights. Changes nothing.

Did you see the earliest videos, of Peterson trying to engage with protestors and getting shouted down? He was sincerely trying to engage, and they just shout him dwon. — Jeremy Murray

Yeah. Getting shot down by an unruly crowd is the point of a protest. If you're part of the mob you just get to shit on everyone who's not in the mob. Whether that's for good or ill really depends on the cause.

A willful rejection of evolutionary theory and human history? — Jeremy Murray

I'd diagnose it differently. The forms of political praxis that are popular are the ones where you can shout about stuff and do nothing of note. Academics who are aware of these issues are isolated from the levers of power to roughly the same degree as everyone else. They're also just workers behaving like this. I behave like this sometimes, honestly. I used to more. I'm sure I have a bit with you.

Should be common allies! — Jeremy Murray

Absolutely. Though it won't happen without a concerted effort on behalf of left politics to make anti-patriarchy cultural attitudes appealing to men. And also, frankly, appealing to be seen in men. IRL I'm a burly skinhead, I've scared a passer by just by weeping silently in public.

It just seems to me that the denial of what scientifically speaking are still hypotheses and not facts should fundamentally be possible. — Benkei

I think this is an asymmetric burden of evidence. The standards for something being a scientific hypothesis with supporting papers are much higher than facts from the press. We're at a point with climate change where behaving as if climate change is not happening, and if it is happening it's not bad, and if it is bad it has some good sides... is quackery repudiated for decades. Qualitatively the correct conclusions have been known for decades.

Moreover, the quality of discussion in climate change threads is universally low for these reasons, and they can't be kept on topic. Climate change denial is exactly the same flavour of troll discussion great attractor as social media USA Trumpshite, only with decades of evidence and consensus that it's horseshite rather than days - or sometimes minutes - of news.

It happens to coincide with the change in Social Media use at this site, which by and large received a positive reaction that gave me an extra impulse. It looks like everyone wants better and higher quality and improving moderation and creating a framework for it is an important part of it. After a majority of moderators said to go for it, I did. — Benkei

Makes sense. Though I find it difficult to argue for this and not also to prohibit climate change denial.

he 'grooming-gang' scandal seems beyond dispute a failure of this sort, and if the police had had the guts to address this issue, seemingly of Pakistani men with shared family ties, then 'vaguely middle eastern' looking men wouldn't have as much suspicion around them. — Jeremy Murray

Do you think there's a way to go about disrupting specifically Pakistani grooming gangs?

It is a fundamentally neoliberal solution to inequality. — Jeremy Murray

Yep!

Default wokist thought argues that focusing on the patriarchy helps men who have had these negative experiences, but overlooks the fact that those patriarchal norms are also enforced by women — Jeremy Murray

Yep! Again you can find people that talk the role women play in it. I referenced bell hooks {I think it's in "All About Love" or "The Will to Change"} and Audre Lorde {In "Sister Outsider"}. I think you can put a more left wing buzzword gloss on it, which means something a little different but only a pedant would care - women also construct and maintain patriarchal gender relations.

It's honestly baffling to me that this would be a contentious point. People are raised in families. Most families split household and work tasks. Families often split those in the old gendered way, and even gender the tasks like what used to happen - man take out trash fix car and do finances, woman hoover and cook and plan social arrangements.

Really lefty, ultra feminist couples upon hitting the workforce and getting a baby face a choice between roughly emulating old gender norms - with the woman staying home to take care of the kid, and being worse off. Due to shitty childcare costs. And at that point you're left with a structurally traditional household with feminist errata. I think this mismatch between the broad context {the household} and the intellectual commitments {explicit instruction of kids} is what keeps some of the norms "subterranean" in @Tobias sense.

While we might have a post-critical consciousness about gender, and know loads of shit is stupid about it, we still live in a gendered society and have our desires aligned with - and expressed in - the same binaries. Change in expected behaviour is slower than change in opinion, I reckon.

although Peterson should be in a different category entirely than Tate. — Jeremy Murray

I think Maps of Meaning era Peterson should be in the "kooky academically insulated scholar" category. His more recent behaviour is just culture war bollocks. He got famous for resisting a trans rights bill, after all. It wasn't his work that did it alone. Even though it fit into the zeitgeist in a similar way to the masculinity grifters.

Most colleagues are / have been cool. I think it likely the few people I've worked with with a 'baseline of suspicion' of men were angry with men for personal reasons. But I also think they are often given a pass by those around them. — Jeremy Murray

Yeah. I think it intersects awfully with racism too. I've heard more speculation about people of colour's sexual deviancy than white blokes. Here in the UK it's mostly men who look vaguely middle eastern that receive the worst excesses of this moral panic.

I always wonder if I come across as having a political ideology? I describe myself as a conscientious objector, but I was strongly left my entire adult life until getting turned off by the dogma. — Jeremy Murray

You're going to count as having a political ideology based on how you speak about this. And it's going to appear "right wing" in some circles. Don't you know this already? I generally don't speak plainly about this stuff any more in person 'cos of one too many times losing acquaintances/friends for appearing like a far right ideologue.

The incredibly irritating thing about this, from my perspective, is that there are ways of talking about this dispute which are "internal" to the liberal left discourse. Like what I said regarding patriarchy typecasting women as carers and men as latent criminals getting in the way of men having careers in childcare.

Nighttime, so I don't recognize them, but this girl was obviously young enough to want to stop and look at the toys. The daughter asked her mother 'remember when you told me life was harder for girls'? — Jeremy Murray

I do think it's important to teach young girls to be careful in a way that boys don't have to be - like what to do to avoid a drink being spiked. I think it would also benefit young girls to be taught about the differences in gendered performance in the workplace - the way blokes describe themselves tends to make us be seen as more qualified on job applications etc.

But my impression is that doing this in the wrong way exacerbates a sense of threat. I think there is a reductive way of speaking about these issues in the media - both left and right wing - which amplifies the exacerbation. In the UK there are perpetual moral panics about people of colour sexual predators, the left liberal media sees this as a sign of rape culture {it is} but emphasises that it's all men's responsibility to change ourselves on an individual basis to address these crimes. The right media explicitly racialises the issue. Rather than talking about, say, including a lot of material on establishing consent in sex ed.

The commonality between the narratives is that they're difficult to present in a way that doesn't attribute that behaviour to all men based on a stereotype of masculinity. A reductive kind of essentialism. People can do better if they're given more space than a Tweet or a small newspaper column that needs to optimise clickthrough.

I don't think there's a way to read the right wing ones charitably. What they do is plain to see. I can however read the left wing ones charitably due to spending a lot of time reading feminist literature. You can find a lot of feminist literature that laments this pervasive essentialism outside and within feminism itself.

Which isn't to say these societal problems are feminism's fault - that's absurd, and regrettably a common response among reactionaries - it's just to say you're not going to get men on board with that message, unless they're already onboard and invested in learning feminist deep lore.

What I do wish was more commonplace was men describing their negative experiences of patriarchy - the same system that women are exposed to -, and some of it really is this stuff. Being taught that we're latent predators, ought be violent and domineering and so on. I find it incredibly ironic that these absurd masculinity grifters like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson actually agree with the reductive left liberal construal of masculinity on what makes a man a man. They just disagree on whether it's a good thing.

I should've also said, I imagine we'd going to see 90% eye to eye on this. With constructionist/post-structuralist sympathies regarding gender.

I have no idea I'm being an interlocutor for @javra

teachers? ed assistants? — Jeremy Murray

Just some teachers. They get used to me quickly though. I'm sure it's related to what you just said.

The most sexist thing I ever witnessed between teachers in my 20 years was when a mediocre colleague told me she suspects 'every one' of the male teachers in high school of being creeps. — Jeremy Murray

Ouch. Yes, dealing with that is difficult. Did you ever experience a baseline of suspicion otherwise?

I come at this from a very left wing angle, I get frustrated with the above because of how patriarchal it is, and people don't notice. Seeing men as latent predators is precisely part of the patriarchal norms feminist critique is supposed to attack, it reinforces the idea that only women should work with and care for children, as well as alienates kids from male role models and authority figures. It's bad for everyone and I hate it.

I'm pretty sure the kids pick up on it too. Speculating over which teachers - almost always male - are paedos is a favourite pass time. It's the same deal.

The being “too dichotomous” part – as far I so far interpret it – comes into play when one insists that, because the yin and yang are a strict dyad metaphysically, speaking then must be fully yang, fully masculine, such that femininity plays no part in it. Or else that listening is fully feminine, fully yin, such that masculinity, yang, plays no part in it. — javra

What I'm making is the more modest claim, that the feminine parts are strictly feminine and the masculine parts are strictly masculine. If you could tell me when the parthood stops I'd appreciate it. What I'm saying isn't that things have only one aspect, it's that if something has an aspect which is masculine or feminine, that aspect is strictly masculine or feminine and not both, even if that aspect has other sub-aspects which may be masculine, feminine, both or neither.

I don't know how to parse your definition otherwise, since insemination and inseminator are antonyms, you can't be an inseminator at the same time as an inseminee, in the same act. It's similar to claiming that you can't be talking and listening at precisely the same moment, but you might be talking and listening in precisely the same conversation. I think you are highlighting that you can find a broader context of unity {like the conversation}, or subcontexts of difference {like air pulsing into the ears being an insemination and thus make listening feminine, but the ideas you think in response disseminate, and thus masculine}. But I'm highlighting that any particular aspect is masculine or feminine but not both.

I believe that ↪Tzeentch was warning against just this kind of thing when he said one should steer away from too dichotomous an interpretation of the yang (masculine) and yin (feminine). — javra

Isn't it unavoidable. A thing will have masculine and feminine aspects. Take one of the masculine aspects. Does that masculine aspect have feminine meta-aspects? This is a way of saying, that while an object level phenomenon has masculine and feminine aspects, the aspects themselves are dichotomously masculine or feminine.

Uh. Are you sure that's not publishing previously published work? Repeatedly? You've read the site rules right?

No curses or the like, just nifty reasoning utilized to turn their views upside down. ... — javra

I tend to just ask them questions and see where they're coming from. Usually stories of personal trauma, or they grew up in the institution they're promoting. The ones I remember most are from smaller institutions, people with really radical faith and very magical beliefs. The only ones I'm hostile to are the scientologists, they stop people in the street and don't inform them of who they are. A swift "they're a cult, mate, walk away" in passing sorts it out. They're usually stopping people who're not well dressed or PoCs, just predatory bullshit.

I will respond to your longer post, just when I've got more brainpower.

I'm glad you're not in the pocket of Big Bum.

And hey, while I’m not certain where you find yourself residing on the “spirituality” spectrum, irrespective of this, having some bloke walk up to you while your reading a book in the park so as to inform you of some true savior or such, this when you tell them you’re not interested in conversing with them, would – in keeping to my previous posts – then be a bit toxic of them if they don’t relent. — javra

I tend to walk up to those people when I see them in the street. They get sick of me.

And btw, thanks for this post. It's more thoughtful than that of name calling, as per "mystical" and "stereotype". — javra

I meant them in a relatively non-judgemental manner. But I appreciate it didn't come across that way, which I'm sorry for.

My definition of masculinity you declare a mysticism (hence to consist of "obscure thoughts and speculations") and instead argue that the gender is fully culturally relative and so cannot be defined away. — javra

There are two aspects of my criticism regarding what you've been saying, I do disagree with what you've written on two levels. The first level is an object level criticism, I don't think your definitions do what they purport to - I think they do a good job of describing some aspects of the conventions of masculinity and femininity, but I get the impression that you want them to do more than describe social conventions. Let me know if that's not the case. If it is the case, read on. Let's pause my allegation of mysticism for now, I admit it was quite unclear.

I'd suggest that some of these things are recognisably masculine and some are not. Making an INSERT INTO statement in an SQL prompt doesn't count as masculine. Making a SELECT statement in SQL doesn't count as feminine. I realise these are bald assertions, but I hope they serve the point. I'd treat them as counterexamples.

Let's look at publishing in more detail. If you have an idea about a thing, information has come into your brain, which is feminine as you're inseminated. Then you write a thing, which is insemination, so male. Then you read your own thing, which is insemination, which is female. Then your own word goes into your head, which is female again. You complete the story, which is male, since you're inseminating the world with your thoughts. You then send it to a journal, which penetrates their inbox, turning the inbox into a woman. They then publish your article, which puts it into the world, which is male... or is it giving birth?

You can parse each of these transitions as inseminations or births, and flip the gender they count as. If your word spills on the page, you birth it from within you, blah blah.

The point there is that whether something is masculine or feminine will depend upon how it's described. Which it shouldn't, because the act should be intrinsically masculine or feminine, no? A manifestation of all permeating principle? It should not turn on the whims of our description.

I'm sure you could describe everything as having masculine and feminine aspects, but that's moving the goalposts innit? Because the definitions you provided aren't just non-exclusive dualities, they're antipodal - oppositional.

-- The masculine is interpreted, be it psychologically or physically, as being “that which penetrates (alternatively expressed, as that which inseminates via information)”.

-- Whereas the feminine is interpreted, again either psychologically or physically, as “that which is penetrated (alternatively, as that which is inseminated by information) — javra

The penetrated is not the penetrating implement, the inseminator is not the inseminated. The strict distinction between them is part of the set up. Something can have both as aspects, but not be both at once, surely?

I think that your definitions capture a good chunk of how we think of and use the words, they're historical generalisations, and definitely capture "man fucks girl gets fucked" as the quintessential masculine/feminine duality. But I don't think it's particularly robust. I could go into it more, but pegging, cowgirl, men being service tops, women being power bottoms - there are plenty of violations of the principle - in which men are penetrated and women penetrate. I agree that your definition captures a way in which these acts go against convention, but nothing more.

If all you're doing is trying to capture aspects of convention, I think you've done quite good job, but I got the sense you were doing more than that - were you?

There is another aspect of my disagreement, which I've focussed on up until this point - a methodological one. But let's focus on this object level one for now, since the methodological discussion should probably come after this one.