parents' observations — Moliere
Honestly there aren't a lot of those and this is probably the only example you're going to get. (Wouldn't have posted what I did except the language is so interesting.) As a dad, I don't even need to understand my kids to support them and love them, so it's a whole different thing. And I don't ask my teenager for explanations, because he's not a research subject. — Srap Tasmaner
The trouble I have is that I want to get there by seeing those expressions as performance, but the people using these expressions keep talking like they're supposed to be taken as incontrovertible fact, or as witness -- however you do that you're opening yourself to the same types of skepticism and critique as any other expression. — Srap Tasmaner
No one would consider 'racist' an identity worthy of the same deference. Why gender specifically? — Srap Tasmaner
Because men and women and all the others can and do wear dresses -- and women also don't wear dresses. That is, the behavior doesn't define the identity, nor do traits. Whatever identity is, it's not those (though some identities identify with those). There are some roles which are slotted for the genders which people are attached to, but people also overcome these along with traits-based views while maintaining their gender identity: Think here not of trans but of cis -- how many cis people have you known who undergo physical and occupational changes which don't align with their self-picture, but still manage to identify as their gender? Does a man cease to be a man if he doesn't have a job? Does a man cease to be a man if he has erectile dysfunction? Does a man cease to be a man if he has feminine feelings? — Moliere
I don't ask my teenager for explanations, because he's not a research subject. — Srap Tasmaner
I know (feel??) myself to be a woman; the other side scrambles to find something else because whatever the criteria are that's not it. How will negotiation proceed? — Srap Tasmaner
If you dial the clock back a hundred years, say, and someone born a woman claims, without being metaphorical or something, to be a man, not to have a preference for presenting as a man, in the culturally standard way, though a woman, but to be a man full-stop, then the likely conclusion would be that this woman is suffering from a delusion. — Srap Tasmaner
I would even find that possibility tempting today except it just doesn't look delusional, or not like any delusion I'm at all familiar with. I literally do not know what it's supposed to mean, which suggests to me that people making such identity claims are up to something completely different. — Srap Tasmaner
What's not clear is whether my understanding is expected or required. Usually with words people say to me, it is, but I'm honestly not sure here, which is odd. I can think of two explanations for this: it is not a message, say, but a signal; or language is being used in some new way, and I don't just mean in a Humpty Dumpty way. — Srap Tasmaner
If it's the latter then the world has changed and maybe this is *real* postmodernism, not the piddly warmups we've been living through but the real thing, a through-the-looking-glass kind of change. All of us on the forum here are suddenly dinosaurs no matter how cool we thought we were. — Srap Tasmaner
it's creative rather than literal. If anything this is just thumbing your nose at all gender categories. — Srap Tasmaner
I'm asking why it's only society that has the mandated role to play, why is my responsive behaviour socially restricted along gender lines, but not the performative behaviour of the actual person whose gender it is? — Isaac
I'dd say the malformation is at least related to the definition of toxic masculinity offered, the way toxic masculinity presents is violently, and we are the ones who get to diagnose it. — Moliere
What's up with the continued violence women are subjected to in our society? One possible explanation is that we have unhealthy identities which makes it feel right (enough, at least) to use violence. — Moliere
Though I don't think we'll be able to encompass all concerns with a single antidote, right? This answer more in the spirit of answering the original question, or riffing on the notion of real man which I reject at the outset.
What would you propose as antidote? — Moliere
Haack introduces the analogy of the crossword puzzle to serve as a way of understanding how there can be mutual support among beliefs (as there is mutual support among crossword entries) without vicious circularity. The analogy between the structure of evidence and the crossword puzzle helps with another problem too. The clues to a crossword are the analogue of a person's experiential evidence, and the already-completed intersecting entries are the analogue of their reasons for a belief. She claims that her metaphor has proven particularly fruitful in her own work, and has been found useful by many readers, not only philosophers but also scientists, economists, legal scholars, etc. — Foundherentism - Wiki
I think perhaps the problem with the term 'toxic masculinity' is that it is not clear-cut. From previous posts, we can see how meanings vary with more or less violence attached. It can suffer from vagueness and being overgeneralised.
That is why I try to supply real examples. I read current news. What's going on? To bring it back to your question of 'Ethics'. However, the post re Iranian women and the 'morality police' was ignored. Why? — Amity
Yes. Isn't that why you posted the thread in the 'Ethics' subforum?
Why is it hard to get to a 'should'? Is this all Hume's fault? The is-ought problem? — Amity
When you see something that is clearly wrong, isn't there an impulse to do something about it?
But not everybody knows or cares enough about whatever 'it' might be.
Some believe it is above their pay grade.
Sometimes, we feel helpless, frustrated, and impotent. After all, what power do we have?
However, when enough people are adversely affected, there can be spontaneous collective action. Sometimes there can be coordinated efforts by different activist groups.
Unfortunately, even after apparent success or progress, the problem is shown never to have gone away.
Today, I read of Iran's 'reinstatement' of the 'morality police': 'to deal with civilians who “ignore the consequences of not wearing the proper hijab and insist on disobeying the norms”.
This comes 2 months ahead of anniversary of the death in custody of Mahsa Amini for not properly wearing the Islamic headscarf.
Among those killed during protests after Amini’s death was Minoo Majidi, a 62-year-old mother who was shot with 167 pellets. She reportedly said to her family before attending protests in Kermanshah: ‘If I don’t go out and protest, who else will?’ Her daughter Mahsa Piraei said her mother always valued women’s rights and freedom.
— No other option but to fight - Iranian women defiance against morality police
***
I admit my ignorance. I had wrongly assumed that those policing the women, in what some term 'gender apartheid' by the clerical regime, would be a male-only force. So, I was surprised when I looked at the Guardian's headline photograph of 'Two veiled ‘morality police’ approach women on the streets of Tehran.' Then again, there is nothing new about women v women. Females are not all 'sisters'. Just as males are not all 'brothers'.
So, who are the morality police?
For most of the 1980s and 1990s, the Komiteh was comprised of religiously devout followers of the regime who joined the force at the encouragement of clerics. However, by the early 2000s, Iran’s population was comprised mostly of young people. When Ahmadinejad made the Komiteh an official police force, a number of young men joined to fulfill their mandatory military conscription. This younger generation was more lax than their older counterparts, leading to inconsistent patrolling.
— Who are Iran's Morality Police? - The Conversation
And here we have it. A question for wonderer1: Is this a result of 'evolutionary psychology'?
A changing sense of morality? Young men unwilling to act against their modern (possibly secular) beliefs yet are forced to do so.
A line from the film 'Australia':
Just because something 'is', doesn't mean it should be.
Who polices the 'morality police'? — Amity
, the performative behaviour of the person whose gender it is is restricted on pain of counting as what they (feel they) are. So if you were to say "You're a woman! Not a man" to a trans man, because they were wearing a dress, what's restricted in that moment is the violence of your assertion — fdrake
I like the analogy. — Ciceronianus
In fact we're part of the world and our lives made up of our experience interrelating with the rest of it, and others — Ciceronianus
Pragmatism takes the meaning of a concept to depend upon its practical bearings. The upshot of this maxim is that a concept is meaningless if it has no practical or experiential effect on the way we conduct our lives or inquiries. Similarly, within Peirce’s theory of inquiry, the scientific method is the only means through which to fix belief, eradicate doubt and progress towards a final steady state of knowledge. — Peirce, Charles Sanders - IEP
I'm asking why it's only society that has the mandated role to play, why is my responsive behaviour socially restricted along gender lines, but not the performative behaviour of the actual person whose gender it is? — Isaac
The peculiarity of gender and sexual identity in this culture is that what Nature contrives must first be hidden from public gaze, and then indicated by conventional signs of hairstyle, clothing, and behaviour. This invests sex and sexual identity with totemic power that makes this thread significant in a way that a discussion about, say, eye colour is not. Genitals are hidden like The Holy of Holies, and other such religious mysteries. Sex is the religion of modernity, and this thread should belong in the philosophy of religion section, except that no one here is questioning the foundations of practice and belief. — unenlightened
Negotiation about what, though? It's relatively easy to use the pronouns someone wants you to. It's a bit harder to see someone as the gender on a gut level if they identify with if they look or act stereotypically otherwise. I think those are behavioural commitments though. — fdrake
I do think it's very unlikely that we could get, even in principle, a list that boils down who counts as a man or a woman without also constructing an incomplete stereotype of the role - in terms of behaviour, attitudes, social standings etc. And we'd already know that behaving in accord with a stereotype is neither necessary nor sufficient for being the type of being that stereotype is associated with. — fdrake
If you misgender a cis person then you are corrected, right? — Moliere
So no, if someone who is male thinks they ought to be referred to as 'she', they've misunderstood how the word is used. Doesn't mean they can't wear dresses, doesn't mean they can't wear make-up. It's just an odd facet of our language that we use a different form of address for different sexes. — Isaac
. But right now, one is not misusing a word because a particular group want it used differently.
Of course, I've no intention of traumatising anyone by deliberately doing something which is going to upset them, but honestly, if people are going to be upset by the fact that the entire world does not jump to it in support of their preferred treatment, I think they have much bigger issues to concern themselves with than my habits of address. — Isaac
[ Feel now I shouldn't have posted this at all, so if you missed it, it's too late. ] — Srap Tasmaner
Too open and personal? — Amity
I responded to what I felt was a real struggle in understanding and coping. — Amity
It's one thing to share my own private life, but it's uncool to share someone else's. Pretty simple. — Srap Tasmaner
Which was kind of you. — Srap Tasmaner
you don't have to have a philosophically or scientifically rigorous understanding of someone to treat them decently, so the analytical challenge I've been dealing with here is a whole separate thing from just being as good a dad as I can. — Srap Tasmaner
I think it's a pretty common distinction across languages, though my familiarity is European languages: English as primary with some studies in German and Spanish. So it's not the linguist's viewpoint. — Moliere
I don't think it an oddity at all though because patriarchy -- the patrilineal descent and control of property -- is a common among the cultures which utilize these languages. We mark distinctions which are important, and being able to tell who is going to own the stuff after I die is important. — Moliere
In real life, and not on the internet (which is different), any trans person I've known has been gracious towards me figuring out the customs they prefer.
Probably why I'm pro-trans. I've never really had a problem with any trans person I've met in real life. — Moliere
the internet, though, as I said earlier -- I really think it changes the way we relate, at least on the social media pages with algorithms designed to increase engagement no matter what — Moliere
So the correct application is to sex (reproductive capability, here), not gender (a much wider grouping of expressions and roles)? You seemed to be saying earlier that the correct usage was to apply it according to individual preferences. — Isaac
I can't see any more good reason to limit your assessment of the general trans movement to the people you've met that you would limit your assessment of masculinity to only those men you've met. We have means by which we can expand our knowledge of how larger groups act. — Isaac
This is how pronouns work. — Moliere
capital "wants" people to be predictable because then you can plan profit flows, have workers show up on time, and so on. Or maximize engagement -- the propaganda machine automatically selects for any belief which will maximize engagement. — Moliere
I must be wrong, not merely behind-the-times. I must be wrong so that they can be wronged. — Isaac
Is there even a side? Or are there a multiplicity of sides being generated in order to keep people coming back? — Moliere
I think it affects us all pretty equally. It's like when you learn there's this cognitive bias called such and such: just because you know about it doesn't mean you're immune to it. Even if you have a ritual, as I've outlined with absolute skepticism, the propaganda still effects feelings -- Propaganda works. — Moliere
I don't think anyone is playing victim either -- I think trans people are victimized through violence against them. — Moliere
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