It should be pretty obvious that I don't think it makes communication impossible, right? — Terrapin Station

Then you must use some other word than "correct" which has no practical difference in meaning.

It was hilarious watching Grant Shapps last night saying we can't have Corbyn leading a caretaker government because he would wreck the economy etc, when it is well known that the caretaker government would explicitly be for the one purpose of stopping no deal and calling an immediate general election. This is the standard of Tory rhetoric these days, a laughingstock. — Punshhh

Did you watch the Tory leadership debates? Some of the candidates, Jeremy Hunt in particular, seem to think that he's the literal incarnation of Lenin! You know, Jeremy Hunt: the one who wants to bring fox hunting back, halve the time limit on getting an abortion, and give big corporations a massive tax cut.

...and since my posts were not responded to, IN A WAY I UNDERSTAND but people wanted to react, they decided to put a million-word posts in response to what I have written. — god must be atheist

Annoying, isn't it?

In my experience of talking with scientists about philosophy, I have found that many times most scientists seem to look down on it like if it were just speculative non-conducive discussions about random thoughts that anyone can make up. — Shushi

Well, it's not "just" that, but let's not kid ourselves that that doesn't sum up a large part of it.

Love the comic strip at the bottom of your opening post, by the way. "What do you mean by 'pure'? What do you mean by 'just applied'? I wonder... do they know I exist?". :lol:

“Rhetoric”, the censor’s bogeyman. If Trump’s magical spells and “charisma” is enough to “bring out the worst in people”, one has to wonder why the vast majority of anti-trumpism, which slobbers from the mouths of every pundit, late night television host, celebrity, newspaper, and musician, has little to no effect. Maybe it’s not rhetoric after all? — NOS4A2

It doesn't have little to no effect, except perhaps on that basket of deplorables, and it's definitely mostly rhetoric coming from Trump. What else would it be if not rhetoric? An impartial and unbiased reporting of the facts? Get outta town! :rofl:

Lots of people tune in to laugh at the incompetence of the president, which those late night television hosts, celebrities, and others, use for material. There's no shortage of supply. I would hazard a guess that Trump is probably the most mocked president since George W. Bush, and he may well have overtaken him in that regard, even at this comparatively early stage in his presidency. That's an achievement of a sort, I suppose.

I'm not going to explain that being queer is not the same thing as being a homosexual again. — thewonder

Stop lying. It's getting on my nerves. It still has that meaning, with a derogatory use, as can be verified by online dictionaries. From my own experience, I can tell you that it has had that meaning at least since my childhood in the early 90's, when I first heard it being used in that way, and also much earlier than that according to the Wikipedia article which you yourself quoted. I only found out about the more recent usage you refer to much later in life. Just because you clearly favour the later interpretation, that doesn't mean that other interpretations cease to count. That is just your own personal belief. Once again, I feel it necessary to point out that you are not the sole arbiter of what a word does or doesn't mean.

I believe you would assert that the statement "Murder is wrong" is a true statement.
— EricH

Yes. Anything else implies murder is not wrong. Any takers on that? That is, that can make the case? — tim wood

The case has been around for some time, it just isn't convincing enough. They definitely have a truth-value, whatever that may be. Anyone who thinks otherwise I would put down to a result of misinterpretation.

Not anymore. :wink: — Wittgenstein

Much better. :up:

@schopenhauer1

Weird questions. Don't you already know the answers? Where's the mystery?

I have yet to hear or read an explanation by anyone that maps out the metaphysics of transgenderism.
What is a "true woman"?
What does it mean to "feel" like one?
What about you can be "in the wrong body"? — Artemis

It relates to what we were just talking about in terms of masculine and feminine. I don't literally believe the part about being in the wrong body, but other than that, I don't see why the rest of it should be so hard for you to understand. Just go watch a few videos about transgender females by transgender females themselves on YouTube, or better yet, meet some in person. I've done both. And I think it has little to do with metaphysics. It has more to do with psychology and social science.

That was my intuition as well. It’s weird, I think, but who am I to judge? I suppose one could live one’s life this way, but I think it just invites bullying, and who would want that? Not that they deserve bullying but that’s not something that one would expect a Cro-Magnon type to understand and accept. Why go through the trouble? — Noah Te Stroete

Depends how important it is to the person. If it was that important to me, why would I let the fear of being bullied repress me? For comparison, I didn't come out publicly with my true sexual identity whilst in school for that very reason, but I haven't let homophobes or other judgemental types silence me or keep me in pretence for quite some time now - although I am typically quite private about my sexuality and rarely bring it up. There are still plenty of homophobes and judgemental types around.

You love their genocidal son murdering god and how Christianity is homophobic and misogynous and do a lot of harm. OK. I get it you immoral piece of human garbage.

Regards
DL — Gnostic Christian Bishop

:lol:

I'm not exactly a fan of Christianity, but you take the biscuit. Your title questions are purely hypothetical, rendering the discussion of little significance.

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? (Angels don't exist!).

What does “gender fluid” even mean? — Noah Te Stroete

That one's actually pretty easy to figure out, even without the aid of Google. It means something along the lines that you don't identify as a single, set gender over time, but are flexible or "fluid" enough to identify with whatever seems right in the moment or to not identify at all.

This is way outside my experience, but it seems to me that biological men who feel as if they're women and who want to live as women in their societies would see living in accordance with society's gender roles as a benchmark to show that they are truly women. I can't imagine that many would see the world through the eyes of Gender Nihilism. Living in accordance with gender roles would be one of their primary goals, wishes, dreams. Am I wrong about that? — T Clark

No, you're not.

You keep referring to our cultural inclination to think of the sexes in a certain way which is no different than how one thinks about the existence of gods. Just because we've been culturally conditioned to think a certain way doesn't mean that thinking is correct. What is being stretched is the idea of sex beyond what it is. Sex is not how you wear your clothes or your hair. Sex is physiology. — Harry Hindu

We weren't talking about sex, we were talking about the concepts of masculine and feminine, and it would be utterly wrongheaded to think about that exclusively in terms of the physiology of sex, whilst willfully ignoring what an explanation in terms of culture adds. The two go hand in hand, and don't make sense otherwise. These aren't empty concepts. That would be absurd. There's clearly something to them. Masculine and feminine are concepts relating to the two sexes, male and female, in terms of cultural associations in the form of image, fashion, mannerisms, behaviour, characteristics, personality traits, etc., and there's no rational reason I can think of for you to arbitrarily scrap any reference to culture here.

Look, if you want to think about it like that, then so be it, but you can count me out.

Either Trump is a great sorcerer or they’ve subscribed to magical thinking. — NOS4A2

You don't have to be a great sorcerer in order to have the charisma, personal qualities, and rhetoric required to bring the worst out in people. Hitler had it, and Trump has it too. That footage of the crowd behind Trump chanting, "Send her back!", whilst Trump stands there and does nothing, indicating passive acceptance, is chilling to the bone.

That isnt how "masculine" and "feminine" are defined. They are defined as relating to one's sex. — Harry Hindu

Yes, relating to one's sex, but you're stretching that to absurdity when there's no need. They relate to cultural conceptions of sex in terms of image, behaviour, desires, and so on. Without overthinking it, if you were asked to think of a woman, it's more likely than not that you'll think of something pretty close to the stereotype. That's just how our brains work. It's like how a lot of people would think of the red heart symbol with two curves at the top if they were asked to think of a heart, instead of thinking of any actual heart which looks very different. It's not a category error, just two different ways of thinking.

So, in other words, if you use "chair" to refer to bicycles, you're not incorrect. — Terrapin Station

Yes you are, because "chair" has a completely different meaning to bicycles. The common meaning is considered the standard for determining correctness by default. That's always the implicit context. You seem to think that you yourself are in charge of the implicit context, and of the default standard for determining correctness. You seem to think that you can change the default setting to your own idiosyncratic meaning on whim, without saying a word. But you're wrong about that. That's clearly not how things are, and not how they work, and the rest of us are keenly aware of this - it's pretty obvious when put to the test by trying to communicate in your way - which is why no one is agreeing with you. Baden has already effectively reduced your position to absurdity. You're just biting the bullet at this point. Consistency despite absurdity. Nothing to write home about.

I get the feeling you're fetishizing non-conformism to the extent its impairing your ability to accept facts so basic coherent comprehension is dependent on them. It's OK to conform sometimes, you know. It helps keep things sensible. You don't get brownie points just for holding a minority opinion. — Baden

:up:

That's a good test if your goal is conformism. — Terrapin Station

In this case, and many others, they conform because it makes perfect sense. A chair is that thing that you sit on. That's the correct answer in the context. You wouldn't be gaining anything by deviating from the norm here. It would just make you look kind of silly.

But I agreed with everything you said. I just used words in a non-consensus way so that they meant their opposites. (See, I did it again). — Baden

That's a nice little reductio ad absurdum there. Terrapin Station is usually quite logical, so I'm surprised he can't detect the clear fault in his position you've highlighted here.

There is not a "correct meaning of the word 'chair.'" — Terrapin Station

That's absurd, and that it is absurd can be put to a test of sorts. A good test to see whether you're talking bollocks is to put it to ordinary people. If they laugh in disbelief and exclaim something along the lines of, "Of course there is! It's what you sit on, silly!", then that's a pretty good indication that you've gone badly wrong somewhere. And that's exactly the sort of reaction you'd get.

Exactly. There's nothing inherently more masculine ir feminine about how someone wears their hair or what jewelry they wear or what kind of clothes they wear. Those are human behaviors that are not inhibited by one's sexual physiology. — Harry Hindu

But it's not about inherent qualities or sexual physiology. It's not on that basis that we talk about feminine hair, jewellery, and clothes. Of course it doesn't make sense in that respect, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense in other respects.

But that is what I'm getting at - the incorrect cultural notions that they are governed by ones sexual physiology, thereby labeling them as masuline and feminine. Im not saying that peoples reactions don't exist. Im saying that their reactions are wrong - a category error. — Harry Hindu

It's not a category error. You're just thinking about it in a way that leads to that conclusion, but you don't have to think about it that way. You're choosing to do so. It's like if I were to deny that there are no punks or hippies, just people. It's not a category error on a cultural level. On a cultural level, there are indeed punks, hippies, masculine and feminine, and many other identifiable categories of that sort.

The correct meaning of the word "chair" in English language is "a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs" and this is determined by consensus (clearly not the case of argumentum ad populum.) — Magnus Anderson

Exactly. @Terrapin Station, can't you see the absurdity in making such a charge in these cases? Does it not seem intuitively wrong to you to think of that as somehow fallacious? It is nothing like the obvious wrongness you can easily detect in typical examples of the fallacy. It only has a superficial similarity to genuine examples of the fallacy. Statements like that quoted above have little do with logic altogether, it really is a matter of common sense, and readily agreeable to most. Let it go. You've been stuck on this point for a long time now. I would like to see you concede and move past it.

1) New pronouns won't take off, so even if I had any political or aesthetic objections to them, it wouldn't matter in the bigger picture. — Baden

Okay, fine, I get that, although we're on a philosophy forum after all. How much of what we talk about here really matters in the bigger picture? How much of it is hypothetical? The fact is, we're discussing it regardless, and not for the first time.

2) I generally accede to polite requests that cost me nothing. And would regardless of my propensity to be altruistic because of the good will fostered. It's trading a negligible cost for a non-negligible benefit. — Baden

It wouldn't cost me nothing, so your second point wouldn't apply to me. It would mean caving in on a principle, and I don't do that lightly.

So, I don't feel any pressure in the above case. I feel like I'm winning. And even where a demand is made then I'd consider the presenting of the obligation to negate itself by its presentation as such and so again feel no pressure. — Baden

Well if there's no pressure, then there should be no problem with my lack of conformity, should there? Easygoing people aren't the kind of people that kick up a fuss if you don't do as they want. No pressure to conform, no problem. But I think we both know that there is pressure, whether cloaked in polite language or otherwise.

Thats the problem. Those arbitrary behaviors (wearing skirts, earrings or long hair) are being incorrectly categorized as masuline and feminine, when they should simply be categorized as human behaviors.

Of course there are masculine and feminine behaviors that are not arbitrary as those that relate to one's physiology.

The problem we have is transgenders reinforce those arbitrary categorizations, by claiming to feel like the opposite sex, and then adopting those arbitrary behaviors that are considered masuline or feminine as if those behaviors only belong to that sex. — Harry Hindu

But they're not simply human behaviours. They are predominantly more masculine or more feminine. Of course, there's nothing inherent about length of hair, for example, that makes it masculine or feminine, but it's nonsense to think that there would be nothing feminine about wearing your hair in lengthy pigtails, large hoop earrings, and a pink dress. If you don't believe me, then just give it a try and see how people react. That it exists on a cultural level, rather than physical reality, is not that there's no such thing or that it doesn't exist at all. It is very evident that it does exist, and that there's something to it, which is also why transgendered men and women exist and can be visibly noticed as such.

(In other words, a normatively phrased demand (You should refer to me as.../ You should not expect me to refer to you as... ) by either party short-circuits the solution from both ends.) — Baden

I have no idea what that really means or why you think it.

That's ridiculous. — Terrapin Station

As is much of what he has been saying: "infinite genders, queer yet functionally straight, the sky is red to me if that's what I believe, if you identify as a unicorn I would respect that..." Surely he's trolling?

Not really. I just value folks gettin' along. — Baden

Yeah, well, you can't get along with everyone. I'm probably not going to get along with someone who oversteps the line by pressuring me to do something I'm not comfortable with doing. You can pretend that it's just a simple matter of etiquette, but the truth is that there's more to it underneath the surface.

I do think that if a person asks that you use certain pronouns that it is not unreasonable to expect for the other person to consent to their request. — thewonder

And I don't think that it's as clear cut as that. There are multiple layers to this, and your take is too one sided. See my replies to Baden above for a different interpretation.

Boring. — Baden

Bothered.

So, the converse is that someone asks you as a favour to refer to them by their preferred pronoun presuming no obligation. Then, on the basis of that lack of presumption, you accept it as an obligation. In other words the obligatory etiquette arises out of its voluntary negation by its beneficiary.

As in:
A: "I'd really appreciate it if you would refer to me as "they" rather than "he or she". You don't have, to of course, but I do prefer it." (Obligation negated)
B: "Sure, of course." (Obligation presumed)(On the unspoken necessary condition of the original negation of obligation).

This is how etiquette works. Give and take in a space created by charity and good-will. There is nothing to be proud of in a vulgar rejection of this aspect of human relations. — Baden

I'm simply not going to refer to the other person using language I'm not comfortable with. So it would depend entirely on how I felt at the time. They don't have to cause a scene and make it a big issue if I don't do exactly as they want, but my preference is that they get over themselves. It's rude to pressure someone into doing something they're not comfortable doing, and to use etiquette as an excuse.

How is that there are an arbitrary set of behaviors that are considered to be masculine and feminine more reasonable than what Queer Theory posits? — thewonder

How does that supposedly relate to my reply, qualifying that one ought to respect a person's chosen identity within reason?

You seem to be ignoring what I said and putting words into my mouth. It's evident that there are indeed a whole range of things, including behaviours, which are typically considered masculine or feminine. Much of it makes little sense when properly analysed, and some of it I find harmful and offensive. But it's just the way that things are, like it or not, and I don't think that that's something that'll ever change entirely, nor should it. An entirely gender neutral world seems bland as fuck. Sure, so-called "girls toys" and "boys toys" is a good example of the kind of thing that really gets my goat, but let's not go overboard.

And as for what you've said of "Queer Theory", you know what I think about that already. I simply don't agree with you. You're wrong, except in the isolated context you've created for yourself, where apparently you can be whatever you want to be, no matter how ridiculous, like a queer unicorn under a red sky, even though you're actually just a straight man under the blue sky with the rest of us. What more is there to be said? You clearly let your imagination and wishful beliefs get the better of you. I'm just not like that. If I want to escape reality, I'll do some hard drugs or something.

Having said that, I don't get the self-righteous refusal not to respect—within reason—others choices about how they want to be addressed. Seems like an unnecessary way to make enemies. — Baden

That's oddly one-sided. Why wouldn't the person demanding that I adopt a terminology which I find silly, at the cost of seeing me as personally affronting them, be the one who is being difficult? I'm not doing anything wrong. If a transgender woman, who has quite clearly changed their appearance to reflect the appearance roughly associated with their gender, wants to be referred to with feminine personal pronouns, then that's absolutely fine with me, but I'm simply refusing to adopt awkward, unaccustomed, and frankly ridiculous-sounding terminology which has only recently been made up - and I don't think that there's anything wrong with that, irrespective of whether that's considered offensive. The offended party is not in the right by default simply by virtue of being offended.

You ought to respect their chosen identity. — thewonder

Within reason.

I just don't understand the need to care so much about this. Why are so many people pedants when it comes to inventing pronouns when:

"humba wumba shlumba dumbha, these sounds even in the haze"
"Twas brillig and the slithy toves..."
"embiggen" — fdrake

For the simple and fairly obvious reason that people ambiguous in appearance are not speaking out in significant numbers and demanding that I adopt that particular terminology in reference to them. So it's a non-issue. That's just a segment of deliberately nonsensical poetry. It's not the same.

But if they were, then my position would essentially be no different. I simply won't be browbeaten into adopting nonsense terminology or be made to feel bad every time the situation calls for the use of personal pronouns, and it's as simple as that. It's only an issue because people have made it into one. I would rather the whole thing were not an issue, as it is an embarrassing distraction from more serious and worthy causes, but this is what certain contemporary groups have been making noise about, and yes, it has pretty much become a parody of itself.

Don't agree. You don't have to be a feminist to believe in gender equality. — T Clark

But that's not implied by what I said. That's actually a fallacious inference. Feminism, as I characterised it, is all about gender equality, but that is not at all to suggest that one must be a feminist to believe in gender equality. Feminism is just a form of gender equality advocation with a focus on females.

For a man to call himself a feminist is to try to coopt for himself whatever power and authority comes with that word. A lot of times it's also a way of avoiding personal guilt for gender conditions. Just the same for race. — T Clark

That's a load of rubbish. I don't identify as a feminist, as it happens, but if I did I would be doing nothing of the sort. I would be expressing my support and identification with female focused equal rights.

Any ideology which claims to be feminism but is not about and in favour of gender equality is just another form of sexism.

Au contraire! I have posited that what being "queer" means is that you generally accept something along the lines of that gender is performative and that sexuality is fluid as per Queer Theory. This does not necessarily imply that a person has to be a homosexual in order to be queer. — thewonder

That you've posited something does not make it so. You do understand that, right? You are of course free to go by your own meanings, but no one is obliged to do likewise. When I was talking about the meaning of the word "queer", I was speaking generally. It might help if you thought outside of your own belief system instead of forgetting its status as a fringe view which many people outright reject. "Queer Theory" is not the norm. It is not widely accepted, nor even seen as a credible academic subject by lot of people.

Sorry, you can't be queer if you're not a homosexual. And you can't be a feminist if you are a man. And you can't be a black power advocate if you're white. You can be a white, straight, man who tries to be sympathetic and respectful of black, gay, and female people, but it's disrespectful and creepy to claim more than that. — T Clark

I'm fully with you on that first sentence, but the next two sentences are false, even if it might strike some as peculiar. Being queer - outside of the bizarre make-believe world that people like thewonder comes from - just means being gay, albeit with nonidentical connotations. However, there is nothing in the meaning of feminism or black power advocation which precludes males or whites, nor should there be in the case of feminism especially, which is all about gender equality.

If I experience the sky as being red, then it is red to me. — thewonder

Oh god. You are very predictable. Sure, whatever, the sky is red, I'm a unicorn, and up is down.