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c wilmot
climber
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Jul 22, 2017 - 10:43am PT
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Macron is a corporate tool. I joked during the election that he was basically trump wearing an obama mask.
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nah000
climber
now/here
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Jul 31, 2017 - 10:47pm PT
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so i've been a little slow on the uptake with regards to this thread... i've been a little burnt out, so i hadn't bothered to take a look since i posted the last wall o' text.
but upon a gander, it's actually been relatively respectful. so kudos to all involved.
yury wrote: By any chance, do you know a direction of a road paved with these good intentions?
nope. i accept that you, mb1 and others may be correct. newly minted laws are always a bit of an adventure. and so it is hypothetically possible that your concerns may turn out to be correct. and if that is the case i promise i will be the first to join your protests. that said, i, to this point, have seen no indication nor reason [other than the unfootnotable and therefore by all indications manufactured outrage of the american interwebbed right tilting media] to be as alarmed, as you gents seem to be.
because of this, i am disappointed that neither one of you wanted to take me up on my bet... :(
mb1 wrote: And, nah000, to your point, "...what it can force a person to do is stop using he and-or her if a person says that that is not their preference."
And THAT is precisely what's wrong! If I insist on calling a person by their not-preferred pronoun, that is perhaps crass, even offensive, but it should not be ILLEGAL!
You have NO right to not be offended. You have NO right to have your PREFERENCES catered to. You have NO right to demand on force of law that I abide by your PREFERENCES, particularly if I refuse to acknowledge them.
that's fine. i believe i have understood your position. to be clear though, by this same logic a black person has no right to be OFFENDED and it should not be ILLEGAL to call them a N***ER... it is, after all, only their PREFERENCE that they not be called this.
correct?
because as long as that is your position, i do appreciate the logic you have employed to arrive at your position.
i do however disagree with the starting point.
as such i have no issue with making, what i believe to be, harassment of minorities illegal.
[and yes, that is a passive aggressive attempt to point out your unnecessary use of all caps: contrary to your tone, not all of those reading your posts are idiots, and as such, most are fully capable of understanding your point, without the use of incessant and mildly infuriating ALL CAPS... but as i'm sure some are annoyed by my use of all lower caps, no worries, if you keep using them... your thoughts are interesting enough, that i'll get over it... hahaha]
but to agree with a couple things mb1 has said:
Lawyers GUESS with your money; they don't suffer any penalty WHEN they are rendered incorrect by a judge.
hahaha. unfortunately: in many instances this is too true.
and the more interesting one:
Not gonna happen, and the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop flatly denies this. As quoted above, he would have happily sold them any ready-made cake in his shop, but he was not going to be forced to bend his artistic talents to create a CUSTOM gay cake.
this, assuming your version is in its entirety true, is an interesting question.
if, everything is as you are saying, then i hope those suing lose this case.
while it is a fine line to slice [sorry/not sorry for the bad pun...], and one that i haven't put a lot of thought nor research into, [so i reserve the right to change my mind post haste... hahaha], as both an artist for hire and a queer identifying person, i have to admit that my initial reaction is that i'd like to reserve the right to not create the next homophobic pastor's desire for a cross shaped church... and so i can't see why it would not be fair of me to possibly have to find another cake shop to fulfill my creative requests...
as usual, with that said, this is a very fine line you are drawing...
"We DEMAND on force of law that you PARTICIPATE in our behaviors qua gay behaviors."
is it really? is a wedding of gay people a "gay" behaviour? or is it a human behaviour?
is anal sex between heterosexual people a "gay" behaviour? or is it human behaviour?
regardless, as far as i can tell, you have an interesting set of constructs... and so i do appreciate your delineating them for me/us...
i have to say though, i am quite disappointed that you threw down a gauntlet...
and then when i picked it up [admittedly on my own terms]... you chose to not even acknowledge it...
sad!
[and ha!]
[and with all seriousness: all the best, all]
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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that's fine. i believe i have understood your position. to be clear though, by this same logic a black person has no right to be OFFENDED and it should not be ILLEGAL to call them a N*ER... it is, after all, only their PREFERENCE that they not be called this.
First, to the "bite the bullet" aspect of your point, correct, I don't believe that it should be illegal to call somebody a N*ER. We all know that many black people would be breaking the law if that were illegal! And a law against "offensive speech" is, flatly, a law against the very sorts of speech that the first amendment was designed to protect. We don't need a law to protect "popular" or "widely accepted" speech; the first amendment exists TO protect "offensive" and "unacceptable" speech. And we draw arbitrary lines about this at our dire peril!
People don't have any right to "not be offended" by the ideas and expressions of those ideas from other people.
Now, to the conflating part of your passage. It's a common conflation, so I don't "rebuke" you for falling into it. But it's incorrect nevertheless.
To keep your analogy on track, you should be talking about a black person who says, "I self-identify as white, even though biologically I'm black." Now, it should not be "offensive" to refuse to call a black man "white" or "Asian" or "Eskimo" in defiance of the biological fact.
You've turned the "calling" into an explicitly pejorative phrase rather than a simply factual one. So, your analogy conflates a statement of biological fact into a pejorative and non-factual one. A black person is not a N*ER, because the same biological fact can be referenced using a non-pejorative term. The latter phrase is not a simple biological statement; it is designed TO BE an epithet rather than simply express a biological fact.
In the same way, calling a woman "she" is not an "offensive" term on the face of it; there has to be SOME pronoun that can express actual biological female gender that is not "offensive" on the face of it! Terms like "he" for male and "she" for female in English have served that exact purpose for many hundreds of years!
You see, the gender-pronoun problem is that we're now being expected to defy biology (to the extent that it can be detected, which IS where the rubber meets the road in these cases). There is nothing pejorative about referring to a biological woman as "she," any more than it's pejorative to refer to a black man as "African American," or "black." In both cases, we're simply using almost universally-accepted pronouns to ACCURATELY refer to a biological attribute of a person. Calling a biological man "ze" or whatever else is an intentional defiance of biology in the same way that calling a black man "white" or "Asian" is a defiance of biology, regardless of "self-identification" as some attribute other than that which biology itself has specified.
Moreover, if the black community made it known that they preferred their race to be referenced using some different term than "black," they would not be doing anything like what the gender-pronoun warriors are attempting! The black community would not be demanding that we all pretend that they are some other race or that they HAVE no race!
We don't need to delve into the slightest pejorative phraseology to simply refer to the correct biological attributes of a person, and, frankly, something is wrong with a person who "self-identifies" in defiance of biology; something is much more deeply wrong with a person who also demands that others follow them into such defiance of the scientific facts.
This is not "expressed preference" in anything like the way a black person can legitimately say, "There are many expressions of my biological race that are not designed to be explicitly pejorative. I prefer that you use any of those instead of N*ER. Of course, you are free to use N*ER, but if you do, I take you to be intentionally disrespecting me as a person."
When a biological man goes down the gender-pronoun warrior path, HE is instead saying, "The gender pronoun 'he' has been forever used in entirely non-pejorative ways to reference my genuine biological gender. But I do not self-identify as that gender, so that term must not be applied to me! You must instead use an entirely made-up term that defies the biological fact of this attribute of me."
Nobody is defying biology to use either "black" or "N*ER." But by sharp contrast, the new-wave gender-pronoun warriors are demanding that we defy biology and abide by their anti-biological "preference" in using only terms that were designed TO defy biology; and our refusal to follow them into this defiance then defines us as "pejorative" and "offensive" just for insisting on using biologically-accurate terms.
Finally, the fact that I know in advance that somebody will take offense at my verbiage does not even prima facia, much less in fact, make it "wrong" for me to use that verbiage anyway, particularly when my chosen verbiage is intentionally accurate. It also should not be presumed that I "intended to give offense" when the offense-taken was an unintended side-effect inhering in the person taking offense. TAKING offense is a choice; it is not an implication of hearing even intentionally offensive verbiage.
I know a wonderful, black pastor. He has encountered some racism over the decades, and he's even been called "N*ER" by a few people in the church. Because of his wonderful character, he simply refuses to take offense, preferring instead to feel pity and pray for the person so misguided that they would attempt to offend him in that way. He just chuckles a bit sadly and says something like, "Well, I guess I am just a 'N*ER' to that gentleman. Nothing can be done for it."
The point is that offense is TAKEN, not pushed upon a person. The most intentionally "offensive" verbiage NEED NOT actually offend; taking offense is a choice. And taking offense at the biologically-accurate and non-pejorative verbiage of others has become a scandal of the hand-wringing, safe-spaces, snowflake left. They are not mad at the actual pronouns; they are mad at ANY gender-reference that does not cohere with their "self-identification." And that is madness.
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nah000
climber
now/here
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^^^^
primarily: thanks for your response! i appreciate the intellectual honesty and cajones it takes to take the position that you did regarding the "bullet". it is always an interesting discussion when you engage as you have above... so i appreciate your taking the time.
in general my take away is to continue down the path along two fronts of discussion:
with regards to the 1st: in an ideal universe [the world where i generally see your position as having originated from] i would agree with you regarding free speech vs attempting to "protect" historically oppressed groups from what have been and are, powerful symbols of and manifestations of [at least] psychological control during past oppression.
in one possible ideal world we would all be born monadic, we would pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and there would be no statistical reverberations through the following generations due to recent past and far historical injustices.
unfortunately and more likely fortunately, that is not the world i see us as living in.
and so in the same way that you believe, and i disagree with, the idea that affirmative action is not situationally and temporarily justified [at least as far as i can recall due to your past postings], i disagree with the idea that it is a necessary mistake to attempt to legally "protect" the historically and recently oppressed from some very specific and exceptionally important forms of, what i see as, [at least] psychological and spiritual oppression.
now having said the above, there is some, i believe, common ground between myself and you, yury and j.b. peterson [to name a few]. i don't believe that these laws [affirmitive action, anti harrassment laws, and the like] should be necessarily indefinite. they should be part of what i see to be effective reparations for the past. as such, i believe, they should have an aimed for end date. i also know that we do have to be very careful of the slippery slopes that you all are nervous about. i don't want to walk around in a world where if i accidentally misgender someone or if i make an unconsidered joke that i then apologize for, i end up wasting time and money in front of some human rights commission or the like.
in short, i think we need to be very clear on what, in this specific case, is entailed by "harassment" and in general on exactly what the reasoning behind and therefore life cycle is, of the types of laws that we are discussing.
the flip side is that, while just like i often agree with capitalistic principles yet still have no issue with anti-monopoly laws or regulated utilities or the thousand other exceptions where the collective must push back against the individual, i also think there is a place, in extreme instances of historical oppression, for the collective to attempt to protect individuals in a way that does [in a hopefully temporary manner], curtail free speech.
i could give examples, but it'd just be to push some buttons, and we all know what we are discussing, so i'll skip the tempting histrionics... :)
what i will say is this: my view is that your and the american fundamentalist belief in the "individual" that they are in parallel with, was only successful [to a degree] due to a unique set of temporal and spatial circumstances.
and just like the time and space during which the ole u.s.s.r's unfettered attempt at manifesting the results of a stated belief in the "collective", that time and space is coming to a close.
in short, from what i understand of both your and my driving beliefs, i see the world as a lot more intrinsically, necessarily and beautifully grey than i understand you to see it.
and with regards to the 2nd: sorry i don't have the time/energy to fully get to this one right now. but i will come back to it at a later date. as who knows when that will be, if you feel so inclined feel free to come back at me, as the spirit moves. i do appreciate many of the conversations/discussions we've had over the years...
in the mean time the second front is your attempt at authoritatively enforcing your view that physical sex is gender and therefore that both are objective aspects of being human that we as outsiders can "know" about all other humans.
as i'm sure you must know by now i disagree with you on both points.
while i'm not going to go through the whole argument i will leave you with a couple questions:
 have you ever known and had a significant relationship with a trans person? or an identifying as two spirit, agender or in general non-binary person? the reason i ask is that, iirc, in one of your other explications you spoke of there being an attempt at conflating "behaviour" with gender... any trans person i have known would not characterize it this way. for example and if i can be so crass: a phenotypical male putting on a dress and getting fUcked up the aSs, or any other single or set of objective behaviours, does not a woman make.
and no trans person that i have known would argue as such. so why you would conflate the discussion as being about "behaviour" suggests to me a potential lack of understanding regarding this matter.
and a second question is: are you aware that cultures with binary genders are by no means anywhere near universal either presently or historically? in case you haven't seen the breadth of differing views and conceptual frameworks, pbs put together a very nice infographic a couple years back identifying, locating and summarizing many of the differing ways humans have collectively conceived of themselves when it comes to gender. in case you are interested you can find it here.
seriously: peace. :)
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