Hacker News Reader

Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

This isn't my opinion. I will happily call people by whatever pronoun they wish to be called. That's just common decency in my opinion.

That comment was in reference to this story, it looks like I got the quote wrong: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/journalist-sues-twitter-...

I think there's a difference between how we should recognise someone socially and the reality of an individual's biology. What's worrying here is that stating a biological fact can be viewed as too extreme if it goes against a certain political ideology.

But there are plenty of examples like this. I know people have been kick off of social media for suggesting the Prophet Muhammad was a pedophile, or for discussing racial crime stats. And many of the examples I've seen of this don't appear to be in bad faith either, in fact most seem to be in the interest of honest dialogue. They just had the wrong opinions.

View on HN

"In reality, you're not a woman, we're just pretending because we're polite" isn't a very pro-trans stance.

But "trans women cannot (yet?) bear children" shouldn't be an anti-trans stance, either.

Is anyone saying otherwise? I haven't heard of anyone being banned for that.

N.B: what somebody says they are banned for and what they were actually banned for often differ.

> what somebody says they are banned for and what they were actually banned for often differ

Based on our experience at HN (not that it generalizes) I'd even say they usually differ.

If you define "woman" as "able to bear children" you're also cutting out a lot of cis-women as well. Defining gender based on reproductive ability is just a shitty thing in general, anti-human if you will.

Give me a definition of "woman" that is acceptable to all parties involved.

Don't forget things like androgen insensitivity syndrome, infertile women, etc.

Woman: someone who, when you ask them, tells you they're a woman.

If we want a simple inclusive definition, you can't beat that.

Not everyone wants an inclusive definition, some people want discriminatory definitions. And I don't mean discriminatory in a negative sense. If "four" means 4, it would be more inclusive if it also meant 5 and 6, but it loses some utility in its inclusivity.

My problem isn't with your definition, it's with your implied assertion that we should "we want a simple inclusive definition," which is clearly not the case, as the differing priorities in definition are literally central to the debate.

If you want a discriminatory definition, there are many bad ones to choose from. Take your pick!

Then we're back at "woman" just meaning a social nicety.

To some people the word means woman as a biological sex, in which case it would be "has 2 X chromosomes, or otherwise falls in a slightly muddy intersex situation." To some the word means woman as a gender, which itself can also mean either biological sex or gender identity. Watching people make concrete assertions to one another on the basis of definitions they do not share is as predictably pointless as you'd imagine.

It feels you're taking the least charitable interoperation of what I'm trying to say.

I believe trans women are "real women" in just about every way that matters. I only make an exception when I absolutely have to. For example, in sports, or in a medical context.

It might help to remember the word "women" is just a label we assign to people who share a certain common set of social and biological traits. And the majority of these traits trans women share, however in the case of trans women there are some exceptions. But it's not just trans people who don't fit cleanly into these groups, there are similar difficulties to be had with intersex people for example.

There are no easy answers here. Life isn't black and white. It's silly to think we can cleanly divide the whole of society into to clear categories.

I think you mean well, but are maybe a little out of touch with how things have changed in the last few years. Wikipedia does a good job of analyzing this topic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

The way I read it is that it's taken over 50 years for "gender" and "sex" to become different things. It's still a word that's transitioning (ok, some pun intended), but essentially we're past the tipping point now and you'll offend people if you use gender words incorrectly.

The WHO has the progressive definition that you want to be using: https://www.who.int/gender-equity-rights/understanding/gende...

This is in contrast with the dictionary definition from Google, which still uses biological sex: https://www.google.com/search?q=define+gender

It does feel a little bit like when "literally" changed meaning to "figuratively", but this distinction is really important to an ever growing group of people.

It's also worth noting that it applies to gender words like "man" or "woman" which are different than sex words like "male" and "female".

I still don't understand how non-binary people fit into this, but if you embrace the "singular they", you'll probably not offend anyone.

“You must believe something to be true that you yourself know to be false” is a very “point deer say horse” kind of philosophy.

And there's only four lights, let's get the accusations of Orwellianism out of the way too.

It's not a matter of "my side has facts and your side has opinions." It's that we disagree on what the facts are. You can find a lot of scientists from a few centuries ago confidently asserting that black people are subhuman. It doesn't magically make them not-racist because they believed it to be a true fact.

They were wrong, and you are wrong.

Well, yes, there is a creepy element of Orwellianism to this. And the creepy Orwellianism comes in when you make comparisons like the one you just made - that I’m somehow wrong today because, centuries ago, a few scientists had some pet racial theories that turned out to be wrong. It’s a deliberate inversion of language meant to get people to submit.

> But there are plenty of examples like this. I know people have been kick off of social media for suggesting the Prophet Muhammad was a pedophile, or for discussing racial crime stats. And many of the examples I've seen of this don't appear to be in bad faith either, in fact most seem to be in the interest of honest dialogue. They just had the wrong opinions.

I find the trend of "this fact/data is not to be discussed" to be particularly disturbing.

Muhammed being a pedophile/child molester by modern definitions is pretty damn clear in the Quran. Saying we can't discuss it is very odd.

There are significant differences in racial crime and academic stats in the US. The causes can be debated - the existence of a difference less so.

And for a less controversial parallel to the previous... there are major differences in gendered crime stats in the US. Again, the causes can be debated - but a difference most definitely exists.

Under what standard is "racial crime differences are a forbidden discussion" reasonable where "gendered crime differences are a forbidden discussion" is not? What level of fact are we willing to memoryhole if it ends up politically inconvenient?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com