Comment by foldr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by foldr | Hacker News Reader

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You can see that lliamander doesn’t actually agree with all of those points from replies upthread (they are being asked to “lie”).

> But, there are some non-binary identities that I don’t have buy-in for. I will of course refer to people by their preferred pronouns to be kind, but can anyone give another reason?

In the general case your question answers itself. If you don't believe that someone is really (e.g.) a woman, then obviously there is no reason to refer to them using their preferred female pronouns except general politeness and kindness.

If I understand correctly, you are concerned about cases where someone does not accept either 'they', 'he' or 'she' as acceptable pronouns. I would urge you to find a real example, as discussing such cases in the abstract based on Wikipedia articles is frankly ridiculous. But again, the answer to your question in the abstract is obvious. If you don't believe that the person's identity is real, then you can either use their preferred pronouns to be polite – or not.

I fail to see any real philosophical issue that's raised here, given that you already accept that gender and biological sex are not inextricably linked. I guess there's the question of "How do I tell if someone's reported identity is real?", but that seems to be just a special case of "How do I tell if someone is being honest?". The answer is of course that you do so using your general nous.

> that seems to be just a special case of "How do I tell if someone is being honest?"

Is it that simple? Nobody is doubting the honesty of anyone involved. The real matter is there is a cultural tradition called gender, and some people see it as a flexible thing, and to others it’s not, or less so.

You linked to the HRC FAQ, so you must have felt it was relevant to what lliamander was saying. I’m curious what information it contains that could convince someone to be more flexible in their gender definition? What would you say to someone who doubts the validity of non-binary identities? What would it take to convince you that those “extreme,” to reflect your language, neopronoun-based identities are real and valid?

> If I understand correctly, you are concerned about cases where someone does not accept either 'they', 'he' or 'she' as acceptable pronouns.

That’s not what I said at all. I’m not sure how you got that impression. I brought up neopronouns to show that most people have a degree of inflexibility in their conception of gender. These examples you’re asking for are besides the point.

Edit: Do you see how I’m using devils advocate? I personally believe that transgender identities are real and valid, for whatever that’s worth. But if you consider an extremely liberal position on gender, it’s useful to see how you react to it.

>I brought up neopronouns to show that most people have a degree of inflexibility in their conception of gender.

People's objections to neopronouns are usually practical and linguistic in nature rather than stemming from any particular inflexibility about gender. I don't really doubt that some people have gender identities that fall completely outside the usual male/female classification scheme. What I do doubt is that any significant number of these people think that the pronominal system of any given language must necessarily encode the relevant conceptual aparatus in its morphology. After all, there are plenty of languages where pronouns don't have gender at all. If someone is talking about you in Chinese, then 'tā' is all you're getting – and who could reasonably complain about that? That's not to say that I'm reflexively (tee hee) opposed to all neopronouns. Adding additional gender-neutral pronouns to some languages might make sense, conceivably.

I can see how it would be nice to have a general argument that would prove to a skeptic that any arbitrary non-binary identity was 'valid'. However, there are a couple of reasons why I don't think this is a reasonable thing to ask for. First, different identities are different. If the 'validity' of a given identity comes into question, then one has to argue on a case-by-case basis. Second, while it is almost certainly very rare for people to be delusional or dishonest about their gender identities, it is clearly possible in principle. Thus, the requested argument would either be an argument to a false conclusion, or would have to presuppose the honesty and sanity of the relevant person, at which point it would beg the very question that is usually at issue.

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