Comment by countarthur | Hacker News Reader

Comment by countarthur | Hacker News Reader

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This is a really thorough reply to what I said and very thoughtful, thanks.

Regarding "liking woman a lot", I was quoting the original author - it seemed like an autogynophilic statement to me, the idea that you are sexually attracted to something so much you want to become it. Maybe I'm misunderstanding!

Yeah it's interesting what you say about Blanchard... the fascinating thing for me about Blanchard is the measurement of groin blood pressure to test for arousal in response (rather than relying on self-reporting), I think his solutions were sexist and backwards and a great example of how blinkered medical professionals can be.

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If we expand the dictionary definition of woman to include some men, we then need a new term to describe... well, actual women. I know a lot of people want to adopt the term "cis woman" for this, but I'm going to stick with "woman". If this is just my personal aesthetic judgement that's fine, the burden of proof is on others to expand it and I don't think the justifications are very good.

Regarding the actress you mentioned, Brian, I can totally see I might mistake her for a man as she's gone out of her way to masculinise her appearance. I wouldn't feel guilt if I used male pronouns then later realised that was incorrect (according to my own rules) - perhaps surprise? I wouldn't even feel temporary embarrassment because she's gone to lengths to look male. I would correct myself to use she/her - even in direct conversation. That might be awkward but it's fine.

If I was in a country, organisation or situation where my livelihood was at risk for using sexed pronouns, I would avoid using pronouns entirely as regrettable prudence. This isn't hypothetical: parts of my social life overlap with these kinds of people and I steer through it, often by saying less, but I won't lie to someone directly.

I don't feel guilty about saying I don't believe in god/heaven to a catholic priest, even if the logical implication is that, from my perspective, they've wasted their life and chances of a happy love and sex life. It's unfortunate but really has nothing to do with me, it's all based on a set of attitudes and beliefs I don't participate in (and personally find regressive).

> Regarding "liking woman a lot", I was quoting the original author - it seemed like an autogynophilic statement to me, the idea that you are sexually attracted to something so much you want to become it. Maybe I'm misunderstanding! > Yeah it's interesting what you say about Blanchard... the fascinating thing for me about Blanchard is the measurement of groin blood pressure to test for arousal in response (rather than relying on self-reporting), I think his solutions were sexist and backwards and a great example of how blinkered medical professionals can be.

To be clear, I don't agree with Blanchard's typography or think it is correct to modern science. But it was never as simple as how it's typically portrayed. I suspect the author of the original post was being sort of ironic/humerous, though it reads as "this is the Blanchardian sense of why I want to transition."

The main thing I want to stress though is that Blanchard was never in the "every person with sperm must use he/him and be masculine and every person with eggs must use she/her and be feminine" camp. He definitely was (is) sexist and backwards, but I think at the time, he was genuinely trying to help people. Ego seems to have gotten in the way of his updating his views and ideas to match reality as science evolved.

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> Regarding the actress you mentioned, Brian, I can totally see I might mistake her for a man as she's gone out of her way to masculinise her appearance. I wouldn't feel guilt if I used male pronouns then later realised that was incorrect (according to my own rules) - perhaps surprise? I wouldn't even feel temporary embarrassment because she's gone to lengths to look male. I would correct myself to use she/her - even in direct conversation. That might be awkward but it's fine.

> If I was in a country, organization or situation where my livelihood was at risk for using sexed pronouns, I would avoid using pronouns entirely as regrettable prudence. This isn't hypothetical: parts of my social life overlap with these kinds of people and I steer through it, often by saying less, but I won't lie to someone directly.

This goes to what I've been saying in the other threads. It's hard for me to comprehend why this is so important. I can understand easily the arguments about sexual assault, participation in sports, and so on - whether I agree with them or not. But needing to use pronouns that are equivalent to someone's genitalia or sperm/egg creation status so stringently that you'd go out of your way to correct yourself to that (and probably offend Brian and people around them quite a bit, in the process), and that you feel uncomfortable being around people who do what you consider to be the wrong thing... it's hard for me to grok. Code-switching into the terminology that's comfortable for the environment you're in and people you're with is incredibly common and ordinary, we do it all the time.

Why is that particular thing so fundamental and important?

The Catholic priest example doesn't make sense to me. You might tell the priest that if he asked, but if you were having a friendly conversation with the priest and he said "have a blessed day!", would you stop and go "Actually, God's not real, and I won't call you Father, Dave, because I don't believe in Catholicism"? I'm Jewish, and I'd probably call a priest Father and the pope Your Holiness, because it's polite in that context. It's not an admission that I accept Jesus, at least, not to me.

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