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What is your most controversial opinion?
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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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That gender abolition is the best way forward for society. Really gets both sides all pissy
What is gender abolition, the abolition of any distinctions between male and female?
No, that would be quack genetic modification. Not my area of expertise. Eliminating the social categorization of gender as a whole.
No need to call anybody a quack. I'm just trying to understand your controversial opinion.
Social categorization is incredibly vague, so it's still not clear to me what you feel should be abolished.
I think he is trying to say everyone should become a they/them and he wants to abolish he/she genders?
Responding here since I didn't know how to ping you in the other comment, in a sort of blunt way, you're correct. Everyone would simply just be, not categorized into gender and the associated social expectations that come with it
I'd be surprised if his most controversial opinion is related to grammar.
In an extremely blunt way, it's correct. It obviously extends beyond grammar, and I have an entirely different stance on how 3rd person pronouns should be handled in English that described, but the premise is solid. Take where you would typically use gender, and, like, don't. Obviously you would still have biological sex for things like medical records, but it wouldn't be tied to who you are as a person, it would just be a letter on a paper somewhere.
Can you be more verbose? I'm still really confused what you are trying to say and why it makes both sides mad? Could you throw in some examples of dialogue?
Sure. I'll give it a shot. Sorry in advance if this just ends up being word salad. This isn't my strong suit.
To start out with the base that nearly everyone agrees on: "gender", as defined by something (there's disagreement on that part) exists in society.
The traditionalist perspective is (from a typical western perspective, at least) that gender and all the social expectations and baggage that come along with it are simply the natural order. This perspective uses biological sex as the defining trait of gender. I presume everyone here passed 6th grade biology to figure out how that works.
There's also a sizable group of people who disagree with that definition of gender, and consider it separate to biological sex. This, broadly speaking, constitutes the transgender movement. Now there's a lot of different perspectives on how gender should be defined among this group, especially so if you branch out beyond the typical western perspective, and i don't care to go into every different perspective in detail, I'm sure you have an opinion on this topic as well.
But to sort of loop back to where I started, both groups tend to believe that gender is an important part of people identity-wise, and should, in whatever form they support, be upheld, maintained, and respected.
That right there is the point where I break from the mainstream views. While it's indisputable that society currently places heavy emphasis on gender, I believe it to be neither essential nor beneficial to society at large, and we should work to remove it from society.
Yeah thanks for trying I'm still confused but I think I kind of understand. Out of curiosity about how old are you? Most younger millennials and gen y that I interact with seem to not really care about gender and what you are saying seems like pretty common sentiment I'm those age groups. I think the part I'm confused about is like why this is controversial? I've miss gendered people several times and no one's gotten ever mad or really cared since it's not being done I'm mean or cruel way.
I'm a white cis male so I'm so confused about what the deal with caring so much about it is among some loud conservatives? Like the only people I see or hear about making it a problem are people being jerks in a professional environment and making it a big deal when literally no one cares if you are being nice and treating people like humans.
Mid twenties.
People don't like it when other people don't agree with them, especially when they've decided to stake their own personal self worth onto it.
Nobody has ever cared likely because you yourself don't particularly care. That's not an insult, to be clear. What I mean is that you aren't trying to make a statement or anything, you're just going along with the flow. And I do that plenty because there's a time and place for activism and it isn't all the time and everywhere. But I encounter a huge amount of friction when I do try to make a point, especially with how fucking jumpy a lot of people are about it.
To put it in overly simplistic terms, the traditionalists hate that I oppose their strict gender norms, the trans crowd hates that I oppose their self-identity bullshit.
For a lot of people, "treating [them] like humans" constitutes subservience to the standards they put forward.
Thanks that actually clarified this for me! 😊
Honestly the whole thing annoys me and no one shuts up about it... I hate culture war bullshit.
I feel like a lot of people didn't play enough pokemon as a kid to have some words of wisdom carved into their brains "There's a time and place for everything, but not now". Like there's absolutely a time and place for discussions over social politics. it isn't omnipresent
Everything everywhere being culture war gets annoying really quickly. I feel like it was way easier to ignore a decade ago or talk though the issue. I also think the country is so divided and every culture/social issue gets turned into a wedge issue.
There's no way to even have productive conversations anymore without weird political purity tests from all sides.
I wish there was a way to get more cross political solitary. We could get so much done as a country. I feel like most people want the same things at the end of the day.
Like I love guns and gun things but most gun people and gun talk on the internet and in meat space is just weird culture war stuff. I should be able to go to the gun range without having to talk about or pass some weird political purity test... It's just so off-putting. I want to shoot my guns not listen to someone's feelings about children's gentiles...
Also I think if the gun community was more inviting people could have proper discussions on things like background checks or how to regulate guns or whatever without it turning into ban extended magazines or ban x because x... More nuance is needed by all sides but it's hard to do when everyone just screams at each other.
Everyone is in bubbles it's really bad for society.
I think people are really bad at judging what the other side believes or thinks.
Anyways I hope we don't have a civil war it will be really bad and bloody... We need a release valve.
And on guns, I don't understand why people with the strongest feelings on not regulating guns are also people who do not own guns in my personal experience... It's really weird to me.
Not to change the subject since I'm still really confused but this is on the front page when I sort by hot. What I think you are saying seems like common sentiment in the LGBTQ community?
https://sh.itjust.works/post/1296958
Okay, thanks for explaining.
If I understand correctly, you're saying that a person's sex should only be referenced when it is relevant, which is only in a narrow set of situations. Any reference in speech to a person should not invoke his sex.
Sure. Though I'm genuinely curious where you're located that the start and end of gender is planted firmly in linguistics. Because in my experience, there's a whole lot more stuff in society that's intertwined with gender.
Reality.
I agree that its ideal, but how would you even do that? Its so engrained into peoples' brains that I doubt it could even happen unless the vast majority of people agreed to not teach the concept to their children.
Same way any social progress is made: gradually change people's opinions
I don't think you understand how difficult it would be to coordinate that. Is it even possible for a person to unlearn gender entirely? If so, would they even want to? Maybe you could succeed in convincing people its a good idea, but could you convince them to actually do it? If this were to happen it would have to span multiple generations. How do you convince someone not to teach their child something so integral to being a productive member of this society? People struggle to use the correct pronouns for people already, do you really think they could live with the abolishment of gendered pronouns as a whole? Gendered pronouns help differentiate between people in a conversation without having to say their name. "George and Sally raced but she was faster than him." This sentence doesn't make sense without gendered pronouns. "George and Sally raced but they were faster than them." This is a monumental change to how the entire world works. It will not happen by simply changing people's opinions. A good middle ground might be severing the connection gender has with sex, and simply using gender as a way to differentiate people. Although, it's not like this would be easy either.