Asklemmy

43970 readers

676 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

What's a good response to someone saying "just change your gender"? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In my country it has been made easier to change the gender in your passport. I think it's a good step forward. But since this has officially been decided, multiple times people used the sentence above for any gender related issue, with derogatory attitude. For example when talking about quota of women at work or pay gaps. When I just look at them, because I'm missing a good response, they add something like "now it's easy, everyone can change it just as they like". I don't know how to concisely respond to this. There are multiple things wrong - as if discrimination would disappear by "changing" gender and the obvious dissent about it being a progressive step that everyone can decide for themselves now what the gender entry in their ID is. What would be a good short response in a situation like this?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 43 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

How about innocently asking "how would that help?"

In the case of quota, they are necessary because of women not being promoted to higher positions as frequently as men. This has nothing to do with your gender in your ID card.

In the case of pay gap, most of it is explained by jobs most often held by women being payed worse. This doesn't get better by changing your gender.

With just asking "how would that help?", you put the other person in a position to explain their argument, and maybe they reflect a little.

[–] ShareMySims 26 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

This.

One of the best ways to confront a bigot is by pretending to be completely naive of their intentions, and getting them to dig their own hole by repeatedly asking them to explain what they mean.