I am afraid that the different outcomes of gender and racial identities cannot that easily be discarded as logically inconsistent. Of course, Maria's answers are pretty bad and inconsistent.
But let's assume for a moment, that the base theory, that both gender and racial identity are nothing but social constructs, is true. Secondly, assume that mankind has the ability to implement arbitrary social constructs, in other words, we are free to choose in which constructs we want to live in.
In that case the next question would necessarily be: Which constructs are morally justifiable? As soon as anything gets within the reach of our power, the questions of morality becomes virulent.
The answers for racial and gender identity given for the current historical and societal could be hugely different. For instance, one might argue that cultural appropriation is morally wrongbecause of the history of slavery etc., whereas the ensuring people's freedom in regard to gender identity is morally right, because in principle, if no other goods are speaking against it, people should be free to do anything they want to.
There are a lot of things criticizable, even questionable, in the above argument, but I don't see any immediate logical inconsistency.
Maybe that's why she got nervous, because in her eyes you were already approaching it from a direction where you miss the whole right from the beginning. You didn't ask for the moral justification, but were attacking her with that phallocentric logic of yours, you evil, old man, you lost case.
Disclaimer: The argument I proposed above is not my opinion. I'm just trying to find the best argument for the other position, at least the best argument I can come up with in short time.
On another topic, a few years ago I had Thaksviging dinner with Sasheen Littlefeather and her friends. I was the only one who knew about her Oscar escapade, and I discovered that she rarely mentioned it. For good reason!
I think Stanley was replying to the thread, not specifically to your comment. In any case, I think your two assumptions are pretty heavy lifting (both race and gender are nothing but social constructs), and the "moral justifications" for various constructs will be as complicated and contradictory as anything we have now, if not more so. I feel like we're on a train trying to go in two different directions.
Well, a lot of advocates of wokeness are radical constructivists. It's not a position I agree with, on the contrary.
However, this oftentimes is their theoretical foundation and we have to deal with it. If I refrain myself from debating their epistemological approach and if I accept it for the sake of the argument, I simply cannot detect inconsistencies in the conclusions, at least none that are that obvious and crude as they appear in your article .
In fact the argument I used was the well-known argument, that the very high good of individual freedom can be limited by other goods (or by prevention of bads). In this case the bad to avoid would be cultural appropriation. This argument in itself is not inconsistent. The idea that avoiding cultural appropriation is a good important enough to outweigh freedom can be questioned. The notion of cultural appropriation itself can be questioned, for example that it presupposes that culture or cultural expressions could be owned by anyone in the first place (which is totally whacko, imo) . But the kind of inconsistency you were writing about? I can't see it.
Why am I doing all this nit picking? For the one reason that calling someone's position inconsistent is the end of all debate and rightfully so, if it really is contradictory. But if it isn't, the discussion can go on. Not stopping to talk is, I think, crucial these days.
What I called "moral justifications" and by what I meant reasoning in an ethical debate about what is right or wrong, may turn out to be complicated and may run into difficulties along the way, but that's how these things often are. To predetermine that they will be loaded with more inconsistencies than any other such debate, seems to be a long shot to me and no fruitful attitude when getting into the discussion with the other side.
Their ideologies are full of gaps and totally nonsensical. That afraid look you mention is real and exists in all of them. When they simply have no answers to very reasonable and simple questions. Then they scream offence and call you the crazy person.
The thing that’s the most annoying is that there’s such a small percent of these people but they are so loud and drowning any normal discourse. And creating fear in all of us to a point where we simply no longer want to voice, what we thought are sensible opinions.
In Australia all of our schools,universities, childcare centres are undergoing renovations and getting a new “inclusive” wing.
No one knows where this is going but I hope that it bursts soon
Couldn't have put it better, wait!, couldn't have put it nearly as well as yourself. My thoughts exactly. What I've decided to do about our strange cultural moment On So Many Fronts, is to just pay attention, listen carefully, keep my mouth shut because of where I live, and wait for the resolution of all the confusing tangents various parts of the society have chosen to go on. I see our current culture as playing some sort of strange sport with all these "ideas" around racism, gender, self-identification and mucho mas. It's weird, interesting, but on a practical level, a gigantic waste of effort and energy. We have bigger fish to fry and life is short. All this social experimentation isn't fun anymore....
“some sort of strange sport” & “bigger fish to fry and life is short”...I like your depiction of what’s really happening. It’s troubling for me to see so many people [including myself] using issues worthy of debate and solution-oriented action, as entertainment/sport. It seems clear there’s an evolutionary compensation happening to find meaning anywhere possible in an increasingly artificial world. This “strange sport” is kinda just international gossip.
However, I do respect that many people’s lives are truly affected by the outcomes of these debates. And I believe there’s a lot of good intention behind the wokes, reasonable folks, and all the other blokes.
I am grateful of truth seekers with a platform [like Chris] that continue to challenge the mainstream narratives on a global scale, while many of us find it more practical to stay relatively neutral or quiet in our local communities...but this is ass backwards. Fuck this polarization in local communities fueled largely by international conflict and social media. Life boat communities here we come!!!
So true. It used to be fun, an expression of freedom. These days, it's feeling very un-fun, and more like an expression of conformity. But maybe that's just my perspective. Hard to know.
Yeah I think America is by far the worst. In Melbourne Australia it got really bad. Melbourne is basically like LA when it comes to the progressiveness. They’ve lost the plot so I moved to Perth. Where it’s a little bit more normal but the movement it’s taking some momentum here too.
We have a non binary person starting work and they dress like a woman, put make up like a woman, is married to a person who identifies as a man yet she is not sure if she’s a she or he or they. Some days she’s more she some days she’s more they.
I mean.... it’s causing anxiety in all the staff here already and they haven’t even started properly. They have been working from home for few months.
Meh. Perhaps my comment was misinterpreted. I'm more relieved to not be dealing with the political hysteria and lectures about race and gender from people who have the only "correct opinion".
I don't really care what people do with themselves as long as its not harming me. Live and let live.
I've had non-binary, etc. coworkers. Most of them are normal, friendly people. Just call them by whatever pronoun is on their nametag that day and move on.
My sister teaches in a school where some of the kids (around 10 years old I think) go by "they." The teachers and other kids treat them just as they would any other kid. I don't see the issue.
I have a hard time believing that society as we know is collapsing. Most people who believe that shit have never spoken to someone who looks different than them.
Yeah I think most people want to get along and just get on with life.
Most people don’t have issues calling anyone a different pronoun or a name.
The problem arises when people on far ends of the spectrum don’t see eye to eye.
I didn’t want to make it sound like I’m a hater or anything.
I do have a lot of compassion and actually do a lot of volunteer work with LGBTQ community. Some of the coolest people that I volunteer with are trans or non binary. But they’re the genuine ones that don’t mind if someone slips every now and then and calls them a different name or uses a different pronoun.
I think for majority that’s not an issues. It’s the few that are still trying to figure it out for themselves and they’re still hurting on the inside and they project their pain on everyone around them in the only way they know how. By being offended or demanding things in a rude way. Things which would’ve been given to them anyway.
Interesting how perspectives could differ. In my company there's a former guy, transitioning to become female. She's still got a lot of a man's physical characteristics . I've rarely seen anybody changing for the better in such short time than him/her. And by that I mean her behavior and attitudes towards others. She's such a nicer, gentler person know. My guess is that back a couple of months ago, when still a man and not out of the closet, he was a kind of unpleasant, angry man, oftentimes snapping because he was so afraid and discontent.
For me it is very beautiful to witness somebody coming to terms with himself and seemingly so more content about life.
One thing you wrote makes me wonder why that is: What is it exactly, that causes the staff to get anxious? That's an honest question. I simply don't understand what is threatening about someone being fluid or, depending on one's perspective, insecure about his identity?
I think it’s making everyone uncomfortable because there’s a lot of uncertainty. This person has laid down some strict rules. They have been very demanding of their rights, which I feel would have been given to them anyway.
Our company is amazing. We are really inclusive. We all are a little bit progressive and support each other. we work in the environmental industry but people just don’t want to be forced to do things that don’t sit well with them.
The new person has been very vocal about LGBTQ rights on their linked in.
I think their approach is not friendly so far.
Their office is a little bit further than the rest of the offices and they have demanded that they be put in a different spot.
They think it’s a segregation. But it’s not. They are just starting a job to replace a person who had that office before.
One of the things that’s been discussed is that we will all have to include our pronouns in the email and signature to make the new person feel included because they have their pronouns.
And I feel like I don’t need to do that and I don’t want to be forced to do that.
Another thing that was discussed is to go to a support March for gender inclusivity. Once again, I don’t want to be made to do things that I don’t want to do. Especially in my spare time.
I’m very supportive of people who are trying to figure out who they are. I volunteer with people with substance abuse and a lot of them have gender confusion. And I have a lot of understanding and compassion for what they’re going through. It’s not easy.
For me it’s not about the gender it’s about how they carry themselves and how that affects me.
In Melbourne in 2016 the HR told me to employ a gay person for a trade role and I simply couldn’t find anyone from lgbtq community to fill the spot. So I employed a qualified man. And at the end of the year they told me I failed to meet my KPI’s to meet the diversity numbers. Which lead to me almost being performance managed.
Thanks for your elaborate response. I appreciate it very much.
People like the one you describe are unbearable.
And the KPI thing is outrageous. I'd have told them to go fuck their KPI's. Well, that's what I'm telling them to do anyway, but this is absolutely untolerable.
I was at the Olympics in Montreal in 76 and saw Bruce Jenner win the Decathlon. To a high school track jock like me, Jenner was the epitome of male athletic virtue. Fast forward all these decades, and I still grapple with the changes he, now she, went through. But was also in a partnership with a woman a few years ago whose daughter declared herself to be trans, and who schooled us in all the gender fine points, starting with a chart she put on the fridge. "Gender is assigned at birth," and off it went from there. We're all on a spectrum, in many aspects of our identity, and if it's one thing we know, human beings are adaptable and fluid. But we are also creatures of culture and of our times, and even though I'm told that there is a Passamaquoddy tribal member in my heritage, I doubt I could succeed in saying I'm part Native American. And therein lies the current hoopla. Thank god I have my 20 something kids to school me in what's cool and what's not!
I am afraid that the different outcomes of gender and racial identities cannot that easily be discarded as logically inconsistent. Of course, Maria's answers are pretty bad and inconsistent.
But let's assume for a moment, that the base theory, that both gender and racial identity are nothing but social constructs, is true. Secondly, assume that mankind has the ability to implement arbitrary social constructs, in other words, we are free to choose in which constructs we want to live in.
In that case the next question would necessarily be: Which constructs are morally justifiable? As soon as anything gets within the reach of our power, the questions of morality becomes virulent.
The answers for racial and gender identity given for the current historical and societal could be hugely different. For instance, one might argue that cultural appropriation is morally wrongbecause of the history of slavery etc., whereas the ensuring people's freedom in regard to gender identity is morally right, because in principle, if no other goods are speaking against it, people should be free to do anything they want to.
There are a lot of things criticizable, even questionable, in the above argument, but I don't see any immediate logical inconsistency.
Maybe that's why she got nervous, because in her eyes you were already approaching it from a direction where you miss the whole right from the beginning. You didn't ask for the moral justification, but were attacking her with that phallocentric logic of yours, you evil, old man, you lost case.
Disclaimer: The argument I proposed above is not my opinion. I'm just trying to find the best argument for the other position, at least the best argument I can come up with in short time.
I just heard a TV interview with the author of a new book I AM NOT THIS RACE. The author does not want an assighnment to limit her.
Okay. And that is related to the argument I presented how?
On another topic, a few years ago I had Thaksviging dinner with Sasheen Littlefeather and her friends. I was the only one who knew about her Oscar escapade, and I discovered that she rarely mentioned it. For good reason!
I learned about it from the documentary "Reel Injun" I watched it in a university course called "American Indian Cultural Images"
I loved what she did and thought she was beautiful too. That scene stood out to me in that film.
I think Stanley was replying to the thread, not specifically to your comment. In any case, I think your two assumptions are pretty heavy lifting (both race and gender are nothing but social constructs), and the "moral justifications" for various constructs will be as complicated and contradictory as anything we have now, if not more so. I feel like we're on a train trying to go in two different directions.
Well, a lot of advocates of wokeness are radical constructivists. It's not a position I agree with, on the contrary.
However, this oftentimes is their theoretical foundation and we have to deal with it. If I refrain myself from debating their epistemological approach and if I accept it for the sake of the argument, I simply cannot detect inconsistencies in the conclusions, at least none that are that obvious and crude as they appear in your article .
In fact the argument I used was the well-known argument, that the very high good of individual freedom can be limited by other goods (or by prevention of bads). In this case the bad to avoid would be cultural appropriation. This argument in itself is not inconsistent. The idea that avoiding cultural appropriation is a good important enough to outweigh freedom can be questioned. The notion of cultural appropriation itself can be questioned, for example that it presupposes that culture or cultural expressions could be owned by anyone in the first place (which is totally whacko, imo) . But the kind of inconsistency you were writing about? I can't see it.
Why am I doing all this nit picking? For the one reason that calling someone's position inconsistent is the end of all debate and rightfully so, if it really is contradictory. But if it isn't, the discussion can go on. Not stopping to talk is, I think, crucial these days.
What I called "moral justifications" and by what I meant reasoning in an ethical debate about what is right or wrong, may turn out to be complicated and may run into difficulties along the way, but that's how these things often are. To predetermine that they will be loaded with more inconsistencies than any other such debate, seems to be a long shot to me and no fruitful attitude when getting into the discussion with the other side.
I think about this a lot.
Their ideologies are full of gaps and totally nonsensical. That afraid look you mention is real and exists in all of them. When they simply have no answers to very reasonable and simple questions. Then they scream offence and call you the crazy person.
The thing that’s the most annoying is that there’s such a small percent of these people but they are so loud and drowning any normal discourse. And creating fear in all of us to a point where we simply no longer want to voice, what we thought are sensible opinions.
In Australia all of our schools,universities, childcare centres are undergoing renovations and getting a new “inclusive” wing.
No one knows where this is going but I hope that it bursts soon
Chris,
Couldn't have put it better, wait!, couldn't have put it nearly as well as yourself. My thoughts exactly. What I've decided to do about our strange cultural moment On So Many Fronts, is to just pay attention, listen carefully, keep my mouth shut because of where I live, and wait for the resolution of all the confusing tangents various parts of the society have chosen to go on. I see our current culture as playing some sort of strange sport with all these "ideas" around racism, gender, self-identification and mucho mas. It's weird, interesting, but on a practical level, a gigantic waste of effort and energy. We have bigger fish to fry and life is short. All this social experimentation isn't fun anymore....
“some sort of strange sport” & “bigger fish to fry and life is short”...I like your depiction of what’s really happening. It’s troubling for me to see so many people [including myself] using issues worthy of debate and solution-oriented action, as entertainment/sport. It seems clear there’s an evolutionary compensation happening to find meaning anywhere possible in an increasingly artificial world. This “strange sport” is kinda just international gossip.
However, I do respect that many people’s lives are truly affected by the outcomes of these debates. And I believe there’s a lot of good intention behind the wokes, reasonable folks, and all the other blokes.
I am grateful of truth seekers with a platform [like Chris] that continue to challenge the mainstream narratives on a global scale, while many of us find it more practical to stay relatively neutral or quiet in our local communities...but this is ass backwards. Fuck this polarization in local communities fueled largely by international conflict and social media. Life boat communities here we come!!!
So true. It used to be fun, an expression of freedom. These days, it's feeling very un-fun, and more like an expression of conformity. But maybe that's just my perspective. Hard to know.
Move back to Spain, dude. No one really worries about that shit here.
Yeah I think America is by far the worst. In Melbourne Australia it got really bad. Melbourne is basically like LA when it comes to the progressiveness. They’ve lost the plot so I moved to Perth. Where it’s a little bit more normal but the movement it’s taking some momentum here too.
We have a non binary person starting work and they dress like a woman, put make up like a woman, is married to a person who identifies as a man yet she is not sure if she’s a she or he or they. Some days she’s more she some days she’s more they.
I mean.... it’s causing anxiety in all the staff here already and they haven’t even started properly. They have been working from home for few months.
Meh. Perhaps my comment was misinterpreted. I'm more relieved to not be dealing with the political hysteria and lectures about race and gender from people who have the only "correct opinion".
I don't really care what people do with themselves as long as its not harming me. Live and let live.
I've had non-binary, etc. coworkers. Most of them are normal, friendly people. Just call them by whatever pronoun is on their nametag that day and move on.
My sister teaches in a school where some of the kids (around 10 years old I think) go by "they." The teachers and other kids treat them just as they would any other kid. I don't see the issue.
I have a hard time believing that society as we know is collapsing. Most people who believe that shit have never spoken to someone who looks different than them.
Yeah I think most people want to get along and just get on with life.
Most people don’t have issues calling anyone a different pronoun or a name.
The problem arises when people on far ends of the spectrum don’t see eye to eye.
I didn’t want to make it sound like I’m a hater or anything.
I do have a lot of compassion and actually do a lot of volunteer work with LGBTQ community. Some of the coolest people that I volunteer with are trans or non binary. But they’re the genuine ones that don’t mind if someone slips every now and then and calls them a different name or uses a different pronoun.
I think for majority that’s not an issues. It’s the few that are still trying to figure it out for themselves and they’re still hurting on the inside and they project their pain on everyone around them in the only way they know how. By being offended or demanding things in a rude way. Things which would’ve been given to them anyway.
Interesting how perspectives could differ. In my company there's a former guy, transitioning to become female. She's still got a lot of a man's physical characteristics . I've rarely seen anybody changing for the better in such short time than him/her. And by that I mean her behavior and attitudes towards others. She's such a nicer, gentler person know. My guess is that back a couple of months ago, when still a man and not out of the closet, he was a kind of unpleasant, angry man, oftentimes snapping because he was so afraid and discontent.
For me it is very beautiful to witness somebody coming to terms with himself and seemingly so more content about life.
One thing you wrote makes me wonder why that is: What is it exactly, that causes the staff to get anxious? That's an honest question. I simply don't understand what is threatening about someone being fluid or, depending on one's perspective, insecure about his identity?
I think it’s making everyone uncomfortable because there’s a lot of uncertainty. This person has laid down some strict rules. They have been very demanding of their rights, which I feel would have been given to them anyway.
Our company is amazing. We are really inclusive. We all are a little bit progressive and support each other. we work in the environmental industry but people just don’t want to be forced to do things that don’t sit well with them.
The new person has been very vocal about LGBTQ rights on their linked in.
I think their approach is not friendly so far.
Their office is a little bit further than the rest of the offices and they have demanded that they be put in a different spot.
They think it’s a segregation. But it’s not. They are just starting a job to replace a person who had that office before.
One of the things that’s been discussed is that we will all have to include our pronouns in the email and signature to make the new person feel included because they have their pronouns.
And I feel like I don’t need to do that and I don’t want to be forced to do that.
Another thing that was discussed is to go to a support March for gender inclusivity. Once again, I don’t want to be made to do things that I don’t want to do. Especially in my spare time.
I’m very supportive of people who are trying to figure out who they are. I volunteer with people with substance abuse and a lot of them have gender confusion. And I have a lot of understanding and compassion for what they’re going through. It’s not easy.
For me it’s not about the gender it’s about how they carry themselves and how that affects me.
In Melbourne in 2016 the HR told me to employ a gay person for a trade role and I simply couldn’t find anyone from lgbtq community to fill the spot. So I employed a qualified man. And at the end of the year they told me I failed to meet my KPI’s to meet the diversity numbers. Which lead to me almost being performance managed.
That was back in 2016 when it wasn’t this bad.
So yeah, I’m a little cautious.
Thanks for your elaborate response. I appreciate it very much.
People like the one you describe are unbearable.
And the KPI thing is outrageous. I'd have told them to go fuck their KPI's. Well, that's what I'm telling them to do anyway, but this is absolutely untolerable.
I was at the Olympics in Montreal in 76 and saw Bruce Jenner win the Decathlon. To a high school track jock like me, Jenner was the epitome of male athletic virtue. Fast forward all these decades, and I still grapple with the changes he, now she, went through. But was also in a partnership with a woman a few years ago whose daughter declared herself to be trans, and who schooled us in all the gender fine points, starting with a chart she put on the fridge. "Gender is assigned at birth," and off it went from there. We're all on a spectrum, in many aspects of our identity, and if it's one thing we know, human beings are adaptable and fluid. But we are also creatures of culture and of our times, and even though I'm told that there is a Passamaquoddy tribal member in my heritage, I doubt I could succeed in saying I'm part Native American. And therein lies the current hoopla. Thank god I have my 20 something kids to school me in what's cool and what's not!
Thanks Chris. Thought-provoking and nuanced musing about race and gender.