What Has Happened To This Country????

[vernonk]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5073511/Teacher-suspended-praising-pupil-using-wrong-gender.html

Why is anyone pandering to these people?

[jim360]

There are as many genders as society decides there are. It's not an absolute rule, and indeed different societies may disagree on the answer.

[vetuste_ennemi]

//vestute_ennemi, if the person genuinely does have a diagnosed mental illness resulting in a such a delusion, they it may be entirely appropriate to support the delusion as part of a treatment or management plan.//

I understand that point and agree with it, Woofgang. What I don't agree with is that gender is independent of biology. Encouraging children to pretend otherwise seems to me worse than ill-advised.

[jim360]

"What I don't agree with is that gender is independent of biology."

This is why I understand "misgendering". Still, I think the debate is different on a societal level as opposed to an individual one. Generally speaking people are healthier if they are allowed to explore their identity with some level of freedom, as opposed to having that identity "imposed" on them. So in that sense I disagree with you that encouraging the "delusion" is more harmful than ignoring it. I could, for example, point to a few cases where men were brought up as women by force and it backfired spectacularly.

Put another way, I can accept that this teacher may not agree that transgenderism is a thing. What I can't accept is that he should have that battle with the child in question.

[-Talbot-]

jim360
There are as many genders as society decides there are. It's not an absolute rule, and indeed different societies may disagree on the answer.



So you would go along with any made up gender then.
Sound crazy to me.

[jim360]

That's not what I said though, is it?

[-Talbot-]

So you do think the majority of them are a nonsense?

[jim360]

That's also not what I said.

[douglas9401]

You know what's missing from this 'debate'? Muslims, so here you go.

This is all an ISIS plot to occupy our waking hours with piffle and balderdash, tying in knots police and security forces who must now dedicate scarce resources to devising ways of not giving offence to any old guff that comes their way re gender.

Possibly.

[Jackdaw33]

What sort of crazy policy forbids the use of personal names in favour of pronouns? Surely that is a foolproof way of inadvertently making an error.

[-Talbot-]

So you do think the majority of them are real genders?

[Jackdaw33]

^avoiding

[kvalidir]

It's what anyone's given society decides Talbot- for example there were 5 gender identities in most Native American cultures before we arrived there and poked out 'two identites only' oar in.

[-Talbot-]

I will stick my neck out and say that the society I live in doesn't want or recognise 65 or 71 or 93 (whatever number we are currently at) genders

[jim360]

I don't subscribe to the view that there are necessarily only two genders, and that necessarily these match with biological sex. In some societies this view has already been reached and codified into law. Most notably, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan all now accept the existence of a "third gender", which is most closely associated with male-to-female transgenders in the West, although the hijra isn't quite the same.

[kvalidir]

I will also stick my neck out and say that the society you think you live in may in fact merely be a figment of your personal hopes because that's not the same one I am living in, so one of us is clearly wrong.

[-Talbot-]

What exactly do you think my personal hopes are?

[jim360]

It does appear to be a Western -- specifically, a Christian -- thing to be obsessed with the idea that there are, and can be, only two genders. It's not difficult to find examples across the rest of the world where there are no such stigmas against those who don't conform to the binary interpretation of gender.

[kvalidir]

Judging by your posts, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, you seem to pour scorn on the idea that there should be more than two identity genders. As it's human nature to wish that other people agree with us, I'm also assuming therefore that you think society shares your views, when I think it does not.

[-Talbot-]

That's not what I said though, is it?

[kvalidir]

I think you are assuming that society doesn't want to accept multiple genders because you don't want you, whereas I think that is not the case. how much more simply can I phrase it Talbot?