Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Dak]

Because it isn't something you can just 'decide' to be. You don't choose your gender identity anymore than you choose your sexual orientation.

I think you underestimate the power/ability/possibility of changing your own mind. Sexual identity is biological. Gender identity (and sexual orientation) is a social construct and fluid. Which means it was decided. Fluidity entails decision making. I can be whatever I want to be. I can decide to not be what I want to be. My wants and decisions can change constantly and independently.

Don't be so rigid.

I know we would disagree on taxes. I disagree with everyone on tax dollar expenditure because it's all profit from slavery. I do not condone slavery, even when some of the profit is put back into the farm for select livestock amenity improvement. And if segregation is bad, it's bad. Regardless of who asks for it.

 

[Einherjar86]

I thought you were a relativist?

Is that what you think of me?

I think you underestimate the power/ability/possibility of changing your own mind. Sexual identity is biological. Gender identity (and sexual orientation) is a social construct and fluid. Which means it was decided. Fluidity entails decision making. I can be whatever I want to be. I can decide to not be what I want to be. My wants and decisions can change constantly and independently.

Don't be so rigid.

Why do you assume that because something is a "social construct" it entails a conscious decision?

 

[Mort Divine]

I agree that there is some fluidity to gender, and sexuality for that matter, but for the most part what someone identifies as is a non-changing (or extremely difficult to change) state of being for them. The basics of ones gender identity are formed at a very young age and most often do not change, but rather as they get older flesh themselves out in ways they couldn't at a young age.

EDIT: I mean that I agree there is fluidity in the sense that not everyone exhibits just characteristics of a single gender even if they only identify with it. I identify as a man, but I possess feminine traits yet I am not bigender or the like.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Check out this WTF

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Bikini_Atoll

 

[Dak]

Is that what you think of me?

Relativist is sort of a uselessly vague label now isn't it?

Why do you assume that because something is a "social construct" it entails a conscious decision?

At some point most are. Something emerges and gets a label and cemented as acceptable. In the last 100 years particularly, with the amount of think tanks and advertising boards etc, I think most social constructs are intentional created, yet probably subconsciously accepted for the most part.

I agree that there is some fluidity to gender, and sexuality for that matter, but for the most part what someone identifies as is a non-changing (or extremely difficult to change) state of being for them. The basics of ones gender identity are formed at a very young age and most often do not change, but rather as they get older flesh themselves out in ways they couldn't at a young age.

EDIT: I mean that I agree there is fluidity in the sense that not everyone exhibits just characteristics of a single gender even if they only identify with it. I identify as a man, but I possess feminine traits yet I am not bigender or the like.

Or we can all stop worrying about gender and refute the whole nonsense. Bam, agender. I am what I am. We all have a little bit of both the male and female biological components. It's a very slight shift in hormones etc at critical junctures that make the difference in sexual identity, which affects what you want to call "gender". It's not like your body is 100% teetotaling "male". "I have feelings sometimes so I must have a little of the feminine gender in me" is the kind of nonsense that goes along with your edit. We're human. Homo sapien.

Check out this WTF

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Bikini_Atoll

FUCK YA MURKA!

 

[Mort Divine]

And humans are not just able to be identified as such and have it wholly encompass who and what they are.

Yes, at the core people should just accept that 'we're all humans so just be excellent to one another" as the superior way of living, but that isn't the case mostly. People have things that separate them from one another, obviously, and we should not be trying to trivialize these things in any sense.

 

[Dak]

I think it might help. People kill each other over fucking sports teams, which would certainly be considered a more superficial "identity" than some gender or lack thereof. Attaching less, not more importance would probably help engender some empathy.

 

[Mort Divine]

That is change on a societal and world scale that won't happen over night, or even years. Until that could happen (won't be in any of our lifetimes), people just need to deal with differences.

 

[Dak]

That is change on a societal and world scale that won't happen over night, or even years. Until that could happen (won't be in any of our lifetimes), people just need to deal with differences.

By forced segregation?

 

[Mort Divine]

No, in this case the separate bathrooms are needless really. Either go with a unisex facility specifically, or allow people to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender. It just boils down to sometimes people should be forced to deal with things they're uncomfortable with. Plenty of people are still uncomfortable with gay people, and yet they shouldn't be able to use their discomfort to ban them from being able to do things heterosexual couples are allowed to do such as marriage, adoption, partner visitation rights, etc.

Not to swerve this into that area or anything...

 

[Dak]

No, in this case the separate bathrooms are needless really. Either go with a unisex facility specifically, or allow people to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender. It just boils down to sometimes people should be forced to deal with things they're uncomfortable with. Plenty of people are still uncomfortable with gay people, and yet they shouldn't be able to use their discomfort to ban them from being able to do things heterosexual couples are allowed to do such as marriage, adoption, partner visitation rights, etc.

Not to swerve this into that area or anything...

I didn't say anything about being forced to deal with stuff. Kind of going to the other extreme. But the reason gays are banned from entering into domestic partnership contracts, (in this country) is rooted in racism, just like gun control. Can't let the my pals be carryin gunz or dirtyin up the "pure" white bloodlines. Now marriage control and gun control is still around, searching for reasons to exist. It's the unfortunate effect of letting government get it's foot in the door in any aspect. It's almost impossible to get it out again. I'm pissed off heterosexuals have to get licensed(pay a fee for permission) to be legal domestic partners. I don't know why gays are arguing to get that same oppression.

 

[Matt]

Government involvement in your private life isn't a good thing. Government involvement in other sectors (like banking/finance) isn't inherently bad, though.

 

[Dak]

Government involvement in your private life isn't a good thing. Government involvement in other sectors (like banking/finance) isn't inherently bad, though.

It's just as bad. In fact, it's the government involvement that gives banking it's cartel status.


On a different note:
http://reason.com/blog/2013/02/19/is-your-local-police-department-using-pi

They have since pulled these targets, offering up a contradictory explanation. Go figure.

 

[Einherjar86]

Relativist is sort of a uselessly vague label now isn't it?

I just wouldn't call myself a relativist. Relativism rests on the archaic representational belief that form mirrors/echoes content (i.e. a person's behavior/beliefs represent some interior kernel or self). For relativists, there is no longer any objective or superior ideal, but every person's exterior corresponds to an interior that is unique but equally valid. This is the simple pluralist/democratic philosophy.

This is not what I believe. I believe that people's opinions/behaviors correspond to no interior self; I believe that the interior self is an illusion. I think that people's behaviors are consequences, or effects, of an amalgamation of cultural factors and circumstances. Everything can be explained materially. There are no interior essences or selves. There are, however, individual conscious organisms who congeal into subjects according to certain material conditions.

At some point most are. Something emerges and gets a label and cemented as acceptable. In the last 100 years particularly, with the amount of think tanks and advertising boards etc, I think most social constructs are intentional created, yet probably subconsciously accepted for the most part.

I think you're assuming that "social constructs" and "labels" are artificial and thus irrelevant. Just because individual beliefs and behaviors are the result of external material conditions, and then subsequently adopted, doesn't make them any less relevant. Furthermore, they're often not intentional in that they can't be traced to any one individual. Labels of the sort you're referring to come about culturally and communally. They may be promoted by the media and advertising boards, but that doesn't make them intentional. You're attributing far too much conscious ability to altering one's own desires; even if someone didn't know what to call her gender-identification, this doesn't mean she can swap for another at a whim.

Or we can all stop worrying about gender and refute the whole nonsense. Bam, agender. I am what I am. We all have a little bit of both the male and female biological components. It's a very slight shift in hormones etc at critical junctures that make the difference in sexual identity, which affects what you want to call "gender". It's not like your body is 100% teetotaling "male". "I have feelings sometimes so I must have a little of the feminine gender in me" is the kind of nonsense that goes along with your edit. We're human. Homo sapien.

Now you're neglecting an entire history of gender bias and sexual prejudice. The reason people have gone through so much trouble to create these identifications is because they've experienced significant trauma at the hands of a mainstream culture that has, historically, targeted them as objects of derision. If you want to seriously contribute to the utopian "human" ideals that you just espoused, then don't attack those who want to perpetuate new gender-identifications; attack those who want to obscure and diminish such identifications.

 

[Dak]

"Mainstream society" is/has been every bit as repulsed by concepts of anarchy as they are of androgyny, so it's not like I'm talking from some accepted position. I don't spend much time trying to "reclaim" the anarchy label or something, or even spend much time discussing a label for my beliefs. Labels, like/as symbols, conceal as much as they reveal.

Obviously you can't swap wants at a whim. You can change wants though (if you want to, lol). All that self help "bullshit" about talking to yourself in the mirror actually can/does work. Conflicting wants are interesting.

 

[Einherjar86]

I don't think you're talking from an accepted position, but I do think you're ignoring the historical nuances and dynamics of the situation. It's simple to just say: "Let's all just accept our human equality!" This isn't how those affected by the situation react, however. You tend to oversimplify things, in my opinion.

 

[Dak]

Oh I know people directly affected, on either side, react differently. It says a lot, to me, that both sides of this issue go running to the government to try and get whatever it is they want accomplished.

On a similar note, the newest issue of Time had an article about a new program pioneered in a city in Cali called "Coffee with a Cop". One of the cops interviewed said it was a way of trying to combat the negative perspective people get of cops as the result of you know, all the horrible things they do. So they have coffee with the chattel as if that is supposed to balance it out. Anyway, the most interesting part of the article was the part about the type of people attending these things. It was comprised apparently entirely of the "THUR OTTA BE A LAW!" crowd, all showing up to complain about all the things their neighbors were doing or whatever. Disgusting from all angles.

 

[Einherjar86]

Just to clarify a bit from earlier:

Or we can all stop worrying about gender and refute the whole nonsense. Bam, agender. I am what I am. We all have a little bit of both the male and female biological components. It's a very slight shift in hormones etc at critical junctures that make the difference in sexual identity, which affects what you want to call "gender". It's not like your body is 100% teetotaling "male". "I have feelings sometimes so I must have a little of the feminine gender in me" is the kind of nonsense that goes along with your edit. We're human. Homo sapien.

It looks like you're suggesting that gender identification corresponds - to varying degrees, but a general correspondence nonetheless - to biological sexuality. This isn't how gender is typically understood. Gender is a performative institution, and doesn't really relate all that much to underlying biological factors.

This is why using categories like "masculine" and "feminine" don't work for gender studies; gender is comprised of infinite amalgamations of performative sexual identities, and two people with exactly the same proportions of bio-sexual hormones/apparatuses may have entirely different gender identifications. Your categorical thinking in this matter tends to be rigidly structuralist, but you can't ultimately boil gender down to masculine and feminine, or varying degrees thereof.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

I just wouldn't call myself a relativist. Relativism rests on the archaic representational belief that form mirrors/echoes content (i.e. a person's behavior/beliefs represent some interior kernel or self). For relativists, there is no longer any objective or superior ideal, but every person's exterior corresponds to an interior that is unique but equally valid. This is the simple pluralist/democratic philosophy.

This is not what I believe. I believe that people's opinions/behaviors correspond to no interior self; I believe that the interior self is an illusion. I think that people's behaviors are consequences, or effects, of an amalgamation of cultural factors and circumstances. Everything can be explained materially. There are no interior essences or selves. There are, however, individual conscious organisms who congeal into subjects according to certain material conditions.

Can you define interior/exterior here? is it like idealist/ materialist?

 

[Einherjar86]

To an extent, yes.

Exterior simply refers to manifest behavior and "beliefs" (i.e. what people say they believe, which really are no more than actions involving utterances). Interior is a nearly obsolete term that appeals to a consistent and corresponding "self" that is the source, so to speak, of all an individual says or does. Many theorists today criticize and/or question the notion of the interior self. It was long believed that such a self actually existed and communicated, or expressed, itself to others via exterior means (words, gestures, etc.). Many critics now believe that the interior self is mostly an illusion of consciousness. Consciousness, being an emergent phenomenon that allows us to reflect on ourselves and our own ability to think, isn't the subsequent result of an internal self, but merely the manifestation, or appearing, of a congealed subject that comes about in such a way due to so many external material factors.

The old parallel between exterior form and interior content/essence, has been transposed in today's critical culture; the original "essence" that we once attributed to a pristine, consistent "self" has now been relegated to the exterior, not as a consistent component of self but as a "subject," something molded by material conditions.