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How can we have a proper debate when we no longer speak the same language?
- ClassyJacket 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- swader999 3y ago[flagged]
- RyanShook 3y agoDawkins interview with Helen Joyce, author of Trans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu72Lu5FqE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu72Lu5FqE4
- FactKnower69 3y ago[flagged]
- system7rocks 3y ago[flagged]
- system7rocks 3y agoHas Dawkins sat down with numerous trans people to listen to their stories and perspectives... and why his actions and words are offensive? Of course, offensive doesn't mean he has to pull back or go a different route. But sometimes, our choice of words causes us to have social repercussions. It certainly has me throughout my life. Often, I can repair those damaged relationships by listening, learning, and growing - sometimes, I cannot. Isn't this part of what it means to live in a society that is free and contested, where folks can push and pull in various directions? I just don't get this article. Is he a victim? Or what? What does he want us to do? Not criticize or complain about his dumb tweets?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago> I just don't get this article. If I understand the article, people who don't "get this article" are the very sort he is describing. > Not criticize or complain about his dumb tweets? What in particular did he say that you find "dumb"?
- system7rocks 3y agoMost tweets are dumb. They are a tweet. That website is a mess. I understand his article. He is bothered that he gets pushback and labeled all sorts of things because of what he writes. It happens. It's life. It's also not new. It's why so many religious/political people chose to create their own publications throughout history to not have to deal with editors/market forces. Is he incapable of stepping back and understanding that the world is changing? Or looking at the bigger picture? Or thinking critically about the ways this moment mirrors other moments in history?
- itiro 3y agoConstructive inquiry is different than the whine Dawkins is discussing. He’s saying what you said; people write things, fuck off if you don’t like what they write, trans people, right wing people, liberal people, HN people. And it’s being spun here as if he doesn’t get the point we all just absorbed reading his article. Very “you made this? I made this.” meme.
- fsargent 3y ago> But shouldn’t we just indulge the harmless whims of an oppressed minority? Maybe, were it not for a strain of aggressive bossiness which insists, not so very harmlessly and not sounding very oppressed, that the rest of us must humour those whims and join in. Goodness, what a whine. If you’re not a person who is directly confronted with this, why are you throwing yourself into this debate? The only reason to enforce your idea of a person’s gender over their own view of it is because you’re a jerk. It’s that simple. Stop being a jerk.
- itiro 3y agoWhy did you invoke gender? The quote is generic enough to my reading it could mean any one of various mathematical minorities. Do we all join in with Trump flag waving caravans of F150s? They were a whiny minority recently.
- travisjungroth 3y agoThe article is about gender.
- itiro 3y agoNo it’s about hypersensitive minority groups and uses one as an example.
- travisjungroth 3y agoYou’re being weird. I thought you hadn’t read the article when you asked “Why did you invoke gender?”. They’re just talking about the same thing the article is.
- itiro 3y agoOh I am? Ok, sure. Did not realize there was an obligation to avoid “being weird” to your sensibilities.
- Animats 3y agoThe "accept our shaky premise or else" crowd is annoying. The intimidation has backfired. The first big public controversy for transgender bathroom rights was in 2016. right before the US presidential election,[1] and may have pushed Trump over the top and into the White House. [1] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/05/timeline-bathroom-wars/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/05/timeline-bath...
- polotics 3y agoA lot of the time when I see inflamed rethoric about "Woke" things on the web, I strongly suspect this is the work of a skilled provocateur, making sure anyone who could be radicalized into strongly opposing the presented opinions is reinforced into clear calls to action, in the case of 2016, 2020, 2024(?): """vote for Trump, because very clearly and very explicitly the Wokes want to take away your freedom"""
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wiskinator 3y agoThis was the most poorly written and blatantly biased article I’ve seen in a while.
- crazydoggers 3y agoEmotionally charged topics shouldn’t be avoided, but we should all strive to have rational and compassionate conversations about such things. I always like to introduce people to this rules of civil conversation during such exchanges. https://therulesofcivilconversation.org/ https://therulesofcivilconversation.org/ Equally helpful to maintain conversations that are positive is to check out own biases and fallacies: https://yourbias.is/ https://yourbias.is/ https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/
- exo-pla-net 3y agoGross that you were flagged for this. Sorry. Edit: For the two people who read this, in this buried submission, in this buried comment, a quote humorously apropos from the article: "so hair-trigger is the hypersensitivity, a mere invitation to discuss something is enough to set it off."
- jrflowers 3y ago[flagged]
- system7rocks 3y agoThis is an excellent comment.
- nyanpasu64 3y agoLove to see articles simultaneously attacking trans athletes for being taller, and attacking the self-determination and gender exploration which would allow trans people to avoid the natal puberty causing them to suffer intense physical dysphoria (including shape, muscle mass, and height), and struggle to pass as their preferred appearance to themselves and others.
- cooper_ganglia 3y agoReading this, it struck me how the dynamics of the current 'cancel culture' or whatever resemble those of the traditional religious institutions Dawkins has previously critiqued. Both, at their extremes, exhibit an intolerance to differing viewpoints as a threat to their literal existence. Both can become insular, shutting out any deviation from the 'accepted' narrative, and this poses a real threat to free thought and inquiry.
- crazydoggers 3y agoIt is ironic, and sad that this was so quickly flagged. It may be that, given something like 80-90% of humans on earth follow such religious institutions, we as a species have some genetic factors that make us intolerant of differing viewpoints. I can imagine such genetic factors could have played a role in social cohesion early in human evolution.
- wheresmyshadow 3y agoYou're completely right, this couldn't be any more ironic. Article on how people can't debate got flagged with lots of comments proving the point, ah...
- fallingknife 3y agoJust had an idea. The power of a flagging should be scaled by the inverse of how often the flagging user uses flags.
- system7rocks 3y agoI'd love to engage with others about this. Richard Dawkins has not done himself any favors as being open to this conversation. There is so much to learn and appreciate about the diversity within humanity, including the concept of sexuality and gender. That would be a great conversation, and yet Dawkins and others just complain but don't open it up.
- stakhanov 3y ago
- ryandv 3y agoI am disappointed by the absolute paucity of reasoned discourse in this comment thread so far. All I have witnessed are lazy dismissals and thought-terminating cliches [0] without anyone actually engaging with the substance of the article. Recalling the HN guidelines: > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. I expect Dawkins has run into quite a bit of the same mode of equivocation and redefinitions of terms he writes of, when he went around striking down anti-scientific Creationist arguments such as "evolution is just a theory." A Creationist would parrot this line, thinking that "evolution is just a guess." A scientist understands this to mean, "a falsifiable hypothesis verified through empirical evidence and experiment." It's worth taking a look at what Frege had to say with respect to words, their meanings, and what they can refer to [1]: > It might perhaps be said: Just as one man connects this idea, and another that idea, with the same word, so also one man can associate this sense and another that sense. Hence the necessity for interlocutors to "come to terms" on what exactly they mean by stating their definitions clearly before there is any hope of rational discussion. This is rapidly becoming more and more difficult, as old words with a long history of usage such as "gender" are being appropriated to mean, and refer to, things quite different from the original senses and references of those terms. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A... [1] http://www.scu.edu.tw/philos/98class/Peng/05.pdf http://www.scu.edu.tw/philos/98class/Peng/05.pdf
- flir 3y ago> “Sarah Jane” Baker Speaking of words, why would “Professor” Dawkins do that? > This is rapidly becoming more and more difficult, as old words with a long history of usage such as "gender" are being appropriated to mean, and refer to, things quite different from the original senses and references of those terms. Like "chaos" in physics, "master" in computing, or, as you point out, "theory" in science as a whole. Wikipedia has John Money introducing a distinction between biological sex and gender identity in 1955, by the way.
- TMWNN 3y ago[flagged]
- kelseyfrog 3y agoIt's really a shame Dawkins hasn't dipped his toe into social epistemology. It's very clear that this is a grounding issue that's highlighting that different categories have different grounding rules and that within categories, individuals have different grounding rules. Furthermore, grounding rules have cultural-geofraphic territories and change over time. It's how I can get a new job and call myself a Data Scientist, but as Rachel Dolezal is mentioned in the article, cannot alter her appearance and be Black. The categories are simply grounded in different things. Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir, does a phenomenal job at describing this principle in Categories We Live By. It's a plus that it's both fairly short and approachable.
- ryandv 3y ago> It's how I can get a new job and call myself a Data Scientist, but as Rachel Dolezal is mentioned in the article, cannot alter her appearance and be Black. This theme was already explored in the literature [0]: > Former NAACP chapter head Rachel Dolezal’s attempted transition from the white to the black race occasioned heated controversy. Her story gained notoriety at the same time that Caitlyn Jenner* graced the cover of Vanity Fair, signaling a growing acceptance of transgender identity. Yet criticisms of Dolezal for misrepresenting her birth race indicate a widespread social perception that it is neither possible nor acceptable to change one’s race in the way it might be to change one’s sex. Considerations that support transgenderism seem to apply equally to transracialism. Unfortunately, just as is happening here, instead of engaging with the substance of the paper on its own merits, there were widespread calls to simply retract the paper and dispose of it down the memory hole [1]. [0] Tuvel, R. (2017). In Defense of Transracialism. Hypatia, 32(2), 263–278. doi:10.1111/hypa.12327 (https://sci-hub.se/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/hypa.12327 https://sci-hub.se/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/...) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_transracialism_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_transracialism_controv...
- kelseyfrog 3y ago> Unfortunately, just as is happening here, instead of engaging with the substance of the paper on its own merits, there were widespread calls to simply retract the paper and dispose of it down the memory hole. What's your explanation for this, what do you suppose the retraction advocates explanation is, and why might they be different?
- marcod 3y agoI agree with a bunch of what's said at the beginning of this. Dialog is the way, cancelling is not. But then he started to lose me: > the biological fact that our sex is determined at conception by an X or a Y sperm. Ever heard of people who are intersex? Given the diversity of the human condition that some people are born feeling not like the sex of their body at birth does not seem far-fetched to me. > What I didn’t know, and learned from Joyce in our interview, is that small children are being taught, using a series of colourful little books and videos, that their “assigned” sex is just a doctor’s best guess, looking at them when they were born. Is this is actually happening on a significant scale? All that I have ever seen were books for children that say, it's ok if you feel different and not a single one that said you will be better if you are different.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoTo your first question, this is addressed in the interview. To your second question, yes. To address your statement after that, peer pressure is hell on a little kid.
- h11h 3y agoI find it frustrating when people claim to be upholding science but then make simple, unscientific claims that suggest they actually have the minds of Greek philosophers. Some women do have penises. Some men have XX chromosomes. Some women have XY chromosomes. Some people have XX and XY chromosomes. Science tells us that. This has nothing to do with transgender people. But it does suggest "sex" might not be as simple as a metaphysical binary.
- vernon99 3y agoThe problem is that people use very (like VERY) rare edge cases to build a whole framework based on it and bully the rest. Typical tyranny of the minority.
- pointlessone 3y agoAccording to Wikipedia 1.7% is the upper bound of all intersex variations in the population. It is important to acknowledge and accommodate these people. However their existence more often used as a weapon in discourse on adjacent topics like gender and identity but not necessarily specifically intersex. As an example, about 9% of population is left-handed. When was the last time someone mentioned violence when talking about handedness?
- klyrs 3y ago> 1984’s Appendix lays out the principles of Newspeak, the nascent language of Orwell’s dark dystopia. Newspeak was designed to make unorthodox thoughts impossible. There would be no words to express them. > The Times (January 18) reported that “a transgender woman has denied raping two women with her penis”. If “with her penis” is not quite 2+2= 5, it’s getting close. 2+2= 4.5? It's so curious that Dawkins, of all people, seems to be complaining that unorthodox thought -- that is to say, a rejection of traditional religious doctrine -- is expressible in the English language.
- ryandv 3y ago> It's so curious that Dawkins, of all people, seems to be complaining that unorthodox thought -- that is to say, a rejection of traditional religious doctrine -- is expressible in the English language. That's not what he's "complaining" about at all. In fact, quite the opposite - that certain political and/or religious groups are _making it impossible_ to express unorthodox opinions that run counter to their dogma and catechisms, and that this is being accomplished through the control of language.
- klyrs 3y agoWhat religion do you refer to? Is it a major one? When you say catechism do you literally mean doctrine in the form of question-and-response dialogue that is memorized by adherents? Traditionally, "orthodoxy" refers to doctrine that is either religious tradition or generally accepted. But the acceptance of transgender people is still hotly contested worldwide, and a small minority of humans live in jurisdictions where it's even legal -- do words have meaning, or are you yourself "torturing the language" to reach conclusions that are unsupported by the facts presented?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ryandv 3y agoIt can be argued, and has been upthread in the top-voted comment at time of writing, that "the dynamics of the current 'cancel culture' or whatever resemble those of the traditional religious institutions Dawkins has previously critiqued." You can choose to accept or refuse this proposition as you will; taking it as granted, it seems proper to invoke "orthodoxy" in its literal sense of "doctrine that is generally accepted," and catechism in its original sense derived 'from Greek katēkhismos, from katēkhizein "teach orally, instruct by word of mouth"'. [0] What is generally accepted is dependent on time, location, and culture. Consider that this submission was immediately flagged within less than an hour of its posting, implying that this article is not generally accepted within the bounds of whatever time, location, and culture we are inhabiting when we post here. [0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/catechism https://www.etymonline.com/word/catechism
- JellyBeanThief 3y agoThe fundamental problem Dawkins is struggling with is that he is asking for reasoned disagreement on Twitter, which is well-known for a desert of reason. If he truly desires thoughtful discussion, he needs to do it with real people in the real world. And that's so obvious that I begin to wonder if he's sincere, or if he's just stirring up shit to capture people's attention.
- klyrs 3y agoHe's salty about getting demonetized on youtube. Which is a little ironic since transwomen's makeup tutorials are demonetized. Which is the horseshoe theory of advertising: if it ain't mainstream, don't put your brand on it.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoThis problem goes beyond Twitter. You simply can't have a reasoned discussion on this topic, anywhere.
- system7rocks 3y agoAgain, I disagree. Trans folks are not unreasoned. They are open to the immense challenging reality that is their identity. It's different. Go in with humility. Listen. Learn. Ask questions. Be open. All will be well.
- ghink 3y agoIn most spaces that I tried to ask questions about this topic, when first wondering about the contradictions in this ideology, I was pilloried and sometimes even banned from the space. These were typically leftist political spaces where I was already a participant. So I listened and learned, and ended up realising that all of this is built upon unfalsifiable beliefs that I have no obligation to accept. Like, a man who calls himself a woman is a woman? Nope, not affirming that nonsense.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoI have. Of every trans person I've had conversations with about this, only one ever had a real conversation with me. The rest just didn't want to hear my viewpoints or get asked any substantiative questions because they made them feel bad. Most of my interactions I've been called names, many they just didn't want to have the conversation. I have never, anywhere on the internet or in real life, seen an example of a clear headed discussion on this topic between two people that disagree fundamentally about all this.
- locopati 3y agoMaybe trans people are tired of having their existence debated or being treated as a problem to solve (often in an unnuanced way that tries to simplify trans people in exactly the ways we are pushing back against).
- throwawa14223 3y agoYou don't get to not have your existence debated, no one else has that privilege.
- locopati 3y agoSeriously? That's your response. Who's debating your right to existence? Or do you get to take yours for granted?
- throwawa14223 3y agoYes, seriously. Pick a characteristic and someone out there says it should not exist. I've walked past people with megaphones saying my race should not exist. I've loudly been told my religion should not exist by employers. Having your existence questioned is normal and probably unavoidable whenever humans with different values bump into one another.
- locopati 3y agoAnd because of that are people taking away your health insurance? Are people preventing you from getting necessary medical care?
- throwawa14223 3y agoMoving the goalposts. Dawkins is doing neither of those in the above article.
- itiro 3y ago[flagged]