The piece satirized the confusion between sex and gender. It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social construct." It's still a highly debated topic and well within the public sphere of debate. Also, this person was a public official and was in the news from general news outlets (named Woman of the Year) which puts them well within the public realm of ridicule, even if you or I don't agree with it. If the piece had advocated physical harm that would be much much different.
>It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from...
Would you have said the same thing about ridiculing someone for being openly gay in government 30 years ago, being Catholic in government 60 years ago, or being Black in government 80 years ago?
No, because those aren't even remotely similar things. It wouldn't be a "hate crime" to call a Catholic a Protestant, or a Gay person a Straight person or a Black person a white person. It would be a hateful to deny them rights or to call for abuse. In this instance the "hate crime" is merely saying someone's biological sex is x, even if they say they are y. However, If I called a non-trans woman a man or a non-trans man a woman, that's not a hate crime. So, the whole idea is fairly inconsistent.
I still think it's very much up for debate, unlike the instances you listed. I have trans friends, and while I can't speak for them, I don't believe they think the debate is as settled on some of these issues, especially in regard to "misgendering" being a hate crime. Hell, I've misgendered one of my non-binary friends constantly by accident and we're still friends. I'm not banned and haven't been charged with a hate crime. Would I want someone intentionally misgendering them just to get to them? No, I think that's cruel, and I'd defend my friend; but I don't think that person should automatically lose their account or be arrested (which has happened outside the US.) There's an important distinction there and it's an important debate.
What do you think is the fundamental joke the article is making?
The only joke I see is "a trans person exists". The article isn't about her policies, her performance in her job, or even complexities in our evolving definition of either sex or gender like you are implying. The joke is that this person is trans. The message of that joke is the existence of a trans person in public is worthy of mockery. Therefore the only way to stop the mockery is to stop being trans or retreat from public life. I think refusing to stop that mockery until the target does one of those two things qualifies as harassment.
The joke of the article was that she was named "Woman of the Year," so they named her "Man of the Year" to point out the ridiculousness of such an award for her. You can disagree with that, or you can agree with that, but it's still a very tame joke. I don't think the debate on transsexualism is a closed case in many regards. There are important topics to discuss on it; and satire, even if you don't find it funny, is important to that debate.
I mean the idea that a trans-woman could actually feel and experience the challenges a biological woman faces...is pretty controversial; or the fact that many base their identity on media stereotypes rather than the very diverse experiences of womanhood, also is a pretty important debate, especially among feminists.
We can't just close the debate off and disallow any discussion on it (or jokes about it), and call anything against it a hate crime. That's not how things work. It could also have massive political fallout if Progressives are unwilling to join in the debate and stifle any attempts at it.
>The joke of the article was that she was named "Woman of the Year," so they named her "Man of the Year" to point out the ridiculousness of such an award for her.
The award is only ridiculous if you think trans people shouldn't exist in public as openly trans. I mean you even referred to her as "her" so you seemingly recognize that her being eligible for "Woman of the Year" is more appropriate than "Man of the Year". The perceived ridiculousness comes from the same fundamental concept underlying the joke, the existence of trans people is funny and their desire to simply live their life as they see fit is worthy of mockery.
>I mean the idea that a tran-woman could actually feel and experience the challenges a biological woman faces...is pretty controversial; or the fact that many base their identity on media stereotypes rather than the very diverse experiences of womanhood, also is a pretty important debate, especially among feminists.
No one is arguing that here. This is a person identifying as a woman and being recognized in public as a women. That is the only political statement being challenged. You are free to continue debating whether trans women and cis women have the same experience or whatever, but neither the USA Today or the Babylon Bee was making a statement in that debate.
>We can't just close the debate off and disallow any discussion on it (or jokes about it), and call anything against it a hate crime. That's not how things work. It could also have massive political fallout if Progressives are unwilling to join in the debate and stifle any attempts at it.
I don't know why this is framed as progressives shutting down the debate on the topic. The conservatives viewpoint that the Babylon Bee seems to subscribe to is that gender and sex are they same thing and they are binary. There is no way to debate against that viewpoint. There is no possible compromise position. It denies the very existence of someone like Levine. There is nothing Levine could have said to the Babylon Bee to stop them from targeting her specifically because they weren't criticizing any of her beliefs or actions. They were criticizing an innate quality of her being.
> The award is only ridiculous if you think trans people shouldn't exist in public as openly trans.
This is simply your skewed view and not how many people read the joke. She was named as "woman of the year" BECAUSE she was trans, not because she was/is a woman. That's the joke. USA Today itself probably doesn't care if she is or isn't a woman, the award was issued to get engagement.
> I don't know why this is framed as progressives shutting down the debate on the topic.
Because that is how Progressives have treated the topic in general (at least publicly, privately not so much.)
> It denies the very existence of someone like Levine.
This is not true, it denies how this person views themselves, not their existence; and your existence isn't whatever reality you have chosen for yourself. For example, being gay is something you don't force society to see, you are simply attracted to the same sex. When you change your sex or gender, you are asking for a societal buy-in. That is much different.
> You are free to continue debating whether trans women and cis women have the same experience or whatever, but neither the USA Today or the Babylon Bee was making a statement in that debate.
Actually, both are very much connected, because the idea that you could not experience what a naturally born biological female could is perceive in the eyes of many as to why you cannot yourself ever be a biological female...when you were born male. These are very integrated topics.
>This is simply your skewed view and not how many people read the joke. She was named as "woman of the year" BECAUSE she was trans,
Fine, and this is "simply your skewed view". Yours is not inherently more right than mine.
>Because that is how Progressives have treated the topic in general (at least publicly, privately not so much.)
You completely skipped my point. Progressives have treated this topic this way because there is no compromise position. What concession can a progressive hope to accomplish debating someone who believes that sex and gender are the same and binary?
>This is not true, it denies how this person views themselves, not their existence; and your existence isn't whatever reality you have chosen for yourself. For example, being gay is something you don't force society to see, you are simply attracted to the same sex. When you change your sex or gender, you are asking for a societal buy-in. That is much different.
Trans people don't need "societal buy-in" any more than any other group. They just want to live their life how they see fit. A trans person choice's don't impact you any more than a gay person's choice. Just leave them all alone and mind your own business.
>Actually, both are very much connected, because the idea that you could not experience what a naturally born biological female could is perceive in the eyes of many as to why you cannot yourself ever be a biological female...when you were born male. These are very integrated topics.
This has no relevance to the issue at hand. They weren't awarding the Cis Woman of the Year Award. They were awarding the Woman of the Year Award. Trans women should be just as eligible for that as cis women. This isn't a weightlifting competition. There is no reason to exclude trans women from this type of award.
> Fine, and this is "simply your skewed view". Yours is not inherently more right than mine.
Yes, exactly, which is why banning/suspending them is wrong. A joke can hit or land based on who is hearing it. You not liking it doesn't mean it's inherently hateful.
> You completely skipped my point. Progressives have treated this topic this way because there is no compromise position.
No, Progressives treat it this way because they are scared of their base. If you talk to many in private there are serious questions that they are too scared to raise. But I'm telling you, if they don't raise them, they could politically suffer from it.
> Trans people don't need "societal buy-in" any more than any other group.
This is just factually wrong. It requires you to allow them in women's sports despite tremendous advantages, in women/men's bathrooms (probably the lesser controversial ones,) to be legally held responsible for misgendering, to chemically/hormonally alter children, etc. That is societal buy-in. That is not the same as allowing a Jewish person to practice their Sabbath, employing a black person, or allowing a gay man to get married. I can't even think of anything remotely comparable.
> This has no relevance to the issue at hand. They weren't awarding the Cis Woman of the Year Award. They were awarding the Woman of the Year Award. Trans women should be just as eligible for that as cis women. This isn't a weightlifting competition.
It is actually very relevant and the fact that you can't see that is frustratingly hilarious. It's also funny you say it's not a weight-lifting competition, when a person born a male could theoretically enter a women's weight-lifting competition and completely dominate...and it would be unquestionably supported by some people.
>Yes, exactly, which is why banning/suspending them is wrong. A joke can hit or land based on who is hearing it. You not liking it doesn't mean it's inherently hateful.
This logic doesn't work for moderation. There ultimately needs to be a judge. Otherwise, "I was just joking" becomes a get out of jail free card for any Twitter moderation.
>No, Progressives treat it this way because they are scared of their base. If you talk to many in private there are serious questions that they are too scared to raise. But I'm telling you, if they don't raise them, they could politically suffer from it.
You are still skipping over my point. You are placing the blame for not compromising on progressives, so tell me what they should do. What do think is the middle ground between progressives and conservatives who think trans people are mentally ill and shouldn't be allowed to express their trans identity in public? How do you compromise with people with that view?
>This is just factually wrong. It requires you to allow them in women's sports despite tremendous advantages, in women/men's bathrooms (probably the lesser controversial ones,) to be legally held responsible for misgendering, to chemically/hormonally alter children, etc. That is societal buy-in. That is not the same as allowing a Jewish person to practice their Sabbath, employing a black person, or allowing a gay man to get married. I can't even think of anything remotely comparable.
We are not even debating any of those issues because the belief that the Babylon Bee is putting forward is so extreme as to be unwilling to concede on any of it. Levine wasn't competing in a high school girls soccer game. She wasn't trying to use a public women's room. She isn't threatening legal action based off being misgendered. She is simply doing her job the same way all her colleagues are and yet she is subject of public ridicule and death threats for simply existing.
How do you think that gets fixed? Do you think there is some negotiation to be hard in which progressives promise to give up arguing about high school sports and conservatives will stop sending death threats to any openly trans public person?
>It is actually very relevant and the fact that you can't see that is frustratingly hilarious. It's also funny you say it's not a weight-lifting competition, when a person born a male could theoretically enter a women's weight-lifting competition and completely dominate...and it would be unquestionably supported by some people.
Fine, explain the relevancy. Tell me how that USA Today article supports "the idea that a tran-woman could actually feel and experience the challenges a biological woman faces" or challenges "the fact that many base their identity on media stereotypes rather than the very diverse experiences of womanhood".
And yes, I specifically was referencing weightlifting as an issue in which nuance can exist. I was contrasting that with an issue in which no nuance can exist, the idea that sex and gender are the same and both are binary. You either believe that or you don't.
> You completely skipped my point. Progressives have treated this topic this way because there is no compromise position.
Isn't the compromise position to tolerate everybody's own personal words and definitions? That certainly used to be the progressive position, at least up to about a decade ago.
Your "own personal words and definitions" don't matter. That is inconsequential to most trans people's live. What does impact them is the government. What definitions will they use?
I don’t understand your point then. If the Babylon Bee can use their own definitions, so can Twitter. What grounds does that leave to object to a suspension based off Twitter’s definition?
I don't understand how your question relates to my point.
The compromise position is that you tolerate people's personal definitions and words, e.g., you would not demand they be punished for having or using them.
I'm not saying there is some legal "grounds" you could use to bar somebody from being intolerant of what you say or think, you just asked what a compromise position would be, and tolerance is one and it's what the progressive position was for a long time.
We don't agree on that. Pretty disingenuous and infantile that you claim that's the conclusion of my comment now, wasn't it? Do you want to actually have a conversation about this or just come up with some vapid "gotcha"?
It's fundamental to democracy and a healthy public discourse that people be allowed to voice their opinions including disagreements. It's quite extremist to believe that people who disagree with us must stop talking about it. That is not what tolerance means.
What's the end game? Ban and censor and silence until nobody complains, disagrees, speaks out, or satirizes The Truth™ ?
I already said I don't understand your viewpoint. You seem to be saying the Babylon Bee is free to challenge progressives', USA Today's, and Twitter's definitions of these words. However, you also seem to be saying that neither progressives nor Twitter can challenge the Babylon Bee's definition.
The everyone should just be tolerant of other people's definitions solution kind of relies on everyone being tolerant of other people's definitions.
I already said twice that I didn't understand whatever point you were trying to make. If you "want to actually have a conversation" like you say, you could try either directly addressing my comment or at least rephrasing and expanding on your point.
You said everyone should be tolerant of everyone else's definitions. Doesn't everyone include progressive, conservatives, USA Today, Twitter, and the Babylon Bee? If so, aren't you suggesting they should all stop complaining about the definitions the other groups use?
I'm not saying or suggesting any such thing as you insinuate and a really basic reading of what I wrote makes that very clear. If and when you are ready to have a grownup conversation, I'll be here. Until then, snarky content-free "zingers" don't interest me in any way. I literally do not care in the slightest and certainly won't dignify it with a response. Nobody else is reading this or being swayed by these comments, so if you don't want to try to have a constructive and polite conversation just move on. I hear twitter is a great place if you want to bait people with that kind of comment though.
>I'm not saying or suggesting any such thing as you insinuate and a really basic reading of what I wrote makes that very clear. If and when you are ready to have a grownup conversation, I'll be here.
How many times do I have to say that I do not understand what point you are trying to make? I'm not saying that like I think your opinion is bad. I am saying I don't understand how you are applying your principle of tolerance in this situation. Either directly tell me why my summary of your position is wrong or stop playing this "grownup conversation" card. A grownup way to approach this situation would be to actually engage in the conversation rather than repeatedly complaining that I am having this conversation wrong.
And how many times do I have to tell you I do not respond to that kind of rhetoric? I literally do not care about it. And that includes the high horse you're on now, doesn't work with comments like "Ok, I’m glad we agree that the Babylon Bee should stop complaining about how other people define these words." in the thread.
The point I am trying to make, which I made from the very beginning, is that tolerance to peoples' different opinions is a possible compromise position and it was the progressive position for a time. That's it, that's the point. You asked about what compromise position there would be vs shutting down debate from people who believe sex and gender are the same thing and binary, and that's an answer for you.
You may not understand what tolerance means and want to ask more about that, you may have other questions, you may dispute that was ever the progressive position, or you may argue that it is not a viable compromise, but not by asking some nonsensical rhetorical question about what I am saying, or what I agree with. If you are not capable of addressing the comment without snide digs at the messenger, just take it elsewhere. As I said, nobody else will ever read this so the performantive "I won" style of internet-arguing is pointless. And I'm not getting the impression by now that you are interested an answer to your question. So why even waste any more time here?
>You may not understand what tolerance means and want to ask more about that, you may have other questions
I understand what tolerance means. I don't understand who you are expecting tolerance from in this situation.
The Babylon Bee's article is not tolerant of Levine's or WaPo's definitions. The BB's refusal to remove the tweet is not tolerant of Twitter's definitions. People aren't objecting to the BB's definition in a vacuum. They are reacting to the lack of tolerance from the BB.
The problem doesn't originate with a lack of progressive tolerance. It originates from the BB's intolerance.
> The award is only ridiculous if you think trans people shouldn't exist in public as openly trans. I mean you even referred to her as "her" so you seemingly recognize that her being eligible for "Woman of the Year" is more appropriate than "Man of the Year".
One issue with people being coerced into using wrong-sex pronouns is that it restricts discussion on this topic.
In this case, for example, if you believe that he shouldn't have been awarded a "Woman of the Year" accolade because he is really a man, but have to refer to him as "her" to be able to say this such that other people can read this - i.e. to avoid your comment being removed or your account banned - then it undermines the entire point being made.
> The conservatives viewpoint that the Babylon Bee seems to subscribe to is that gender and sex are they same thing and they are binary. There is no way to debate against that viewpoint. There is no possible compromise position.
No, the conservative position is that sex is objective and factual, while gender is a subjective facet of personality that is socially constructed. The compromise position is to destigmatize gender nonconformance within the category of “man” in a way that does not set up a conflict of rights with women.
It's cool how HN discussions predictably get distracted from the main point.
The main point was that the claims made by the new owner are demonstrably false.
The new owner claimed that unbanning decisions would be made by a new moderation council. While he was saying this, a slew of right-wing and conspiracy accounts were reinstated even though the council does not yet exist.
Meanwhile here we are, debating gender and sexuality.
> he only joke I see is "a trans person exists". The article isn't about her policies, her performance in her job, or even complexities in our evolving definition of either sex or gender like you are implying. The joke is that this person is trans. The message of that joke is the existence of a trans person in public is worthy of mockery. Therefore the only way to stop the mockery is to stop being trans or retreat from public life. I think refusing to stop that mockery until the target does one of those two things qualifies as harassment.
meh.
Twitter allowed much worse things that joking about someones self-identified gender.
It's a satire site: it's exactly what it says on the tin. If you leave political affiliation out of it, then, yes, twitter has been taking sides.
Generally we consider jokes to be cruel when they mock an affliction that someone didn’t choose to have. You can just about get away with making such jokes about the abstract idea of an affliction, but when you name someone directly it crosses a line.
Whether you think this particular example was cruel depends ultimately on whether you think it is targeting the individual’s gender dysphoria (the thing they didn’t choose to have), or whether it is targeting their claim to be something they objectively are not.
One might argue that there is no difference, if one believes that gender affirmation is the only treatment for gender dysphoria, and that everyone is obliged to participate in that treatment, and to do otherwise amounts to mockery of the unchosen affliction.
Personally I think it’s wrong to joke about people with schizophrenia, but equally wrong to tell them the voices in their head are real.
I take your point, but would suggest the joke is more pointedly aimed at society generally, and the magazine specifically.
What makes the joke funny and culturally relevant — as opposed trivial cruelty — is that it represents a simple, forbidden truth for which one will be subject to severe public censure and deplatforming.
Comedy is a final bulwark against uncritical thinking, and can be used to deflate ludicrous ideas that are otherwise culturally unassailable.
>Comedy is a final bulwark against uncritical thinking, and can be used to deflate ludicrous ideas that are otherwise culturally unassailable.
Comedy can inspire thoughfullness and push back against societal norms. Comedy can also be a way to normalize bullying marginalized people. Being a troll and saying 'But wait, I'm being funny!' still makes you a troll. It's not like the account in question was trying to generate thoughtful discussion. Punch-down comedy is just dressed up hatefullness.
The wider philosophical point is, if a man has gender dysphoria, does that mean he is a woman, or just wants to be a woman?
If the latter, there should be no issue in a satirical publication making the point that a man who wants to be a woman getting awarded a "Woman of the Year" accolade is nonsensical.
Like I said, low-effort humor at the expense of marginalized people is just bullying. You can read a lot into the Bees "joke" but none of it is there. It's just low-effort and doesn't speak to any larger social issues.
The editors shouldn't go to jail, but its obviously the type of hate content that will drive away users and advertisers and twitter was wise to ban it. It adds nothing to the discussion.
Someone appointed to a highly responsible and prestigious government role after a highly successful career, as Levine has, can hardly be described as marginalized.
The Bee's article is more broadly a commentary on how accolades intended for women are now going to men who identify as women - which rather undermines the point of having such awards in the first place. The humor is in inverting this:
"The Babylon Bee has selected Rachel Levine as its first annual Man of the Year. Levine is the U.S. assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he serves proudly as the first man in that position to dress like a western cultural stereotype of a woman."
Criticizing male dominance like this is very much a 'punching up' type of comedy.
>Someone appointed to a highly responsible and prestigious government role after a highly successful career, as Levine has, can hardly be described as marginalized.
Only if you are completely clueless on what marginalization means, which by the rest of your comment, it appears you are.
Trans people, especially trans women are treated poorly. They have less economic opportunity, have a high incidence of being victims of crime, and face violence from society.
Being successful in spite of being marginalized doesn't somehow magically make you no longer marginalized.
Just like there are successful Black people, but they still experience systemic and social racism. Success doesn't magically change that.
I'm guessing you don't believe in systemic racism though, so its probably a non-starter
You’re not punching down when the near entirety of all cultural institutions, journalists, and technology platforms have mobilized to protect your target from all question and criticism.
When you can be censured, deplatformed, and even lose your job for stating an objective truth like “men cannot get pregnant”, your words, by any possible definition, are punching up.
>You’re not punching down when the near entirety of all cultural institutions, journalists, and technology platforms have mobilized to protect your target from all question and criticism.
Unfortunately that isn't really true. Trans folks, especially trans women face discrimination and violence on a daily basis in society. You see, they actually exist in the real world and somehow Twitter mods can't keep people from saying and doing terrible things in real life.
>When you can be censured, deplatformed, and even lose your job for stating an objective truth like “men cannot get pregnant”, your words, by any possible definition, are punching up.
Spare me and your culture war nonsense. I'm sure you believe that white men are under attack and marginalized.
This is ridicule, quite clearly. I won't get into the "is it or is it not a hate crime" bit, but this isn't "merely" stating anything. The term "biological sex" doesn't even appear in the article. The point the reader is supposed to take from this article is quite clearly not "mere" information about Rachel Levine's gender and/or "biological sex". It's that Rachel Levine's presented gender was very funny to the authors and that we should laugh at her for it.
> Would I want someone intentionally misgendering them just to get to them? No, I think that's cruel
Seems like you're putting an awful lot of weight on the distinction between "hate" and "cruel" to me.
What about here on HN? Do you think it's OK for users here to be "cruel" to others, or should dang ban them? Because HN bans people for being cruel, probably every day. Why is Twitter different?
I'm going to reply to my own comment to extend the last point, because I think it's important to point out:
I think it's clear, and that everyone would agree, that if you showed up here on HN making fun of another commenter for their gender in exactly the way that the Bee did, using exactly the same words, that you'd be banned. And we'd all agree that you should be banned.
I think the logical trap that the "free speech" folks are falling into here is that this doesn't "feel" targetted in the same way. It's a "media organization" making fun of a "public figure" and neither the Bee nor Levine are part of "your community". So Twitter banning them doesn't feel like community enforcement of norms, it feels political. And since the Bee is on "your side" you feel like they must have been wronged.
So maybe you should be constructing arguments around whether or not Twitter consitutes a "community" with "norms"? Maybe it doesn't, I'm willing to hear arguments. But the idea that the article wasn't hateful jut doesn't fly as I see it. It was awful, and the only way to see otherwise is to get into a headspace where Levine isn't part of "your community" and thus her feelings don't matter.
I agree with this, but I would emphasize something you glossed over, which is that the target is a "public figure." It's normative to be cruel to "public figures" in ways that would be totally unacceptable in any normal interpersonal relationship. I personally think that's fucked up, but it really is normative.
So singling out e.g. cruelty specifically about trans people's gender presentation seems targeted and political, because it's completely commonplace to say cruel things about someone if they made bad art, or if they disagree with you about some political policies, and rarely do people get banned from anything about it.
This is a perspective thing. But I just don't see that. I mean, sure, there are Internet Yahoos everywhere who run around calling people Nazis and whatnot. But do you have any examples of major abuse directed by big accounts with big audiences (i.e. the ones that attract the censors' attention) that should have been banned but weren't?
The Bee went way out on a limb with that article as I see it. And they got banned. Certainly other similar accounts (the Onion, say) aren't nearly as hateful.
I don't actually use Twitter, so I don't really have specific examples of huge Twitter accounts tweeting nasty things? I am just thinking of what's clearly considered normal among my peers. For example, here is a random thing I find if I Google "mean tweets about donald trump": https://twitter.com/dadsaysjokes/status/1062806755229474824?...
> What's the difference between Donald Trump and a worm? One of them is a slimy, loathsome creature incapable of complex thought; the other one actually shows up when it rains.
I'm claiming that most people would think that it's totally okay to say that about Donald Trump in public, even though it's an absurdly mean thing to say. (I am sure I could find similar jokes about Joe Biden, too.) I don't think that this would be deleted from Twitter if people reported it. But I also don't think it's really much different from what the Bee wrote. I think people would treat the Bee's article as different mainly if they think that being trans is a special category that is taboo to be cruel about.
The notable difference is that one insult is criticizing behavior, while the other is criticizing the person for their core identity (and no, I don't count political affiliation as being central to identity).
From my perspective it's OK to criticize Trump (or Biden) for their policies and conduct, but I don't think people should fat-shame Trump, for example, or make fun of Biden's occasional stutter.
The issue isn't that people are being mean, it's that they're trying to ostracize people for aspects of their being that are out of their control. That's why, generally, trying to cast someone out for being of a certain race, gender, or sexual orientation are considered unacceptable, but criticizing their political opinions or corrupt or otherwise slimy behavior are fair game.
> Can this really be considered a core identity though?
Levine thinks it is. Some of us agree. What's the origin of the term "core identity" in your eyes, and in which bodies has our civilization invested the authority to regulate them? It sounds from your invocation of "fraud" like you think this should be a legal issue?
I mean, sorry, but this is an open and shut libertarian argument. It's no one else's business, especially the government's, to decide who you are. Period. If being a woman or a man (by whatever standards you want to use) isn't hurting anyone, and it clearly isn't, then our job is just to shut up about it.
I mean, seriously: there are people walking around all over the place with Y chromosomes. I have one too. We're everywehre! If my Y isn't hurting you now, how could that possibly change if I put a skirt on it?
Which aspect of this video convinced you that when men like Levine identify as women, they actually are women, not just men who want to be women? I watched the whole piece and didn't find a persuasive argument in favor of this.
Also their discussion on the Forstater case is out of date; that original judgement they cite was overturned on appeal, and the subsequent employment tribunal found that Forstater had indeed been discriminated against for her gender critical beliefs.
This seems like an agree-to-disagree situation, but I found their framing of gender identity to be convincing.
Regarding whether Levine is a woman or "man who wishes he's a woman", the question feels like crawling way way into someone else's head to tell them they're wrong about how they feel about something? If you told me you disliked a certain food, I dunno, say, broccoli, I think a reasonable response would be for me to say, "Weird. I really like it." An unreasonable response might be, "Do you really dislike broccoli, or are you just a broccoli lover who's being difficult and seeking attention?" The answer to that question, if the question even makes sense, doesn't have any impact on me whatsoever.
To my eyes, the core of modern-day conservatism is being bothered by the existence of the type of people I don't like. See, for example, the governor of Florida being bothered by immigrants to the point where he felt the need to go four states away just to find some to be bothered by.
I think a lot of people bothered by trans women are having the same sorts of feelings, and I can't help but notice that in almost all cases, the trans women who bother them are people who have undergone either incomplete or otherwise unconvincing transitions, or, let's be honest, people who through no fault of their own happen to be ugly. I have never once seen people expressing these opinions about beautiful trans people, which strengthens my conviction that what it's really all about is "I just don't like that type of person". Which, I'd like to add, is an opinion or preference in itself and maybe even can't be helped and so who cares, but it feels needlessly cruel to express it to the people you feel that way about (imagine two people getting onto an elevator with you, and one of them sizes you up and says to the other, "I just don't like the look of this person"). And it becomes actually dangerous when they have a large audience prone to violence, and the person they're expressing their distaste for is someone who is already an outcast not because of their behavior but because they happen to not like broccoli, and it sometimes happens that people like them are literally murdered for it.
In any case, I'm not here to try to prove you wrong; just expressing my view because you asked. I'll also add that I think one of the problems we have on the left is the idea that if you're wrong about some issue it means you're evil, and I try to be wary of that, and I thought the video did a good job of navigating its argument without wallowing in that sort of spite. I like to imagine we're both here trying to figure stuff out in good faith.
> I am just thinking of what's clearly considered normal among my peers.
OK, so that gets directly to my point. You have a community. It has norms. You presumably police it according to those norms. Some things are OK, some aren't. I'm not going to judge it, because it's not my community (though I dearly hope you aren't trafficking in the kind of hate the Bee did).
But Twitter is a community too, and it has different rules.
As for the joke you found. Y'know what, I think that's pretty borderline. I can see some forums (here, for example) finding that banworthy, and I wouldn't be shocked if Twitter did too. But it's also a rando comment with sub-1000 engagement numbers. If this was horrifically offensive to Trump supports, not many of them seem to have been complaining about it. The Babylon Bee had many millions of followers and this was a very controversial article.
There aren't public figures on HN like this, and people make fun of some public figures here sometimes regardless. You also can't compare a massive platform like Twitter that has a broad range of discussions and allowances with HN which is a very niche forum on very niche topics that surround tech.
It's like comparing someone being banned from your school chess club for being mean vs banning someone from the entire school district for being mean. It's not comparable. Twitter and Facebook are massive public forums, to the point where they are nearly public utilities that are privately owned.
An example: you would have your post removed if you posted that topless Elon photo with his weird body structure and made a comment about it, but on Twitter/Facebook that flies...because they aren't niche forums.
I think the debate on misgendering being a "hate crime" is a bit pedantic. A lot of normal things between friends, lovers, acquaintances, colleagues pr strangers can be considered criminal or normal depending on circumstances / context. The idea that you're going to be jailed by accidentally misgendering your buddy is just moral panic at the expense of trans folks.
If I walked around the office calling my male co-worker by some random female name as a form of ridicule I'd end up on those cheesy videos they make you watch for sexual harassment training.
I guess I could have said 62 years, but yes I was specifically referencing JFK. His Catholicism was a major topic at the time of his election. Many people questioned whether he would defer political decisions and general loyalty to the Pope. He had to give speeches professing his belief in the separation of church and state. However by the time we got ready to elect our second Catholic, no one seriously questioned Joe Biden about it.
Some people believe sex is a spectrum, or that it can be changed, but it’s super-fringe and mostly reflects ignorance of the difference between sex and gender rather than being a serious philosophical position.
It may be fringe in the sense that people don't state what they actually believe out of fear, but it is not fringe on official policies and the direction they are heading. If you don't agree with the statement "Trans women are women", and all the conclusions that leads to, ie. trans women in sports, then you risk being cancelled.
Binary means 0 and 1. It does not mean 0, 1, or 2 1.7% (or even 0.018%) of the time.
Of course, the word "binary" is a social construct, and "spectrum" is a social construct as well. However I would expect that in a forum focused on computers, binary generally means 0 or 1 with no other values possible even 0.0000001% of the time.
"Some men choose to identify as women." Really? This is not a serious statement that engages with the science behind gender transition.
The word "error" is a social construct. I prefer "variation", which also is a social construct, but doesn't imply a judgment. (Of course, judgments are social constructs.)
It seems cruel to use a metaphor of "manufacturing error" to describe intersex people. Humans make "errors", nature just does whatever it wants mindlessly and deals with it.
While I think "sex is a spectrum" is perhaps not how I would phrase it because it lets people muddy these kinds of arguments together, I think it's pretty well-accepted that there are people who are neither fully male nor female, i.e. intersex.
From a biological perspective, what if you were born biologically male but have no androgen sensitivity and basically develop biologically female? Your genitals appear to be male but you've undergone all the puberty that someone female would: I don't think you can cleanly carve a sex binary here. Actually, maybe as a larger point, I don't think even "biological sex" is as clear cut as people try to make it: do you consider it all of genitalia, chromosomes, hormones, or only some?
For what it's worth, don't take my comment as any argument about gender as a spectrum one way or another because I don't want to get into the culture war aspect of it: I only want to point out that people who are resolutely "sex is a binary" are being overly prescriptive about it.
Bingo. This is what scientific terminology aspires to. Except “sex is pretty darn binary” is a useful, meaningful simplification, while “sex is a spectrum” is at best a fundamental misunderstanding of what a spectrum is, and at worst a politically motivated conflation of intersex conditions with gender variation.
Eh, I think you can get various axes on a biological sex spectrum even if you consider the the definition of biological sex: if someone has male gonads and XY chromosomes but has undergone sex reassignment surgery and is undergoing estrogen hormone replacement theory, would you still classify them strictly biologically male if they don't meet two of the four generally used criteria for sex? And in the case you don't believe that all those criteria should be used for determining biological sex, then that's another thing people need to agree on. I think characterizing biological sex as a spectrum can be a useful way of thinking it, but I think people end up dragging the culture war debate into it.
> if someone has male gonads and XY chromosomes but has undergone sex reassignment surgery and is undergoing estrogen hormone replacement theory, would you still classify them strictly biologically male if they don't meet two of the four generally used criteria for sex?
Yes, because sex is a description of an observed natural phenomenon, not a taxonomy of medical interventions.
Not everyone agrees with that interpretation of sex, though, and reasonable people can choose to interpret sex as a collection of biological traits, medical interventions or not.
If a computer system produced the values 0 or 1 most of the time, and 2 a small percentage of the time, we wouldn't call it "pretty darn binary".
Plenty of intersex people are gender variant as well. See for example Dana Zzyym, who is intersex and uses they/them pronouns. They fought for nonbinary gender markers in passports.
I think they’re being glib, but sex absolutely is a social construct. What exactly constitutes THE properties of the female and male sex is defined by society more than biology. For example, people who have androgen insensitivity syndrome develop perfectly normal looking “female” bodies, but their genetic sex is “male”. People generally still consider those individuals to be “female”. If you want to get down to it, all words are socially defined. They usually attempt to describe or capture reoccurring details about the observable world, but nature (especially biology) has too much variety and weird exceptions for any simple linguistic model to perfectly match the physical world. That’s doubly true for a linguistic model used in everyday life as opposed to scientific discourse.
That’s not to say that “sex isn’t real” or some absurd position like that. There is a real phenomenon in biology where genetic and phenotypical variance tends to follow a limited set of patterns. Biologists call those patterns “sex”. But, the idea that “sex” as we use it in normal day-to-day life is a rigidly defined system based on hard biological facts is laughably false. When was the last time you insisted on seeing someone’s genetic karyotype test results? When was the last time you asked someone to drop their pants so you could examine their genitalia and determine their sex?
The phrase “sex is a social construct” is technically true in the same way that “chairs are a social construct” is true. The word describes a fuzzy subset of the set of all things, and what we consider in or out of the set is largely based on what we think should belong to it, and that is absolutely influenced by societal expectations. Where do chairs end and tables begin? Where does the female sex end?
Once you get to that point, the phrase almost has no meaning. If all word definitions are social constructs, then that’s table stakes and it doesn’t make sense to call out a specific word as having that property. Surely the phrase “is a social construct” must mean something more than “is like any other word”. Indeed, the meaning of that phrase is larger than what it literally says. There is a socially defined meaning that is attached to it. That phrase implies the word in question “is arbitrarily defined (more than most words)” and “is up for interpretation (more than most words)”.
If you agree with me this far, then the right way to frame this discussion is “should we pin ‘sex’ as it is used in every day life to specific physical properties or should we allow it to be more porous?”. This isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. If we pin it, for example, to genetic karyotype, then we need to stop using it in contexts where the genetics of the person are unknown and must admit the existence of several additional sexes (e.g. X, XXY) AND recognize it’s no longer useful for describing the phenomenon of what a person looks like or how their body works. If we make it porous, then we will endlessly debate about whether boundary cases fall into one bucket or the other and possibly hurt some feelings along the way.
The fun thing is that we get to pick what words mean, and we get to pick what we do with “sex”. Language is, after all, a social construct.
> What exactly constitutes THE properties of the female and male sex is defined by society more than biology.
This might be true for the incredibly tiny minority of intersex individuals who defy categorization, but for >99.9% of people it’s not true at all, and challenging the meaningfulness of a word based on such rare edge cases is a huge overstatement of how controversial this is.
Intersex conditions being rare or not doesn’t really matter for my argument. There could be literally be just one person with AIS in the history of humanity, and the statement “if you consider this person to be female then your definition of female is based on more than just their sex chromosomes” would still be true.
I found these articles to be a good overview on this topic --- the change of interpretation between "sex" and "gender", and defining characteristics of "woman" within the context of feminist philosophy:
For what it’s worth, I’m a trans woman, and I’m well aware of some of the discourse around this topic already (both positions that are pro- and anti- “trans women are women”). I tried very hard to avoid injecting any of those details into it, though. I wanted to do a “reasoning from first principles” sort of analysis of the idea rather than try to recap the discussions that are happening in feminist spheres.
No, gender-sex separation has always been an oversimplification. The fact is that gender identity is driven by complex interactions between biology and society. There is no better explanation for why regret rates for gender affirming surgeries are the lowest across all of medicine.
The satisfaction rate for gender-affirming surgery is in a completely different league from the rest of medicine. (And I have a lot of sympathy for the few people that do regret them -- I'm good friends with one such person.)
All language is a social construct. We recognize patterns in the real world and assign words to them, but patterns in complex systems like human biology have all kinds of exceptions.
Social construct doesn't mean fake, though. It's real, and it describes a real thing, but is a simplified model of it. The fight is over which model is better.
> It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social construct."
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone say that sex is a social construct. Gender yes. And that gender and sex are orthogonal. And that gender is a spectrum but sex in humans is binary.
Maybe I missed the evolution of the conversation but I don’t think I’ve seen any volume of argument that sex is a social construct. I’m open to be convinced.
There are many pieces now that proclaim biological sex (not gender) is a social construct. There are pieces in Forbes, Psychology Today, Professor curriculum, etc that are now saying this. I would say it was fringe if it weren't for the fact that it's been elevated by major publications.
When I was younger "gender is a social construct" mostly meant that if you were a man you were allowed to enjoy feminine things and if you were a woman, you could be a tomboy, etc. It also applied to trans individuals. However, that has shifted heavily over the last few years to be something very different and has gone so far as to go fully to the extent that sex (not gender) at birth is up for debate (even outside of Turner Syndrome or Intersex births.)
The earliest most popular publication that posited that "sex is a social construct" might be Butler's Gender Trouble. This article is a pretty good overview on the evolution of the discourse on this topic:
I would say 'orthogonal' is used for conceptually independent, not causally independent nor statistically independent (uncorrelated). So i would say that sex and gender are conceptually independent, although in reality statistically highly correlated.
Where did I claim there was? You can philosophically believe that free speech (and also know that the 1st Amendment does not apply to private companies, but that the "right" to it is a general philosophy outside of government) should exist while holding the position that you can be held accountable for some things.
The question is how much a public forum should allow or not, especially one that has advertisers but is also an important forum for our democracy. That's very important and just saying everything under the sun is hate speech is not a good debate starter, especially when it's unevenly applied, and the rules are written by one viewpoint.
I think the "downvote" system which does eventually hide comments (until you request them) is a feature that already exists in beta. I think that's better than the "shadow banning" and suspensions in some instances. Obviously, you still can't tolerate some things, such as calls for violence, rioting, etc. Moderation is very difficult, but I err on the side of more openness than locking things down and stifling speech and debate.
