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I'm old and I don't understand...


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Saw this article while I was eating breakfast today:


http://www.independent.co.uk/student/news/oxford-university-students-gender-neutral-pronouns-peter-tatchell-student-union-ze-xe-a7470196.html


I FIND THIS DEEPLY OFFENSIVE. Did nobody think about all the poor people who identify as alien villains in black and white movies? They'll have to start coming up with a whole new set of pronouns now the best sci-fi sounding ones have been taken :crybaby:

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A leaflet distributed by the union said they hoped the move would prevent transgender students feeling offended by the use of incorrect pronouns and cut down on discrimination.

 

It is not hard to not offend a transgender person. Generally they make their choice known. If they are dressed like a women, they are a she. If they are dressed like a man, they are a he. I know quite a few people who have been through the change and I have yet to think "oh, are they male or female?"


I think what the union is actually wanting is to use the pronouns Ze and hir. These are gender neutral/nonbinary pronouns (neither male or female) and applied to people who do not wish to be identified as either gender.

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Maybe we should just update the birth certificates used these days to that they have a pronoun field, then everyone can be a super special snowflake and have their very own unique set :roll:


This really is just ridiculous stuff... I mean it's one thing to encourage people to be tolerant but it's another thing altogether to force people into change, especially ridiculous stuff like this. This sort of nonsense is the sort of thing that pushes otherwise calm and reasonable people with more reserved social views into the open arms of the crazies, and BOOM Donald Trump elected. Want to be a he? Fine. She? Fine. Weren't born that way? Don't care, go nuts. But when we start getting into the business of catering to every single minority group of nutbags and giving them all special treatment... jeez :shock:

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seems better than a recent post on this very forum where a woman was referred to as 'IT'.. and nobody cared. nobody cared in the slightest.


 

The worry is, if it survives it is likely to produce offspring as well.
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A fair point, although it was being said with the outright intent of being offensive towards her, so them there waters are a tad murky. Different kettle of fish to saying "you must now replace all pronouns with these". I'm quite happy being a "he", personally. I don't really want people calling me a "xe" out of fear that they might offend someone else. Or out of fear that they might be persecuted for not being considerate of others when really they don't actually care about the social undertones. In fact, I'd be inclined to go so far as to say that I'd find it offensive...


Uh oh.

http://takethesquare.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/TTS1.jpg

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I have a problem with a transgender barmaid. I always question if I should say "pint please darlin'" or "pint please mate".

 

If they are now a women then yea, it's "pint please darlin'". If they are now a male it is "mate". Not difficult.



Personally, I would not wish to be referred to as any gender neutral pronoun. However they do have their place. Hermaphrodites for example. They are neither male or female (biologically speaking) yet when they are born, male or female must be put on their birth certificate. There is currently no option for "neither" or "both".

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I have a problem with a transgender barmaid. I always question if I should say "pint please darlin'" or "pint please mate".

 

If they are now a women then yea, it's "pint please darlin'". If they are now a male it is "mate". Not difficult.

 

 

Ah but to know what he/she is/was forces you to assume his/her pre and post gender. If it's clear he is a man dressed as a woman, then surely "mate" is correct unless you also assume that its their (female) clothing that dictates their gender not their physical (male) characteristics in which case any man dressed in clothing that's accepted to be feminine must surely also be referred to as a female...

I'm wearing a pink striped shirt today - pink being traditional a female colour.. is the barperson going to respond to me as darlin or mate??

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I have a problem with a transgender barmaid. I always question if I should say "pint please darlin'" or "pint please mate".

 

If they are now a women then yea, it's "pint please darlin'". If they are now a male it is "mate". Not difficult.

 

 

Ah but to know what he/she is/was forces you to assume his/her pre and post gender. If it's clear he is a man dressed as a woman, then surely "mate" is correct unless you also assume that its their (female) clothing that dictates their gender not their physical (male) characteristics in which case any man dressed in clothing that's accepted to be feminine must surely also be referred to as a female...

I'm wearing a pink striped shirt today - pink being traditional a female colour.. is the barperson going to respond to me as darlin or mate??

Yes darlin :twisted:

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I have a problem with a transgender barmaid. I always question if I should say "pint please darlin'" or "pint please mate".

 

If they are now a women then yea, it's "pint please darlin'". If they are now a male it is "mate". Not difficult.



Personally, I would not wish to be referred to as any gender neutral pronoun. However they do have their place. Hermaphrodites for example. They are neither male or female (biologically speaking) yet when they are born, male or female must be put on their birth certificate. There is currently no option for "neither" or "both".

Yeah but telling people to use the neutral term for EVERYONE just to be safe is beyond offensive and idiotic.

Just try to imagine applying the same logic to anything else :P


Hey Joe, pass me a spanner! No, not the philips head spanner. The other spanner! No, not the hitting nails into the wall spanner. The spanner spanner! NOOOO not the sharp spanner for cutting wires! THE SPANNER SPANNER :lol:

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I have a problem with a transgender barmaid. I always question if I should say "pint please darlin'" or "pint please mate".

 

If they are now a women then yea, it's "pint please darlin'". If they are now a male it is "mate". Not difficult.



Personally, I would not wish to be referred to as any gender neutral pronoun. However they do have their place. Hermaphrodites for example. They are neither male or female (biologically speaking) yet when they are born, male or female must be put on their birth certificate. There is currently no option for "neither" or "both".

Yeah but telling people to use the neutral term for EVERYONE just to be safe is beyond offensive and idiotic.

Just try to imagine applying the same logic to anything else :P


Hey Joe, pass me a spanner! No, not the philips head spanner. The other spanner! No, not the hitting nails into the wall spanner. The spanner spanner! NOOOO not the sharp spanner for cutting wires! THE SPANNER SPANNER :lol:

You Rang :)

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I have a problem with a transgender barmaid. I always question if I should say "pint please darlin'" or "pint please mate".

 

If they are now a women then yea, it's "pint please darlin'". If they are now a male it is "mate". Not difficult.

 

 

Ah but to know what he/she is/was forces you to assume his/her pre and post gender. If it's clear he is a man dressed as a woman, then surely "mate" is correct unless you also assume that its their (female) clothing that dictates their gender not their physical (male) characteristics in which case any man dressed in clothing that's accepted to be feminine must surely also be referred to as a female...

I'm wearing a pink striped shirt today - pink being traditional a female colour.. is the barperson going to respond to me as darlin or mate??

 

I'm going to assume you do not know/are not aware of anyone who has been through the process. So here goes.


Before someone goes through the gender reassignment operation they must live as their "chosen" gender for at least two years. Generally this involves everything from changing their clothing, using the toilets of their "new" gender, change their title etc. The end result is if they want to be a women, they become a women, if they want to become a man, they become a man. In all aspects but genitalia (a little more work to hide breasts pre-op, but it can be done with hormones).

In my experience, there is no doubt about someones desired gender when they are going through this process. After all, I don't go looking at my work mates trousers to see if they really are male or not!


I suspect you may be getting a bit mixed up with transvestites... Believe it or not, men who are serious about becoming a women do not dress like Dr. Frank N. Furter!

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Yeah but telling people to use the neutral term for EVERYONE just to be safe is beyond offensive and idiotic.

Just try to imagine applying the same logic to anything else :P


Hey Joe, pass me a spanner! No, not the philips head spanner. The other spanner! No, not the hitting nails into the wall spanner. The spanner spanner! NOOOO not the sharp spanner for cutting wires! THE SPANNER SPANNER :lol:

 

I agree. I'm only saying that gender neutral pronouns do have a place alongside their male and female counterparts. But not to describe transgender people, unless they wish to use them.

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Yeah but telling people to use the neutral term for EVERYONE just to be safe is beyond offensive and idiotic.

Just try to imagine applying the same logic to anything else :P


Hey Joe, pass me a spanner! No, not the philips head spanner. The other spanner! No, not the hitting nails into the wall spanner. The spanner spanner! NOOOO not the sharp spanner for cutting wires! THE SPANNER SPANNER :lol:

 

I agree. I'm only saying that gender neutral pronouns do have a place alongside their male and female counterparts. But not to describe transgender people, unless they wish to use them.

In that case we agree :D

My only issue is with idiots like Oxford Uni that try too hard to protect people who don't necessarily want people trying to protect them and making everyone else a bit angrier.

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WELP I've spent a good part of my evening trying to improve my understanding of all this, the opinions behind it, and the social issues underpinning the whole thing. I have come to a number of understandings:


1. Sex, gender and sexual orientation can be mutually exclusive:

- Sex is what bits you have

- Gender is what you feel like on the inside (no disemboweling required)

- Sexual orientation is what you want to get kinky with

2. All this pronoun bollocks relates to gender, not the other two

3. "He" is fine, "She" is fine, "They" is fine

4. It's a bit of a dick move to insist on calling someone the wrong thing after they've told you which they identify as

5. Literally everyone who expects to be asked what their preferences are as a courtesy can f**k off, that's idiotic, your feelings do not have rights

6. Anyone who insists on "Ze", "Xe", or any other made up bullshit, can do one and is going to get "they", because this is also idiotic

7. Dear god I hate everyone and I will probably just waterboard the next person that talks to me about this stuff no matter what their opinion is


I would love to say that this who experience has helped me grow as a person but mostly it's just made me realise that political correctness has become completely socially regressive and is beginning to erode freedom of speech and expression.

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WELP I've spent a good part of my evening trying to improve my understanding of all this, the opinions behind it, and the social issues underpinning the whole thing. I have come to a number of understandings:

I would love to say that this who experience has helped me grow as a person but mostly it's just made me realise that political correctness has become completely socially regressive and is beginning to erode freedom of speech and expression.

Interesting. You're not the first person I've heard link this trend to the popularity of Trump and Farage.

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Interesting. You're not the first person I've heard link this trend to the popularity of Trump and Farage.

Well, to be fair, I do feel like there is an indirect link to Trump's election - but even if you give it enough credit to assume it's a key factor, you can't really suggest it is the entire cause as I've seen some commentators suggest. A generalisation like that would be a bit dismissive of the people who voted for him - and I still think that the huge mistake the Left is continuing to make in the US is to tar the entire Trump supporter base with the same brush rather than try to identify what brought them together in the first place and attempt to win back the moderates among them. It's similar to this "Alt-Right" buzzword that keeps flying around; depending on who you hear using it, it seems to encompass anyone from hardcore swastika-on-forehead neo-Nazis through to people who read an article on Breitbart maybe just once. Sticking one label on everyone whose political views you don't like doesn't combat them, it forces them together - forces the moderates into the waiting arms of the radicals.


But anyway, back to what you said: I get the impression that American voters found themselves in a position where they had two major candidates, one who was outspoken on PC issues (and outspokenly in favour of backing them with legislation) and another who wasn't. Trump never needed to announce himself as an opponent of Political Correctness, his actions have already spoken pretty loudly and to be honest it wouldn't even be necessary. All he needed was to be "the other option" running against someone like Clinton, and he had a good shot at scooping up a huge chunk of the "pro free speech" vote, the "people scared of being persecuted for accidentally offending other people" vote, and quite frankly the "I'm getting sick of hearing about this PC thing, it's getting goddamn ridiculous" vote. And of course, a good chunk of those people probably didn't have much to genuinely worry about - but the election process was marred by the same thing that seems to send most debates of Political Correctness waaaay off track: a lack of proper debate. The "progressive" side constantly demonstrate a lack of willingness/ability to engage in discussion with anyone who isn't 100% behind them. And then there's this idiotic thing people have started doing of going out of their way to destroy people's lives via the medium of the internet if they dare to say something that challenges their views.


Tl;dr: I think that the build up to the American election turned their political landscape into even more of an echo chamber than usual; the left was unwilling to listen and preferred to reaffirm their opinions to one another while criticising the character of anyone outside their little sphere, and that forced all of the right and a good chunk of the center into a chamber of their own where the truly god awful minority among them poisoned the minds of the rest with fear and anger. And THEN, Trump happened.


Not so much with Farage; his problem with PC culture only appears to stretch so far as anything he feels was imposed on us by Europe. Most of our sins - arresting people for saying mean things online, and the likes - were home grown. I'm sure that being the filthy populist he is, he's spoken out about the issue at some point to certain people... but he probably said the opposite to a different group later that same day :P I think it's a whole different debate relating to the social undertones of Brexit, and I'm not touching that with a 50 foot pole until I'm firmly outside of these borders :lol:

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...quite a lot of stuff

Yes yes yes :D. especially about the echo chamber.

One way of viewing the problem with the left in the US is that they've made it really hard for a someone such as a Democrat-voting Pennsylvania steel worker to like their candidate enough to vote for them. I used to think politics in the US and UK were quite different, but I wonder if the same thing is beginning to happen here.

As for Farage, I think part of his appeal was that he was clearly non-PC, and, just like Trump, he didn't need to say anything to prove it. But you're right, enough of this, before my pixels get ripped out :wink:

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WELP I've spent a good part of my evening trying to improve my understanding of all this, the opinions behind it, and the social issues underpinning the whole thing. I have come to a number of understandings:


1. Sex, gender and sexual orientation can be mutually exclusive:

- Sex is what bits you have

- Gender is what you feel like on the inside (no disemboweling required)

- Sexual orientation is what you want to get kinky with

2. All this pronoun bollocks relates to gender, not the other two

3. "He" is fine, "She" is fine, "They" is fine

4. It's a bit of a dick move to insist on calling someone the wrong thing after they've told you which they identify as

5. Literally everyone who expects to be asked what their preferences are as a courtesy can f**k off, that's idiotic, your feelings do not have rights

6. Anyone who insists on "Ze", "Xe", or any other made up bullshit, can do one and is going to get "they", because this is also idiotic

7. Dear god I hate everyone and I will probably just waterboard the next person that talks to me about this stuff no matter what their opinion is


I would love to say that this who experience has helped me grow as a person but mostly it's just made me realise that political correctness has become completely socially regressive and is beginning to erode freedom of speech and expression.

:thumb:


http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t75/GixxerSup/Silly%20photos/13895397_1100439849991248_7075045343078656546_n_zpsskinj6ti.jpg

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