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For most of mechPoet's posts, it appears to be.
See their above comment about grammar being a tool of oppression for an example.
If someone uses "they" pronouns, dismissing that by saying "you can't use 'they' as a singular pronoun, because it's not proper grammar" is oppression.
Would you like to argue that "words are just words" to excuse the use of slurs, next?
This type of dialog only makes enemies and bystanders out of potential friends, in my experience.
Spoiler:The average suicide rate among transgender and other gender-nonconforming people is closer to 50%.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32
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This type of dialog only makes enemies and bystanders out of potential friends, in my experience.For most of mechPoet's posts, it appears to be.
See their above comment about grammar being a tool of oppression for an example.
If someone uses "they" pronouns, dismissing that by saying "you can't use 'they' as a singular pronoun, because it's not proper grammar" is oppression.
Would you like to argue that "words are just words" to excuse the use of slurs, next?
I don't know that there's ever been a point where Krensky and I were potential friends. But why don't you go ahead and elaborate how I'm not being nice enough to someone who mocks everything I say.
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For most of mechPoet's posts, it appears to be.
See their above comment about grammar being a tool of oppression for an example.
If someone uses "they" pronouns, dismissing that by saying "you can't use 'they' as a singular pronoun, because it's not proper grammar" is oppression.
Would you like to argue that "words are just words" to excuse the use of slurs, next?
I have no idea what you're on about here or what imagined violence or oppressive act you're accusing me of.
Which pretty much reinforces my comment about everything always being about oppression for you
This reminds me of a time in one of the threads (I think it was here on the Paizo boards, but I could be mistaken) where various women were talking about their experience in gaming spaces, and several male posters chimed in and were like, "You're straight-up lying."
When one of the other posters challenged one of them on it, he responded, basically, "If I were to believe that, I'd have to see sexism everywhere."
Which was like, DING DING DING.
Language absolutely can be a tool of oppression, even when it's not intended to be. Using male as the default gender for all of humanity has real effects in how we think (I'm not a total Sapir-Whorfist, but I think they had a point), and those have real effects in how men and women get treated. (Given how many control groups in research designed to discover what's true for humans have been comprised solely of men, sometimes those effects can be tangible and even life-threatening.)
And given that what's "proper" grammar is designated by who's in power, it can likewise have severe effects ranging from income to the fairness of the justice system on people who speak differently from that group's conception of "proper."
This reminds me of a time in one of the threads (I think it was here on the Paizo boards, but I could be mistaken) where various women were talking about their experience in gaming spaces, and several male posters chimed in and were like, "You're straight-up lying."When one of the other posters challenged one of them on it, he responded, basically, "If I were to believe that, I'd have to see sexism everywhere."
Which was like, DING DING DING.
I think that was here. One of the "How can we make gaming more welcoming to women" threads, maybe?
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Facts not in evidence.I'm not really trying to do away gendering. I do it all the time, because I've been taught to. But I try to recognize when I do it, and understand what effect it has.
In order to reach the point of getting people to accept gender variance, though, you have to recognize the problems that are associated with the act of gendering. Although "have to" is perhaps a strong choice of words? I think it's important to understand, or at least that I considering my own understanding of it important to me. Obviously, having a widespread acceptance of gender variance is more important than theoretically exploring how the meaning of gender is constructed, but I'm interested in both.
You want some problems with gendering? Okay.
** spoiler omitted **...
That doesn't prove that gendering isn't a natural human inclination, though. Many human inclinations do not apply to the full species, and our natural inclinations can and do cause harm.
Homosexuality itself should demonstrate that. We are hardwired to find the opposite sex romantically desirable, but there is a segment of humanity that instead finds the same sex romantically desirable, or that finds both sexes romantically desirable. There is no reason to believe that homosexuality is abnormal or undesirable rather than just the act of existing outside the majority inclination towards heterosexuality, but its existence shows that a human inclination towards something is not a universal trait that every human will have.
The evidence I've seen does suggest that gender is similar, in that we do have a natural inclination to fall into an identity as either male or female, and that this does usually match our sex. Just look at how pretty much every single culture has a concept of male and female. It is not, however, a universal rule. We have people who do not identify as male or female, or who identify as both, and we have people who's gender does not match sex. To go back to my statement of every culture having a concept of male and female, many cultures do have concepts of other genders. That does not disprove the overall inclination any more than the existence of homosexuality disproves the preponderance of opposite sex attraction. In cultures with multiple genders, the majority still fall into male or female, and those definitions of male and female exist. It is also known that testosterone and estrogen do cause some behavioral differences, and that these differences have a tendency to factor into gender roles. The issue is that we are talking about extremely broad trends here, and any trend so broad has a massive number of outliers. It is also very easy to misstate exactly how deep these trends go. We don't actually know the answer to that. We do know that there are tangible differences between male, female, and gender variant brains, but we cannot explain how big an effect those differences actually are and where culture steps in. Every human culture genders people in some way or another, but concepts of what is feminine and what is masculine do not fully line up across cultures, which Anthropology tells us means a mix of biology and culture is responsible, and you can't just throw the whole thing at culture. Nor can you discount a human inclination because that inclination is harmful. A lot of human inclinations are harmful.
The problem doesn't lay with the fact that we gender, the problem lies with the fact that society acts bigoted against those who do not fit the majority's gender system. That's what we need to address. Women need to be free to act masculine if it suits their personality, men need to be free to act feminine, and we need to understand that some people will be both or neither, and some others will have a sex and a gender that do not match.
A lot of evidence? Are you claiming that using tools or wanting to learn ways to make your life easier is evidence of culture? You could make a case that when animals get smarter, they start behaving in different ways, simply because they are smarter, and are able to learn more effectively, touch on abstract reasoning, and so on.
If by that you are asking if animals can have culture, the answer is yes. We've observed such a thing among many non-human primate groups.
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A lot of evidence? Are you claiming that using tools or wanting to learn ways to make your life easier is evidence of culture? You could make a case that when animals get smarter, they start behaving in different ways, simply because they are smarter, and are able to learn more effectively, touch on abstract reasoning, and so on.
Also note that most people seem to accept the idea that "everything is culture until proven otherwise". Now that data is pouring in, these people try to cast biology as politically tainted, not even trying to see where their culture arguments come from.
Making tools as chimpanzees and humans do is clearly not an instinct. It is learned and passed down from individual to individual. That is the very definition of culture in this context.
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Let's also not shame the act of gendering when its hard coded into our brains to do just that (studies have looked at infants differentiating male and female faces well before social influence has any role at all).I'm gonna nitpick here, so apologies in advance. :P
I believe I've heard of a similar study, if not that one. I know there are techniques to determine whether infants make a distinction between different stimuli, but as I understand it, human infants have pretty bad eyesight. So the main thing they were looking for was "does the infant think this face is more mom-like or dad-like?," which pretty much came down to hair length (because despite humans' incredible talent for facial recognition, babies have bad, blurry vision). Which, again, comes back to gender norms for hair length. It could be a different study entirely, or that all could have been accounted for.
A number of studies have been done in the past several years, both in human infants and in non-human primates. Depending on their exposure to either a primary caregiver being female or male, they show a decidedly preferential focus on new female or new male faces. They identify an ability to differentiate as early as 3-4 months (there may be studies that look at earlier ages, but 3-4 months is the earliest age pool that I found with a cursory look).
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878929313000571 Is one of those studies, with more referenced within the text.
They appear to have controlled for hair length to not be a factor (much older studies may have not, but I'm not familiar with them, and that doesn't appear to play a roll at all in the data in the above paper).
Anyway.
Have any of y'all been watching Steven Universe? The season finale was AMAZING. I've been listening to Garnet's song on repeat all day.
I F@&&ING LOVE STEVEN UNIVERSE WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Not sure how to take the Garnet reveal. My wife thought it was an awesome explanation of an earlier episode. I'm a bit confused, but it's still awesome. LOVED the earlier Greg/Amethyst reveal...that was well done, subtle, and as serious(or not) as the watcher wanted it to be, maybe it's the same thing here?
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32
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Anyway.
Have any of y'all been watching Steven Universe? The season finale was AMAZING. I've been listening to Garnet's song on repeat all day.
I F&*$ING LOVE STEVEN UNIVERSE WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Not sure how to take the Garnet reveal. My wife thought it was an awesome explanation of an earlier episode. I'm a bit confused, but it's still awesome. LOVED the earlier Greg/Amethyst reveal...that was well done, subtle, and as serious(or not) as the watcher wanted it to be, maybe it's the same thing here?
They've been dropping hints all over the place throughout multiple episodes, I think. As for examples...well, I guess I'll just have to go back and watch all the episodes to compile a list...oh no...
What are you confused about? Want to take it to the TV forum, or send me a PM?
Here's a link to the song audio (it's so good ;-;):
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32
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Anyway.
Have any of y'all been watching Steven Universe? The season finale was AMAZING. I've been listening to Garnet's song on repeat all day.
I haven't watched anything on CN in maybe five years. The only two western animated shows I've watched recently are Star Wars: Rebels and Star vs. the Forces of Evil.
Seeing the show creator's prior work, is it as generally dumb as Adventure Time?
Them's fightin' words.
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Oh come on. It's the sugar coated psychedelic version of Brütal Legend, except that it takes itself seriously.Them's fightin' words.Anyway.
Have any of y'all been watching Steven Universe? The season finale was AMAZING. I've been listening to Garnet's song on repeat all day.
I haven't watched anything on CN in maybe five years. The only two western animated shows I've watched recently are Star Wars: Rebels and Star vs. the Forces of Evil.
Seeing the show creator's prior work, is it as generally dumb as Adventure Time?
Them's fightin' words.Anyway.
Have any of y'all been watching Steven Universe? The season finale was AMAZING. I've been listening to Garnet's song on repeat all day.
I haven't watched anything on CN in maybe five years. The only two western animated shows I've watched recently are Star Wars: Rebels and Star vs. the Forces of Evil.
Seeing the show creator's prior work, is it as generally dumb as Adventure Time?
Hey. Adventure Time is awesome because it's generally dumb.
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System Administrator
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Anyway.
Have any of y'all been watching Steven Universe? The season finale was AMAZING. I've been listening to Garnet's song on repeat all day.
I didn't get to watch it until this evening. It was the most amazing thing... my favorite part is the line where she says:
And if you think you can stop me, then you need to think again.
Because I am a feeling, and I will never end.
It's been an emotional day with seeing this tonight and Girls With Slingshots ending today.
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Making tools as chimpanzees and humans do is clearly not an instinct. It is learned and passed down from individual to individual. That is the very definition of culture in this context.A lot of evidence? Are you claiming that using tools or wanting to learn ways to make your life easier is evidence of culture? You could make a case that when animals get smarter, they start behaving in different ways, simply because they are smarter, and are able to learn more effectively, touch on abstract reasoning, and so on.
Also note that most people seem to accept the idea that "everything is culture until proven otherwise". Now that data is pouring in, these people try to cast biology as politically tainted, not even trying to see where their culture arguments come from.
Right. Sure. Which tools you make, which songs you sing, that's the textbook definition of culture. However, a tool-user needs the ability to have abstract thoughts, thoughts about things that are NOT precisely here and now, even if they just touch upon that ability. Apparently, some birds, some apes, and so on, are there.
That doesn't by itself mean they use tools only because of culture. Nature is very much the reason they are smart, and this is what gave them the ability. To actually use an ability they have is not culture, it's a universal. Every living thing wants to make its life as easy as possible. The exact WAY in which it uses tools, however, is culture, but that is not something that lets you say their tool use is only culture driven. Nature tells us WHAT to do and WHY, culture tells us HOW, as with so many other things.
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If a human is raised by animals that don't use tools, it won't use tools. There's no tool-using instinct. Many chimps don't use tools; those that do either figured it out on their own or learned from another chimp.
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A human raised by animals wouldn't use tools because it would be dead. And as you say, it is entirely possible for a chimp to figure out tools on its lonesome, which pretty specifically rules out culture.
I gotta say, the last few pages have been filled with laughs where I least expected them. :)
Here's a pretty good solution I've found for these sorts of things. <3 everybody. It's a pretty powerful thing.
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*tests acid pool's pH level*
*contemplates diving in*
*gets submarine*
*begins to transmit message*
Alright, so, outside of the general crap throwing and arguments that have been going on in this thread (one of the reasons I haven't posted here in a while), life has been treating me pretty well. I found a good youth LGBT center in Denver (Rainbow Alley), have made a few friends, and such.
And so, quite possibly throwing gasoline on the fire...
I can understand friendly debate, especially if it's over topics that are related to the community. However, as soon as that debate turns to citing sources to attempt to one-up the other person and insult throwing, then, well, that just kind of sucks. Most of us here (thankfully, not including me, as I'm not out yet [although I'm sure I'll encounter bigotry a'plenty once I'm out]) have to deal with a bunch of ape crap thrown their way every day just because they're LGBT. Do we really need to argue about gendering to the point where it stops being a debate and starts being a game of one-upmanship? Sure, there's been some funny stuff, and pieces of news that makes me hopeful scattered here and there, but mostly it's just been a bunch of pointless arguing. We should all be here to support each other; either cheering one another on when we make big steps, or offering some sort of shoulder to cry on if something bad happens. I can understand sometimes feeling the need to vent, but short rants should be enough, rather than starting long arguments and just plain insulting others. So, if we can't be all friends, can we at least be allies?
*ends transmission*
*prepares herself for a bunch of screaming, and hopes that she hasn't misjudged the situation*
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Thank you, Chris.
Actually, I just realized that probably nobody has ever thanked the Web Staff for patrolling the boards. So, again, I thank all of you.
