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Apple, Amazon, Google and More Than 50 Other Companies Sign Letter Against Trump Administration's Proposed Gender Definition Changes (cnbc.com)
Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, and dozens of other tech companies have come together to condemn discrimination against transgender people in the face of actions President Donald Trump is reportedly considering to reduce their legal protections. From a report: The move is a response to an Oct. 21 New York Times report that the Trump administration is considering limiting the definition of gender to birth genitalia. "Sex means a person's status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth," the Department of Health and Human Services proposed in a memo obtained by the Times. If legislation were to move forward, it would jeopardize legal protections for an estimated 1.4 million Americans who identify as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth, the Times said.
The statement from the companies, which have nearly 4.8 million employees, said diversity and inclusion are good for business. "Transgender people are our beloved family members and friends, and our valued team members," the statement said. "What harms transgender people harms our companies."
The statement from the companies, which have nearly 4.8 million employees, said diversity and inclusion are good for business. "Transgender people are our beloved family members and friends, and our valued team members," the statement said. "What harms transgender people harms our companies."
Signing a letter. I guess the pen is mightier than the lawsuit.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Why does the government need to be on any side of this? Can't we just keep the government out of this? This should be a private matter, much like marriage.
Obama, without statute, redefined gender to be whatever someone claims it to be. Trump changed that back to an objective standard.
How can you have fairness in Title IX protections when it's not at all clear who they apply to and I can claim that any random thing I don't like was discrimination because I identify as a unicorn and nobody can prove otherwise? Of course, that was always the point, to make these into something that would be easy to abuse, turning a standard that was supposed to promote fairness into a codification of favoritism.
I'm logic-gendered, so if you disagree with me, it's an insult to my unique gender and you deserve punishment, bigot.
We wish. More like pandering to a constituency to keep their favor.
Rules should benefit 0.01% of the population, because they matter most. Everyone else should change behavior and culture and their understanding of nature and the world to make these 0.01% of people feel comfortable.
The rest of us can expect nothing in return for the effort to accommodate the 0.01% of people who matter.
We're going back to the more objective terminology, sex, that we haven't had since a whole 8 years ago. What is the world coming to!
Americans look a bit strange, almost like mentally sick.
If your sex defines your status then we don't have the equality we keep saying we have. Shouldn't we work more towards getting THAT in order and leave gender as simply a physical trait similar to 'has two arms'?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
One that is based on birth (which there would possible be three so to include hermaphrodites) and one that is regarding personal choice. i.e. male/transgender, female/female, etc... there are good reasons to identify birth gender and personal choice.
Transgender is a lie. Getting surgeries, chopping off your weewee (optional of course) and taking hormones does not mean you're now a woman. It means you look like a woman (sort of, some cases are definitely better than others). Sorry my fellow liberals but I just can't get behind this trans movement. People with gender dysphoria should be treated for their mental disorder in a different way than sex 'reassignment'. Let's quit lying to ourselves and each other. Dudes are dudes and dudettes are dudettes. The only people with a legitimate case for benefiting from sex (re)assignment are those who were born with ambiguous genitalia.
America must be doing awesome if THAT is the problem the president keeps himself busy with.
We are, thanks.
Trump has done very little to appease the social conservative side of his base. He hasn't built any walls, and it's not like his choice of Pence as VP actually affects anything. Still, I'm surprised he's doing even this much: the Bushes did nothing beyond saying conservative things from the podium, and they still got the so-con votes. Trump himself is far from so-con, so this is clearly political horse-trading.
I woudn't think this would be his priority either. I wonder what he's getting in trade.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The federal government does a billion things a day including millions of minor things that the President probably isn't intimately involved in. You might as well ask why obama had the time to change the definition in the first place.
In 2016, NYC had to release a list of 31 recognized genders, and even that wasn't enough for some, so they had to expand it even further.
How the fuck are you even supposed to put that on a form??
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Conservatives: "We want personal liberties, get the government out of our lives, freedom!"
Also Conservatives: "Thank god we have the Government telling people how they are allowed to identify themselves."
The government isn't telling people how they can identify themselves. They are setting down how people will be identified by the government. Since there are no mandatory federal IDs in the US, I'm not sure how much it matters to people who work for tech companies, not the government. Might be annoying for passports, I guess (though you won't get much sympathy for how other countries treat US citizens at the border, given the reverse).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Some AC brought up the same issue below - only in regards to the companies suing. I guess they are doing really awesome when they can waste funds on a lawsuit like this.
Also I really doubt Trump personally has put more than about five minutes of effort into this, if that. It's nice of you to help spread campaign propaganda though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"We received a Letter Against today". "OMG, was it signed, too"? "Yes it was"! "Oh crap, we are screwed now"!
Then explain intersex/hermaphrodites.
Why does the government need to assign/recognize gender now? Its not like anyone has more/less rights due to their gender. Women are now allowed to own property, serve in the military, etc. If the govt didn't bother recognizing gender, it would save a lot of time, money, and those arguments. And I honestly don't care who is using what bathroom. If some woman feels like a man and wants to use the men's room, I don't care. And if some man feels like a woman and wants to use the ladies' room, that's fine too. It still doesn't give them the right to molest or attack someone. And I honestly don't believe the current laws are what keeps most perverts from exploiting this now.
But I don't think the govt should recognize marriage either. Ending marriage recognition would end the debate over who can get married. Do whatever you want in your church, temple, or backyard shack. Make whatever legal agreements with whoever you choose. I don't care or need to know about it.
Sure, ending recognition of gender and/or marriage will complicate some other issues, but it would stop this never-ending debate over who is what and what should be allowed.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
People with gender dysphoria should be treated for their mental disorder in a different way than sex 'reassignment'./quote>
To be fair, hormones are the only drugs we have to treat gender dysphoria. It's not like we're doing that instead of working psychiatric drugs. Still, it's a terrible treatment given the immense suicide rate for people who have had the surgeries. It a treatment with a 60% 10-year survival rate, IIRC (due to suicide), clearly not good enough.
It's a good thing conversion therapy is illegal in California. Oh, wait, it's only the other kind of conversion therapy that's illegal, not this kind.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I wonder what he's getting in trade.
Voter turnout from social conservatives at the midterm elections next week, in order to help ensure the Mueller probe continues to be neutered.
Trump himself is far from so-con, so this is clearly political horse-trading.
I woudn't think this would be his priority either. I wonder what he's getting in trade.
Trump's a regular guy (in the sense of being common, coarse, etc.).
Sure, he has no coherent political philosophy, but he is a regular guy (which is what many elites actually dislike about him).
And like it or not, regular guys know the difference between boys and girls. Sure, they may pretend to go along with the mass hysteria, to keep their jobs and not be labeled social pariahs, but they know, in reality.
The only trans movement I can't agree with is trans-fats.
#DeleteFacebook
I don't give a shit if a man wants to live as a woman or vice-versa.
I don't care if someone wants to mutilate their genitals.
I don't care if someone wants to call themselves some newly invented "gender" and live a certain way.
What they do in the privacy of their own life is their own business.
But science says there are two genders. PERIOD. There is one other state, biological intersex, where the person has BOTH. But it's a mutation and rare to boot (maybe as high as 1.7%).
Also, the government should not be expected to subsidize these people's lifestyle choices in their documentation. Nor should someone be able to go back years later, cross things out, and scribble "Whatever!" in the margins.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
All that's happening is that an objective, legal standard is being observed for something to have meaning.
There's absolutely nothing in there that says a company cannot do all it wants to be fully accepting of LGBT people (and I strongly suspect that this will happen anyway, due to legislation in other areas).
It's not somehow saying "You're not allowed to be transgender". You're still perfectly within your rights to be one legal sex, and present an entirely separate gender to the world, and people are savvy enough these days (in the main) to treat that at face value, and get on with life, with a nod to their choice.
This is not taking away any right. It's making a legal definition mean something again.
Some people are born with ambiguous genitalia and chromosomes are not 100% deterministic either. While the majority of people are readily identifiable and have unambiguous genitalia and the expected matching sex chromosomes, that is not always the case. But in the end, who fucking cares? How does it affect your life in any way?
This is much like the "blind leading the blind", except it's the greedy and morally bankrupt trying to shame the greedy and morally bankrupt.
Ridiculous!
shhh, we're supposed to go a step beyond merely tolerating other people's delusions; and actively engage and foster them.
Since humans have a very simple genetic gender-control, you are almost right. There are a small number of genetic oddities involving malfunctioning chromosomes or odd numbers of chromosomes instead of pairs, but they are usually indistinguishable from male or female except by genetic testing and a slightly abnormal natural hormone balance (which given the variations in "normal" male and female hormone balances, is hard to identify). There is a very very small number of those genetic oddities forming a stable, but not-fully-gendered person. There is also the awkward possibility of chimerism resulting in something awkward like a female with a genetically male groin and generally male morphology due to male testosterone levels throughout life.
None of that means that we need more entries on the "gender" checkbox than "M","F", and "prefer not to identify." If you don't want to identify as male or female, or if you just don't want to identify because you are sick of being lumped into awkward demographics, pick the third one.
OK I'm not particularly thrilled with this in general and get people want to identify as whichever gender they feel fits them and I'm more than happy to let people choose for themselves, but "reduce their legal protections"? Yeah this prevents them from choosing to change their gender identity but I'm honestly curious what legal protections forcing someone to identify as their birth, rather than chosen gender, is preventing?
(White hetro male born and remains this way so my opinion or lack of understanding may mean precisely squat)
There is a difference between sex (genetic and physical characteristics) and gender (social norms attached to such differences). The fact that the NYT of all places are conflating the two is to drum up clicks by angry leftists and to look 'woke'. Even the Department of Health and Human Services memo mentioned sex specifically! I guess you could argue that there should be 3 entries for sex: male, female, and other to handle certain very rare genetic and physical disorders. When a doctor asks you if you are male or female they mean if you got a dick and more testosterone or a vagina and more estrogen. This whole debate is stupid. It is not erasing trans people. Having body dysphoria is traumatic, and the fact that the left makes such light of it is almost as sickening (though not as much as those that abuse trans people). Not every person who transitions ends up happy with the decision. The suicide rates of such people are high, and I imagine that actual bullying is less of an issue there than not feeling like your body is your own. They need help. Also, your pre-pubescent kid is probably not trans and we shouldn't hold a parade for them.
Actually, yes. I mean at least as far as food and things go. And just like any other community that achieves a constant food supply, mixed with a constant supply of things, the Americans are striving be entertained. And just like every other community that's striving to be entertained, there need be no limit to the vast expansion of "what's entertaining", no matter how perverted. And so this will continue until some natural course resets it all.
It's the communities that aren't striving to be entertained, that are entertained by the little things in life, thus they enjoy things more. Americans have all the food and stuff that life requires, and yet they're mostly hateful towards themselves and others. Whereas communities where the main portion of time is spent in order to get food and things are mostly loving toward themselves, and others.
So yes, it's true that things are great in America, but 'things being great' is a concept that's underdeveloped in America.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
regular guys know the difference between boys and girls.
Regular guys believe and are very sure that they know the difference, just like they are sure about many other things they have no clue about. It's called ignorance and yes, this is a common feature of the so-called regular guy.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Then I think you should actually learn biology, it's fucking complicated.
Trump personally does not need to do very much at all. With Republicans in control of both house and senate, all Trump needs to do is sign the bills that come out and occasionally appoint a social conservative to various key positions. Both of which he has done.
As a trans person it feels like my government is trying to erase me. I appreciate these companies doing this and making me feel safer. Also good god these comments, is *everyone* on slashdot anti-trans? Do you know any trans people in person?
Flamebait. Wow. I can't even just make an honest statement and argue my position without being 'flamebait'. Sure. Whatever you say.
I mean, it's built right into HTML for Pete's sake. If you're using Angular I can point you to a good guide on how to wire it up to a model.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
There are only two genders. There is no reason for further debate.
I do not belong to the church of the lowercase 'i'
Not quite. The field of sociology makes a distinction between sex and gender. Sex is the simple biological part to which you refer: Male or female, and in a very small percentage of cases intersex. Gender is the social expression and recognition of sex, and it's a lot more complicated and flexible - gender is what determines how you should dress, which jobs you are expected to go into or to avoid, which restroom you can enter, and if you are socially allowed to carry a handbag. Usually sex and gender are in clear alignment, and everyone is happy - people know their place and how to behave. When they do not align, unpleasantness happens.
This. Thank you. I can't believe my employer forces me to believe that a man in drag is a woman if he identifies as a woman, but after I posted that on the company Slack I was reminded that Slack posts have to meet HR directives on "diversity". At least I made my voice heard.
He hasn't built any walls
Yes but to be fair that's Obama's fault.
This isn't something where "belief" comes into play, it is 100% a physical attribute, nothing more.
As a person with a vagina that does almost exclusively person with a penis things, and wears person with a penis dress, neither of those make me a person with a penis, they make me a woman who would prefer to be a man.
A woman who would prefer to be a man is not a man. I wish I had straight brown hair. I don't. Making a personal choice to say "I am a person with straight brown hair and is a boy" makes me a liar, not a boy with straight brown hair.
Desire is not reality.
not activists. We've found that gender is a lot more complex than we though. Hormone levels have a huge impact on how we act and interact and those can vary wildly.
This actually brings up an interesting point: A lot of transgender people are that way because of hormonal imbalances. Right now we can't really fix those because we don't have a reliable way to test for them when you're young. By the time we're aware it's happening it's too late to fix. But eventually that'll change. We'll be able to identify gender fluid people when their born (or at least folks likely to have the specific genetic markers and issues related to it) and make corrections. But should we?
There was a story where disabled people having kids faced a bit of a problem because their kids would be healthy. With a blind kid it's not so bad, but with Dwarfs they wanted children like them. In the end I think all of them said they would choose for the children to be normal given the chance. And that's understandable given the disadvantages of even something like Dwarfism. But it raises some interesting questions. And of course, what happens if we start making improvements?
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But science says there are two genders. PERIOD. There is one other state, biological intersex, where the person has BOTH. But it's a mutation and rare to boot (maybe as high as 1.7%).
Insists that science says there are two genders. Immediately notes that science identifies more than two genders.
Regular guys believe and are very sure that they know the difference, just like
they are sure about many other things they have no clue about. It's called ignorance and yes, this is a common feature of the so-called regular guy.
All you are doing is making a bigoted blanket statement about "regular guys" exposing your own biases.
Some degree of ignorance is useful and necessary in order for people to function in the real world and get anything at all accomplished.
Some assume too much for their own good while others are too careful and indecisive for their own good. If you feel compelled to judge try doing so on an individual basis using something resembling objective criteria.
You're prejudiced against the overweight transgender community? Shame on you!
Way to install your values onto a term that has no involvment in what we're talking about.
Is Trump's move also "common sense"?
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
From a data design viewpoint, I say don't force something into type Boolean that may not be Boolean, and don't force anything into a single column that may be multiple columns.
For forensic reasons, a person's "plumbing" may be one thing, but the person may prefer (or changed into) a different gender identity, including maybe "none" or "other".
Thus, if it's a social context, track their preferred status, but track different for forensic purposes. The gov't shouldn't be in the business for forcing a social classification into pre-defined boxes. Tell the religious fanatics to shove it up their plumbing.
Insurance companies are sometimes allowed to charge "males" more, but this seems like discrimination and profiling to me.
Now if there's ever required military service for a real war, that's a sticky one. Maybe everyone could be subject to draft, but the military can select based on qualifications and needs, not gender. A lot of military activity is not necessarily field combat, especially in the age of remote-controlled drones and bots. And there are physically strong females and weak/out-of-shape males.
Table-ized A.I.
And it really matters to regular boys? I mean, unless they want to take the girl or guy to bed with them?
Care to elaborate why? I can't really see the big importance.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Tolerating? I'm happily ignoring them and really can't see why I should give a fuck about it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ah, it starts to make sense.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm not arguing for or against. But we need to consider the impact of dumping binary genders. I'll focus on Title IX. Let's say I'm a boy that is very good at soccer but not good enough for a scholarship. I can beat most girls and if I was a girl, I'd likely get a sports scholarship. Hmmm... I suddenly decide I'm a girl and apply. I get the scholarship. play for 4-years and then decide, after graduation, that I was wrong and I'm a boy after all. Nothing to prevent that.
There are lots of laws giving women extra rights and benefits. If any man, at any time, can declare he is a woman, those extra rights are worthless. Are we prepared to take away from the women what they have fought so hard for?
Oh? Care to look into all the wonders of Mother Nature in determine sex and gender? There are several dozens of things that go towards making penis or no-penis an incredibly stupid way to make these determinations.
Watch transexuals compete in sports as women.
It's already happening. "Trans female" wrestlers are these big jacked up dudes who 'transition' and then go wrestle actual females and completely destroy them. Total sham. Men can't become women.
Science definitely does not say that. Science says it's complicated. Genetically we associate maleness with having a y chromosome, but there are XX people who are male by pretty much any other measure, and XY people who are female. Embryology tells us that sexual characteristics are strongly influenced by the hormonal environment in the womb, which is in turn influenced by all sorts of things. If you expand to other species, there's pretty good evidence that at least some cat mothers can influence the sex of their unborn kittens, and do so based on environmental stress. In other species sex might be assigned by things like the temperature. Some species, famously, can switch, even in adulthood.
In humans there was an idea that every fetus starts out female, then some develop male characteristics. Not surprisingly, it's more complicated than that. Every fetus basically has both sets of sex organs, and it seems that a complicated orchestra of hormones and signalling proteins is required to fully develop either set of organs (and suppress the other).
And that's physical sex. Science supports the idea that gender is, if anything, even more complicated, and equally "real."
Donald didn't used to have issues with gender flexing, thus it appears he's playing politics and kissing up* to the GOP religious base.
* No pun intended.
Table-ized A.I.
Firstly, thank you. I appreciate the help.
As a 52 year old transsexual person, who transitioned more than 25 years ago. I have experienced a lot of discrimination, bigotry, and violence because I am a transsexual person.
It is my hope that those who follow me will have an easier and safer life than I did.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
In the mid 1970s, when I published the TriSexual Review, our kind were rarely discovered and poorly understood. Without the internet as a means to discreetly find each other it was rare for one of us to ever meet another. We were surely one of the smallest minorities on earth and that is possibly why the print publication failed after the first issue.
A clever researcher today could find us online. We, individually, discover the trisexual links only after exhaustive effort driven by extreme loneliness. We try scores of keywords that humans would probably never search for. There's no telling how many trisexuals out there have still not found our online home.
Because we are basically incompatible with normal human anatomy we are shunned in any attempt at sexual encounters. We could give some pleasure to both males and females, but neither are willing to engage once they see our unusual configuration of equipment. Sadly, even if humans were willing, it is unlikely that we would receive as good as we give. Only the luckiest of us will ever know the joy of connibulation with two of our own.
We've even been excluded from the LGBTQetc community; they think we are strange. It's not just that they already have a 'T' in their name; we don't have to use T, we would accept '3' for our part. No, they just don't like us crowding the ever growing list of letters or perhaps due to the fact that there are too few of us to contribute to their huge political action fund.
Which bathrooms do trisexuals use? Next time you meet someone who might be trisexual, engage in a thoughtful conversation. Demonstrate that you're not a hater, a bigot, a Trump supporter. If you seem like an open minded individual, it might answer the bathroom question for you.
...omphaloskepsis often...
There are people whose penis/vagina situation is not clear at birth. And there are people who have one set but in all their being are sure that the should have the other. Fact.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Nevertheless, the convictions of "regular guys" are very often wrong in all kinds of things. You know this.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Why not keep ID of people and the government registery to a strict biological fact ?
Although there are some strange situations (X0, XXX, XXY, XYY), the vast majority of people are either XX or XY. This is something that can't be changed and, as such, is part of WHAT YOU ARE... And which could be used to register you in official records.
BTW, in some countries, the people are assigned an unique AND IMMUTABLE number at birth. That number may include your birthdate but also your birth gender... And people who are changing their gender during their life don't get a new number assigned to them...
Official records are there to keep track of people... These are meant to be hard fact (birthdate, sex, filiation, ...) not personnal preferences...
It was not me who made up an imagined group of so-called regular guys.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
If sex is not the same as gender, then why are people wanting to apply the definitions of gender to the Title IX law? The law addresses sex, exclusively.
Can't have it both ways. Pick one.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I'm told that the applicable Woke Rule is "healthy at any size!" This is separate from the "obesity crisis" because shut up.
So, we can just ask the person to divulge their sex and never mention gender and everything's cool, right?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Infact, the word "gender" was synonymous with "sex" up until the mid 1960's, in which feminists and "gender studies" professors started to redefine it as something different in order to further their ideas that gender was "socially constructed" in some way. We've all be duped. Gender isn't socially constructed and shouldn't be thought of that way. They were successful in their attempts to change peoples perception of the word.
To be fair, he said science, not sociology
Ah, so it's the bone that we dogs get thrown so we swallow the next thing where we get to foot the bills for his cronies.
Already wondered why Trump gives a shit who shits where.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
unless you define "regular guy" as somebody whose dad funneled millions of dollars through him when he was a kid to dodge taxes. Me? I'm a regular guy and I was lucky to get a couple books and a Nintendo from my Dad. I also don't go out of my way to be a jerk to transgender people to score cheap political points with my base. Go figure.
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So if someone is born biologically male, gets gender reassignment surgery because psychologically they're female, and now they feel like what they are is normal, the government is supposed to treat them as male anyway? What could POSSIBLY go wrong!? Or are they supposed to not get the surgery and 'pretend' to be a man their whole lives, even though they go through life feeling like they're living a lie?
America must be doing really shitty if the constituents who want this are statistically significant.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
apparently you have a problem with the word penis. By the way that is the medical term.
There are women who are XY. Things like immunity to testosterone causes them to develop as a woman.
Biology is much more complicated than you'd like. Everything is gradients. Nothing is 100%.
In the political philosophy of right-wing freedom, freedom below the belt extends to your wallet, but not your jewels—except as assessed an independent, government-certified authority, before you even gain the use of language.
Solution: anything that looks like a malformed testicle, or a malformed penis, should be expeditiously lopped off, while it's too small to matter.
Once this enlightened policy rolls out for fifteen years, washrooms should all be promptly relabeled "him" and "harem".
Problem solved.
According to the statistics I have seen, "born with ambiguous genitalia" occurs at a rate of 1 per 1000 births. That is millions of people. We are supposed to ignore their plight, just because it offends you?
Science says nothing about genders. Science says a lot about biological sex, and even there, there aren't just two, although the vast majority are either biologically male or biologically female. By way of counterexample, I have friends who are intersex - born with both sets of plumbing, so to speak.
Finding God in a Dog
The only reason you are so upset about this is because you are insecure and prefer others to bear your burden. People are not binary. Just like people are not either "black" or "white" there are grades elsewhere too. If you don't believe it I suggest you familiarize yourself with the details, there sure is enough porn to do so
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Well, that depends on what scale you're looking at, doesn't it? Chemicals don't have social rules, and neither does energy. But people - people have social rules.
Finding God in a Dog
So called "regular guys" are regularly wrong in their believes regarding all kinds of science, from physics to biology. Do you believe "regular guys" opinions about evolution or relativity as well?
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I thought sex and gender were not the same thing.
..... He hasn't built any walls, .....
That's not entirely true..
https://nypost.com/2018/06/02/trumps-border-wall-breaks-ground-in-san-diego/
Technically you are correct, insofar as it's not done (built), but it is under construction...
Oh? Care to look into all the wonders of Mother Nature in determine sex and gender? There are several dozens of things that go towards making penis or no-penis an incredibly stupid way to make these determinations.
Are you saying you want to limit recognized-trans status to people who are intersex only? The majority of trans* people are not intersex, XXY, etc.
I would say that it is sex that determines which bathroom you use.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Yes, both things exist. Sex is biological and not always unambiguous. People are born with ambiguous genital attributes. That's because there is not a fundamental difference between the male and the female genitals, and sometimes the result is not clearly either-or. This is one reason for why Trump's idea is not a good fit for reality. In addition, our brains, emotional states, and culture are complex and the way the brain deals with the biological states is also not always unambiguous. Some people are biologically toward one end of the scale and emotionally on the other. Forcing them to conform is just as idiotic as trying to force a gay person to be straight or a straight person to be gay. This is the other reason for why Trump's idea is not a good fit for reality.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
It really isn't. If you have a vagina, you are a woman and get to file lawsuits under Title IX that there aren't enough sports teams for you. If you have a penis, you are a man, and don't get to file the lawsuit. You only want it to be complicated so that there can be more victim groups in you intersectional politics.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Where you're all going wrong is that there are very, very, very few people born that way. From the news and articles published in the last few years, you'd think that as much as 20% of the population has some kind of sexual physical abnormality. Try way less than 1%.
Nature makes mistakes, but far fewer than you'd think.
I didn't say a single word about frequency, it's all in your mind. Anyways, there is sex that is not always unambiguous, and there is gender which isn't always either. If a person feels like A although her genitals are B it is not your or my place trying to force them to feel differently
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Plus Trump's plan is not making allowances for the less than 1% either
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
People with XX chromosomes can have normal male genitalia, including testicles. So your classification comes down to producing viable sperm. The male infertility rate in the US is around 9%. Since you argue there are only two sexes, those people are female?
I'm not sure you know what science is. Which wouldn't be terribly uncommon on the Internet.
Gender is the social expression and recognition of sex
That's fine. But our laws are written regarding sex, not gender. If we want to change the laws, that's fine too. It's a long and arduous process to change laws. That's how our founding parents (see what I did there) wanted it. Change is supposed to come slowly and deliberately so we are not subject to mob rules.
As many others have noted, if we want to remove the notion of sex from laws all together, you can do that too. See above.
With the Government demanding to know the racial and gender breakdown of my employees (and now, in California, the gender breakdown of my board members), this becomes critical. If I hire a bunch of brogrammers, but half of them believe they are women - does that mean I have a diverse gender group of employees? If the 5 board members of my company consist of 3 self-identifying, XY-chromosome men, and two self-identifying, XY-chromosome women, does that mean I have the proper ratio of females that California demands? If the draft fired up again and I chose to identify as a woman even though I have XY chromosomes and male genitalia - does that mean I am exempt from the draft?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It matters when it comes to lawsuits. That transgender, self-identifying woman you just hired into your company will probably NOT assist you in a gender-discrimination case. In California, if you're a public company with 5 board members, 2 of them must be female. If one of your board members has XY chromosomes but identifies as a woman - does that count as one of the two you must legally have?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Around 1.5-2%* of humans are born with some amount of intersex characteristics. That makes it about as common as red hair.
Often they don't even know until much later in life, e.g. women who can't conceive because they have internal testes instead of ovaries, or never find out.
All humans start off female, and around half become male in the womb. Sometimes the change doesn't affect all parts of their bodies. This is uncontroversial medical science, there are numerous examples you can see for yourself in medical textbooks.
So is it really that hard to imagine that a person's brain may not match other parts of their body too? Why can it only be the reproductive system or other random parts, but not the brain? Why can't they have a mostly male body but female reproductive organs?
* There is some debate about this, but even the low estimates are a very significant number of people.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'd like to think that it is only a small number of people who really care about this particular issue, and that for the majority of his supporters it's just about being contrarian and doing things that will piss off "liberals" etc.
I'd like to think that.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Intersex is not a "gender".
It's a form of birth defect.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Intersex isn't a gender though.
It's a birth defect.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Yes. What you're talking about isn't a "male".
You're talking about a person with a birth defect.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Apple, Amazon, Google and More Than 50 Other Companies Engage in Virtue Signalling
You're the one insisting there are only two sexes. Maintaining that position quickly dissolves into nonsense, which you've quite ably demonstrated.
"Per CA law at least according to the poster at work, I can identify as any gender, I don't need to prove anything, and I'm protected by the law in doing so."
California just passed another dumb law that says public companies are forced to have at least one female on their boards.
Looks like one dumb CA law can be used against another: just have a few of your male board members self-identify as females and, presto!, problem solved California-style...
while Trump is busy doing this he's doing nothing to curtail the abuses of the H1-B visa program. You know, like he promised to do during his campaign. And don't tell me he needs Congress. Obama put several pro H1-B executive orders through (most notably allowing their spouses to work, which puts downward pressure on their wages since they can count on income from their spouses) that Trump could kill with the stroke of a pen.
Again, funny how when he can rile his base with social issues that don't cost him a dime he's all over it, but when it's time to stand up for workers it's always "later".
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
it's hard to get folks to vote in this country. We've got lots and lots of voter suppression (lots of places you get Jury duty if you vote and folks can't afford the time away from work). The young'uns don't see the point since nothing ever seems to change, and they make you vote on a Tuesday (again, voter suppression) when you're tired and working on term papers or your second job or both.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
when you pry it from my cold, dead, absolutely fabulous hands.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
when you pry it [google.com] from my cold, dead, absolutely fabulous hands.
Also I posted this to the wrong point in the thread. Curse you clicky scroll button!
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Concrete and undeniable huh? Well, I'm up to the challenge.
Everything you said is true, and none of it actually matters. The fact that people in a society associate certain colors, items, objects, or even words, with a certain sex does not mean that gender is socially constructed.
A social construct is something that was made up by a society and would not exist otherwise. Examples are: currencies and economic markets, political nations and states, marriage, and religion. Gender is not one of these. Gender is not constructed by a society. There were no meetings held to determine what female and male were. There were no laws passed to create feminine or masculine. They are a product of biology and would exist if society collapsed.
New rule: You use the bathroom based on your sex, not gender. Problem solved.
I'm not sure how it ever became "gender" in the first place.
. Sex is biological and not always unambiguous. People are born with ambiguous genital attributes
You're talking about something like one in a million people. Governments needs to optimize for the common case, not the one in a million case.
Some people are biologically toward one end of the scale and emotionally on the other. Forcing them to conform is just as idiotic
Asking someone to overcome mental illness with will power is like asking someone with a broken leg to "walk it off". I think most people get that. The complaint is asking the mainstream to make way for the corner cases. Even though that's sometimes the morally correct choice, it's often unpopular.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I can't believe my employer forces me to believe that a man in drag is a woman if he identifies as a woman
If that's truly the worst aspect of your job, count your blessings. Some people are expected to do actual work at their jobs, and don't have time to worry about what's between their coworkers' legs.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
being transgender often comes with a raft of health problems. Not the ones caused by trying to transition but just plain ones you're born with. Physically a lot of transgender people have huge hormonal imbalances. They're literally trapped in the body of the other sex, having very high/low levels of testosterone/estrogen (plus other sex hormones). This also leads to a variety of mental problems from coping with the mixed up hormones, to say nothing of the mental problems you get when you're an effeminate male or butch female.
Getting a diagnoses opens up all sorts of treatment options. Not just gender reassignment (lots of them don't want that). But if you don't recognize transgender as a thing then you're left fighting with your insurance company to get them to pay for anything.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
One of my kids thought he was going to be a robot when he grew up
That's nice. It's not gender dysmorphia, so it's not at all relevant.
The scary thing is, what you wrote as sarcasm reads like a playbook for the current administration.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I love how the LGBT lobby still claims to be a ragtag persecuted victim scrambling in fear
The gun lobby has a fucking constitutional fucking amendment protecting their fucking rights and they still won't shut the fuck up after 226 fucking years.
Some men like men, and some women like women. Worry about your own life.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Simply because someone is born with the non-functional equipment of both doesn't mean they're a "third gender".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Transgender is a lie.
Then don't date a trans person. I personally don't find transsexuals attractive. I'm also not keen on cigarette smoke, and I think squid is pretty damn disgusting.
But if some other human on this planet wants to smoke a cigarette while eating squid, and getting their fuck on with a transsexual - it doesn't affect me, so I don't have a problem with it.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
'Culture war' conservatives are a rarified minority. It's not like on the left where the culture warfare is a major component of the program. Conservatives don't subscribe to the notion that 'the personal is political.' There is room for a separation of private life from political life. Life and living is complex and layered.
It's already happening. "Trans female" wrestlers are these big jacked up dudes who 'transition' and then go wrestle actual females and completely destroy them. Total sham.
If your favorite sports have suddenly ceased to provide entertainment, there's an amazing feature on your TV to solve this problem: The power button. Press it, and the un-entertaining program goes away, as if by magic.
It also works on NFL protests, fake news, and inane sitcom reboots. Try it sometime!
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Calling roughly half of the American population 'bad' just makes you seem dogmatic and a little silly.
Or maybe he timed it to highlight 'stupid shit the Dems waste so much time obsessing over' which he very effectively has done here.
Left handed people are a much larger minority and the egregious damage that right-hand bias clearly imposes on our lives doesn't for some reason foster champions of social justice to save us.
No, it's a sex thing, more than a 'plight of the minority' thing. An opportunity to be loud and brash, which is always a fun adventure.
This has always been a nerd site, with nerd articles on tech but also nerd culture. If you want it to be a 'tech journal' site, fuck off, because it's never been only that.
It doesn't have anything to do with hitting on them. Gender is a very significant part of how we perceive and understand others. Throughout in every culture in human history, men and women behave differently and are treated differently. To pretend they're the same or interchangeable is intellectually dishonest.
It's as if your boss believed in flat earth and everyone must behave as though the earth is flat or be referred to HR. It probably doesn't affect your work much (who needs time zones anyways?), but I can see why some people might object.
ambiguous genitalia is a birth defect. People with this birth defect should be treated with all the same sympathy and concern and medical intervention that victims of any other birth defect get. Just as a child is occasionally born with a cleft lip, or a missing arm or leg, or a heart outside the rib cage, or parts of a malformed twin attached is given a medical evaluation and experts make their best decisions abour surgical corrections, the same should be done for a child born intersexed. In very nearly all cases a simple DNA test will reveal XX or XY and then surgeons can figure out how best to make the person's personal plumbing align with their genetic code. The error that was made in this field in the past was when doctors decided to surgically alter such children to the physical form most easily surgically achieved with the bits of genitalia available rather than to match their DNA; this often ended up trying to make a genetic boy into a fake girl or a genetic girl into a fake boy and many of these cases lead to suicides later in life. These people were vicitms of a double tragedy.
We have cheap and easy DNA tests now.
Nobody is demanding that the plight of such victims be ignored. Society sadly failed these people far too foten in the past, but the answer is not to make up for those past failures by failing a whole new generation of victims by telling them a falsehood - that sex is a mental construct and anybody can change his or her sex at will by checking a box on a government form or by simply telling other people that one's sex has suddenly changed. Demanding that the entire society go mentally ill is absolutely not the solution to this fairly rare problem.
No, that's a concrete, undeniable example of how fashion changes. A boy is still a boy whether he is dressed in blue, pink, yellow, green or any other colour and the same is true for a girl. You cannot change your gender simply by changing your clothes any more than wearing a saddle would make you a horse.
There are only two you fucking retard. The fact that some freaks people are born with a super position of both doesnâ(TM)t change the crack there are only two sexes dumbass.
Holy shit dude (presumably).
I was kinda on the fence before, but these two sentences have crystallized that I need to support fervent push for LGBT rights.
From one random Internet user to another: you.. really should.. relax a little.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
This whole discussion is not about gays and lesbians in the first place, so no, but it is no surprise that you don't understand that
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Generally speaking the term "sex" is indeed biological, while "gender" is social or personal. So, non-story.
The science here is quite clear, as this Nature piece explains. If you choose to ignore the science, then of course you're free to do so. But that doesn't make the science wrong and the conservatives right.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
Does this mean that a sex change who has gone the whole nine yards changing from mail to buxom female will no longer he expected and required to cover her mammary glands at the beach? And that is the tip of the iceberg here,
And one wonders, idly, what gender a hermaphrodite will be under this law. Will he-she be able to use both restrooms?
Off hand I do not think this has been thought through properly.
{^_-}
Everything you said is true, and none of it actually matters. The fact that people in a society associate certain colors, items, objects, or even words, with a certain sex does not mean that gender is socially constructed.
No, that's exactly what people are referring to when they talk about gender as a social construct. The association of certain colours, certain toys, certain jobs, certain behaviours with a particular gender.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I agree, opting out of transgender competitions is the best immediate option, whether it's athletes or viewers. But then what happens if those that opt out want to do their own thing and exclude transgenders? The authoritarian left will tell them they can't freely associate and outlaw their activities. And then you have the issues of sports in public schools.
Hmm, took longer than usual for the snowflakes to be trolled by reason today.
Slashdot has become really anti-science lately, mostly because of a small number of people with mod points.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Fuck sociology - it is not a science.
Uh, no. That's not what social construct means. Social constructs aren't simply preferences. This is how they've confused the meaning of the words to forward their position.
It's not the preference, it's the association of the preference with sex. Girls are not innately drawn to pink things, that's the socially constructed part.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
California law, so California's definition is what matters.
That's the thing about state's rights - it lets you have different rules in different places. OTOH, the more powerful the federal government, the more it will matter what Trump thinks.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
They should probably live in a state where the rules are different, so that it says "female" on their ID.
Gee, it's almost as if state's rights are a good idea, so that people can move to states that match their culture, rather than a homogeny enforced by the likes of Trump.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Pretending a transgender person is not of the sex into which they were born is a courtesy, not a legal necessity. How they see themselves is irrelevant when it comes to what the word "sex" means. That facts undermine the self image a person may have constructed in their own imagination does not make them any less true.
And gender is not "assigned at birth", it is defined by sex at a time when they can be nothing but identical. Framing it as "assigned" implies that it has no more of an objective basis than someone's self-image. Even if gender is a social construct, it is based on biological fact. A self-image that contradicts biological fact is that person's own problem, and cannot outweigh that which is based on fact.
If we made only rules which benefited the 50%+1 person only, pretty much we would still be in the 19th century type of law - which is where your "why do we make laws for few people" slip to. Forget pollution stuff as it is local, shallow bury radionucleide and bad chemicals under a school ? No problem after all it will damage only very few people comapred to 300 million, far less than 0.01%. Forget Handycapped laws or access too.
The reason we have laws even for 0.01% of the population is to protect them from the tyranny of majority. You may like tyranny of majority though. If you are in the majority, it is pretty swell, especially if you have no empathy whatsoever.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
His "other" is not a third gender. it is a medical condition making it you have both sex organ for example with various type of rare hermaphrodism. Even complete androgyn incensitivity makes you a woman. Sure with XY chromosome, but the embryonal development followed the X plan (incomplete since only one X - but your sexual organ are female and only ovaries are really not working. uterus is working and artificial implementation can lead to pregnancy). There is indeed only 2 "gender/sex" biologically : female and male. The rest is problem of the formation of either or both. But there is not such a thing as a "third" sex/gender thing in biology. It is quite binary. Just like somebody having a dis-formed leg is not called a second type of non-bipedial-human. He may get the qualifier of handicapped but it does not change its status. Just like losing your penis due to accident does not make you a female biologically, retracting it and putting it inside abdominal cavity does not make you a biological female. Now SOCIALLY is another kind of worm. the problem is that most of the population mix both indifferently, while some WANT to differentiate them. And I am not even touching the part where social and biological touch, like sex and dating, not even with a 100 foot pole.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
>>> which restroom you can enter
I think a lot of women would disagree that this is a matter of gender.
You're still not getting it. Just because companies have marketed pink things to girls doesn't mean gender is socially constructed. It just means that parents have a preference for buying pink things for girls, and companies found out that if they color their girls items pink they will get more sales and make more money.
For something to be a social construct effort had to be expended to perform the construction. There were no committees who convened and decided pink was for girls and blue was for boys. No laws passed. No proclamations from any leadership. Fashion and preferences are not social constructs.
Most social constructs are not created by committee, they just evolve naturally. Beauty is another good example - the ideal varies between cultures, but isn't regulated by law or proclamation.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Nah, just anti-pseudoscience.
nobody, and I mean nobody would claim to be transgendered to peep on girls in a bathroom. The shit you get from everybody for being trans is insane. At least some of your family will turn against you if not most of it. Everyone looks at you funny. And you worry when you're walking around at night that some drunk frat boy is gonna decide you made a pass at him and deck you. I know a gay guy beaten half to death for that. Spent a few years in a coma...
It would be like claiming to be a Nazi for the beer and schnitzel at the local KKK rally. It's just not something people do.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Trump has done very little to appease the social conservative side of his base.
Not according to social conservatives. Trump has done more for them than any other president in their lifetimes, in the words of Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council. Specifically, Trump gets a "mulligan" on his entire pre-Presidential life, as long as he continues to deliver for social conservatives. Did Trump get the wall? No he didn't, not so far, but he fought for it, and that is what will count for them. He's put a lot of anti-LGBT and anti-abortion people in the HSS and other executive departments, and that also makes them quite happy. Trump, meanwhile, likes pandering to the evangelical base because they're truthworthy and reliable. They don't blow with the political winds, and that sort of loyalty is pretty important to Donald Trump. While they admit they wouldn't nominate him for pastor and don't consider him a moral leader, it's a marriage of extreme convenience, because he has rewarded their loyalty like no other president in recent memory.
Technically, they turn the dick inside out and make 'Vaginer' out of it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This is what you're not getting. Social constructs don't evolve naturally. You see the word "construct" in the term? A construct by definition isn't natural, it is deliberately created. That's like saying english is a constructed language because the words evolved over time. It's nonsense.
Beauty also is not a social construct. Preferences are not social constructs! There were no meetings held to decide what is and isn't beautiful.
This is what I meant when I said the "gender studies" professors in the 60s did a good job at duping everyone by trying to redefine words to suit their agenda.
It's telling only I have limited time to deal with other people's emotional issues
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Turns out the privileged majority fight hard when you threaten their privilege:
https://news.sky.com/story/300...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne...
Of course, the Labour party are the people that changed the law to make it legal for them to discriminate against men. Amazed they found the time in between ruining the economy and taking the UK into illegal wars.
You're very much like the trans people I know. Normal, with a small facet of your life that most people don't need to deal with it.
Be assured that I don't think the freaks represent you.
It matters for passports, social security, W-2 forms, and the national census, to name only a few standards. It also matters for Title IX based laws and policies.
Because the moment identity "fluidity" becomes acceptable in one area, it will start becoming acceptable in others. We 'd have white people identifying as black for the race points (some already do), illegal immigrants identifying as war refugees, professional victims identifying as whatever will get them sympathy. And you will be forced to pretend it's all real, because if a man in drag can claim to be a woman why not them? And then those "I identify as" people will claim legal rights, because if a man in drag identifying as a woman can have the same legal rights as a woman why not them? Your little girl will be forced to pee next to a man in the public toilet, illegal immigrants will treated as war refugees with your tax money, then white special snowflakes can claim to be repressed minorities and receive grants. For the sake of sanity, let's stop the madness. At least when we are allowed to.
I don't care what's in my co-workers' legs as long as for legal purposes they cannot change identity on a whim. See my post above for why....
This. If HR wants to believe that the earth is flat, a man dressed female clothes and feminine makeup is a woman and that the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is Agile, they can do it. Disallowing employees from saying otherwise is not right IMO.
Gender is a very significant part of how we perceive and understand others.
How? At least in a professional environment? What exactly is the difference between talking to a male or female developer?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Good. Maybe at some point people will start to ignore that bullshit as they did when everything was "terrorism". Once a sentence starting with "I identify as..." is met with a "whatever" response, we can maybe return to normality.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.