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Comments
> But really, the dolls send a very specific message that's in line with current social trends; it's easy to change your gender, or even, sex. It's not, it's hard
> In real life, people now change their gender (really, their sex) by changing their pronouns
A few comments:
1. I think people have settled into a practice where "gender" is the sense of identity (along with all the social dimension that goes with gender labels), while "sex" is the term for one's anatomy. Of course, like you note, there are some people who still do not fit into the binary of these, for anatomical or other reasons.
2. We are a sexually binary species, but frankly speaking, since we don't actually check each others' genitalia before speaking to or referring to or describing or understanding each other, gender labels are to some extent just arbitrary trivia. And once we understand that "gender" and "sex" can be decoupled (or, at least, are easier to decouple than the societal weight of gender labels and those labels themselves), then I think various nonbinary categories are more easily understood.
N.B.: I'm just speaking about my own ideas on the subject; I haven't consulted anyone else before writing this. Though my ideas have changed over time based on my experiences and discussions with others, including but not limited to LGBTQ folks.
Okay, don't make me do this for any more than necessary.
It's 2019, and it'll be 2020 soon. We live, right now, in a world where sex stereotypes are at their weakest. It's not time to give up and give in to them.
It's certainly not the time to begin claiming various (as you've basically admitted) identities that don't exist in reality, which people and their supporters then attempt to treat, defend, and legislate, as if they were genuine minorities, which they are not.
If you think I'm kidding, try being any person of note who accidentally "misgenders" someone.
Unless we accept dudes who love wear skirts to work, dudes who wear skirts to work will never be accepted into society, and we'll basically have to reclassify them into some other thing whether they like it or not.
Which, to me, suddenly sounds a lot like sexism.
The work being done is not to eliminate sex-based stereotypes, it's to reinforce them to the point of hilarity (or despair, really).
They... can't? as far as I can tell, we only say "gender" because nobody wants to go around saying "sex" all the time (see also: how government offices have no problem with this little sense of politeness).
You really can't understand somebody without understanding who they are, and one of the most basic things about a human is what sex they are. If that creates stereotypes on the part of one of the people in an interaction, that's unfortunate, but a side-effect of living is lots of unfortunate situations.
Plus, unless a person is naturally androgynous or puts a maximum amount of effort into it, you'll still be able to tell anyways, no matter what they try to tell you. Your mind will literally know, even if you don't want to.
oh, well, that was a lot
I don't think I have to rule on whether these are "genuine minorities" as long as I simply observe that (identity or presentation) gender and (anatomical) sex can be decoupled. It's uncommon, but it does happen. This is sort of a different topic compared to stereotyping though.
Incidentally, I have in the past argued with transgender folks about this.
Well, I mean, I personally don't really care whether dudes wear skirts to work. They can go ahead and do it if they want.
I certainly don't like the social weight that gets put on them, and I guess one could read stuff like a lot of discourse these days as furthering this same framework but just in a different form, rather than doing away with the framework.
That's how I used to use the two terms, until I found that I guess they're convenient for expressing the difference between these two different ideas.
Or simply the mere fact of having previously observed that someone was referred to by a given pronoun, despite never having even seen the person in meatspace. That happened to me.
But then I realized it was more a matter of courtesy and the need for a consistent referencing label (thanks to English only having gendered third-person pronouns, unfortunately), so I decided, if it doesn't matter to me, I should be fine saying whatever, as long as the person is not fucking with me (figuratively at least).
oh gosh what have i done i have entered into yet another internet argumentThe ideas.
There are lots of ideas on the planet, but none should be codified in this way in popular secular language for a very nebulous sense of 'convenience' that in turn favors ideas that set us back.
Your argument was at least that this sort of thing reduces the pressure of stereotypes, so I argued from that point.
I've already gone over why this isn't ideal, least of all that it never ever stops at just words, plus that whole reality based speech framework thing.
Basically, there are times where going along with a thing is more damaging than the alternate, even if it hurts someone.
I mean, obviously, I don't want you to change your ways because politeness will get you places and not get you into constant fights.
Anyways, can we give it a rest? (I mean, after you've replied to me). I didn't actually want to fight this fight, it was just that Someone Disagreed With Me On The Internet and I couldn't help myself.
EDIT: Haha, as if I could get out of it that easily (all I'll say to restrict importing drama).
You know what, screw this. This was said to me;
I won't say by who, because who actually cares, but I have now been engaged in a PM war.
It's not fully clear which set of ideas you're referring to (the pronoun thing or the gender-fluidity thing, presumably the latter?), but my guess is that I probably disagree with you either way, since I don't really see this as a "backward" vs. "forward" thing. Rather I just see it as a way to get on with life rather than getting hung up on what's basically a personal thing anyway.
I'd ask what the "next" thing is but this is a slippery slope argument so I'd probably disagree anyway.
Meanwhile, I've found myself already involved in three different arguments today. I'm not doing very well. Though in one of them I'm just criticizing someone's tone (albeit knowing full well that that person and I disagree on the topic), and in another I think some people have misunderstood my position (they're responding to me explaining why hand-holding is bad while my position is that giving people choices for filters is good).
Both, mainly because they both fold into the latter.
I already talked about their claim to be recognized as a minority, plus the various legislation this would involve. It is in no way a personal thing. I mean, just asking somebody else to modify their behavior to suit you is not a personal thing.
Anyways I have a fun update on the Kidult YouTubers! I don't know what it is about YouTube exactly that makes people inherently less honest. Maybe, actually, it's just all social media in general.
One of them has released a video in a new "series", obviously starting out with mentioning how anxious everything has made them. I don't know how accurate this is, but the fact that they immediately spend the rest of the video trying to become a fitness YouTuber doesn't make me want to give him the benefit of the doubt.
By the way I did also find the YouTuber who everybody else was ragging on for switching content spheres.
I actually did write up a first half of my Kidults on YouTube post but I'm not sure how to approach the rest.
Also for some reason I felt like reading about shipwrecks and have been at it wholly these past two days.
Plus once you get over the initial guilt you only remember it once you've looked through 3 hours worth of ships.
Also I just had my phone repaired, as it wasn't charging up, one of the connections inside broke. I hope I didn't cause damage by snuggling the micro-USB port to make it work when it wouldn't charge.
This entire story reads so much like your typical CSI show investigation (geolocation, placement of curtains or whatever) that I'd think the guy might have even got the idea from those sorts of shows.
I guess maybe after this somebody might consider letting new smartphone's least HQ photo mode be "less extremely HQ than normal, but still terrifyingly HQ".
By the way, another K-pop star may have committed suicide, much like Jonghyun from SHINee earlier this year. It was Sulli, formerly of f(x), whose song Electric Shock was really really big back in late 2012.
I know that she'd taken a health break from music and had to quit f(x) at some point, and the unit basically petered out before she could make a comeback there. However, she kept at the entertainment industry and actually made her re-debut this year with a new digital single.
I remember that her re-debut didn't do amazingly well. K-pop stars work outside of groups still has to bank on whatever group they're currently in a lot of the time, and she'd had none. She might have also gotten lots of negative feedback from f(x) stans or similar for her solo debut, who I remember saw her as the weak link of the group when she left (yet couldn't explain why the group didn't sustain itself without her either).
I have this terrible feeling that whilst there might not be a wave or anything, the idols of well, basically the generation of K-pop I grew up with, might face similar situations. The industry wasn't as regulated back then, and it probably still isn't now, but what they faced was probably much worse just owing to the lack of scrutiny of how K-pop idols were treated since the only major market they were really breaking into was Japan.
It's just... very sad all round.
we're hitting autism levels that shouldn't be possible
cyberpunk 2019
...and a few more memes. It's like a perfect storm of autistic incelism.
ClariS' Naisho no Hanashi sure is a good song.
The implication I'd bought into, I guess, was that Conservatism, especially social conservatism, would die when the people who believed in it like, literally died.
Aside from that, the implication is that social conservatism, unlike the "live and let live" policy, or the more recent "you can't talk really disapprove of what others are doing at all because that's Oppression", was morally wrong (see; Oppression).
However, over the past few months I've been considered the merits of social conservatism. Of course that doesn't mean I subscribe to it all of a sudden, but it does mean I think it's a valid way to live one's life or color one's views.
And in terms of my personal outlook on life, I'm still pretty conservative, with regards to being cautious, not jumping on bandwagons, a desire to be honorable and humble in front of others, and wanting stuff to be able to stay stable in the long run. (Incidentally, another word for that last idea is "sustainability".)
But the kinds of "conservatism" thatt the Republicans espouse are not the honorable ideas, but the "the world should revolve around us!" kinds of ideas. Y'know, like, the kind of stuff I do when I complain about the orthography of the English language, and I'm fully aware I'm being the "get off my lawn" position when I'm doing it. But I yell at clouds for fun while they yell at economically disadvantaged people for profit and social control.
also it should totally be spelled "conservativism"
Edit: if anti-socialism counts as conservative there's that.
I mean, even outside politics I've always been very skeptical of people promising one-off solutions to literally everything.
Though, technically, that's what an election tends to become ("Elect me and I'll fix it all!")
Ah, there's that. I did use "Young Republicans" as an illustrative point, but I guess Turning Point works better.
The funny thing is how easily Republicans as a party tend to abandon what I'd consider social conservatism really quickly when they see the social trends shifting. I'd say there's very much a lack of care about things right now that aren't economics. Of course they do rail on and on about abortion, but that's because it's beneficial for them right now. I don't think there's much else they care for in terms of "social conservatism".
Is liberalism really an embrace of socialism, or do the policies overlap but definitely not match to a tee? This is a question that I would like answered, but the current liberal (to be specific, American Democrat, really) sphere seems to be in favor of socialism (if not outright communism) and therefore has a vested interested in conflating the two.
I mean, I very much doubt "live and let live" goes very well with "the government should be in charge of fixing everything" since it becomes evident very quickly that social policy that leads to the betterment of the nation-state as a being above the human isn't very into allowing people to do whatever they want.
I say "above the human" here because I'm considering individual self-interest. There very much is an argument where the nation-state is not only allowing said human to live with all the rations their body needs and offers them a job/home/medical care etc, or in fact that the nation-state is saving said human being from themselves by making their more polarizing/potentially dangerous decisions for them.
To contrast Liberalism or what?
Also typically the conservative side is more strongly anti-socialism, as revolutions are kinda damaging to the whole keep-things-the-way-they-are thing.
relativism
nativism
positivism
progressivism
objectivism
primitivism
collectivism
constructivism
recidivism
prescriptivism
conservati(vi?)sm
Speaking of which, I lost the opportunity of buying a computer significantly better than mine plus peripherals for $400. Maybe it's better that way, I should keep some savings, plus technology marches on and in a few years one will be able to get something better for cheaper.
But you're right; saving is important, too.
Speaking of saving vs spending. I think I've mentioned before how I was really excited about Off the Hook mini-dolls, and how I wanted to collect them all.
Unfortunately, it seems Spin Master isn't very good at selling dolls (or anything that isn't Bakugan or PAW Patrol really), because they overstocked a bunch of the specific ones (everybody and their grandma seems to have a Summer Vacay Vivian for sale) whilst leaving some out (Spring Dance Vivian and Alexis, for example, are practically impossible to find, and I've only seen the second Summer Vacay set with Vivian and Jenni for sale once).
I mean right now I'm just doing a strategic overlook of what I'd have to do to collect like, even half the whole collection. I'm considering giving up and moving on with my life, maybe waiting to see what they come up with next... but I really like Off the Hook...
Anyways I should also mention how much I like the... well, "flavor text" I guess of Off the Hook. It's about six mannequin girls who love fashion, which is much cuter than this sort of thing is normally.
Iyou want it.More importantly there's going to be a British election this December and there's literally no better Christmas present anybody could have given me politically.
A few months ago I got this idea in my head that I should read political theory/nonfiction, but I yesterday I got this feeling that it would, frankly, be a waste of my time and money (and probably just make me sad).
Books should be fun, right?