gender fuck or gender fucked (the politics of trans)

This is an *extremely* interesting topic for me.

if someone is 100% androgynous, ie. 50% male and 50% female, the greyest grey, then would they also be 100% bisexual?

you might say that sexual orientation and gender are two totally different things, and rightly so for the most part, but wouldn't you say that a 100% androgynous person is more male if they are attracted to females? or am I just prejudiced from heterosexuality being the sexual orientation norm?

no

they are two entirely different things

and i think you mean to say 'genderqueer'. 'androgynous' refers generally to gender presentation iirc, which is also a different thing.

i think you're coming too much from your own position of thinking that someone's sexual attraction determines their gender. i guess someone could feel like they were attracted to women "in a male way" and that might edge them towards thinking themself more male.

but really a 100% androgynous person, the way you're thinking about it, isn't really possible, you know? not least because in our lives we're constantly being gendered by the people around us: someone born intersex, for example, is going to have grown up thinking a lot about gender, being told they're a boy or a girl, or that they're like a boy or like a girl, long before they start working out who they're attracted to.

csm there are many many people who identify as neither/both genders without a big lean in either directions

direction

so there are!

i mean trans people generally go many years of their lives being incorrectly gendered but they still know what their true gender is, right? it's not really any different for ppl in the middle of the spectrum though i'm guessing there's often some more confusion

oh, yeah, that was kind of what i was trying to say: the process of working out where you feel you are on gender starts when you start being gendered by other people, which is quite a bit earlier than working out who you're attracted to.

saying that sexual orientation and gender are two totally different thinks implies that there isn't the slightest relationship between these at all (no confounding variable). You're saying that gender and sexual orientation are mutually exclusive. You are absolutely certain that there one does not directly effect the other even in the slightest way

nvm the typos

^my original question is getting at what I just posted

nvm the bollocks

and nvm the confounding variable thing. I used that term wrong.

they are mutually exclusive

maybe there's a correlation between being out of the closet, ie if you're out as trans maybe you're more likely to be out as gay or bi or whatever, or you're more willing to confront the possibility (or maybe not)

but yeah, gender identity and sexual preference have no correlation. i'm not an expert but this is very basic 101 stuff.

I don't think you have the science to back you up your mutually exclusive stance. You have a theory that corresponds to what everyone else says... sound bytes from gay activists.. I'm only suggesting that there's a tiny but direct correlation between the gender and sexual orientation. But not enough of a correlation to suggest that I'm "coming too much from your (my) own position of thinking that someone's sexual attraction determines their gender". And actually I'm a bit offended that you said that's my position when I clearly wasn't coming from that position at all.

....and any miniscule correlation would mean that you can't be 100% androgynous (or "genderqueer" or whatever) and be only attracted to one sex. you'd have to be 99.9% androgynous or less. to be 100% you would have to be bi-sexual

trans activists, more so

i don't think this is really something that two cis people can argue about. i'm just going to take the word of every trans person i've ever talked to about it and every trans person whose writing i've ever read about it.

and again, if there is some correlation, i would bet all my pennies that it's because a trans person who is willing to divulge their gender identity is more willing to confront their sexuality and divulge that information if they aren't 100% hetero. if the % of gay/bi trans people is higher than it is for cis people, i'd more readily believe it's because homophobic culture puts so much pressure on cis people to present as straight.

i'm sorry if i'm misreading you, but i disagree with your similarly non-scientific impression that there is even a tiny correlation. i'm not sure what your basis is there.

....and any miniscule correlation would mean that you can't be 100% androgynous (or "genderqueer" or whatever) and be only attracted to one sex. you'd have to be 99.9% androgynous or less. to be 100% you would have to be bi-sexual

don't understand your logic here at all

(or "genderqueer" or whatever)

you don't have to be an ass about this, i wasn't trying to fuck with you or anything

no, I just don't honestly don't know what the right word is

but I don't think we can really discuss this 'question' of mine anyways if you are thrown off by my bad phrasing of sentences and math hoohaw

how could one scientifically test if gender and sexual orientation are mutually exclusive? maybe it's impossible, or maybe I should come back to this question when I'm high

CaptainLorax I have no idea what you've been arguing about but I'm going to predict that you're wrong.

there always has to be an antagonist for the antagonist

if someone is 100% androgynous, ie. 50% male and 50% female, the greyest grey, then would they also be 100% bisexual?

you might say that sexual orientation and gender are two totally different things, and rightly so for the most part, but wouldn't you say that a 100% androgynous person is more male if they are attracted to females? or am I just prejudiced from heterosexuality being the sexual orientation norm?

― we gotta move these refrigerators (CaptainLorax), Wednesday, June 13, 2012 9:44 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

these things have nothing to do with each other, you are wrong, I award myself 1000 points

the world is shaped like a cube. you are full of words

it's okay if you don't understand the riddler as long as you understand the riddle

http://timecube.com/

if other people can understand what you're saying without also ceding to a bias in favor of heteronormativity, then maybe i'm just dumb. it's also possible that you aren't making sense.

i guess i also just don't get the point of your question in the first place. if someone says they're "100% genderqueer" then that's what they are, and if that person says they're bisexual then that's what they are. you don't need to perform a scientific study to accept that.

I don't just accept things at face value. I like to study them. I like the science I always come up with new things that I ought to be studied or new interesting theories that I like to talk about

i stopped typing coherently hours ago when I picked up the whiskey

lorax leaving aside my serious doubt about assigning percentages to culturally determined notions like biological sex, gender and sexual orientation, i think you're freely slipping between correllation and causation in your argument

"if someone says they're "100% genderqueer" then that's what they are"

yeah, I don't care about any of that. I mean, they can say whatever they want and I'll know what they mean

meanwhile, I'll still toy with the theory that gender and sexual orientation aren't mutually exclusive. the idea intrigues me. i'm not trying to prove people wrong if they say "I'm 100%". i'm trying to understand an idea that interests me

i don't necessarily accept things at face value either. but i guess my point is that whatever hypothetical 'science' you're doing right now doesn't trump the miles and miles of experiental data that's out there. and that queer politics are extremely sensitive and there isn't a single transgender/queer person alive that deserves to have their identity questioned or prodded or inspected. and there is plenty of science already out there that legitimizes queer identities and orientations.

if there's no science to be had then I don't really care about this theory anymore

also not just scientifically dubious but also mutable

meanwhile, I'll still toy with the theory that gender and sexual orientation aren't mutually exclusive. the idea intrigues me. i'm not trying to prove people wrong if they say "I'm 100%". i'm trying to understand an idea that interests me

ok sure, but i think where you're going is affected by:

or am I just prejudiced from heterosexuality being the sexual orientation norm?

which seems to be true. when i didn't understand you before i was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt with this.

xp

things are only mutable when you don't have enough science to nail them down

i don't think this is really something that two cis people can argue about

soooo otm

Each person on the planet is pretty different.

Gender politics is good but it's only a fragment of a person's ego. Plus there is how you self-identify and how you are identified by societal norms, both of which can change from day to day, situation to situation.

Androgyny will continue to get the short end of the stick as long as gender politics remain polarized.

I think I'm only prejudiced in that the reason that I first entertained this theory of mine is because I was thinking about sexual norms. I have a theory and no answer; so I'm not gonna proclaim that gender and sexual orientation are NOT mutually exclusive. But I will lean towards NOT mutually exclusive because i feel like it

wouldn't you say that a 100% androgynous person is more male if they are attracted to females?

I would think a 100% androgynous person would be post-sexual.

someday I will finish reading The Cyborg Manifesto

....and any miniscule correlation would mean that you can't be 100% androgynous (or "genderqueer" or whatever) and be only attracted to one sex. you'd have to be 99.9% androgynous or less. to be 100% you would have to be bi-sexual

― we gotta move these refrigerators (CaptainLorax), Wednesday, June 13, 2012 9:55 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you don't know how statistics work do you

anyway, the late great moonship is otm, pretending that socially-constructed "understandings" of gender/sexuality are in fact v precise analytical tools needed to pathologize actual people is...not productive.

lorax doesn't know how anything fucking works, i am mystified that people are still engaging with this creepoid halfwit

i'm amazed that you get creeped out and testy this easily

i wouldn't want to be the guy who puts the extra scoop of sugar in your tea

http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/t7en.html

OK, you've just lit my touchpaper, opened my bullpen, yanked my bellrope.

whatever you wanna call it, I'm off

xpost

lorax i meant mutable in that a person can change their gender and sexual identification over time ... which i suppose you would answer with something like "we just don't have the SCIENCE to predict that a person will be born 73% gay, and therefore come out at 27% into their lifespan and be attracted to women 7 percent of the time"

to which i would reply that you seem to have equally strongly deterministic views of both science and human behavior

http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/02/05/i-am-the-lorax-i-speak-for-the-gender-binary/

Weird ideas about trans people?

Staggering assumptions about bisexuality based on personal bias?

Lorax is Julie Bindel and I claim my £5.

i wonder if whisky explains bindel as well

it was quite dispiriting reading this actually, i know it's just drunklorax but you encounter that mode of pig-headed "I HAF AN IDEA ABOUT TRANS PEOPLE AND IT MUST BE RIGHT AND IF IT ISN'T I DON'T WANT TO KNOW" argument so often

oh my god i've only now seen bindel's latest gem

WCC have you seen it? it is kind of...beyond

Yeah that Bindel piece isn't so much beyond as backwards.

It's a particular piece of rad-fem ephemera from the 80s which was v v au current when I was adolescent and getting a sexuality and did me, personally, a lot of damage so it was just v v dispiriting to see it revived again. But since the evo psych crew are reviving antique notions towards gender roles I guess it's a thing. :-(

Thread is just, you know - straight White Cis dude demands "Science!" but wants science to look like the assumptions of SWCD's rather than the lived and stated experience of others.

I mean on a purely observational / anecdotal level it is oft noted that the percentage of trans, gender neutral, genderqueer people is actually much higher in the *asexual* community than in the general population but it's really hard to establish any kind of causation or even proper correlation on that one. But that is at least something based on talking to people and conducting informal headcounts, not drunken theorisation. It might just be easier for trans or genderqueer ppl to talk about or openly identify as such because they're already outside hetereonormativity and those questions get easier to ask outside that straitjacket.

i was hoping this would be one of those nice revives and it would be about the portrait of the chevalier d'eon the national portrait gallery just discovered

http://www.philipmould.com/admin/resources/1338997149stewartchevalierdeon2735inframe.jpg

Who says my idea only applies to trans people? Gender and sexual oriention covers just about everyone. Most of you are unable to interpret everything that I say and it's largely my fault for not dropping knowledge as fluently as wikipedia.

What I was saying last night was merely a theory that I found interesting. And I never said that a direct relationship between gender and sexual orientation would renforce heterosexuality or homosexuality (plus I never concluded that such a relationship even exists). Furthermore, both hetero and homo can be supported at the same time in a direct relationship. Imagine a cloud of data points that do not suggest a straight line. They could be parabolic, hyperparabolic... or two seperate lines or zig zags even.

If you don't get the idea of things I try to explain then by all means keep on complaining about something that you think I'm suggesting. But don't blame me for your interpretations. If you need to blame me for something, and it appears that some of you might, try blaming me for not explaining things very coherently instead of jumping to conclusions about what you think I'm saying.

thomp that looks like tim brooke taylor.

Lorax, stamping feet: it's not fair! You guys dismiss my ideas because you have miscast me as an idiot!!!

ILX: correlation / causation. We have dismissed you as an idiot *because* your ideas are garbage.

The same data cloud example I just used is exactly why I was wrong about a 100% androgynous person having to be 100% bisexual given a direct relationship exists between G and SO. I started last night posing that line of thought as a question. I take fault in answering that question later in the night when I was taking up an antagnostic viewpoint - mostly for the sake of argument. Anyways, I'm at work right now, I'm going to put down my blackberry for a few hours.

Xp

You win. My thoughts are garbage and the idea of a direct relationship between gender and sexual orientation is uninteresting and therefore not worth sharing

But why are you posting to this thread if I've started such an uninteresting discussion

straight White Cis dude demands "Science!" but wants science to look like the assumptions of SWCD's

Very otm-y.

Lorax, if your ideas weren't meant to be understood as referring to trans people, maybe you could have tried posting them in a different thread. Say, one that didn't explicitly refer to the politics of trans in its title.

trayce: Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont (5 October 1728 Tonnerre – 21 May 1810 London), usually known as the Chevalier d'Éon, was a French diplomat, spy, soldier and Freemason whose first 49 years were spent as a man, and whose last 33 years were spent as a woman. Upon death, a council of physicians discovered that d'Éon's body was anatomically male.

the eighteenth century was best at names.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/08/five-trans-role-models

i also did not know the legendary interplay designer/programmer 'burger' was trans

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134614/the_burger_speaks_an_interview_.php?print=1

I've been holding off on this question for awhile, but I have to know. How'd you get to be called "Burger"?

RH: Remember when I told you I was flat broke? When we founded Interplay, we didn't pay ourselves much. We were starving. When I was at Boone Corporation, I was being paid twelve thousand a year. Slave wages. I was a kid; I didn't know any better. My entire life was get up, go to work, work until I'm too tired, sleep, repeat. Didn't have time for cooking, and I didn't have any money.

There was a place called Hamburger Stand. They sold 29 cent hamburgers. Since I spent most of my time at the office, I didn't want to walk over, buy a burger, and walk back.

So I'd buy a bag of twenty of them. Blow six bucks, get twenty burgers, go to my office, and put them in a drawer. I was too cheap to buy a refrigerator -- well, really too broke. Every so often I'd open the drawer and eat a burger.

I had an office mate who was a health food nut, constantly complaining about how I should eat right, exercise like he did. One day I was working all through the night. I didn't leave. It's the morning, and he comes in, sits across from me. I'm still working.

Around 3 p.m., I'm done. Burger time! I pull open the drawer, reach in, put the bag down, grab a burger, and start munching. Wasn't thinking anything about it. That's when my co-worker looks at me, looks back, looks at me -- and it dawns on him that the bag has been there for who knows how long. Those burgers are pretty firm.

He just loses it. He jumps up, his chair goes flying, he goes, "That burger is insane! That burger is insane!" He runs out. I'm sitting there like, "What's with him? Whatever." Then later Brian Fargo comes in and asks what I did to him. I didn't do anything. What's going on? My co-worker had gone to the restroom and tossed his cookies. That's how disgusted he was.

So then, the rumor started. "Did you eat any burgers lately?" So they started calling me Burger. I played along. "Okay, I'll get a burger. I'll eat a burger." Later on, unbeknownst to anybody, I had an issue with the name I was given at birth. So I would rather be called Burger than by that birth name. "Just call me burger." For the next twenty years, that was my name. Everybody called me Burger. Now my name is Becky. I finally shed the name Burger.

haha this revive is so hilarious and infuriating. surely all we need is conspiracy theorist methodology to investigate gender and sexuality! good work lorax.

In 1967 the CIA issued a memorandum calling for mainstream media sources to begin countering "conspiracy theorists". In the 45 years before this memo, the phrase "conspiracy theory" appeared in the Washington Post and New York Times only 50 times, or about once per year. In the 45 years after the CIA memo, the phrase appeared 2,630 times, or about once per week. The phrase "conspiracy theorist" wasn't used by these publication prior to the memo. After the memo came out these two newspapers have used that phrase 1,118 times. Of course, in these uses the phrase is always delivered in a context in which "conspiracy theorists" were made to seem less inteligent and less rational than people who uncritically accept official explanations for major events.

In many cases, W. Bush and his colleagues used the phrase conspiracy theory in attempts to deter questioning about their activities, activities that he was guilty of. Like flashing subliminal messages in his campaign advertisements. Or when his former company was linked to fraudulent Bank of Credit and Commerce International through several investors. After 9/11 Bush said in a televised speech "let us not tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th". It worked. The leaders of the 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, said "we were set up to fail". Hamilton went on to say that the Commission faced too many questions, too little funding, and too little time.

Elmo, case in point, you are no better than awful politicians and deceptive media giants when you mean to belittle me with your conspiracy theory comment.

aaahahahahahaha

case in point, indeed.

so you're saying transppl did 9/11?

"Everybody called me Burger. Now my name is Becky. I finally shed the name Burger."
I hope this was said with a tinge of regret rather than relief, because Burger is an awesome name.

I first read that as "I finally sheed" (lost seussian word for becoming a female)

that burger story is disgusting

i feel like it must be fake. who the hell would put a piece of beef in a drawer and then come back and eat it tomorrow? i'm surprised they didn't die of e coli after the first week.

lorax i think what is offensive to many people is that you would reduce something so personal, complex and culturally overdetermined as sexual preference or gender orientation to cod-quantitative "data points"

I've never seen a fast food hamburger that wasn't rock hard and inedible after ~12 hours.

like your data points are not some bullshit survey like "rank your job satisfaction 1-5"

this is something that's been actively used to pathologize, oppress and marginalize groups of people even up to the present day

what's next, you're going to start an interesting "what if?" theoretical thread on physiognomy?

it's kind of weird that "burger" was the gender neutral pit stop, since the only burger role model around is mayor mccheese who definitely presents as male.

furburger

Have you ever seen a gendered burger?

lorax: it seems reasonable to ask whether biological gender, experiential gender and sexual orientation are related, and if so how; and beyond all that, how we might begin to answer or even examine such questions in the first place.

otoh, it's less than reasonable to simply assert an opinion without apparent theoretical or factual support while suggesting that those who believe otherwise lack adequate scientific support for their position. and once you've admitted that you failed to explain yourself coherently, you won't earn much sympathy complaining about the fact that you've been misinterpreted.

either get your posting together, or drop it.

The thing is, there have been academic attempts to quantify this kind of human experience as data, as far back as Masters and Johnson - The Kinsey Scale, the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid and there have even been attempts to map that onto different concepts of gender (and there's also been a whole history of this kind of thing being problematic for many reasons.)

The problem is not trying to take a scientific or even quantitative approach to human sexuality and gender - the problem is acting like a drunken fool on a messageboard without having even done the most basic of research.

Have you ever thought out loud some random theory? I do it all the time. You gotta start somewhere. Imagine a bunch of stoners in a circle sharing some crazy ideas. Then some nerd comes in and is like "you should shut your mouth because you haven't done any research". Is that fair? Is ILX a place where people can openly discuss ideas that pop into their head or should that idea be TSAed every which way before it can be uttered? Why say anything at all? Google would be a lot more informative than a bunch of strangers. I didn't come here posting questions in attempt at finding a universal answer. I came here to discuss the idea in itself. And no, I wasn't looking for a one-sided discussion.

XP to Contenderizer

"otoh, it's less than reasonable to simply assert an opinion without apparent theoretical or factual support while suggesting that those who believe otherwise lack adequate scientific support for their position."

And that is exactly what I thought when I got the answer to my question: "No, they are mutually exclusive" - a belief without apparent theoretical or factual support. At that point I took the opposite stance in hopes of opening the discussion.

The jig is up contenderiser. People share their editorial comments all the time. If they had to be labeled, opinions like the ones discussed last night might be described as a hunch or a belief. I'm not going to crucify someone for their beliefs or hunches, but I do like to discuss them sometimes.

"...and once you've admitted that you failed to explain yourself coherently, you won't earn much sympathy complaining about the fact that you've been misinterpreted."

I'm sorry that you thought I was complaining or looking for sympathy on that matter. What you call complaining, I call 'vocally' accepting that I'm incoherrent and wrong at times so as to better clarify myself.

"either get your posting together, or drop it"

I'm on the level. I'm sorry if you are upset because you think otherwise.

XP to Late the Great

"lorax i think what is offensive to many people is that you would reduce something so personal, complex and culturally overdetermined as sexual preference or gender orientation to cod-quantitative 'data points'"

Yes I need to remember that this isn't a group of stoners or data miners but a group of strangers. Also, if I was more coherrent innitially then maybe the open discussion would have taken us to better places.

If it's not too late I would like to give a shout-out to all my adrogynous home fryz on the east coast being all sexy with your pixie hairdos making me feel ill. Ah fuck it. It's too late

Imagine a bunch of stoners in a circle sharing some crazy ideas. Then some nerd comes in and is like "you should shut your mouth because you haven't done any research". Is that fair?

Yes.

It would also be fair to ditch debbie downer

Hey, a nerd can interject his mind all he wants but as soon as he gets all "shut your mouth" about it or starts spreading some bad voodoo then it's time to send him packing

Imagine a bunch of nerds sitting in a circle. Then some data stoner comes in and is like "CRAZY IDEAS CRAZY IDEAS CRAZY IDEAS".

what if the nerd is a trans or queer person saying “please don’t speak about my actual lived experiences without doing any research about it”? what a debbie downer!

pssst i heard debbie downer used to be a danny downer

adam and eve not adam and debbie

dominique downer

imagine an imaginary idiot and then let him infuriate you.

its not very nice to call lorax imaginary

imagine an imaginary idiot

tautological! demerit!

can we bring back the thing where we start threads that take the form 'ban (poster name)'

be the change you wish to see etc.

i saw a trannie with the hottest ass EVER the other day
― JaXoN (JasonD), Tuesday, September 21, 2004 11:55 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what if the nerd is a trans or queer person saying “please don’t speak about my actual lived experiences without doing any research about it”? what a debbie downer!

― staethyr,

tell me, what did I speak about the actual lived experience of trans people?

if people are getting infuriated at me, can you please do me the courtesy of telling me why?

it's because you are babbling about shit you clearly don't know a goddamn thing about and acting like that just because you come up with ~radical ideas~ about gender and sexuality while drunk you deserve the deference due a great scientific thinker

and how am I acting like that? how does one act like they deserve deference?

I do not have the patience to explain your malfunctions to you in detail; have a nice evening.

whatever

lorax you implied (maybe just for theory's sake) gay men were less male than straight men

do you think if you proposed on a different thread that white people who are attracted to non-white people were less white than other white people yr fellow ilxors would not be weirded out by your whole line of questioning?

the jig is up

Yes I need to remember that this isn't a group of stoners or data miners but a group of strangers. a bunch of straight white guys where I can just be all privileged and shit.

lorax you implied (maybe just for theory's sake) gay men were less male than straight men

― teh late great

I'm not sure how I did that. Please point out exactly where I implied this so I can explain myself

that's hardly an incentive.

I've politely asked 3 different people to explain where they are reading the specific things that caused them alarm but no one has answered me. Of course, I only just recently asked teh late great

Hi Lorax, I hope the late great doesn't mind me answering for him, but you implied it right here, in your first reviving post: wouldn't you say that a 100% androgynous person is more male if they are attracted to females?

Yes I need to remember that this isn't a group of stoners

woah woah woah i resent that

I fully grok the "stoners sitting around a campfire" interpretation of ilx. No opinion on the gender issues here though. Just wanted to suggest that the thread title be changed to "the politics of transing".

thanks emily. I missed that

I'll try to explain myself. I was drunk and I was wrong and I apologize for that. I'm sorry I forgot how homosexuality is just as natural as heterosexuality. My brain was so focused on whether or not the direct relationship between g and s.o. existed and how different kinds of graphs could express this relationship, that I left out homosexuality from my thought process. I didn't think about more complex direct relationships (more complex graphs) until the next day. Frankly I wasn't thinking much at all

and I was always thinking about math at that

I miss Suggest Ban. Lorax, please stop engaging in drunken speculation, your "opinions" are totally offensive and objectionable. Fuck off and die, also Suggest Ban

yes, I limited the possibility for homosexuality when I limited my mind to only seeing certain graphs. Im sorry. I;ll go kill myself

hey CaptainLorax, based on what I can recall the last time you dropped your hilarious theories into a thread and made people angry at you, you don't know a goddamn thing about math, so it's not really a good excuse for not knowing a goddamn thing about gender identity either.

sleeve u can flag post it is the same as suggest ban

lorax - if you stop being so defensive for a minute, you'll hopefully notice that, along with the smackdowns, you've received a fair amount of useful, constructive advice itt. you might do well to back off for a while and think about some of it.

frankly, the course of this thread over the last day or so was entirely and sadly predictable after your first few posts. so, you said some dumb shit when you were drunk. fine, that happens to nearly everybody, but whining as though you're the injured party isn't doing much to calm the waters. better strategy when you realize you fucked up: apologize gracefully and take a breather.

Yeah this thread has, WTFery aside, been very constructive. heck I've learned things. And like hows life I also have "the politics of dancing" stuck in my head thanks to thread title argh.

"you haven't taken my idiot theory seriously! my unfounded ramblings deserve a serious reply! this isn't fair!" - a dumb cis straight male person

Xp, I apologized the best I could. The result: I was told I should die and that I suck at everything I do. (Well, I guess the "I am terrible at just about everything was more than just the result"). It hurts when people reduce my college degree to toilet paper. There's nothing I can do to change that back. You are only allowed so many mistakes.

So I've decided to quit. If ending it all to escape eternal negative judgements (albeit based mostly on things I've done out of stupidity) seems like whining, then yes, I guess I'm a whiner too. There's no way to turn some things around without a fresh start, or in this case, a long farewell.

I'll miss ILX. I just don't want to be the butt anymore

man see u

For the record, I only whined long enough to quit. It wasn't like I was whining for a real long time, unless you call my long spout of apologizing and trying to defend (or clarify) myself to be whining (which takes a long time to do because there was so much I had to say).

Slime, Out.

I miss Suggest Ban. Lorax, please stop engaging in drunken speculation, your "opinions" are totally offensive and objectionable. Fuck off and die, also Suggest Ban

― sleeve, Thursday, June 14, 2012 10:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^ flagged this post

bring back captainlorax

do you tell everyone who is kind of dumb about transgendered people to fuck off and die? do you really expect CaptainLorax to have a fully formed understanding of gender/sexuality right out of the gate? being thick certainly doesn't deserve a "fuck off and die" imo.

tbh I agree with crut here. I have to admit that his initial question wasnt out of the gate offensive to me, but at the same time I did think "ok there'd be ppl here who are into gender politix who can explain better". And, well they sort of did... but this immediate "you are completely wrong" shit he got wasn't helpful. OK I agree, he was - but why? I still dont know if i know why, and I dont think that was brought across well?

That said lorax didnt help his cause by then jamming himself into "well this is my idea stfu you guys". I dunno.

I guess I expect ILXors to be more familiar with/tolerant of CaptainLorax's approach than I expect CaptainLorax to be familiar with gender identity.

Talking poisonous shit about people far less privileged than him - and in particular refusing to engage with the issue that maybe lived experience might outweigh some poisonous shit he was spinning, is worth a FOAD, yeah. Not even mentioning playing "why are people pissing on my dreaaaams?"

You know, I don't even think it was his initial idiocy that garnered him the "fuck off and die" comments. It was his increasingly entitled and butthurt pushback against people who were trying to explain his errors to him.

It's pretty disingenuous to pretend Lorax is some innocent victim.

No one's defending his position here tho (well I'm not). I do think that a bit more of a "why is he wrong" may have shut him up. But, I'm coming from a very "i know zero about trans/gender politix" position and I dont expect others to kow tow to that. I just accept that I'm dense on that subject and...well, frankly I then skip the thread. Which seems unhelpful. But then again I'm not asking ILX to educate me.

i really kept holding out hope that he would know when to leave well enough alone, but he just kept going and going and going, trying to have the last word until he finally realized that wasn't going to happen and had to take his ball and go home

He was even asking ppl to educate him. He was all "why are you Debbie Downers disrupting my beautiful StraightWhiteDude concepts with your inconvenience Wikipedia bullshit facts? I'm being oppressed, maaaaan!" which no one on ILX will tolerate

i think he was not at all earnestly seeking knowledge but people politely answered him anyway and then he turned on them in a familiar captain lorax way and then when they objected he acted like a victim also in a familiar captain lorax way and now he has departed in a familiar captain lorax way. i also think he was enjoying himself immensely the whole time.

Wasn't. Stupid oppressive iPhone spellcheck bullshit, maaaaan.

estela otm.

This is some stupid bullshit though:

http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/t7en.html

― "Holy crap," I mutter, as he gently taps my area (silby), Thursday, June 14, 2012 4:22 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't think Lorax is an "innocent victim" fwiw. I just tend to think of him as still needing some room to mature & figure shit out.

I do think it's understandable that people don't have patience for the combination of "guy clearly speaking from position of straight white male privilege" and "guy who keeps on arguing/defending himself despite repeated attempts to explain ~real shit~ to him" - I just don't understand how that heats up to the level of FOAD. People are dumb! Sometimes you have to tell people things over and over again for them to get it! They don't deserve to die. I tend to not ever tell people to die, as a rule, though, so I guess that's a personal thing. I'm white btw.

No one ever actually pointed him to a chart showing the incidence of heterosexuality vs. homosexuality vs. bisexuality among people of varied gender i.d's. You'd figure with the number of people on here who seem to perceive themselves as experts on gender identity, someone could have at least been kind enough to do that.

sleeve is pretty much among the worst ilxors tho and really shouldn't be held as an example of normative ilx thought

yeah my initial post was directed at sleeve

If he'd actually been interested, that data was available within 2 clicks of one of the wiki links I posted.

But I think Estella OTM and I'm perpetuating this by continuing to even answer this.

crüt otm imo

I don't think Lorax is an "innocent victim" fwiw. I just tend to think of him as still needing some room to mature & figure shit out.

I do think it's understandable that people don't have patience for the combination of "guy clearly speaking from position of straight white male privilege" and "guy who keeps on arguing/defending himself despite repeated attempts to explain ~real shit~ to him" - I just don't understand how that heats up to the level of FOAD. People are dumb! Sometimes you have to tell people things over and over again for them to get it! They don't deserve to die. I tend to not ever tell people to die, as a rule, though, so I guess that's a personal thing. I'm white btw.

― mississippi joan hart (crüt), Friday, June 15, 2012 8:40 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

the thing is that Lorax pulls that stuff on lots of threads about lots of topics all the time. it was a matter of time before he picked a topic that struck a nerve and nobody had the patience to give him "room to mature" which, uh, how old is this guy.

Within two clicks of your wikipedia link, he also could have read a sort-of half-assed article on Gender-Neutral Toilets.

And now we are going to have a long discussion on how it is the right of privileged ppl to demand that marginalised ppl spoonfeed them information they refuse to digest! In fact not just a right, but a duty! How delightful!

Also, FOAD.

Who is that directed at?

I'm not saying it's a duty, but if you want to help people to understand a worldview that you know a lot about, it's probably better to be kind and generous than to be snotty and withholding.

why is this argument about how to respond to a moronic troll or trollish moron, can't tell which and don't care, still going on

everyone who shut lorax down otm
everyone defending lorax, what is wrong with you

All I know is I read the thread through from the revive and its really hard to believe that anyone could read Capt. Lorax as being anything but sincere in his quest for info, however convoluted and stoner-brained his initial premise.

^ I'm sayin

anyway I don't want to "pull a lorax" myself itt so I'mma back off before I show any more of my privileged ass.

even allowing for my less-than-zero patience for stoner-brained people and arguments, the "waaaah you're not letting me EXPLAIN TRANS ISSUES TO YOU" hissy fit didn't exactly convince me of his sincerity. if he was sincere about it it might be even worse though.

True enough. But nobody has an obligation to do that with someone like Lorax who is at best drunk all the time and at worst trolling the shit out of the thread. Asking questions and disputing in good faith are not in his playbook.

That was xp to somebody

And now we are onto the "tone" part of the argument, and soon we will be at the "why are you being so hostile, I'm just trying to make ~helpful suggestions~?" part of the argument! I swear there must be some kind of manual for this!

we could probably just reiterate "estela otm" and hopefully conclude it all there

http://derailingfordummies.com/ is the book you are after

sincerity and lorax are but distant cousins

begging the question of a correlation between biological sex in a thread devoted to the politics of trans is maybe not a wise opening move? he's got the right to ask offensive questions. his naivete and obliviousness to his own privilege does not require anyone to give an answer, or educate him, or indulge him at all. it doesn't matter what his intention was. an angry chorus of rebuke is just what he deserved imho.

also when some people did try to engage him, his saying "yeah, i don't care about any of that" on the collective knowledge of subject and "i prefer to explore my own ideas because they interest me" does deserve a "fuck off and die" at the very least.

if he had revived one of the many threads about race on ilx babbling some nonsense about "what if someone was 100% biracial" and wondering some bell-curve bullshit out loud about statistical correlation between race and behavior, there would have no one to defend him.

how is this different? how is this different at ALL? people defending lorax itt are welcome to fuck off and die with him, as far as i'm concerned.

but he was sorting out some of the most nuanced and misunderstood facets of human life with MATH! why won't you let him be great!

there's only room for one great here, the late great FUIUD!!!!!!!!

anyway personally i think it behooves lorax to make more of an effort to understand why some people might be offended by his quantification, and i agree that he's kinda taking this derbyshire-ish "whatever happened to open inquiry?!?" stance which is nagl

otoh FOAD is how i often feel on threads where ilxors are talking about intelligence or education like they're quantifiable variables or speaking from privilege about race so i guess there is a little lorax in all of us

100% biracial people would be entirely split on Trayvon/Zimmerman, obviously.

nah they'd 100% support zimmerman who is himself 100% biracial (white hispanic)

people defending lorax itt are welcome to fuck off and die with him, as far as i'm concerned.

I'm sorry I can tolerate ignorance and obstinance instead of just shouting people down and expecting them to immediately understand & accept my arguments at face value. I don't think stupid people should fuck off and die.

I understand that comes off as me patting myself on the back for being so ~tolerant~ when really I'm privileged enough to not have to be enraged by this shit - but seriously, I always forget some ILXors have literally no tolerance for any stupidity whatsoever to the degree that they think it's cool to tell someone to kill themselves just because they're too dumb to understand a complex subject that people didn't really address in a meaningful way itt because they were too busy balking at Lorax's stupidity.

yes. how very tolerant of you to excuse him of pursuing a disingenuous & offensive line of inquiry. i see you've given yourself a hearty pat on the back for that. well done, indeed. xp

being an idiot doesn't excuse lorax from being an asshole.

being an idiot doesn't excuse lorax from being an asshole.

― real men have been preparing manly dishes for centuries (elmo argonaut),

I'm not sure crüt is saying that it does! Sometimes assholes are just more objects of pity than scorn.

^ gets it

lorax being an asshole doesn't excuse sleeve being an asshole.

Crüt:

a) you are speaking with privilege here. A lot of people on this thread don't see it as an instance of idiocy to be tolerated and changed, they see it as yet another example of a structural monolith that keeps on beating them around the head (if you excuse mixed metaphors). Patience wears thin. Personally, I try to remember that within that monolith, there are individuals, and they often don't realise that this is something that is gone over time and again, so I will try to hold back the hostility/give honest responses if I feel that the person is genuinely making a mistake rather than being offensive on purpose. However, Lorax was pretty much in the middle of that spectrum, and from his past posting history I don't blame anyone for assuming that he was trolling. His responses just compound the initial post.

b) 'fuck off and die' is an expression. Lots of people use it. Most people use it metaphorically, or at least the last part. I understand not liking the expression, but I think you take it too literally here.

also, re: terms and not being familiar with things, zachylon introduced the term "genderqueer" in a matter of fact way, and wasn't accusatory at all, and lorax then dismissed that term (" 'genderqueer', or whatever"). i don't think that indicates any sort of engagement in the topic, and everything he said after that pretty much confirmed it.

remember that year or so when "die in a fire" was common internet parlance

hyperbolic expressions of dismissal borne from frustration just don't seem worthy of taking arms against compared to what lorax was doing

x-post to emil.y: yes, I agree. sorry for unnecessarily pissing people off further.

well tbf i don't know if what lorax was doing really merits hyperbolic expressions of hostility

just checking, crut: the guy who revived this thread with offensive bullshit is the one deserving of sympathy, and the people he offended are the aggressors? wow, go fuck yourself.

pity ≠ sympathy, imo

that's not what I meant, exactly. I was offended by what Lorax said.

also I don't think lorax was being aggressive so much as oafish.

i sometimes wish ILX were a bit more open to divergent positions where potentially controversial subjects are concerned, rather than tending to seeing disagreement as grandstanding challops at best, trolling, bigotry and/or idiocy at worst. otoh, i do not wish ILX were more welcoming of trolls, bigots and idiots, so maybe the present balance is the best of all possible worlds.

I'm sorry I can tolerate ignorance and obstinance instead of just shouting people down and expecting them to immediately understand & accept my arguments at face value. I don't think stupid people should fuck off and die.

i mean good for you but imo when a person opens up a conversation with an offensive stance on a sensitive issue, clearly without having done something as simple as a google search on the subject, and then discussing the subject as stoners might apparently discuss the possibility of DRAGONS STILL BEING OUT THERE MAN, you can't really hold it against anyone else for not tolerating it

I'll miss ILX. I just don't want to be the butt anymore

― we gotta move these refrigerators (CaptainLorax), Friday, June 15, 2012 6:39 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what percent gay are you if you're the butt

thing is i thought i was pretty nice about it in the first place? i was giving concrete answers because the questions he was asking HAD concrete answers that didn't need any further scienceing, but i wasn't trying to be an ass about it because i don't expect others to know much about transgender things. i don't think i was victimizing him. do i have to start using emoticons.

sorry guys, i think expecting people to patiently & politely suffer personally insulting opinions for the sake of fairness and open discussion is some serious backwards paternalistic bullshit.

there wouldn't have been a pile-on if lorax had left it as his original o_0 drunk ramblings, it happened because when people civilly corrected him he was like YOU ARE NOT LETTING ME EXPLAIN MY IMPORTANT THEORY ABOUT TRANS PEOPLE TO YOU which is a bullshit stance to take that totally deserves to be shouted down in the most obnoxious and insulting terms possible

great thread

if there's a discussion about sexuality and someone's first utterance contains percentages, unless they're reading some polling data it's just like, where do you even begin

did everyone just completely miss where Lorax hinted ominously of GAY ACTIVISTS or what?

fwiw i don't see how lorax's treatment here is any different from how he's always been treated. the guy made his bones here on some aspie/alex jones shit!

xp yes i guess i did! i read in a hurry. was mostly looking for the estela zing tbh.

i guess people just think we're being to hard on poor lorax because he's some sort of harmless bumbling buffoon who poses no real intellectual threat?

hint: he's not harmless.

if someone is 100% androgynous, ie. 50% male and 50% female, the greyest grey, then would they also be 100% bisexual?

you might say that sexual orientation and gender are two totally different things, and rightly so for the most part, but wouldn't you say that a 100% androgynous person is more male if they are attracted to females? or am I just prejudiced from heterosexuality being the sexual orientation norm?

these numbers have absolutely no relationship to anything real. what would "100% bisexual" even mean? someone who makes sure to have exact gender balance in all sexual experiences? it's all nonsense. this is just a math word problem in somebody's head. might as well be two trains leaving cleveland at the same time.

the only way lorax can be "defended" is along these lines, imo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurodiversity

change title to "itt a butt"

the only way lorax can be "defended" is along these lines, imo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurodiversity

honestly that's the perspective I was coming from

ok but accepting neurodiversity is not a free pass for people to act however they want nor does it forbid telling someone "hey this thing you are doing is not socially acceptable in this setting"

well yeah

"hey this thing you are doing is not socially acceptable in this setting" != "fuck off and die," which again is the post I'm referring to here

sorry guys, i think expecting people to patiently & politely suffer personally insulting opinions for the sake of fairness and open discussion is some serious backwards paternalistic bullshit.

eh, hardline conservatives would say something very similar about ideas they despise, though they'd likely choose different adjectives. a preference for tolerance and constructive engagement over flamewars is not necessarily "backwards paternalistic bullshit".

xp well you're making an awful big deal of one post

well, I'm also trying to explain myself to the people who told me I can go fuck off and die for "defending" lorax.

I was wondering what happened that made this thread blow up, should have guessed it got Loraxed

100%

lol

twice-loraxed if you count my posts tbh

btw, for all that I'm usually the king of "stop comparing -isms, this isn't a competition" posts, the comments upthread about this whole argument being shut down even more brutally had it been about race are OTM

nothing Lorax said itt made any sense and was offensive in a non-hilarious way (though I admit I did laugh at "oh I don't care about that, I'm going to stick with my theory because I'm brilliant" for I hope obvious reasons) so I don't really know why it's worth getting bothered or upset by FOAD reactions

"a preference for tolerance and constructive engagement over flamewars is not necessarily 'backwards paternalistic bullshit.'"

please, condescenderizer, tell me more about how my reacting to bigoted ideas is harmful & disruptive, tell me what exactly my place is in this discussion

to express a preference is not to denigrate other preferences. your place in this discussion is up to you.

anyway, I'm sorry y'all.

i don't expect everybody to understand exactly WHY this is so offensive to me and WHY this makes me so angry but it is and it does

crut, i don't really want you to die :(

I know <3

it's offensive because it's like talking about IQ. the only use for putting multifaceted things like "sexuality" or "intelligence" on a scale does is enforcing hegemony.

delete "does"

Is the Kinsey scale offensive?

it's pretty reductive I guess?

i don't know if the kinsey scale is offensive but i have also not really been able to discern a use for the kinsey scale.

i think kinsey's big accomplishment was helping people realize that homosexual attraction was much more common than anybody realized.

the history of the stanford-binet test developed by terman etc is deeply offensive

"the intelligence of the average negro is vastly inferior to that of the average white man. ... The intelligence of the American Indian has also been over-rated, for mental tests indicate that it is not greatly superior to that of the average negro. Our Mexican population, which is largely of Indian extraction, makes little if any better showing."

terman measured his own IQ as 180 btw

make no mistake, the people who developed the idea of IQ did so primarily in order to create a metric for choosing which non-whites and lower-class whites would be forcibly sterilized

i think an understanding of the history of "quantitative psychology" is enough to make anybody deeply suspicious of what lorax is talking about

imo this sort of bell-curve type thinking should be verboten for any decent person, even as a lazy intellectual exercise

similarly things like "racial percentage"

But like, there are people with different internal, personal levels of bisexual attraction, right?

"bisexual attraction"

the problem is that this is actually multifaceted thing that you cannot reduce to a level or scale.

what if i'm bisexually attracted to black men and white women, vs someone who is bisexually only attracted to men with bitten fingernails and white women. which one of us is more bisexual?

the one in a band

I'm sorry, please ignore that

tbh i don't know much about sexuality so maybe i'll switch to something called "mathematical intelligence" which i know an awful lot about

so what's mathematical intelligence? are there people that are "better" at math than other people? sure, at least i think. but think about all the different ways you can be good at math ...

- being able to do quick arithmetic in your head (a learned skill)
- manipulating symbols correctly (a learned skill)
- persevering when doing math (an affective trait having to do w/ confidence)
- reasoning abstractly
- reasoning quantitatively
- constructing logical arguments
- understanding logical arguments
- reducing complex things to simple models
- using tools like calculators and spreadsheets
- finding patterns
- being able to understand spatial (2d, 3d, etc) transformations in your head

all of these are legitimate ways to do math, and none of them is necessarily linked to any of the others. and the american educational system basically only values the first three as far as standardized testing of math skills goes.

so while it may be appropriate to come up w/ ways to measure skill in each of these categories, we also have to remember that none of these categories are fixed categories, that a student's strengths and weakness in all of them are strongly related to the context of the problem and the setting (cf the million sof people who can do complex arithmetic w/ money or measures in their heads but not w/ numbers on a page labeled "math test") and also that any measurement of this is a single snapshot of a person at a single time and not necessarily indicative of their history or the potential or their future

and you really, at the end of the day, have to ask what constructive purpose is being served by measuring this stuff in order to separate people out into different gradations on a scale rather than seeing it in terms of open-ended potential

now like i said i don't know a whole lot about sexuality, but it seems highly likely to me that if we were to unpack what we mean when we talk about sexuality (or any human "attribute", race, empathy, emotion, mental health, etc) we would end up w/ a set of ideas as complex as those around mathematical intelligence

right on

late great you are OTMre: macro level problems but tbh i mean my personal reaction kind of has to do with the fact that my mom & the catholic psychologist she hired to pathologize my gayness were very fond of using STATISTICAL EVIDENCE in proving the harms & dangers of homosexuality so there is that as well

The thing about the Kinsey scale is not that it's *offensive* per se, but just that's it's kind of unhelpful and a bit clumsy beyond establishing the rough idea that sexuality was slightly more complicated than a reductive homosexual / heterosexual binary.

It has been supplanted by other statistical tools such as the Klein Orientation Grid, which takes into account the idea that sexuality may be fluid - and also takes into account that sexuality is not just about who you have sex with, but also about who you are attracted to, both physically and emotionally. That other approach I linked to earlier - gyne / andro phillia is a way of measuring attraction without bringing in preconceived ideas about the gender of the person doing the fancying - e.g. it can be difficult to quantify whether being attracted to a specific person is homo or hetero sexual if you have a non-binary gender.

But as with any scientific survey, these things are done on clumsy numerical scales for individuals (usually 1 to 6 or 1 to 7) and the only time that percentages come into it is when you are talking about populations. There is also other interesting work being done out there, not just on these population studies, but following groups of case studies over a period of several years.

There's also other ideas being studied, taking a completely different approach to orientation entirely - that some people do not experience orientation towards a specific gender at all, but experience person-oriented attraction (or such things as demisexuality.) There is just so much interesting research being explored in this area!

xpost to elmo

that too!

the social sciences have a lot to answer for IMO

and you really, at the end of the day, have to ask what constructive purpose is being served by measuring this stuff in order to separate people out into different gradations on a scale rather than seeing it in terms of open-ended potential

i agree with your reservations, but it nevertheless seems to me that aptitude (a combination of skills and talents) in a given area can be meaningfully quantified and measured, either in isolation or in concert with other aptitudes. this sort of information tells us what a person is able to do at present, without further training. it also might help in determining the type and level of education they might most benefit from going forward.

of course "overall intelligence" is almost certainly chimerical...

p.s. read Lisa Diamond she's doing fantastic work on female queer / bisexual sexuality. She basically was researching past studies and found that the data on queer females was pretty much removed from studies on sexuality because it was considered to be "noise" that didn't conform to the hypotheses generated by working from the assumption that "male" modes of sexuality were normative. So her studies revealed that the so-called statistical "noise" actually revealed a consistent but vastly different mode of orientation.

xpost

ah, you slipped from one thing to another there in the middle, contenderizer

we can measure a person's proficiency for a specific skill, or we can measure whether or not they possess a certain piece of knowledge or piece of understanding. this is called "formative assessment" and helps us do exactly what we're talking about.

but it's not the same as "aptitude". a one-dimensional measurement of "aptitude" can tell us nothing about what a person is able to do, nor does it do anything to help us w/ what they might benefit from.

for example, SAT math scores are 100% useless for determining how well a person will do in math classes in college. there is absolutely no correlation, and there never has been, even though it would be very much in the interest of the college board to demonstrate this

to demonstrate a correlation, i mean

I feel like sissymanwhore needs to weigh in on this sexuality discussion

xp to the late great: yeah sure, i agree. i was using "aptitude" simply as a synonym for measurable ability (having nothing to do with any underlying "general aptitude" or the prediction of future performance)

but i guess that's pretty far removed from what people generally mean when they speak of "aptitude testing"

Well, that's not actually what "aptitude" means, so there's that.

sorry for killing thread w pedantry

for the best tbh

xxp - sure it is. that's the basic definition: "capability; ability; innate or acquired capacity"

^ "aptitude" =

ftr

i mean shit, i can ped with the best of ants

let it go

you should look @ the wikipedia entry to see the common usage though

yeah i no

thing this all seems to illustrate more than anything else is how durable the cisgender construct's sense of its own normalcy is. mainstream culture constantly reassures us that apparent biological gender = a predictable experience of binary gender = sexual orientation, and that any variation from this scheme is, at best, a "colorful" deviation.

well, that's exactly what it is, though - a social norm

sophisticated cissery

nice

I wish I could be a woman just for a little while, but me thinking that is pretty much the ultimate expression of male privilege

I'm sure Lorax has had the same thought, at least the first part

i don't suppose there's anything wrong with that sort of curiosity, no matter where you fit in the gender @ orientation continuum

The thing about humans is that their reality can pretty much always evade any categories you might want to impose upon them, including (see Macbeth) "of woman born".

always thought it was silly that c-section = not woman born

in terms of dramatic prophetic twists, i much prefer LOTR's "no man can kill me" "i am no man" bit

gonna take a wild guess here that everybody itt who was unhappy with my response is thoroughly hetero as well as male.

I'm with elmo, that shit hit me personally and it hurt. A nuanced response can be difficult when somebody's busy spitting on your life and ignoring every well-meaning attempt at dialogue. And yes, it was Lorax. I should have known better.

Mordy if we ever meet irl I will happily buy you a beer and smoke you out. You are obviously a good parent and teacher, we have some serious political/philosophical disagreements that get magnified in writing but I can live with that if you can.

This is a great example of why I try my best to stay away from ILE these days. I have no tolerance left for things that offend me, and it shows.

fair enough and very kind of u to say

sorry sleeve.

Sleeve, I don't think you should have to apologise for anything.

I mean, that freedom to *not* have an emotional to this shit, that, that thing there, that is Privilege.

IMHO people should never have to apologise for not having Privilege.

I mean, that freedom to *not* have an emotional to this shit, that, that thing there, that is Privilege.

this is exactly right

WCC, I tried sending you an ILXmail but I don't think it worked.

for some reason I can't see Lorax without trolling him with hypotheticals, sorry y'all

i guess it's possible that someone who is genderfluid wrt identity and bisexual wrt orientation might have different gender experiences depending upon the gender of the person or people with whom they're interacting romantically (or even socially} at any particular time? in this case gender identity would be a dependent variable but it wouldn't necessarily be oppositional or hetero oriented, i.e. you could be a sexual zelig and seek out one particular gender or the other in order to become more like that which you desire.

this is just a particular case tho and i don't know if instances of this even exist but i assume genderfluidity involves factors other than sexuality anyway if it even involves that at all.

nb i don't think this is what lorax was referring to. he was positing a situation in which a gender neutral or bigender person necessarily must experience a gender shift in relation to the gender of the person they're sexually or romantically attracted to. like there's always some kind of anima/ animus projection always in play wrt sexual desire, so if one prefers the feminine that's a result of anima projection and therefore one's gender must be more male since the anima and animus are contrasexual.

there's this notion that romantic attachments are a way of seeking out the other in a "you complete me" kind of way which is where i think he's getting this but you can't extrapolate from popular literary conceits. it's not some immutable law of sexual attraction if you want hard scientific data points to back this up go compile craigslist ads.

WCC referenced the "CaptainLorax debacle" on another thread, so I decided I'd look into it. What a depressing read, though I found crut to be pretty OTM throughout. Also weird how everyone assumes that the Captain is this ultra-hegemonic straight dude -- I assumed that his half-baked musings on gender had at least something to do with his documented attraction to androgynous women.

noted, I did not have that in my .xls

sexual attraction to a v specific type doesn't make someone less likely to be shitty just more likely to be creepy abt it

'i can't be ____ist i watch ________ porn all the time'

if there's any opportunity to give Lorax the benefit of the doubt, I try... until he stomps on it

i'm not a furry i just like drawing animal dicks

I didn't say that he wasn't being creepy or offensive, but I didn't read his posts as being aggressively assertive of straight male privilege. I think he was genuinely trying to ~figure stuff out~, he just did it in kind of a boneheaded way.

jesus zachlyon.

Wait, what? I thought what he said was reasonable...?

i kinda miss these anthony threads.

Cosign with Laurel.

Fetishes on that kinda level are too often an extension of privilege rather than a negation thereof.

what debacle, what happened

Wait, what? I thought what he said was reasonable...?

thank god for defenders of the innocent against the likes of cpt lorax + frogbs

nm i just looked upthread

Fetishes on that kinda level are too often an extension of privilege rather than a negation thereof.

I think it's v. fair to suggest that privilege is a factor in how he framed his thoughts, but I also think it's probable that he's coming at the subject from a more-personal perspective than what seemed to be acknowledged.

i'm never gonna make the finals if i keep posting like this

Mordy, do you think their arguably um misguided opinions are harmless because they're not rhetorical heavy-weights? Or...?

Also trans and genderqueer people (in particular, since we're in that thread) aren't just "the innocent" in some ironic, dismissible way, they're seriously discriminated against in...housing, employment, uh...almost everything?, and are frequently victims of shockingly violent attacks. This isn't really news? I don't grok why you think we should be all "lol ilx" about it and let shit go.

i think there was plenty of push back on cpt lorax when it first happened. no one defended his point of view and only a couple ppl defended his right to speak it at all. i think that crusading around ilx looking for wrongs to right becomes very tedious very quickly. if u see something that bothers u, speak up but maybe in this thread it looked like the posters got it. just like every time i've ever seen frogbs say something on ilx offensive, ppl were not shy about calling him on it.

ts: endlessly being offensive vs endlessly being otm

I think that the real "privilege" at play here was people's privilege to deride Lorax's inquiries as "101 stuff".

Laurel, Lorax is Chinatown. Some things you're never gonna change.

Again with the "u just lookin' for stuff to get offended by" vs "this is the stuff that materially affects the quality and shape of our lives" narrative which gets old v v fast.

Yes ppl on ILX have the right to say what they like, in theory. They also have the right to face the consequences of what they say when those things affect others.

Also fucking LOL at the idea of "having experienced oppression" = somehow "Privileged to be beyond 101" - you really don't get the concept of how this works, do you?

I mean, whatevs. It's ok if you don't grok how it works. Believe it or not ppl itt were not giving Lorax grief for being at 101 but for his blatant refusal to research, look up, learn, listen. For being disparaging of the idea of even looking at this stuff on a wiki - let alone listening to ppl who have actually experienced it.

Everyone has the right to be ignorant on first encountering something new or different. What we don't have is the right to be ignorant while still insisting that we know more or our purely theoretical ~theories~ have more relevance or right-to-be-taken-seriously than those who have actually lived through some of these experiences.

Lorax wasn't given a beatdown for being ignorant, he was given a beatdown for refusing to listen, learn or even engage.

I have got to stop typing complex stuff on an iPhone but this makes me too angry to wait to get to work.

here's the closest thing I've found to a decent source yet.

http://www.apa.org/topics/sexuality/transgender.aspx

They don't break things down into numbers and percentages in the way that would be preferable, but at least it's the American Psychological Association. I feel that you can make a pretty safe assumption that as a prominent scientific organization they have the numbers to back themselves up.

oh yeah WCC, you are never trawling/trolling ilx looking for things to get offended by

this is a good example tho.

i wrote: "no one defended his point of view and only a couple ppl defended his right to speak it at all."

you wrote: "Again with the 'u just lookin' for stuff to get offended by' vs 'this is the stuff that materially affects the quality and shape of our lives' narrative which gets old v v fast."

u know what tho? no one's quality of life was materially affected by what cpt lorax wrote on ilx. you could argue that what he wrote was symptomatic of things that do affect your life materially. or that people have said similar things that did materially affect your life. but the posts on this thread did not materially affect anyone except for cpt lorax.

turning this 9/11 truther - who is routinely mocked by all sorts of ilxers - into the ENEMY cheapens everyone here. he said something offensive, you got to do your bit at him at the time, everyone moved on. i know it makes your blood hot to see the opportunity to go round 2 but he's not even here and you've already put your boxing gloves on. maybe take a deep breath and find something new to talk about. and if there's nothing on gender fuck or gender fucked (the politics of trans) you want to discuss, maybe find a new thread. there are plenty of them.

Please do not presume to tell me how you think that *I* read or relate to ILX. Or how I should read or relate to ILX.

Thanks. The end.

Um, no. Request denied.

Thanks. The beginning??!?!

Srsly, you think you're the one human being to get the Get Out of Being Judged Free card? Give me a break.

I, for one, am interested in what kind of nuanced read Lorax would have on gender after research. His well-researched 9/11 ideas are definitely worth pondering.

Believe it or not ppl itt were not giving Lorax grief for being at 101 but for his blatant refusal to research, look up, learn, listen.

I think Lorax was dismissive because, in his mind, the problem wasn't that his premises were misguided (as others tried in vain to indicate to him) but that he hadn't explained himself well enough. His evident frustration made me feel bad for him, even if the intellectual content of his argument was worth rebutting.

it is nice to picture lorax's points being made by the actual lorax

http://kidfriendlyva.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/lorax1.jpg

I think Lorax was dismissive because, in his mind, the problem wasn't that his premises were misguided (as others tried in vain to indicate to him) but that he hadn't explained himself well enough. His evident frustration made me feel bad for him, even if the intellectual content of his argument was worth rebutting.

dude spent several posts championing the primacy of SCIENCE! and then busted out with:

I think I'm only prejudiced in that the reason that I first entertained this theory of mine is because I was thinking about sexual norms. I have a theory and no answer; so I'm not gonna proclaim that gender and sexual orientation are NOT mutually exclusive. But I will lean towards NOT mutually exclusive because i feel like it

He was not interested in "explaining himself", he was interested in everyone going "omg you are brilliant, what a remarkable breakthrough in scientific thought on bisexuality", as is common with every other argument he puts out there. He is not interested in anything but self-aggrandizement and deserves every bit of mocking and ridicule he gets.

tbf, dude doesn't get out much and is attention-farming the best he can

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xuvfYwzKp7g/TFkHG8cfjfI/AAAAAAAAAl4/a0aCFj99vMo/s1600/Mass+Effect+2+-+Mordin+Solus+LOL.jpg

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3435/images/3435_MEDIUM.jpg

One of the most noble, kind, just, wise and empathic characters in children’s literature, who always represented defending the defenseless, standing up for the vulnerable, and encouraging social awareness has here been re-imagined as a snarky, cruel, insensitive, cissexist, gender-policing asshole, who mocks variance in gender presentation, and tramples over the defenseless and vulnerable in the name of maintaining cisnormativity (and making the producers a few extra dollars selling Happy Meals).

I don't know about that, he reached a point where he wasn't trying to communicate any new wrinkle that we'd missed, but was just defending The Spirit of Enquiry.

xp yeah, DJP OTM

I think he saw ILX as a place where people would be willing to entertain or ignore his drunk ideas, not a place where people would basically tell him that he deserved to die for the thought, common mistake

Less the Spirit of Inquiry and more the Spirit of Making Shit Up While High xp

When your ideas start offending people and you don't apologize, I stop having sympathy for you.

That, and the stuff CL was typing into the box was so far from being germane to the topic that it was basically time cube level nonsense.

i'm a little sympathetic. he's clearly a troubled dude. just check out his 9/11 thread. i'm not going to armchair diagnose lorax but when we're talking about privilege let's not forget that being neurotypical is also a privilege.

man this is terrible could we get a lock thread over here

* chews popcorn *

When your ideas start offending people and you don't apologize, I stop having sympathy for you.

I'll try to explain myself. I was drunk and I was wrong and I apologize for that. I'm sorry I forgot how homosexuality is just as natural as heterosexuality. My brain was so focused on whether or not the direct relationship between g and s.o. existed and how different kinds of graphs could express this relationship, that I left out homosexuality from my thought process. I didn't think about more complex direct relationships (more complex graphs) until the next day. Frankly I wasn't thinking much at all

― we gotta move these refrigerators (CaptainLorax), Thursday, June 14, 2012 9:27 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

IMO, saying "I'm sorry, I'm leaving now" and then leaving was exactly the right thing to do

this does not mean that I am going to retroactively decide that Lorax did not deserve any of the harsh things that were said to/about him before that apology, or that if he comes back continuing in his super annoying self-aggrandizing "hey, I'm going to say some super stupid shit to get attention" mode I'm not going to roll my eyes and enjoy the verbal pummeling

if he comes back asking some innocuous question like "can anyone recommend a multivariable calculus book" and ppl tee up with "FOAD YOU USELESS SHIT", all of this concern-trolling will be valid

if CaptainLorax understands multivariable calculus then my reasons for defending him in the first place may be nonexistent

I dunno we need an expert in multivariable calculus round these parts

I could brush up

can anyone recommend a multivariable calculus book

he understands spectographs

he was as much if not moreso concerned with the graphs as with the sexualities supposedly represented by them = something is not quite normo-typical here is it

i never really got what he was getting at. i don't think anyone did, least of all lorax hiself. even so, the fact that people are getting self-righteous about the harm allegedly done by his nonsensical rambling is the craziest thing about this whole clusterfuck.

i don't think that's true either

i do

thanking u for adhering to gricean maxims contendo

lol, i just mean that you don't have to have interacted with lorax too often to get the impression that he's operating on a different wavelength than most.

tell me about these wavelengths

who's being self-righteous, exactly?

http://femr2.ucoz.com/_ph/6/478949546.png

FWIW arguing that lorax's position is somehow less harmful because he is presumed to be neurologically atypical is weird and deeply patronizing.

his position is less harmful because his eccentricity is seldom malicious. and because he wasn't ever really advocating a "position" in the first place.

really? cause i wasn't particularly concerned when that dude in an elmo costume was making anti-Semitic remarks in Central Park last week. u do have to consider the source of these things. and maybe it's deeply patronizing. so what?

xp

well for my part, i'm not arguing that his ideas aren't harmful or offensive, just that they are of a piece with all the other stuff he's written about on ilx.

I think he kind of knew his idea was B.S. but wanted to discuss it anyway, then got defensive because everyone was jumping down his throat? I dunno I guess that's how I feel these things work

malice is not a prerequisite for harm

this conversation is weird. why is it suddenly that people who have chosen to answer questions and then call someone out on their ensuing misperceptions the ones who are then seen as browbeating that initial someone? just because someone's not malicious, doesn't mean they shouldn't be called out on their misperceptions, and then when he refuses to actually listen to what other ppl are saying, he suddenly becomes a victim? i would think that if someone is being fucked up, they would like to know when they are being fucked up. let's go defend some racists, now, because they didn't mean it maliciously. how many times have well meaning people said fucked up things to me and to anyone else? and we're just not supposed to call them on it because it would make things uncomfortable, or it's not fair to the person who said the original thing, or whatever.

he was already called out two weeks ago! the only reason this is still going on is bc ppl are trying to complete their ilx white knight bingo boards to earn - idk - super poster privileges? here's a fucking gold star, thx for protecting us all from the scourge of ilx, the harmful captain lorax

http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/1803807/2/stock-photo-1803807-gold-star-2.jpg

xxp - I think there's something to be said for just letting things slide if you're reasonably sure there's no malice involved, and not, say, telling the guy he deserves to die

ray - I don't think it's that "we shouldn't call people out when they say things that are wrong", its more of "why do we need 25 posters insulting this guy on a personal level a hundred posts after he apologized and left the board, when these people could, y'know, close the browser or something"

obviously i'm a little biased though

malice is not a prerequisite for harm

no, but harm is a prerequisite for harm. no one was harmed. lorax talked some silly drunk shit and then got peevish when called on it. ILX's desperate hunger to find things MORALLY UNACCEPTABLE! is bizarre.

Mordy, I don't get why you're being so venomous about this but nagl, dude.

contenderizer, how do you know no harm was done?

how can we be sure lorax wasn't harmed?

going out on a limb. just call it a hunch. point me at some harm, and i'm re-evalute.

(ffs. there's a hidden camera around here somewhere, right? O GOD THE HARM!)

laurel, why would i fucking care what u think is or isn't a good look? i'm only posting on this thread in the first place bc i think this ilx discourse is mind-numbing, omnipresent, and of absolutely no value to anyone anywhere. and the way you and others go on about it like it's IMPORTANT, and SERIOUS, is transparent self-aggrandizing bullshit that you should really get over. bc that's the real nagl.

http://www.bilerico.com/images/think_of_the_children_186.jpg

you know, one thing I've found to be a surefire panacea for when someone feels attacked or offended by someone else's words is for someone else to come swanning in and rudely tell them to get over it, that always ends well

I'll add your concerns to the list of self-aggrandizing bullshit that I need to get over. It's a long list, though, I'm not sure when I can get to it.

u know why you have to pretend cpt lorax is dangerous, a guy everyone on ilx knows about and knows what his deal is, the guy who posted that weird gif i posted above as proof that 9/11 was an inside job? bc he has to be if your intervention is to make any difference. if he's just some weirdo that is already rarely tolerated then we don't need a post from zach, from elmo, from laurel, from wcc, all of you coming out of the woodwork to protect ilx from his malignant influence. maybe he's not that important + neither are u

i'll phrase it in a different way, then, contenderizer: what constitutes 'harm', in your opinion? does someone have to be physically injured for it to be 'harm'? slandered? offended?

these things have nothing to do with each other, you are wrong, I award myself 1000 points

― "Holy crap," I mutter, as he gently taps my area (silby), Thursday, June 14, 2012 3:13 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

To me, posts like this are ivory tower snottiness. The number of people who have ever taken a gender studies 101 course is probably relatively few. It's stuff that most folks don't go through their days thinking about. If you have the knowledge, and someone is wrong about something, help them by sharing that knowledge. Don't keep it cloistered and then get upset when someone who wants an earnest conversation pushes back at you for being rude.

contenderizer, shut up about who was and wasn't harmed

i won't cosign a lot of what mordy's said itt to WCC but i do think his point about the response to lorax vis-a-vis his...mental faculties is a fair one. this of course comes from a position of privilege but it's hard for me to read lorax's ramblings and not feel a bit of pity - and while it's not exactly my place to demand this, it would be...ideal if someone like lorax could be engaged - or ignored - without assaulting his very being. he seems to be a fragile guy. zachlyon i think does and did a good job of being able to show some compassion and understanding while calling out lorax's ideas - that's not exactly known as the WCC style, for better or worse, and since the kind of stuff lorax was saying affects some posters in a way it can't posters like zach, maybe it's unfair to expect everyone to react with such measure. i miss nabisco tbh

i will not. no harm was done. period. the closest thing to harm was the brusing of lorax's ego.

psst: don't tell anyone, but i'm always looking for things to get offended by on the internet. it's tough to find nasty ignorant bullshit out there, i mean, you really have to dig for it

contuserizer

he was already called out two weeks ago!

if there are still ppl being like "hmm, wasn't so bad" then there are still going to be people saying "hmm, i think it was" !

basically instead of "you should know that these ideas are offensive", it's "fuck you because I want to assume you knew exactly how offensive it was"; y'know, exactly the kind of response that shellshocks you a bit when you assume these people are your friends

psst: don't tell anyone, but i'm always looking for things to get offended by on the internet. it's tough to find nasty ignorant bullshit out there, i mean, you really have to dig for it

i don't know if u read the 'I Love Racism' thread but that's pretty much the status quo over there.

ILX enforces an orthodoxy of thought when it comes to race, gender, sexual orientation and so on. i think that's generally a good thing, cuz i tend to agree with ILX hivemind on these issues, and it's nice to find places on the internet that aren't cesspools of racist, sexist, homophobic poison.

that said, i'm something of a minor-league outlier on the ILX orthodoxy chart, and i really dislike what too often strikes me as the blinkered, unthinking hostility with which the boundaries are policed. it's not the laws that bother me, it's the cops. i don't mind learning a lesson here and there (and believe me, i've learned a hell of a lot from this site, especially where these issues are concerned), but i do resent the way some people gleefully flaunt their license to bully "wrongdoers". cops will be cops, i guess...

oh my god

are you even serious right now

holy shit, does this mean i'm a cop?

I do love a man in uniform

holy shit, does this mean i'm a cop?

we all are, from time to time. it's often a good thing.

Hahah oh my god. It almost sounds like you're saying you are...a member of a minority group, discriminated against by the PC police. You just want to be free to say whatever feels right to you and not suffer backlash from the hidebound, man! What is the internet coming to when you are not free to have IDEAS without consequence.

I'm sorry, it's just lol.

right, except when those cops are just totally BULLYING people over social justice issues, right? god i'm so horrible i almost forgot that i'm not allowed to be offended.

I'M A BAD COP, REPORT ME TO INTERNAL AFFAIRS. STRIP ME OF MY GUN AND BADGE. MY PANTS, TOO, WHILE YOU'RE AT IT. SO YOU CAN KISS MY ASS.

I was looking for recent news about political issues surrounding transsexuals in an attempt to push this thread back towards where it started but the most recent things I can find are from almost a month ago

rolling up the sidewalk, here. feel free to start a new, unpolluted thread.