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[–]emptiedriver 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Topic 1 - is gender identity "real" - If it's just an internal feeling, then basically, I don't care. It makes no difference to me. Why should I need to know someone's gender identity? Why does it make a difference in the world? If you're a close friend of mine, you can end up telling me about your inner feelings, but I don't see why a new acquaintance needs a label they give to everyone that automatically informs them of some aspect of inner feelings. I don't even understand what it is supposed to tell me about your inner feelings if you tell me you "identify as a woman". I am a woman and I don't know what you think you're identifying as... Maybe you're identifying as your fantasy of a woman. It's not something I need to know about everyone, and more important your feelings don't make it universally true. It's like telling me your favorite color. The problem is when people start to think it's very important that everyone knows, and that feeling it makes it factually accurate ("Trans women are women").

Your sex makes a difference in the physical world because you have a physical body which is male or female. It means that you will be sexually attractive to some people and not to others, that you will be able to mate with some people and not with others, that you will have some medical issues, some political issues, some things which should be statistically noted due to having one of two types of bodies. And you will be more dangerous or more vulnerable, as a rule. Your inner sense of self cannot be so easily divided into two types (even people who believe in a "gender identity" usually define it as a rather indefinite puddle of options, ie, having a personality) and it doesn't provide useful information.

Topic 2: why use pronouns for sex instead of gender? That's what they've always been for. Why change them? What advantage is it to know some vague notion someone has about their personality instead of knowing a material fact? The categories of sex are meaningful. If the categories of gender are also meaningful, then create new categories, new words and new groupings to allow for those to flourish. But don't erase the categories of sex in the process. Some things can be divided by sex, and other things can be divided by gender - why not? is it so terrible to allow for two different ways of thinking? But don't try to overtake the meanings of SEX and pretend it now refers to inner feelings.

Topic 3: neopronouns - fine, but don't require people to speak according to language that isn't their preference. You can suggest all the words you like as options but accusing people of being bigoted for not describing a man as a woman is not fair.