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[–]rubberdubberd00 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

You appear to take it as a given that everyone has the same exact mental faculties, ability to make sense of the world and thought processes as adults with normal-range IQs, fully developed brains and no impairments or neuro-atypical conditions...

I don't know what I've said that's given you this impression. You are incorrect. I am perfectly aware that different people have different styles and abilities when it comes to processing information.

what makes you think you are an expert on how the world's adult human females think about ourselves and see ourselves?

I don't think I'm an expert. You're asking me to defend something that I literally never claimed.

If a person didn't identify as a woman I wouldn't call them one, no. That would be disrespectful. But if someone does identify as a woman, I will respect that. It's as simple as that. I can't understand the issue you seem to see with that. If a person didn't identify as a woman, they wouldn't want to be referred to as one

[–]MarkTwainiac 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

If a person didn't identify as a woman I wouldn't call them one, no. That would be disrespectful.

So if you were making a documentary or doing a report about the long, hard road to the USA's 19th amendment; the lives of long-reigning British queens such as Elizabeth I and II and Victoria; health issues like cervical cancer, menopause, uterine fibroids, pre-eclampsia, pudendal neuralgia and Alzheimer's disease; practices such as foot-binding in China, breast-ironing and FGM in Africa, forced veiling in Muslim countries and communities, and acid attacks in Pakistan and India; or the victims of such serial killers such as Ted Bundy, the Boston Strangler and the Yorkshire Ripper - you'd never, ever use the word women once because you haven't personally spoken to every individual involved or affected and thus can't be sure they "identify" or "identified" "with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex"?

If you were to go to a country where you don't speak the language and thus couldn't communicate with anyone, you would never once think of or describe any of the thousands of female adults you'd see on the streets and in crowded public places like airports, city squares and bazaars as women? If pressed, you'd insist that all of them must be referred to the way you said I must referred to, namely as

men or nonbinary people

??? And you'd tell yourself that the reason you are doing this is to avoid being disrespectful??

If a person didn't identify as a woman I wouldn't call them one, no. That would be disrespectful.

What is disrespectful in my view is your arrogant, high-handed decreeing that not a single one of the billions of adult human females currently alive on planet earth and all the billions who have walked the earth previously cannot be referred to as women unless they/we all have made declarations - and declarations that you have personally heard or read, too - that they/we identify with the second-class position of women in human societies and also with all the sexist, misogynistic cultural associations - in other words regressive sex stereotypes - that men have invented to oppress, dehumanize, restrict and hobble the female sex. And which today's QT advocates like you now arrogantly insist we all must "identify with" or else you will deny us the name/word that for millennia has described us.

The dictatorial behavior and stealing of what does not belong to you that you try to pretty up and pass off as respect and politeness is, in my opinion, simply male arrogance, male dominance, male entitlement, male appropriation and pure unadulterated misogyny repackaged as QT.

[–]rubberdubberd00 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I would not call a person a woman if I knew that they did not identify as such. I don't think there's anything wrong with referring to someone as a woman without having had their identity explicitly stated.

And you'd tell yourself that the reason you are doing this is to avoid being disrespectful??

Yes, it would be disrespectful to refer to someone with a word that I know they do not identify with.

What is disrespectful in my view is your arrogant, high-handed decreeing that not a single one of the billions of adult human females currently alive planet earth - including your own mother probably - cannot be referred to as women unless they/we all make a declaration - and a declaration that you have personally heard or read, too

Again, no one has to have made any kind of declaration, and I would never refuse to refer to someone as a woman if they considered themselves such.

It's not dictatorial to refer to people by the language that they personally prefer. Quite the opposite. And I'm not male, not that it matters.

[–]MarkTwainiac 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Again, you didn't answer any of my questions.

I don't think there's anything wrong with referring to someone as a woman without having had their identity explicitly stated.

Huh? Earlier you said that any/all adult human females who don't explicitly "identify with" the second-class social status and sexist stereotypes associated with the female sex in various cultures cannot be considered or called women, and that instead we would have to be considered "men or non-binary people."

It's not dictatorial to refer to people by the language that they personally prefer.

But that's not what you are doing. You have been saying throughout this thread that unless someone states that they "identify as" a woman, which to you means accepting and embracing second-class social status and a host of demeaning sex stereotypes - and unless you personally have knowledge of this - they/we cannot be considered or called women. Instead, they/we must be called men or non-binary.

Most of us will meet and get to know only a very tiny sliver of the world's population, and most of us know only one or two or at most a few of the world's more than 7,000 different languages and dialects. So how can you know what term that everyone on earth "personally prefers" for themselves?

The half of the population in Afghanistan who aren't allowed out of the house unless fully covered from head to toe in portable cloth prisons - what word would you call them? How is it respectful to claim that they are not women because you personally don't know how each and every one of them "identifies" and because like most English-speakers, you probably don't know any of the words in their languages? How is it not dictatorial to proclaim that because you and a lot of other people on earth personally do not know the words for women in Dari and Pashto, it means there is no word in English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic etc that can be respectfully used for the adult female population of Afghanistan?

[–]rubberdubberd00 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I did actually answer your questions.

You asked:

So if you were making a documentary ... you'd never, ever use the word women once because you haven't personally spoken to every individual involved or affected and thus can't be sure they "identify" or "identified" "with the social class that is culturally associated to the female sex"?

To which I answered:

I would not call a person a woman if I knew that they did not identify as such. I don't think there's anything wrong with referring to someone as a woman without having had their identity explicitly stated.

Which I thought was pretty explicit, but to be as clear as possible, the answer was no. I would not avoid using the word woman (in any context) because I have not had a person state their gender identity to me.

You then asked:

If you were to go to a country where you don't speak the language and thus couldn't communicate with anyone, you would never once think of or describe any of the thousands of female adults you'd see on the streets and in crowded public places like airports, city squares and bazaars as women?

Which my first answer also answers. The only other question in your comment was:

And you'd tell yourself that the reason you are doing this is to avoid being disrespectful??

Which I took as being rhetorical, as you are simply restating something I said, but the answer is yes. I don't say things that I don't believe to be true.

Huh? Earlier you said that any/all adult human females who don't explicitly "identify with" the second-class social status and sexist stereotypes associated with the female sex in various cultures cannot be considered or called women, and that instead we would have to be considered "men or non-binary people."

Firstly, I did not say that people who don't "explicity" identify that way would be considered men or non binary people. What I actually said was that people who explicitly do not identify that way would be considered as such.

Secondly, the social class that is described by the word "woman" does include sexist stereotypes, yes, but that is not all that it is. It describes all the cultural associations as they are grouped together, and that includes physical ones like sex.

Finally, when I talk about a person "identifying with" something I am not talking about any statement that they may or may not make, I'm talking about how they think about themselves. In short, a person doesn't need to state their identity (or even think about it consciously) in order to have one.

As for how you can know what someone prefers for themselves, if you're getting it wrong they will tell you. If you are incapable of communicating with each other then what words you use doesn't matter anyway.

Now I feel like I've covered everything, but to be absolutely sure you won't accuse me of not covering any questions:

So how can you know what term that everyone on earth "personally prefers" for themselves?

You can't unless they communicate it to you.

The half of the population in Afghanistan who aren't allowed out of the house unless fully covered from head to toe in portable cloth prisons - what word would you call them?

I would call them women. If someone were to explicitly reach out to me and ask me not to refer to them as a woman, I would gladly change my wording.

How is it respectful to claim that they are not women because you personally don't know how each and every one of them "identifies" and because like most English-speakers, you probably don't know any of the words in their languages?

Again, I do not consider that I need to know how a person identifies before I can use a word for them, and even if I did, my not using a word for them would not make them not women. They are women regardless of what I think or say.

How is it not dictatorial to proclaim that because you and a lot of other people on earth personally do not know the words for women in Dari and Pashto, it means there is no word in English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic etc that can be respectfully used for the adult female population of Afghanistan?

That's not a claim that I'm making so I see no need to defend it.