OMG - what we’ve all been waiting for! A Guide to the “ever-evolving” language used to “talk about LGBTIQ people”. I need the cry/laugh emoji right here...

submitted by BEB from outrightinternational.org

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[–]mvmlego 2 insightful - 7 fun2 insightful - 6 fun3 insightful - 7 fun -  (2 children)

Calling me neither man nor woman is exactly that.

No, it isn't. Saying that somebody is a member of a third sex is not exactly the same thing as calling somebody an abomination or a slur--and the two may even be antithetical to one-another depending on the speaker's attitudes toward the so-called "third sex", as is the case in the video that I linked to.

You can't remove prejudice by lying about who we are

I agree that using misinformation is not, in the long term, an effective strategy for removing prejudice, but that doesn't imply the people doing the misinforming are, themselves, prejudiced against the group they're claiming to defend.

Consider if BLM was to begin spreading misinformation stating the average IQ among black people is ten points higher than the average IQ among other races--and consequently, that there are disproportionately many black geniuses. Given that this is misinformation about black people, your standard would seem to imply that those BLM activists actually disrespect black people, and that referring to black people as geniuses would be a slur akin to "n-----".

EDIT: Based on this example, it seems clear to me that there's an important conceptual distinction between holding/promoting incorrect views about a group, and disrespecting or using slurs against that group.

[–]ColoredTwice 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

You are seriously comparing "they have 10 points more IQ on average" with "they are neither men, nor women, with very strange bodies"? The othering is what was hurting us a lot and was causing IGM. How promoting it to an absurd level can help? How promoting information that hurt us in the first place can help us? And yes, I would call "third sex" similar to a slur in most cases.

I wonder if /u/OPPRESSED_REPTILIAN finds being called neither man nor woman or third sex as something fine.

Or maybe like that "Transgender and intersex" organisation WPATH called us "mutants, who are not binary sex" was fine too?

[–]mvmlego 1 insightful - 7 fun1 insightful - 6 fun2 insightful - 7 fun -  (0 children)

You are seriously comparing "they have 10 points more IQ on average" with "they are neither men, nor women, with very strange bodies"?

You're putting words in people's mouths. I never used or defended the use of the word "strange" to describe intersex people, and neither did the video that I linked to. As I said, the video was trying to do quite the opposite of portraying intersex people as strange; it was trying to portray them as ordinary to the point of being mundane. So to answer your question: no. That's not the comparison I was making.

How promoting information that hurt us in the first place can help us?

You're flat-out ignoring a considerable portion of my comments. I never claimed that spreading misinformation about a group would help members of the group--in fact, I specifically said in my last comment that spreading misinformation was not an effective long-term strategy for neutralizing prejudice.

And yes, I would call "third sex" similar to a slur in most cases.

That depends entirely on the speaker's opinion of the (hypothetical) third sex, just like any other label. Whether "liberal" is a slur depends on the speaker's attitudes towards liberals; whether "TERF" is a slur depends on the speaker's attitude towards TERFs, etc..

One of the things that I find odd about this conversation is that there's a good case to be made that classifying intersex people as "males or females with disorders [of sexual development]" is, rhetorically speaking, considerably more de-legitimizing than classifying intersex people as their own category on par with males or females. Behind each of these classifications are a host of subtle, conflicting connotations, so it's unreasonable to assume that somebody chose whatever description that they did specifically because they were trying to convey the worst of those connotations--which is what u/Destruction assumed, and what you continue to assume.

(EDIT: rephrased the last sentence and added content to first paragraph.)