Carleas wrote:
In a thread he started a couple of months ago, and rather than resurrect an obviously dead discussion to add my ideas, thought I might as well begin with a fresh thread.
Gender and pronouns and sexual identification seem to be important topics. Biological would seem to be the final baseline to judge from, though a decent case can also be made for neurology.
To me I guess, perhaps neurological has to win the day. Why…? If you look at it from this perspective: how much of something can be changed, before it becomes something else entirely…? Amputees do not become something else because of losing a limb, nor when they put on a prothesis. Castratees do not become something else similarly due to the loss of their genitalia or procreative function. Nor would someone who exchanges one set of genetalia for another, any more than an amputee exchanging a false hand for a hook. Their essential “you-ness” remains.
But if someone lost their memory entirely, or was so damaged neurophysiologcally that relating to them in any way correseponding their previous identity was meaningless… then that “you-ness” is gone.
I suppose it’s ultimately dependent on which side of the form/function divide you fall upon. Is Jack a biological woman identifying as a man a man who due to a congential gentetic disorder can only function procreatively as a female, or is the female biological construct whose emergent consciousness identifies itself as ‘Jack’ simply a biologic procreative vessel plagued with a defective brain…?
Anyway, that wasn’t the main area of discussion.
As was discussed in the thread people and media present an abiological, social aspect of their sexuality and sexual identification to society. The question I think was how much reality was based in the distinction between the two - the genital he/she and the linguistic he/she.
Forgive me if I rehash something that was mentioned in the prior thread but from my quick dash through the pages I didn’t see a discussion about the medium involved - language itself.
Firstly, to an English monolinguist the concept of he/she, and people needing a ‘he’ or a ‘she’ involved with them in conversation is natural and instinctive. He is a he and she is a she and that table over there is an it. However in Turkish, all of them are the same. He is an O, she is an O, and the table over there is also an O.
He is a man = o bir adam.
She is a woman = o bir kadin
It is a table = o bir masa.
There is also no distinction between the sex of siblings, if I have a brother and a sister Turks would say they had two kardes.
The current debate on pronouns is reserved to languages that make it an issue, not intrinsic to the concept of sexual identity itself.
Secondly, we must remember that the words we use to denote something, were never intended to describe in any absolute terms the thing itself. I think we have become so used to absolute measurement in our digital and quantum age - this pencil is 15.6cm long, the intensity of that light is 350lumens, it’s 5 minutes past 2 - that we expect language, which predates all of these instruments of exactitude, to conform to the same specificity. It doesn’t it never did.
“Hey, look out, there’s a tiger in that bush.”
“Hey, move the bony spherical appendage above your shoulders 40 degrees clockwise so as to bring fully into your field of vision that low lying herbacious outgrowth, not the colloquialism for pubic hair, and become aware of the likelyhood of a large, carnivorous, stripe-pelted predator residing within it’s area of cover.”
So, which hunter’s friend got eaten…?
Language is a verbal/audiable medium evolved to convey information likely to impact on the well-being of those involved in its transfer. Its key pillars are speed, and accuracy, which combine to form overall ‘usefulness’ - and this ‘usefulness’ is heavily context based. In the lecture theatre, you sacrifice speed for accuracy of description, in combat you use only the absolute minimum of accuracy for maximum speed.
To me, much of the politically correct debate is concerned with not language so much as acknowledgement of importance. This overlaps with terms like black and cripple etc. not simply he and she.
We naturally spend more time, precision and words describing things we attach importance to, social or personal. For example, I could spend a good 5 minutes describing my wife, whom to you, if you passed her in the street, would just be another woman. A random ‘she’. There’s no right or wrong to my perspective, or yours, it’s simply the degree of importance attached. Like when friends show you pictures of their kids. To you, snot-nosed diminutive human, to them, the absolute meaning of their lives.
So when general society writes off a transgender as a ‘he’ or a ‘she’ in commentry, or someone as black or crippled, to the writer or speaker it’s simply a speedy, accurate-enough-to-convey-meaning, way of describing an event. The weight of importance is on the event more than that of the actors involved.
“Jack’s traditional bespoke men’s clothing store robbed by black man.”
What’s obviously more important to the speaker…? The store or the guy…? The store is individualized, the black man not. It’s the same for he and she. To me, bog-standard, never been confused over my sexual identity, race or religion, white guy… ‘He’ or ‘she’ has little to none importance attached to it whatsoever, it’s a simple grammatic convention. But to a trans, the flip from being a he to a she or vice versa is pivotal to their existence. My casual conversational short cut is a complete negation of something utterly crucial to their person.
In short, I think the debate over pronouns or descriptives in general is a cry from an undervalued minority to an ambivalent majority to simply be acknowledged as a) present and b) important.
Thirdly. With regard to giving objects sexual referrents. Girl robots and boy robots.
Language as I said is not an absolute. It is, as we are, comparative in nature. Language reflects our way of sensing the world.
There is a tree. I rip a branch off the tree, and stand the branch up next to the tree in such a way that it resembles the form, if not the stature, of its parent. I take a picture and show it to a friend.
“Hey, look at this cool tree in the picture.” (I forgot to mention the tree was cool).
My friend never says “uh, which tree are you talking about…?” Because though both resemble each other, the actual tree possesses more ‘treeness’.
I’m a teacher, I once read something in a cog-sci book that scared me. It said that students form an opinion about the capabilities of a teacher they meet for the first time in a classroom within 30 seconds. And that the opinion they form tends to persist for a very long time, regardless of the actual competancy displayed by the teacher subsequently.
What students measure is not the absolute nature of the person standing behind the teacher’s desk as an individual, but the degree to which that person conforms to the internal archetype of ‘a teacher’. ie. as long as on first impression you hit enough of the sartorial, social and behavioural cues associated with the role of ‘teacher’, you’re a teacher. Imposter syndrome - less important than you’d think.
So, as long as a fictional character, robot, internet device or person, hits more cues associated with ‘He-ness’ than she-ness or it-ness, then it becomes a He. And for the purposes of linguistic usefulness, depending on the context of a given commentary, is authentically represented as such.
True racism, sexism, or any-ism, is exemplified in my mind only when the context of the commentary in question would normally require that importance, and thus linguistic precision, be applied to the subject discussed and is not, or is used specifically to diminish the importance of that subject’s being.
ie. “Which one’s the surgeon in charge…? I need to show him the x-ray fast, he’s about to cut off the wrong leg !!!”
“There look, the black guy through the window. Run !”
Is not racist, but expedient.
But.
“They gave that black my position as chief surgeon just because he sucked up to the management.”
Is.
Same goes for intentionally dismissing a person’s choice of pronoun in a context where acurracy is more important than speed. ie. All media platforms where there is no immediate chance of tiger -attack.