A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

[Ferguson97]

This thread has been an absolute mess, and intellectual arguments are being reduced to inane drivel, a lot of which is totally irrelevant.

The thing is, what is gender? If you can’t answer that question, then this debate becomes totally unintellectual in nature, and is more based in personal feelings. In the latter case, then the feelings of a trans person who calls themselves a gender different than there biological sex are no more important than the feelings of someone who thinks that “a man with a uterus” is an oxymoron. Simple as that. They can still respect one another, but you can’t force either one of them to respect the other persons view.

The difference is that for one person, this is just an opinion about a set of issues that barely affects their life in any way, while for the other (trans) person, the way society feels about this issue determines their ability to be safe and successful in every aspect of their lives.

Even if this does come down to a debate about feelings, why would you deliberately hurt someone’s feelings when it costs you nothing to just treat them the way they are asking to be treated?

Like I said, it’s not too much to expect them to respect one another (for example, use requested pronouns). But if the person says, “I still think you’re 100% a man” when the person claims to be a woman, you can’t get mad at them for stating that when you can’t prove them wrong.

How is telling someone “I still think you’re 100% a man” respecting them?  Why would you say that when it is obviously very hurtful to the person you are saying it to, and doesn’t make any difference to the way you live your own life?

It’s just them stating their opinion on how gender works.

If you walk up to a random person and say "your face is ugly", that might be your sincere opinion, and it might not be disprovable, but it certainly wouldn't be respectful.  It wouldn't even by respectful if you said that to your friend.  

There are lots of contexts where it is not respectful to share one's opinion, and a non-trans person's opinion of the "true gender" of a trans person is going to be one of those times virtually always.

Calling someone delusional to their face is certainly disrespectful. Disagreeing on what constitutes “gender,” doesn’t.

I fundamentally disagree.

If you claim to be a Christian, and I say that you aren't because you don't fit my definition of what a Christian should be (say, weekly church attendance and donating to charity), I'd be a disrespectful jerk if I said you weren't "really" a Christian.

[Horus]

This thread has been an absolute mess, and intellectual arguments are being reduced to inane drivel, a lot of which is totally irrelevant.

The thing is, what is gender? If you can’t answer that question, then this debate becomes totally unintellectual in nature, and is more based in personal feelings. In the latter case, then the feelings of a trans person who calls themselves a gender different than there biological sex are no more important than the feelings of someone who thinks that “a man with a uterus” is an oxymoron. Simple as that. They can still respect one another, but you can’t force either one of them to respect the other persons view.

The difference is that for one person, this is just an opinion about a set of issues that barely affects their life in any way, while for the other (trans) person, the way society feels about this issue determines their ability to be safe and successful in every aspect of their lives.

Even if this does come down to a debate about feelings, why would you deliberately hurt someone’s feelings when it costs you nothing to just treat them the way they are asking to be treated?

Like I said, it’s not too much to expect them to respect one another (for example, use requested pronouns). But if the person says, “I still think you’re 100% a man” when the person claims to be a woman, you can’t get mad at them for stating that when you can’t prove them wrong.

How is telling someone “I still think you’re 100% a man” respecting them?  Why would you say that when it is obviously very hurtful to the person you are saying it to, and doesn’t make any difference to the way you live your own life?

It’s just them stating their opinion on how gender works.

If you walk up to a random person and say "your face is ugly", that might be your sincere opinion, and it might not be disprovable, but it certainly wouldn't be respectful.  It wouldn't even by respectful if you said that to your friend.  

There are lots of contexts where it is not respectful to share one's opinion, and a non-trans person's opinion of the "true gender" of a trans person is going to be one of those times virtually always.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Gender probably isn't.

Fwiw misgendering people is a bad thing to do, and I will always call a person by their preferred pronouns, so long as they don't extend beyond he/she/they, but this is not the same as calling someone ugly.

It seems to me like extremists are trying to prevent reasonable people from being public advocates for LGBT issues, and this is a potential explanation for the far left's attempts to harass Contrapoints into oblivion and it also in a slightly different situation explains the insane anti-gay attacks they used against Pete Buttigieg as well.

At the risk of wading into the sort of hardened radical queer theorist territory for which I have a bit of notoriety here, the attacks on Pete from queer voices on the left weren't about his sexuality in isolation, but the perception that he had sold out his queerness to neoliberal/neoconservative pandering and ensconced himself in the values and expectations of a social order built on upholding cisgender heterosexuality (academic types will call this "homonormativity"). The idea that the "queer community" is unified and needs to know better for its own interests is patronizing and paternalistic, and ignores the perspective of many queer voices that have come to reject broader social norms rather than try to seek their approval. I would certainly much prefer a world where I wouldn't risk getting murdered for being transgender, but debates like this where cishet perspectives with no firsthand knowledge of our experience act like they know what's best for a very heterodox collection of people makes me wonder if it's ever worth the effort to get the world on my (or our) side, and while I'd prefer a world with less hot-button discourse eating my people alive it's the inevitable result of advances in queer rights and the Information Age atomization of sociopolitical spheres.

I recognize that this is exchange was somewhat tangential to the broader discussion happening in this thread, but this response here stood out to me as actually bolstering Dalecooper's point. You reject the idea that the queer community is supposed to be unified for its own interests when its imposed upon by outsiders, but this apparently is in fact the operating logic of a certain segment of the queer community the moment one of their own strays from activist expectations. Why else would leftist queer people have cared as to whether Buttiegieg "sold out" his queerness and "ensconced himself" in the world of cishet values? If queer folk don't need to be unified, it shouldn't have mattered. "You should have known better" seems like exactly the kind of sentiment being lobbed at Buttiegieg here by other queer people, despite your protestations to such a notion being valid.

Should be noted that many non straight people do not define as queer. I personally find the word demeaning. The gay men I know who identify as queer pretty much always wear makeup and often have varied pronouns. The queer community is a more radical subset of the LGBT community.

[John Dule]

This thread has been an absolute mess, and intellectual arguments are being reduced to inane drivel, a lot of which is totally irrelevant.

The thing is, what is gender? If you can’t answer that question, then this debate becomes totally unintellectual in nature, and is more based in personal feelings. In the latter case, then the feelings of a trans person who calls themselves a gender different than there biological sex are no more important than the feelings of someone who thinks that “a man with a uterus” is an oxymoron. Simple as that. They can still respect one another, but you can’t force either one of them to respect the other persons view.

The difference is that for one person, this is just an opinion about a set of issues that barely affects their life in any way, while for the other (trans) person, the way society feels about this issue determines their ability to be safe and successful in every aspect of their lives.

Even if this does come down to a debate about feelings, why would you deliberately hurt someone’s feelings when it costs you nothing to just treat them the way they are asking to be treated?

Like I said, it’s not too much to expect them to respect one another (for example, use requested pronouns). But if the person says, “I still think you’re 100% a man” when the person claims to be a woman, you can’t get mad at them for stating that when you can’t prove them wrong.

How is telling someone “I still think you’re 100% a man” respecting them?  Why would you say that when it is obviously very hurtful to the person you are saying it to, and doesn’t make any difference to the way you live your own life?

It’s just them stating their opinion on how gender works.

If you walk up to a random person and say "your face is ugly", that might be your sincere opinion, and it might not be disprovable, but it certainly wouldn't be respectful.  It wouldn't even by respectful if you said that to your friend.  

There are lots of contexts where it is not respectful to share one's opinion, and a non-trans person's opinion of the "true gender" of a trans person is going to be one of those times virtually always.

Calling someone delusional to their face is certainly disrespectful. Disagreeing on what constitutes “gender,” doesn’t.

I fundamentally disagree.

If you claim to be a Christian, and I say that you aren't because you don't fit my definition of what a Christian should be (say, weekly church attendance and donating to charity), I'd be a disrespectful jerk if I said you weren't "really" a Christian.

There are certain objective criteria for what constitutes a "Christian," and if someone does not meet those criteria you are within your rights to make that observation.

If someone believes they are the reincarnation of Julius Caesar, it is not "disrespectful" to disagree.

[If my soul was made of stone]

Should be noted that many non straight people do not define as queer. I personally find the word demeaning. The gay men I know who identify as queer pretty much always wear makeup and often have varied pronouns. The queer community is a more radical subset of the LGBT community.

As a self-identifier the term does originally refer to more radical currents (see the Queer Nation Manifesto), but as with much of the culture as a whole it's become far less politically charged within the past decades. I prefer to use "queer" as a general term to "LGBT" because it's snappier and there won't be any debate over what's included in or left out of any acronyms, but it's true that I do identify with the radical tendencies more than most that I've known in my time.

[If my soul was made of stone]

This thread has been an absolute mess, and intellectual arguments are being reduced to inane drivel, a lot of which is totally irrelevant.

The thing is, what is gender? If you can’t answer that question, then this debate becomes totally unintellectual in nature, and is more based in personal feelings. In the latter case, then the feelings of a trans person who calls themselves a gender different than there biological sex are no more important than the feelings of someone who thinks that “a man with a uterus” is an oxymoron. Simple as that. They can still respect one another, but you can’t force either one of them to respect the other persons view.

The difference is that for one person, this is just an opinion about a set of issues that barely affects their life in any way, while for the other (trans) person, the way society feels about this issue determines their ability to be safe and successful in every aspect of their lives.

Even if this does come down to a debate about feelings, why would you deliberately hurt someone’s feelings when it costs you nothing to just treat them the way they are asking to be treated?

Like I said, it’s not too much to expect them to respect one another (for example, use requested pronouns). But if the person says, “I still think you’re 100% a man” when the person claims to be a woman, you can’t get mad at them for stating that when you can’t prove them wrong.

How is telling someone “I still think you’re 100% a man” respecting them?  Why would you say that when it is obviously very hurtful to the person you are saying it to, and doesn’t make any difference to the way you live your own life?

It's more respectful to be honest about your opinions than to engage in a false charade to protect other people's feelings. Treating others as fragile is not showing respect; it is the opposite.

Whatever you say, Jordan Peterson.

[Damocles]

I’m a man. I am straight. I know both of these things for a fact. Some people, however, have a mismatch between the structure of their brain, and the body they inhabit. So what? There’s no shame in it. It’s just that when you have a large enough population, you’re going to get people who fall into that category.

They are not to be mocked or shamed for their gender self-identification or for their sexuality. These are just aspects of who they are. That does not mean that you cannot have sexual preferences of your own, but it also does not mean that their narrative is any less legitimate than yours is. You are not obligated to be in a relationship with them or to treat them with any difference from others.

Where it becomes a problem is when you perceive their differences as a justification for treating them like dirt. They did not choose that life for themselves. The least you can do is to be courteous and conscientious and understanding, even if you personally have a base urge of disgust, emboldened by the rancor and rhetoric of transphobes.

[The Undefeatable Debbie Stabenow]

This thread has been an absolute mess, and intellectual arguments are being reduced to inane drivel, a lot of which is totally irrelevant.

The thing is, what is gender? If you can’t answer that question, then this debate becomes totally unintellectual in nature, and is more based in personal feelings. In the latter case, then the feelings of a trans person who calls themselves a gender different than there biological sex are no more important than the feelings of someone who thinks that “a man with a uterus” is an oxymoron. Simple as that. They can still respect one another, but you can’t force either one of them to respect the other persons view.

The difference is that for one person, this is just an opinion about a set of issues that barely affects their life in any way, while for the other (trans) person, the way society feels about this issue determines their ability to be safe and successful in every aspect of their lives.

Even if this does come down to a debate about feelings, why would you deliberately hurt someone’s feelings when it costs you nothing to just treat them the way they are asking to be treated?

Like I said, it’s not too much to expect them to respect one another (for example, use requested pronouns). But if the person says, “I still think you’re 100% a man” when the person claims to be a woman, you can’t get mad at them for stating that when you can’t prove them wrong.

What "proof" is needed beyond someone's stated gender identity? Anything else is exclusionary purity-test nonsense that absolutely goes against your principle of respecting other folk.

“I said so” isn’t proof for any claim.

That's literally how gender works.

According to you, sure. According to others (and Western society up until the last ~15 years) it’s dependent on your chromosomes.

Who’s to say whose right when gender has no real definition?

If it’s so nebulous, you should probably be deferring to other’s understandings of themselves as a default.

[DaleCooper]

I think we should look at the academic development described in this thread a little less personally. The point of the critique is that, if there is no coherent definition of gender then there is nothing to academically defend or discuss, and there's certainly no way to respond to the kinds of smears and allegations that get thrown around whenever somebody tries. Academia is supposed to be a venue primarily for two things: education and rigorous debate & discussion. It's not a retreat or a home away from home for students.

[Agonized-Statism]

I prefer to use "queer" as a general term to "LGBT" because it's snappier and there won't be any debate over what's included in or left out of any acronyms, but it's true that I do identify with the radical tendencies more than most that I've known in my time.

Not to go off topic here, but this is exactly the kind of branding the community as a whole needs toward normalization and to encourage unity. The acronym gets a lot of snark for sounding "too academic"- think back to all the opposition the black community got for encouraging "African American". You have to kind of rush through an ever-expanding number of letters just to reference the community and conservatives falsely, but convincingly point to that as "evidence" that LGBT+ is something new, unnatural, and alien (mostly swaying people like OP, but unfortunately their support is necessary so long as civil rights are taking the long, """democratic""" road). I'll keep "queer" in mind as an alternative but I dunno if I'll start saying it until it becomes more mainstream. Still comes off as a slur to too many people IMO.

[John Dule]

This thread has been an absolute mess, and intellectual arguments are being reduced to inane drivel, a lot of which is totally irrelevant.

The thing is, what is gender? If you can’t answer that question, then this debate becomes totally unintellectual in nature, and is more based in personal feelings. In the latter case, then the feelings of a trans person who calls themselves a gender different than there biological sex are no more important than the feelings of someone who thinks that “a man with a uterus” is an oxymoron. Simple as that. They can still respect one another, but you can’t force either one of them to respect the other persons view.

The difference is that for one person, this is just an opinion about a set of issues that barely affects their life in any way, while for the other (trans) person, the way society feels about this issue determines their ability to be safe and successful in every aspect of their lives.

Even if this does come down to a debate about feelings, why would you deliberately hurt someone’s feelings when it costs you nothing to just treat them the way they are asking to be treated?

Like I said, it’s not too much to expect them to respect one another (for example, use requested pronouns). But if the person says, “I still think you’re 100% a man” when the person claims to be a woman, you can’t get mad at them for stating that when you can’t prove them wrong.

How is telling someone “I still think you’re 100% a man” respecting them?  Why would you say that when it is obviously very hurtful to the person you are saying it to, and doesn’t make any difference to the way you live your own life?

It's more respectful to be honest about your opinions than to engage in a false charade to protect other people's feelings. Treating others as fragile is not showing respect; it is the opposite.

Whatever you say, Jordan Peterson.

Big compliment!

[DaleCooper]

I prefer to use "queer" as a general term to "LGBT" because it's snappier and there won't be any debate over what's included in or left out of any acronyms, but it's true that I do identify with the radical tendencies more than most that I've known in my time.

Not to go off topic here, but this is exactly the kind of branding the community as a whole needs toward normalization and to encourage unity. The acronym gets a lot of snark for sounding "too academic"- think back to all the opposition the black community got for encouraging "African American". You have to kind of rush through an ever-expanding number of letters just to reference the community and conservatives falsely, but convincingly point to that as "evidence" that LGBT+ is something new, unnatural, and alien (mostly swaying people like OP, but unfortunately their support is necessary so long as civil rights are taking the long, """democratic""" road). I'll keep "queer" in mind as an alternative but I dunno if I'll start saying it until it becomes more mainstream. Still comes off as a slur to too many people IMO.

LGBTQIA+ makes me chuckle every time I see it or hear somebody say it.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

The original article linked by the OP doesn't appear to have an author noted anywhere, so we can't know whose work it is. This tweet is about the recent book by noted trans-hate promoter and current Economist executive editor Helen Joyce:
https://twitter.com/christapeterso/status/1416599964214448130