Politics Thread 6

[Return_of_the_STAR]

I've just got round to watching that dawn butler clip from parliament. So are you not allowed to say the PM has lied in parliament?

[Tomous]

I've just got round to watching that dawn butler clip from parliament. So are you not allowed to say the PM has lied in parliament?

You're not allowed to accuse people of lying in Parliament.

People tend to get around it by saying "I think my honourable friend has unintentionally misled Parliament" and things like that so they don't imply the intent to deceive.

[Meep]

It was fun to watch but then I realised how capable Miliband looks compared to Starmer and lost all hope.

[Tomous]

Indeed. Its always depressing watching Ed Miliband at his best.

[Return_of_the_STAR]

I've just got round to watching that dawn butler clip from parliament. So are you not allowed to say the PM has lied in parliament?

You're not allowed to accuse people of lying in Parliament.

People tend to get around it by saying "I think my honourable friend has unintentionally misled Parliament" and things like that so they don't imply the intent to deceive.

So if you have evidence someone has lied then you still can't accuse them of lying?

[Tomous]

I've just got round to watching that dawn butler clip from parliament. So are you not allowed to say the PM has lied in parliament?

You're not allowed to accuse people of lying in Parliament.

People tend to get around it by saying "I think my honourable friend has unintentionally misled Parliament" and things like that so they don't imply the intent to deceive.

So if you have evidence someone has lied then you still can't accuse them of lying?

Correct. You get thrown out-like today.

[Green Gecko]

I'm confused about something I got dog piled on on Twitter and don't know where else to post this. "Gender Critical" is trending on Twitter and unfortunately I checked it out while moaning about a coronavirus support grant process. This seems like a euphemism for transphobia to me. Someone waving this flag (a gay man no less) stated "biological sex is immutable" which is a pretty strong way to put it, the argument is the existence of XY chromosomes in every cell. Doesn't it then come down to what defines the term "sex" and the sex binary "male" and "female"? I referenced "intersex" people and was told by an "intersex"person who apparently I had to apologise to that this a deeply offensive term, but that's what I in LGBTQIA+ stands for and my counsellor who's done at least some awareness training expressed it's a pretty common term used by people who themselves have multiple sex characteristics. There's even an Intersex Society advocacy group. Apparently the correct term is Sexual Development Difference (there's also a syndrome and it used to be Disorder, which sounds, well, worse..?)

I still find "biological sex is immutable" troubling. Doesn't that mean transsexualism is impossible or verboten? Is a trans woman who's had sex reassignment surgery then for example a "male woman"? That doesn't make sense at all to me. It just seems like LGBTQ people who reject transsexuals and don't accept that trans women or trans men are women/men or conversely female/male.

I got the standard,"it's not an opinion, it's a fact", which, erm, sounds a lot like bigotry or fear to me. So what's going on here?

Now I can't stop strawberry floating thinking about it after I was notified like 40 times and branded an "uneducated TRA" (trans rights activist) when I have never before in my life openly discussed any kind of gender or sex or sexuality issues on Twitter as I wasn't out until a little while ago. So I can't even participate in a discussion without being labelled despite myself being queer/pan. What. Why does anyone have to be so strawberry floating adamant about their view, yet ultimately denigrate or judge someone that is not inherently harmful or hateful... Such as someone who has changed their sex. I don't think that's a problem society has (transsexuals), I feel society itself has a problem even amongst LGBTQ folk that sex reassignment is something to be feared by some.

IDGI

Also, strawberry float Twitter, you pose a genuine question and are almost guaranteed to get ripped to shreds by people assuming your entire character/agenda based on almost strawberry floating nothing whatsoever.

[Squinty]

I wouldn't expect any kind of meaningful engagement on Twitter. It's a shitshow full of people screaming into a void. I honestly feel like taking myself off there has helped me tremendously.

[Skarjo]

I still find "biological sex is immutable" troubling. Doesn't that mean transsexualism is impossible or verboten? Is a trans woman who's had sex reassignment surgery then for example a "male woman"? That doesn't make sense at all to me. It just seems like LGBTQ people who reject transsexuals and don't accept that trans women or trans men are women/men or conversely female/male.

Biological sex *is* largely immutable. Sex is a chromosomal combo that's decided and assigned at the moment of fertilisation. XY makes you male, XX makes you female, and any of the other combos (XYY, XXY, XXX etc) would designate you as intersex. I've never heard of intersex being referred to as a slur myself, but it's definitely the correct biological term. However, I could be behind the times, because many correct medical terms have been adopted as slurs and then replaced by other terms.

Gender is a whole other thing, and is about how you present in society. The Venn Diagram of sex and gender has a massive amount of overlap but they are distinct things that fall outside that overlap. The term I hear used most at the moment is 'Assigned (sex) At Birth' to recognise that the person may now live as a different gender to the one you'd predict were they cisgendered. So you probably wouldn't say "a male woman" (but I don't actually think that's incorrect, but I know it's not the term usually used in the trans community), rather you'd simply call them a woman and if they needed further clarification you'd say 'Assingned Male at Birth'.

It's worth noting that a transwoman wouldn't need to have had reassignment surgery for woman to still be the correct term. She's a woman once she decides she wants to live as a woman regardless of what's in her genes or knickers.

[Knoyleo]

I'm confused about something I got dog piled on on Twitter and don't know where else to post this. "Gender Critical" is trending on Twitter and unfortunately I checked it out while moaning about a coronavirus support grant process. This seems like a euphemism for transphobia to me. Someone waving this flag (a gay man no less) stated "biological sex is immutable" which is a pretty strong way to put it, the argument is the existence of XY chromosomes in every cell. Doesn't it then come down to what defines the term "sex" and the sex binary "male" and "female"? I referenced "intersex" people and was told by an "intersex"person who apparently I had to apologise to that this a deeply offensive term, but that's what I in LGBTQIA+ stands for and my counsellor who's done at least some awareness training expressed it's a pretty common term used by people who themselves have multiple sex characteristics. There's even an Intersex Society advocacy group. Apparently the correct term is Sexual Development Difference (there's also a syndrome and it used to be Disorder, which sounds, well, worse..?)

I still find "biological sex is immutable" troubling. Doesn't that mean transsexualism is impossible or verboten? Is a trans woman who's had sex reassignment surgery then for example a "male woman"? That doesn't make sense at all to me. It just seems like LGBTQ people who reject transsexuals and don't accept that trans women or trans men are women/men or conversely female/male.

I got the standard,"it's not an opinion, it's a fact", which, erm, sounds a lot like bigotry or fear to me. So what's going on here?

Now I can't stop strawberry floating thinking about it after I was notified like 40 times and branded an "uneducated TRA" (trans rights activist) when I have never before in my life openly discussed any kind of gender or sex or sexuality issues on Twitter as I wasn't out until a little while ago. So I can't even participate in a discussion without being labelled despite myself being queer/pan. What. Why does anyone have to be so strawberry floating adamant about their view, yet ultimately denigrate or judge someone that is not inherently harmful or hateful... Such as someone who has changed their sex. I don't think that's a problem society has (transsexuals), I feel society itself has a problem even amongst LGBTQ folk that sex reassignment is something to be feared by some.

IDGI

Also, strawberry float Twitter, you pose a genuine question and are almost guaranteed to get ripped to shreds by people assuming your entire character/agenda based on almost strawberry floating nothing whatsoever.

You got it, gender critical is what transphobes like to call themselves so they don't sound like bigots. They're not a bigoted hate movement, they're just asking questions, like "please can I inspect your genitalia before you use this bathroom?" and "Why won't you let me inspect your genitalia? What are you trying to hide you pervert?"

[Rik_]

yeah, gender critical movement is a group of bigots masquerading as feminists with "genuine concerns" about letting trans people just live their lives in peace. that's where the term TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) comes from; they use the language of feminism to justify trampling over the rights of trans people. although honestly half of them don't even try to hide it, they're just out and out transphobes. one of the main culprits is the LGB alliance, a *registered charity* who spread charming messages like "they're forcing young lesbians to transition because they hate lesbians" and call gender affirmation treatments "the new conversion therapy"

also re: intersex being a slur, I see a lot of gender discourse on twitter since a lot of my gf's close friends are trans/non-binary and I've never once seen intersex be referred to as a slur so no idea what that's about. I'd wager it's another terf trying to shift the language to make it seem like someone being "in between" sexes/genders is impossible (because of course they hate non-binary people for not conforming to their narrow, hateful little worldview too)

[VlaSoul]

twitter.com/alexandrakuri/status/1418266594959056903

Ed still got the heat damn

also @gecko, sounds like you encountered some TERFs, I would just ignore it

[Jenuall]

That's an old Ed clip just to be clear, it's from late last year I believe. Still a classic though

[Victor Mildew]

Ed MilliBANTS

[site23]

"Gender Critical" is trending on Twitter and unfortunately I checked it out while moaning about a coronavirus support grant process. This seems like a euphemism for transphobia to me.

Yep, you got it!

I referenced "intersex" people and was told by an "intersex" person I had to apologise and that this a deeply offensive term

Intersex isn't a slur. A core TERF/GC view is that sex is both immutable and perfectly binary (no shades of grey). This belief makes it difficult for them to engage with the idea of atypical sex phenotypes.

(As an aside, a point of advocacy in the intersex community is that intersex babies shouldn't be surgically altered to better fit a typical sex phenotype. Most intersex people believe they should instead be allowed to choose for themselves when older whether they want to be considered female, male, or neither, and which if any surgeries to have.)

a gay man no less [...] was told by an "intersex" person [...] even amongst LGBTQ folk [...]

I think the majority of LGBTIAQ people do have solidarity with each other. But as you've observed, sadly it isn't unheard of for individual LGBTIAQ people to have bigoted views.

Biological sex *is* largely immutable. Sex is a chromosomal combo that's decided and assigned at the moment of fertilisation. XY makes you male, XX makes you female, and any of the other combos (XYY, XXY, XXX etc) would designate you as intersex. I've never heard of intersex being referred to as a slur myself, but it's definitely the correct biological term. However, I could be behind the times, because many correct medical terms have been adopted as slurs and then replaced by other terms.

Much like you, I don't think someone's sex has any bearing on whether they should be accepted as whatever gender they are. This is just a science note:

It depends how you measure a person's sex. It's possible, for example, to have an XY karyotype and a genetic disorder in a key sexual development pathway (in DMRT1/2, SRY, etc.) and end up with an entirely female phenotype. It would be unusual to categorise a person with 46,XY complete gonadal dysgenesis as male, and there are even 46,XY women with no disorders of sexual development at all. A person's sex is being measured phenotypically there, not karyotypically. This is true for everyone across almost all social and medical scenarios - it's rare to karyotype someone because it's rarely relevant. This informs the question of mutability, because a person's observable sex characteristics are mutable to a large extent - hormone levels, secondary sexual development, genitalia, and so on.

[Skarjo]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but although we probably look at the phenotype to assume the sex, we only do that because it’s far easier than karotyping every individual, but we’re still assuming that the phenotype is a reflection of the genotypical sex. I’m pretty sure that sex still refers to the genotype, even if we assume it by looking at the phenotype, no? I think male and female are still statements of genotype even if we (absolutely wrongly in the exceptions you mention) will occasionally be wrong by judging it via the phenotype.

[site23]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but although we probably look at the phenotype to assume the sex, we only do that because it’s far easier than karotyping every individual, but we’re still assuming that the phenotype is a reflection of the genotypical sex. I’m pretty sure that sex still refers to the genotype, even if we assume it by looking at the phenotype, no? I think male and female are still statements of genotype even if we (absolutely wrongly in the exceptions you mention) will occasionally be wrong by judging it via the phenotype.

It's far more prevalent to refer to phenotypic sex in medical science. For instance, this article about a 46,XY woman who is fertile and gave birth to a 46,XY daughter uses the unsexed term "46,XY individuals" when talking about the general population with that karyotype, then explicitly and repeatedly uses the term "46,XY female" when referring to specific patients with an observable sex phenotype. That convention has been in use since modern research on these conditions began in the 60s.

Sex categorisation is context-dependent. You can define it in reference to chromosome configuration when it makes sense to you to do so. In scientific literature, even patients who have been karyotyped as 46,XX or 46,XY are usually referred to by their phenotypic sex - it's just considered a more useful and applicable definition.

[Skarjo]

Huh, fair enough. Today I learned.

[OrangeRKN]

Pretty much everything in (macro)biology is classification based on observation that is on some level arbitrary and made only for the ease of understanding, it's not the discernment of natural laws. So to declare any biological model absolute and immutable is to misunderstand what that model fundamentally is - a model, not a law. Even the concept of different species is an invented one without a real, physical basis.

[site23]

Even the concept of different species is an invented one without a real, physical basis

You are taking your raccoon roleplay too far

(But you're right of course!)