Politics Thread 6

[Victor Mildew]

Corbyn is just a huge Tetris fan, leave him alone.

He's obviously a good player. He made rows of labour seats disappear.

[Green Gecko]

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.

I am sure there is some degree of "we don't need experts!" or "intelligentsia!" in saying this but that is the kind of insight an "uneducated TRA" needs... Or perhaps these "gender critical" individuals don't want to see.

There's a pretty healthy dose of fake skepticism (bigotry) in "gender criticism" that purports to be "educated" and lambasts the "uneducated" when the very core problem with most bigoted views is that they stop questioning their own ideas and rely on "facts". It's distressing, but I'm already resigned to commenting on nothing on Twitter besides my own person echo chamber where I mostly complained about bad user experience design. What a waste of life. I got pretty bad anxiety over it and it affected my enjoyment of some games at night.

To make an extreme fascism analogy (because it's easy to understand) it feels like someone shouting "you are uneducated on the Jews! Oh boy you need to do more reading". (Another pile on said that, I was also told to "stop it" which is essentially telling me to shut up.) Profoundly patronising, and annoying.

Anyway, on with my day.

[mcjihge2]

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/its-2021-not-1821-rees-mogg-accused-of-racism-over-commons-comments-282632/?amp#038;__twitter_impression=true

Jacob Rees-Mogg has been forced to apologise after being accused of using an “extremely offensive racist term” in the House of Commons.
The Commons Leader used the phrase “Yellow Peril” in response to a question from an MP.

Mogg is a banana split, but is this more "political correctness gone mad"?.........

Rees-Mogg said: “I hear gossip that (Moore) is actually working in collaboration, and whisper it quietly, with the Liberal Democrats in his area against these schemes, which I think shows how completely lunatic they must be to have created an alliance between him and the Yellow Peril.”

IMO whats worse is,

Tory MP Damien Moore (Southport) had said people in his constituency felt “under attack from the vindictive policies of Labour-controlled Sefton Council” for trying to “impose a cycle network”.

strawberry floating snowflake tory MP.

[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.

Thanks for this as I know you have written about it before. The SDD/intersex person that got upset at me takes umbrage with the idea that they don't fall into the male/female binary, an idea I never expressed (I literally asked, "what about intersex people?", because they themselves believe in that binary (sex assigned at birth). It's horribly confusing that some people who have various chromosomal make ups actually believe in the sex and/or gender binary and want to be defined that way or perhaps have the right to define themselves that way, which of course they do, I never denied that or made any comment on that right. It's spectacularly presumptuous to label someone uneducated trans activist about that. I'm not a trans activist, I apparently replied to the wrong post on Twitter. I'm passively aware and sensitive to the issues.

And there are gay people who seemingly disapprove of transsexuals, or their arguments that they can change their biological sex, based on the chromosomal argument. That seems more like veiled ammunition for the hate phrase, "trans women/men can never be female/male" - regardless of their sex assigned at birth. I might be wrong, but on Twitter you have to be RIGHT OR WRONG and IT'S NOT AN OPINION IT IS PURE IMMUTABLE FACT *drops image macro, info graphic or single obscure source to prove this is a fact".

jesus

The whole thing just scares me and puts me off discussing and educating myself on issues that literally affect myself, which is... Homophobia/transphobia.

So I must admit, one of the weirdest conversations I ever had was with my auntie who I considered to be one of the progressive people I thought I knew.

She was a hardcore, bra-burning, 70s Greer style feminist who had built upon this to smash every glass ceiling ever put over her. She broke her way up to be on the board of various ridiculously powerful government boards and made her millions by becoming a powerful figure in negotiating multi million/billion regeneration projects across Europe. She’s a formidable woman (and I love her to bits, genuinely, she’s awesome), and I thought that with everything she’d been through she’d have a really keen ear for the people on the ladder behind her.

But, when discussing transwomen in particular, she shut down. Now, admittedly, this is based on a conversation I had with her at least 6 years ago when I didn’t know what a TERF was (and hopefully neither did she) and I definitely didn’t know enough to discuss the matter properly, but I definitely remember coming away with the feeling that she felt that transwomen were, to some extent, ‘stealing’ the progress that feminists like her had made. As though she’d broken all these barriers and now ‘men’ wanted to take advantage by changing their identity to fill the vacuum.

It was super weird.

[Hexx]

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.

Thanks for this as I know you have written about it before. The SDD/intersex person that got upset at me takes umbrage with the idea that they don't fall into the male/female binary, an idea I never expressed (I literally asked, "what about intersex people?", because they themselves believe in that binary (sex assigned at birth). It's horribly confusing that some people who have various chromosomal make ups actually believe in the sex and/or gender binary and want to be defined that way or perhaps have the right to define themselves that way, which of course they do, I never denied that or made any comment on that right. It's spectacularly presumptuous to label someone uneducated trans activist about that. I'm not a trans activist, I apparently replied to the wrong post on Twitter. I'm passively aware and sensitive to the issues.

And there are gay people who seemingly disapprove of transsexuals, or their arguments that they can change their biological sex, based on the chromosomal argument. That seems more like veiled ammunition for the hate phrase, "trans women/men can never be female/male" - regardless of their sex assigned at birth. I might be wrong, but on Twitter you have to be RIGHT OR WRONG and IT'S NOT AN OPINION IT IS PURE IMMUTABLE FACT *drops image macro, info graphic or single obscure source to prove this is a fact".

jesus

The whole thing just scares me and puts me off discussing and educating myself on issues that literally affect myself, which is... Homophobia/transphobia.

So I must admit, one of the weirdest conversations I ever had was with my auntie who I considered to be one of the progressive people I thought I knew.

She was a hardcore, bra-burning, 70s Greer style feminist who had built upon this to smash every glass ceiling ever put over her. She broke her way up to be on the board of various ridiculously powerful government boards and made her millions by becoming a powerful figure in negotiating multi million/billion regeneration projects across Europe. She’s a formidable woman (and I love her to bits, genuinely, she’s awesome), and I thought that with everything she’d been through she’d have a really keen ear for the people on the ladder behind her.

But, when discussing transwomen in particular, she shut down. Now, admittedly, this is based on a conversation I had with her at least 6 years ago when I didn’t know what a TERF was (and hopefully neither did she) and I definitely didn’t know enough to discuss the matter properly, but I definitely remember coming away with the feeling that she felt that transwomen were, to some extent, ‘stealing’ the progress that feminists like her had made. As though she’d broken all these barriers and now ‘men’ wanted to take advantage by changing their identity to fill the vacuum.

It was super weird.

Classic 2nd wave feminist

[Return_of_the_STAR]

The sooner we stop putting labels on people and treat each other as individuals the better as far as I am concerned.

[Moggy]

The sooner we stop putting labels on people and treat each other as individuals the better as far as I am concerned.

Typical Spurs fan

[Return_of_the_STAR]

The sooner we stop putting labels on people and treat each other as individuals the better as far as I am concerned.

Typical Spurs fan

I am not a spurs fan, I am an individual who likes disappointment.

[Moggy]

The sooner we stop putting labels on people and treat each other as individuals the better as far as I am concerned.

Typical Spurs fan

I am not a spurs fan, I am an individual who likes disappointment.

Figures.

[Return_of_the_STAR]

The sooner we stop putting labels on people and treat each other as individuals the better as far as I am concerned.

Typical Spurs fan

I am not a spurs fan, I am an individual who likes disappointment.

Figures.

It's all true

[VlaSoul]

Presented without comment:

things that conservatives say that would be awesome if they were true

[Moggy]

twitter.com/tonypatt2000/status/1418641722595282949

[Prototype]

I've posted on the board before about corporations promoting diversity in various ways etc, but what I love to see is something like the below. Action. An actual tangible product which proves your words aren't empty.

twitter.com/gemchappers/status/1418644404580012046

[Moggy]

twitter.com/TowerRNLI/status/1418703723631624199

The Tories (especially Patel) and Farage are directly to blame for people verbally abusing lifeboat crews.

[KK]

Slipped under the radar, this…

twitter.com/MitchellCMM/status/1403335103955324935

[Skarjo]

I've posted on the board before about corporations promoting diversity in various ways etc, but what I love to see is something like the below. Action. An actual tangible product which proves your words aren't empty.

twitter.com/gemchappers/status/1418644404580012046

“Yea nice one mum but how do you expect me colour in the strawberry floating sky now?”

[Return_of_the_STAR]

Slipped under the radar, this…

twitter.com/MitchellCMM/status/1403335103955324935

How weird why would the House of Commons need to wish a news channel luck in launching. Very odd.

[Tomous]

twitter.com/SpillerOfTea/status/1418916489344831494

strawberry floating hell.

[Tomous]

Slipped under the radar, this…

twitter.com/MitchellCMM/status/1403335103955324935

How weird why would the House of Commons need to wish a news channel luck in launching. Very odd.

I'd say it's pretty inappropriate, to use the HoCs to give publicity to a private company like that.

[Knoyleo]

Nigel Evans acting inappropriately? Well I never.

EDIT: strawberry float Spitting Image as well. Their latest iteration has been dire enough already, but that's horrendous.