Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT: 2500-2504 (29 July- August 2, 2013) Weekly Comic Discussion Thread
SageJiraiya:
At what point during toasting does the product go from heated bread, to light, brown, and burnt toast?
wiserd:
--- Quote from: Akima on 05 Aug 2013, 15:45 ---
--- Quote from: wiserd on 05 Aug 2013, 12:45 ---I'm saying she doesn't express herself in the manner females I've known do.
--- End quote ---
Ah, I see. In that case, it is just you.
You have a model in your head of what women are supposed to be like, and if someone behaves in a way that doesn't fit your model, you question whether they are female, rather than questioning your model. That is not uncommon, but it is not good either.
--- End quote ---
You seem to be misunderstanding what I wrote in the same way that Valdis was.
1. Do norms exist within a society? Yes. This question itself is non-normative. Saying that a thing is abnormal is not the same as making a values judgement about whether it is good or bad.
2. Can we say that certain norms are violated in some situations? Yes, of course.
If 1 and 2 are true, it seems fair to question what is causing the outlier.
--- Quote ---"you question whether they are female, rather than questioning your model"
--- End quote ---
On the contrary, I am actively trying to incorporate their anomalous behavior into my model. (Or perhaps Jeph's portrayal of their behavior. It's a toss up if I should be psychologizing May the character, Jeph the author, or Myself, the reader. It seems a complete analysis would include all 'participants.')
The notion someone put forward that May violates norms because she is a psychopath is a reasonable explanation. It is not, of course, the ONLY explanation for such behavior.
Method of Madness:
I don't think anyone was suggesting that her sociopathic tendencies and her apparent violations of gender norms were at all related, unless I missed something.
wiserd:
--- Quote from: mtmerrick on 05 Aug 2013, 17:27 ---lesson(s) i've learned on the topic from this forum
-its harder than you'd think to treat everyone pretty much exactly the same. do it anyways
-when you're not 112% sure what to say, use generic pronouns
-people take this shit seriously.
--- End quote ---
There are women who would be quite upset if guys used the girls bathroom. There are women who wouldn't care. "Treating everyone exactly the same" is probably better, at our current stage of development, than what we did historically. Though historically I think there were reasons for gender roles that modern people don't often acknowledge. The one group that it's unequivocally okay to discriminate against is those people who lived a few hundred years ago. Because they're all dead.
Socially, even today, it's not necessarily adaptive to treat people "exactly the same" in all cultures and all situations. People are individuals and their individuality is frequently informed by their sex. Male behavior is not statistically identical to female behavior, for whatever reason. Look at prison populations and arrest rates for an example of that. I understand the benefit of seeing people as 'tabula rasa' politically but I don't think it holds up as a predictive model in day to day life.
I'd love to have a generic pronoun. Using "they" as a gender neutral singular seems the most natural to me.
And I agree that people take this shit seriously. Myself included.
wiserd:
--- Quote from: Akima on 06 Aug 2013, 02:23 ---
--- Quote from: wiserd on 05 Aug 2013, 19:28 ---
--- Quote ---such as doubting if a person can "really be" their gender given certain behaviors.
--- End quote ---
I assume you're not quoting me, here.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: wiserd on 02 Aug 2013, 00:51 ---Is it just me or does May really not seem female.
--- End quote ---
Your earlier posting certainly expressed doubt about May's femaleness based on her behaviour.
--- End quote ---
I certainly think May could be female given her behavior (to whatever extent we apply the concept of gender to AnthroPCs.) I did question what exactly was going on there, and whether it was possible she was in some way not her gender.
can != might
If that makes sense.
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