Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT: 2500-2504 (29 July- August 2, 2013) Weekly Comic Discussion Thread
wiserd:
--- Quote ---Y'know, come to think of it.. Is it just me or does Marten really not seem male?
--- End quote ---
I assume that that's kindof a throwaway line or mockery. But I'll engage it as a sincere attempt to model my beliefs.
First, there are a lot of men with low muscle mass. Martin is not an outlier in this regard. People with unusually high lean muscle mass tend strongly to be men, or have taken steroids, or have some other trait which explains their being on the long tail. Usually.
Second, Martin seems on the tall end, which, probabalistically, favors cis-male-ness in the average human.
But there are lots of other things.... waking up at 40 with nothing to show for it tends slightly towards a more masculine experience of time than feminine. Being as calm as Martin is doesn't suggest a particular conflict with social norms. I don't get the feeling that Martin is particularly defensive, recovering from anything, dealing with any major crisis either internal or external, etc.
None of these are conclusive even in a constellation, of course. But they explain why I don't have any real reason to think Martin has anything particularly big bubbling beneath the surface of his persona. (Despite his family situation.)
--- Quote ---Thus if we want to "seem female", then we should adhere to your biased personal experience of "How women are".
--- End quote ---
Please note that I never said anything about what someone "wanted to seem." That is a whole new kettle of worms (Bigger than a can. And even worse, we're out of fish) that you are opening, not me.
If you want to seem feminine to me, then you should act according to my notions of femininity. Sure. But why on earth should you care whether you seem feminine to me? Honestly? Further, I suspect that I don't place nearly the weight on femininity or masculinity that some do. These are merely models used to predict people's behavior. Whether I think a woman is feminine or a guy is masculine has absolutely nothing to do with my affinity for them or whether I think they're a likable person. (Okay, I tend to not get along with really sterotypically hyper-macho and hyper-feminine people. But that's beside the point.)
--- Quote ---The issue lies in reducing her as a person with their sexist nonsense and how her being a woman is supposedly some "handicap", because she was supposed to be dumb.
--- End quote ---
Yes. Well, I can't say that they expected her to be dumb in general based only on what she told us. I got a very narrow slice. But they seem to have expected her to be bad at math because of her gender or sex. They didn't claim that being female was a handicap for her, personally. They did acknowledge her competence, it seems. She feels insulted because she feels her coworkers insulted a group she belonged to and identified with and suggested that such group identification was somehow (she feels, at least) incompatible with her abilities. In any case, it entirely ignores the question of whether there really are certain traits which correlate with an affinity for math.
--- Quote ---just as how it isn't a compliment to say "you're passable [as cisgender]" as a synonym for being pretty.
--- End quote ---
I assume you mean because it's damning with faint praise. Kindof like "you won't completely bomb the test."
--- Quote ---These things only betray what oppressive, normative attitudes the person already holds which do not take into account that "trans =/= ugly" or "woman =/= stupid".
--- End quote ---
Just to be clear, this is not a response to any attitude I hold. I know that mathematicians often take a problem and convert it to a solved problem, then solve it. I halfway feel like some people on this board have pegged me as an enemy and then decided that my statements should be converted somehow into statements similar to those of known enemies so that they can thereby be dismissed. It's the whole 'converting my statements into things I didn't say' which aggravates me.
--- Quote ---You said a character "doesn't seem female" and went on to talk about how none of the women you know behave like that, therefore it is nonsensical for there to be a woman who does.
--- End quote ---
Where are you getting the " therefore it is nonsensical for there to be a woman who does." Please quote the line.
Hint: I didn't say that. The first part, sure. The second part? No, you're making that up.
--- Quote ---That it warrants extra scrutiny for falling outside of your norms (but apparently you're not being normative about it)
--- End quote ---
Yes. Put in more mundane terms; unusual is not the same as bad. Why is this so confusing? Do you associate conformity with being good?
--- Quote ---and statistical correlations are not determinants.
--- End quote ---
Never once said they were. Quite the opposite. Multiple times. Who are you arguing with?
--- Quote ---And stop trying to play the "Those damn marginalized people are trying to censor my opinions and free speech AND EVEN MY VERY THOUGHTS :cry: " card.
--- End quote ---
If you tell me one more time that my beliefs are a game, I will tell you that your beliefs are a game. I suspect you will take it
much worse than I have. Consider treating others as you would like to be treated. Being "marginalized" does not excuse you from that.
If you want to tell me that you're okay with whatever I say and whatever I think, so long as it's based on evidence and some measure of compassion, by all means say that. Or, if you're not okay with that then... hey, if the shoe fits don't complain about being asked to wear it.
--- Quote ---People don't have an unalienable right to be liked.
--- End quote ---
I never said I cared strongly if anyone liked me. Just the opposite. I said I'd rather believe what I think is true, but that I was amenable to persuasion that my beliefs were untrue. What I object to is an argument of the form "If you believe X then we will not like you, so you should not believe x." People try that sometimes. It doesn't work so well with me. But I'm open to persuasion, all the same.
--- Quote ---
--- Quote from: wiserd on 07 Aug 2013, 12:36 ---associated with male primary and secondary sexual characteristics.
--- End quote ---
If one presupposes that such traits belong in such categories in the first place. Which I do not. That's just more commonly the case for most of the population. If for instance a trans woman who is comfortable with her genitalia doesn't have genital reassignment surgery... then those are her genitals, consistent with her brain-mapping as a woman, not male ones.
--- End quote ---
Yes, it's a model that works for most of the population. And when it's not the case, there's usually a reason for it. Someone with normal testosterone but stereotypically feminine features may be androgen insensitive. So we start with a typical case and then ask why a particular subject diverges from it. And the result is a working mental model.
wiserd:
--- Quote from: Redball on 07 Aug 2013, 15:03 ---
--- Quote from: pwhodges on 07 Aug 2013, 13:16 ---It may not be easy to do, I admit, and it's certainly not easy to umpire!
--- End quote ---
Maybe all sides could agree to call the game on account of darkness.
--- End quote ---
Sounds good to me.
GarandMarine:
Every now and then, the left half of your brain looks at the right half of your brain and says "It's dark in here, and we may die"
Is it cold in here?:
(moderator)
This is going in circles and not visibly promoting understanding.
(/moderator)
Carl-E:
--- Quote from: wiserd on 06 Aug 2013, 20:01 ---
--- Quote from: Method of Madness on 06 Aug 2013, 19:05 ---Start from the beginning, read as much as you can, but please don't talk about the matter until you do. There's really no way we could answer your question better than that thread could. For that matter, the thread will let you know how misguided the question itself is.
--- End quote ---
I read 2 pages. Nothing was particularly new and the text wasn't at all information dense. I saw the notion of strong vs. weak associations with gender identity brought up a few times, but never really brought to much of a conclusion except that 'people are different.' Okay, sure. But that says nothing about average tendencies. If there's something specific you want me to see, please post the specific text and I'll happily read it. In the meantime, I'm going to go back to having as much of an opinion as anyone else on this forum. And if that's unreasonable somehow, by all means, feel free to explain why. "Don't have an opinion till you've read the phone book" isn't something most folks would go for.
Best
--- End quote ---
I think you've missed the point. Keep reading.
Maybe then, you'll notice that your usage of language is only part of the problem, the other part being your assumptions about anything in human behaviour being "normative". Yes, there are societal norms, but that's the main part of the problem.
And you should probably read some of this thread, too. The more information you're exposed too, the better.
But you really need to shake yourself free of the notion that people are abusing your language usage, especially since you've had to apologize for "misspeaking" so often! The speech isn't the problem - your clarifications have drawn the same reactions as the originals - the problem is the thinking behind the speech.
Open your mind just a little further, and the light might have a chance to shine in.
Boy, am I glad I've been to busy the last few days to really follow all this as-it-happened!
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