So this has come up twice in the past month in FB threads that I've been a part of, mostly as a condescending way to basically say, "you're a man, your opinion doesn't count here."
I guess my real question is why is this vernacular acceptable? I've read a few articles on it online, and to me all they're doing is making excuses for their misandry.
Bear in mind that neither time has it come in an instance where the poster (it wasn't me, in one case) wasnt trying to explain something, but was rather simply disagreeing or asking a question.
It's intended as a term to mock men who feel the need to explain things to women (in a condescending tone), but yes. I have noticed that the term gets thrown around at times at people for seemingly no reason other than disagreeing with something. Maybe an extreme case of overreaction and Poe's Law?
Read the comments section of Huffington Post and you'll see this term come up a bit.
My understanding of the term is hazy, but it seems to have be borne out of the frustration women often feel when men condescendingly "explain" things to them (especially things the woman already knows) out of some sense of authority on the man's part because he is a man (and regardless of his knowledge of the topic). I've seen this happen (and have been guilty of it myself as well) so the term seems legitimate enough.
I have seen it used to shut down male opinions (again, on sites like HuffPost) lately, so I think it is another term that is literally ( )changing its definition as its popularity increases.
jasper76 wrote: I long for a day when "mansplaining" and "check your priviledge" are just a bad memory.
There's a virus going around making people stupider. You won't find the day those are bad memories. Given time, you'll be longing for the good old days of mansplaination and the checking of priviledge.
Ashiraya wrote: Dismissing someone because they are a man is as wrong as dismissing someone because they are a woman, and I am fairly sure that is the consensus here.
See.... I think so too, but in these conversations its been seen as not only acceptable, but other woman have, effectively, cheered about it.
jasper76 wrote: I long for a day when "mansplaining" and "check your priviledge" are just a bad memory.
There's a virus going around making people stupider. You won't find the day those are bad memories. Given time, you'll be longing for the good old days of mansplaination and the checking of priviledge.
I just wonder when being a white male becomes a crime, will I get a pass because I'm Irish?
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: I'm 1/8 Irish. Nevermind the fact that I was born in England and have lived in England all my life, I have Irish blood so I'm a victim too.
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
You need to stop mansplaining and check your 7/8ths privilege. The good 1/8 does get a pass, though.
It's a bad term because it stereotypes the inappropriate behavior in question as "man" thing and ignores the fact that women can do it too, but the basic concept is a relevant one. Way too many people think that their opinion as an outside observer is more important than the opinions of the people who are actually involved in a given situation, and so you get awkward "let me tell you how I'm an expert on your life" conversations. At best it is an awkward eyeroll moment where you just wish the person would STFU and stop digging their hole even deeper, at worst it drives the people with direct experience of a problem out of the discussion and lets it be dominated by uninformed outsiders. So we shouldn't stereotype it as a "man" thing, but we shouldn't pretend that it isn't bad behavior or a legitimate problem.
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jasper76 wrote: I long for a day when "mansplaining" and "check your priviledge" are just a bad memory.
And I long for the day when people stop dismissing relevant concepts because the words are "silly" and/or they have the privilege of dismissing it as "tumblr feminiazis" or "SJWs" or whatever other ridiculous cliche is popular these days.
@Oeregrine: you just admitted the phrase is ridiculous (I'm sorry, you can't take the "man" out of "mansplaining") , and in the same post call other people out for claiming its ridiculoius.
jasper76 wrote: @Oeregrine: you just admitted the phrase is ridiculous (I'm sorry, you can't take the "man" out of "mansplaining") , and in the same post call other people out for claiming its ridiculoius.
Unconfuse yourself, or make up your mind
He clearly makes a distinction between the concept in itself and the word used to describe it. Hardly confusing.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: He clearly makes a distinction between the concept in itself and the word used to describe it. Hardly confusing.
Exactly. The argument I'm objecting to is "someone used a silly name to talk about X therefore I can just ignore X", where people just post nonsense like "lol mainsplaining tumblr feminazi SJWs" and act like that's all that needs to be said about the issue.
I'm going to hold my hand up and my head down to say that I've done the whole mansplaining thing before. And to be honest, the specific incident when I realised it still has me thinking about it quite often more than 5 years later.
Firstly, my apologies to anyone for any rationalisation / excuses. However, on with the story.
I've had 2 IT jobs in my life. One was in my early 20's, in a gap period in university and the other is my current job.
My first IT job, I guess you could say, was a little bit 'old world order.' And it was, well, my first IT job so my knowledge of the industry was pretty much non existent. In any case, it was an office environment and in many ways, it was pretty much the exact stereotype. In other words, the women in that office, at that time, which I worked there and whom I interacted with on a regular basis, just did not know computer-ey stuff. In fact, I'd often get scowled and sneered at if I started mentioning 'technical rubbish' to my various bosses.
I then returned to university, to my Computing classes, where, again, there were very few women on my course and none of whom, who I interacted with at that time, displayed to me much aptitude to computing.
And see. This is where I made my mistake. I graduated, entered my new job, big business, lots of people. Then, pretty much in my first week, the newbies of my recruitment intake went for a night out.
In any case, we were sitting in the pub, one the guys, way smarter than me, an actual proper PHD in computing, whereas I was just a graduate, was talking about some really technical computery stuff and I, took it upon myself to assume that the girl sitting at the table, who was recruited as a project manager, had no idea what the guy was talking about.
I assumed I was helping, I thought I was basically translating, this technical gibberish for her.
What I was actually doing, was mansplaining. I had unconsciously made the summation that, "as the women I have interacted with in the past had little technical knowledge and understanding, most if not all women were not technical."
In short. This wasn't cool.
What kind of makes it even sadder, was the girl never said a word about this, just politely sat there, probably trying to ignore the complete rubbish I was spouting. She more than likely knew more about the subject than I did. It was either the guy telling the story, or another one of the guys at the table, which had to say to me, not making a big deal about it or anything, but it was just a simple. "Dude, <Insertpersonnamehere> knows this stuff, you don't need to do that."
Usually I have a good idea when I'm being a jerk about something, but that just caused a mental blue screen of death for me (to continue with the technology angle).
And yeah, years later, I still feel quite horrible about it. What really hits it home, though, is that many women probably put up with that all day and every day and don't say a word about it. If that guy hadn't piped up, I would have never been the wiser either.
My concern is that the phrase seems to be VERY acceptable in some circles, as a end all, be all way to shut down a conversation and dismiss an argument, most notably from a male.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: He clearly makes a distinction between the concept in itself and the word used to describe it. Hardly confusing.
Exactly. The argument I'm objecting to is "someone used a silly name to talk about X therefore I can just ignore X", where people just post nonsense like "lol mainsplaining tumblr feminazi SJWs" and act like that's all that needs to be said about the issue.
Fair enough. This is a bit of a hot button for me, because I have seen this phrase used in a proffessional environment in an attempt to get someone out of being told how to perform a task they clearly didn't understand how to do. And if you can't do your job because your not willing to have someone "mansplain" it to you, a line has been crossed IMO.
Compel wrote: I'm going to hold my hand up and my head down to say that I've done the whole mansplaining thing before. And to be honest, the specific incident when I realised it still has me thinking about it quite often more than 5 years later.
Firstly, my apologies to anyone for any rationalisation / excuses. However, on with the story.
I've had 2 IT jobs in my life. One was in my early 20's, in a gap period in university and the other is my current job.
My first IT job, I guess you could say, was a little bit 'old world order.' And it was, well, my first IT job so my knowledge of the industry was pretty much non existent. In any case, it was an office environment and in many ways, it was pretty much the exact stereotype. In other words, the women in that office, at that time, which I worked there and whom I interacted with on a regular basis, just did not know computer-ey stuff. In fact, I'd often get scowled and sneered at if I started mentioning 'technical rubbish' to my various bosses.
I then returned to university, to my Computing classes, where, again, there were very few women on my course and none of whom, who I interacted with at that time, displayed to me much aptitude to computing.
And see. This is where I made my mistake. I graduated, entered my new job, big business, lots of people. Then, pretty much in my first week, the newbies of my recruitment intake went for a night out.
In any case, we were sitting in the pub, one the guys, way smarter than me, an actual proper PHD in computing, whereas I was just a graduate, was talking about some really technical computery stuff and I, took it upon myself to assume that the girl sitting at the table, who was recruited as a project manager, had no idea what the guy was talking about.
I assumed I was helping, I thought I was basically translating, this technical gibberish for her.
What I was actually doing, was mansplaining. I had unconsciously made the summation that, "as the women I have interacted with in the past had little technical knowledge and understanding, most if not all women were not technical."
In short. This wasn't cool.
What kind of makes it even sadder, was the girl never said a word about this, just politely sat there, probably trying to ignore the complete rubbish I was spouting. She more than likely knew more about the subject than I did. It was either the guy telling the story, or another one of the guys at the table, which had to say to me, not making a big deal about it or anything, but it was just a simple. "Dude, <Insertpersonnamehere> knows this stuff, you don't need to do that."
Usually I have a good idea when I'm being a jerk about something, but that just caused a mental blue screen of death for me (to continue with the technology angle).
And yeah, years later, I still feel quite horrible about it. What really hits it home, though, is that many women probably put up with that all day and every day and don't say a word about it. If that guy hadn't piped up, I would have never been the wiser either.
And that is pretty darn sad.
Reminds me of a time my friend was trying to explain each play during a football game to a girl in our group who not only knew the rules of football and had better knowledge of the game than him, but was also a referee for high school football.
cincydooley wrote: My concern is that the phrase seems to be VERY acceptable in some circles, as a end all, be all way to shut down a conversation and dismiss an argument, most notably from a male.
I would say just quit the circle if they're going to dismiss you simply because of gender
Mansplaining is, in it's simplest terms, removing a person's ability to comment on something because he has a penis/Y chromosome.
jasper76 wrote: I just wonder when being a white male becomes a crime, will I get a pass because I'm Irish?
Nope
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: I'm 1/8 Irish. Nevermind the fact that I was born in England and have lived in England all my life, I have Irish blood so I'm a victim too.
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
I'm 100% Irish, and we traditionally don't play the victim card. We get another round in and get on with things
That's potentially another good example too. "If the person was explaining the game to say, a British male, who was heavily into sport, but unfamiliar with the specifics of American football, the same way, in the same tone?" If the answer is 'no' then it's probably what's generally seen as mansplaining.
There are genuine, polite ways to explain concepts to people without being a jerk.
Funnily enough, I'm now in a team where there aren't a lot of particularly computer-ey-technical people again (some male, some female), where I end needing to explain a lot of technical-ish concepts to them (EG, tarring files and SCP between servers). It quite often comes down to little caveats like, "getting the order right can always be a bit tricky when it comes to SCP, how I try to remember it is, it's like an address, me:from/some/place, sending it to someone:some/place."
It describes a thing that exists not just in a man-on-feminist-ideas capacity, but generally. The term grew out of a specific frustration with conversations that follow roughly one of these templates.
Woman: I had an experience once. I did not like it.
Dudebro: No you didn't - here's what really happened, and how/why you made the mistake of thinking that happened once. As you can see from my logic, what really happened is clear.
Woman: I don't like it when people say this thing about women, it doesn't apply to me personally.
Neckbeard: Yes it does, even if you don't want to admit it. Here's general scenario that I'm going to say applies to you. You can see I've proved with my logic how it applies to you.
Woman: There's a problem and I'm frustrated by the lack of solutions.
Neckbro: Sure there is. Have you tried obvious solution that would be the first thing anyone would think of? I'm sure you didn't because there is no way there are obstacles or constraints I don't understand. Clearly you're just looking for something to be upset about if you're ignoring obvious solution.
Woman: This thing is rather unfair and well documented.
Dudebeard: That thing isn't very important compared to this other thing, because this other thing is about men. That's the real issue here.
I mean there are others too but this touches a few biggies. It's certainly not something only men do, or that only happens in the context of women's issues. However in the context of women's issues there are a lot of dudes doing a lot of the above. Some snarky terminology to help put down/call out the behavior was probably just a natural result of that.
EDIT: If it helps you in future conversations, you can basically do a substitution so any time someone says "You are Mansplaining" you can read it as
"You're being a presumptuous know-it-all, and a bit of an donkey-cave. Step back and take more than a moment to consider if it's possible you might be lacking information here. You've not experienced this issue personally in the same context, if something seems off try and find a way to get an understanding the context before commenting further. If upon immediately reading that the previous sentence an idea of how exactly it "must be" sprang to mind without further investigation: You're being a presumptuous know-it-all and a bit of donkey-cave"
My introduction to mansplaining via a FB thread was when some friends were discussing the NY Catcall video with the female comic and the male author were guests on some news show. I didn't watch the video as both guests were maddeningly face-punchable but I got the essence of the term instantly.
Like any term that can be used in a debate, it can be misapplied.
Sining wrote: Lol, how are the two things even the same?
They are not the "Same" but a parallel exists because they're reproductive health expenses that are sex specific. Furthermore a performance aids like a penis-pump or Viagra can be though strictly in terms of being a luxury. They improve your quality of life but they'll never save one, and the are only in the most rare of cases undoing harm done to you by another. In contrast a pregnancy always puts a great deal of strain on a woman's body, and can be even life-threatening and it can also be the result of sexual assault.
That men's reproductive services that can be considered only to be a Quality-of-Life improvement are covered as a matter of course, but far more urgent women's health services are anywhere from controversial to a non-starter is seen as broadly unfair. Now the reasons you may not see this as comparable, and why there is resistance to coverage of these reproductive services for women is another issue that hooks into this one (and why the comparison is often made). However that's a bit beyond the scope of this thread and also I have to go to bed.
cincydooley wrote: I guess my real question is why is this vernacular acceptable?
It isn't. It's along the same lines as things like "tone policing" and other made-up words created specifically to shut down debate, shut people up, and push a specific ideology devoid of logic.
Falls into a similar category to things like "cultural appropriation" and "ableism", that is to say things that don't really exist, or, at the very least do but not quite to the same extreme as those that bang on about them would have us believe.
H.B.M.C. wrote: It isn't. It's along the same lines as things like "tone policing" and other made-up words created specifically to shut down debate, shut people up, and push a specific ideology devoid of logic.
Oh that's just beautiful irony. Did you know that "tone policing" is most often a response to attempts to shut down debate? Or do you not see a problem with attempting to derail discussion of a subject by turning it into an argument about whether the people involved are being polite enough?
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H.B.M.C. wrote: Falls into a similar category to things like "cultural appropriation" and "ableism", that is to say things that don't really exist, or, at the very least do but not quite to the same extreme as those that bang on about them would have up believe.
You mean the category "things I have the privilege of being able to ignore, so you shouldn't care about them either".
EDIT: If it helps you in future conversations, you can basically do a substitution so any time someone says "You are Mansplaining" you can read it as
"You're being a presumptuous know-it-all, and a bit of an donkey-cave. Step back and take more than a moment to consider if it's possible you might be lacking information here. You've not experienced this issue personally in the same context, if something seems off try and find a way to get an understanding the context before commenting further. If upon immediately reading that the previous sentence an idea of how exactly it "must be" sprang to mind without further investigation: You're being a presumptuous know-it-all and a bit of donkey-cave"
It would be nice if people just explained exactly what they mean rather then using terms like mansplaning, but I guess that might be impractical to type all of that out every time. It's just when people don't know what they mean and they sound inflammatory it can make people mistake you for mean when your not intending to be. Then again I might be arguing tone when I shouldn't be, or can we talk about tone?
Edit: On reflection, I think I may have just mansplained a little.
EDIT: If it helps you in future conversations, you can basically do a substitution so any time someone says "You are Mansplaining" you can read it as
"You're being a presumptuous know-it-all, and a bit of an donkey-cave. Step back and take more than a moment to consider if it's possible you might be lacking information here. You've not experienced this issue personally in the same context, if something seems off try and find a way to get an understanding the context before commenting further. If upon immediately reading that the previous sentence an idea of how exactly it "must be" sprang to mind without further investigation: You're being a presumptuous know-it-all and a bit of donkey-cave"
It would be nice if people just explained exactly what they mean rather then using terms like mansplaning, but I guess that might be impractical to type all of that out every time. It's just when people don't know what they mean and they sound inflammatory it can make people mistake you for mean when your not intending to be. Then again I might be arguing tone when I shouldn't be, or can we talk about tone?
Edit: On reflection, I think I may have just mansplained a little.
Can one even infer tone in text? How would that be achieved?
EDIT: If it helps you in future conversations, you can basically do a substitution so any time someone says "You are Mansplaining" you can read it as
"You're being a presumptuous know-it-all, and a bit of an donkey-cave. Step back and take more than a moment to consider if it's possible you might be lacking information here. You've not experienced this issue personally in the same context, if something seems off try and find a way to get an understanding the context before commenting further. If upon immediately reading that the previous sentence an idea of how exactly it "must be" sprang to mind without further investigation: You're being a presumptuous know-it-all and a bit of donkey-cave"
It would be nice if people just explained exactly what they mean rather then using terms like mansplaning, but I guess that might be impractical to type all of that out every time. It's just when people don't know what they mean and they sound inflammatory it can make people mistake you for mean when your not intending to be. Then again I might be arguing tone when I shouldn't be, or can we talk about tone?
Edit: On reflection, I think I may have just mansplained a little.
Can one even infer tone in text? How would that be achieved?
It is very easy to infer tone, but very hard to infer it correctly. At least that is my experience. Like I have a teacher who is rather nice in person, but in email comes off as mean and aggressive.
Sining wrote: Maybe that's their real personality. No one ever suspects the nice ones
Well in that case they are no good hiding their evil side in text. It's a lot harder to convey the tone you want in text because you can't do the voice or body language thing.
Peregrine wrote: Or do you not see a problem with attempting to derail discussion of a subject by turning it into an argument about whether the people involved are being polite enough?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, oh wise one, but isn't that exactly what tone policing is ie. a type of "style over substance" fallacy that seeks to derail conversation by focusing on tone rather than what's actually being said?
H.B.M.C. wrote: You mean the category "things I have the privilege of being able to ignore, so you shouldn't care about them either".
One of the benefits of the Internet over, say, verbal communication is that we have time to both read and understand what someone says before replying. Try it sometimes.
Or to put it another way, when I said:
"...or, at the very least do but not quite to the same extreme as those that bang on about them would have us believe."
What I meant was...
"...or, at the very least do but not quite to the same extreme as those that bang on about them would have us believe."
Do you require further clarification? Would you like me to explain that when people scream at Katy Perry for wearing a kimono or call out others for using the word 'petard' because it might offend people it's due to the gross warping of what "cultural appropriation" and "abelism" actually are?
And you said "privilege" unironically. That's funny.
Peregrine wrote:
And I long for the day when people stop dismissing relevant concepts....(*snip)
Just want to focus on your base premise, not the part that could ironically be considered by some types as "mansplaining".
Could you please explain why this concept is relevant or somehow appropriate?
Chongara wrote:It describes a thing that exists not just in a man-on-feminist-ideas capacity, but generally. The term grew out of a specific frustration with conversations that follow roughly one of these templates.
Spoiler:
Woman: I had an experience once. I did not like it.
Dudebro: No you didn't - here's what really happened, and how/why you made the mistake of thinking that happened once. As you can see from my logic, what really happened is clear.
Woman: I don't like it when people say this thing about women, it doesn't apply to me personally.
Neckbeard: Yes it does, even if you don't want to admit it. Here's general scenario that I'm going to say applies to you. You can see I've proved with my logic how it applies to you.
Woman: There's a problem and I'm frustrated by the lack of solutions.
Neckbro: Sure there is. Have you tried obvious solution that would be the first thing anyone think of? I'm sure you didn't because there is no way there are obstacles or constraints I don't understand. Clearly you're just looking for something to be upset about if you're ignoring obvious solution.
Woman: This thing is rather unfair and well documented.
Dudebeard: That thing isn't very important compared to this other thing, because this other thing is about men. That's the real issue here.
I mean there are others too but this touches a few biggies. It's certainly not something only men do, or that only happens in the context of women's issues. However in the context of women's issues there are a lot of dudes doing a lot of the above. Some snarky terminology to help put down/call out the behavior was probably just a natural result of that.
EDIT: If it helps you in future conversations, you can basically do a substitution so any time someone says "You are Mansplaining" you can read it as
"You're being a presumptuous know-it-all, and a bit of an donkey-cave. Step back and take more than a moment to consider if it's possible you might be lacking information here. You've not experienced this issue personally in the same context, if something seems off try and find a way to get an understanding the context before commenting further. If upon immediately reading that the previous sentence an idea of how exactly it "must be" sprang to mind without further investigation: You're being a presumptuous know-it-all and a bit of donkey-cave"
Spoilered the tldr; part that could be viewed by many as another instance of ironic "mansplaining".
Left it in because it pertains to a Catch 22 in political correctness. The Catch 22 is that the concept of mansplaining was originally and still is used to denote when men would use what women considered as overly technical terminology to describe something from their career field (ex. A mechanic that throws out a bunch of technical jargon at his female customers).
These men have had the concept of technical jargon = being bad in respect to use with people outside their professions. As such for the past 20+ years they have been encouraged to use simpler terminology...basically they are supposed to dumb it down.
Now these same people are castigated for using long simplified explanations as their being condescending.
What is a man(person) to do?
Sorry for the "mansplaition" but this was the only way I know to convey the damned if you speak situation that this concept creates.
Guess we all could just sit in our respective corners and not speak so that no one will be offended by concepts and ideas that are not their own.
Chongara wrote:
Sining wrote: Lol, how are the two things even the same?
They are not the "Same" but a parallel exists...
Spoiler:
because they're reproductive health expenses that are sex specific. Furthermore a performance aids like a penis-pump or Viagra can be though strictly in terms of being a luxury. They improve your quality of life but they'll never save one, and the are only in the most rare of cases undoing harm done to you by another. In contrast a pregnancy always puts a great deal of strain on a woman's body, and can be even life-threatening and it can also be the result of sexual assault.
That men's reproductive services that can be considered only to be a Quality-of-Life improvement are covered as a matter of course, but far more urgent women's health services are anywhere from controversial to a non-starter is seen as broadly unfair. Now the reasons you may not see this as comparable, and why there is resistance to coverage of these reproductive services for women is another issue that hooks into this one (and why the comparison is often made). However that's a bit beyond the scope of this thread and also I have to go to bed.
I disagree about their being a parallel. The person was, imo, correct that this was an apple to oranges argument.
Now if the comparison had been about insurance coverage of vasectomies & testicular cancer screenings versus tubal ligation and cervical cancer screenings then it would have been comparable.
focusedfire wrote: Just want to focus on your base premise, not the part that could ironically be considered by some types as "mansplaining".
Could you please explain why this concept is relevant or somehow appropriate?
Because too many oblivious people are happy to go on and on about their opinion on a particular subject while ignoring the fact that the person they're lecturing actually knows more about the subject than they do. At best it's rude and condescending, at worst it drives the people who have actual experience out of the discussion in favor of someone who just has a lot of opinions. For example, a tv news/opinion show where a bunch of rich white guys sit around talking about how racism isn't a big deal anymore and they never see it happen. Or just look at the examples Chongara posted, they're all completely inappropriate things to say and we should criticize them.
Now these same people are castigated for using long simplified explanations as their being condescending.
No, that isn't it at all. Nobody is criticizing people for simplifying a complex subject for a person who isn't familiar with it and needs a simpler explanation. The actual issue is simplifying things when that simplification isn't needed. For example, the story Piston Honda mentioned with a guy simplifying and explaining football to a woman who was a football referee. Of course we should consider that inappropriate, as the guy was blatantly assuming "she's just a woman, she can't know anything about a manly thing like football".
Left it in because it pertains to a Catch 22 in political correctness. The Catch 22 is that the concept of mansplaining was originally and still is used to denote when men would use what women considered as overly technical terminology to describe something from their career field (ex. A mechanic that throws out a bunch of technical jargon at his female customers).
These men have had the concept of technical jargon = being bad in respect to use with people outside their professions. As such for the past 20+ years they have been encouraged to use simpler terminology...basically they are supposed to dumb it down.
Either you don't really know what a catch 22 is or you didn't explain it very well but on the other hand you do give a good example of a man saying "you don't really understand" while seeming not understanding a thing.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Please correct me if I'm wrong, oh wise one, but isn't that exactly what tone policing is ie. a type of "style over substance" fallacy that seeks to derail conversation by focusing on tone rather than what's actually being said?
That's exactly what tone policing is. If I say "stop tone policing" what that means is "stop ignoring the issues and trying to derail this into a discussion of how 'angry' someone is/how they need to be less confrontational/etc". For example, if someone who has been on the wrong end of sexism/racism/etc posts a complaint about it and another person makes a "why do you have to be so angry about it" response. In that case the response would be labeled "tone policing" for very good reasons.
Do you require further clarification? Would you like me to explain that when people scream at Katy Perry for wearing a kimono or call out others for using the word 'petard' because it might offend people it's due to the gross warping of what "cultural appropriation" and "abelism" actually are?
Yep, you're just confirming what I said. You don't see any problem with the Katy Perry thing because you're not part of the culture that's being appropriated and stereotyped. Perhaps you should read this article where it gives reactions from people who are part of that culture. For example:
There is a long history of yellowface in media, specifically in film. Katy Perry’s terrible costume, as bad as it is, doesn’t even begin to touch the enormity of how terrible the fact that her backup dancers have makeup on that makes their eyes look squinty. This is yellowface in 2013.
I am in my 20s, and the shitbag boys who used to pull their eyes back and say “ching chong” still hurt me. This sort of gak is not funny or artistic to me; it just reminds me that I am still not an American to a lot of people and that someone who looks like me still cannot be a Katy Perry of the world.
As for the "petard" thing, I'll first let you explain what 16th century siege explosives or being hurt by your own plan have to do with ableism.
And you said "privilege" unironically. That's funny.
TUMBLR FEMINAZIS SJW LOLLOLLOLLOLLOL
I don't really know what to say to you if you think that "privilege" is such an awful thing to talk about. It would be like trying to explain how the sky is blue, or how 1+1=2.
As part of the culture that's being appropriated, or half-part, can I say that people who think it's offensive are literally quite slowed? And wearing a kimono is different from pulling your eyes and saying ching chong. Please don't act as if there's some homogeneous agreement that the natives think Katy Perry wearing a kimono is offensive and that you need to get offended on our behalf. If the culture was offended, it would be in THAT cultures newspapers, not American tumblr blogs or whatever man.
Privilege exists certainly, but the whole progressive new-speak ‘privilege’ seems based on arbitrary factors such as age, gender, race etc as opposed to any genuine privilege.
I’m a white, heterosexual male in my 30’s. Apparently I’m about as powerful as it gets and this makes my opinions on any subject irrelevant due to my ‘privilege’.
It’s particularly grinding to be lectured on my ‘privilege’ by big city based journalists writing articles for the Guardian or Huffington Post who earn 5 times as much as I do.
LordofHats wrote: It's intended as a term to mock men who feel the need to explain things to women (in a condescending tone), but yes. I have noticed that the term gets thrown around at times at people for seemingly no reason other than disagreeing with something. Maybe an extreme case of overreaction and Poe's Law?
For some reason though white knighting is more acceptable, considering the irony of it being even more condescending towards women.
I've had a lot of awkward moments when I going on about something like the frontal slope of a panther tank's armor or the Siege of Vienna in 1688 where people have no clue what I'm on about and I throw out a lot of terms people don't understand. This feeds into my crippling social awkwardness and i live in abject terror that I am talking about something and the other person not knowing what I am talking about, so I tend to over explain things just in case someone isn't up to date on the ballistics of a 7.5cm KwK 42 or whatever useless thing I am talking about. I'm not intending to condescend but be helpful.
Just today I had an argument with my girlfriend when I attempted to explain what a crew chief on a helicopter did. I was then informed that she knew what it was and I was making her feel stupid by explaining. How the heck was I supposed to know she knew what that was, its not exactly something that comes up in everyday conversation.
I ended up telling her that if I ever do that again just mentally add this in front of my explanation, "I don't know if you know about this subject so I'll explain it. If you do know feel free to ignore this bit."
Its sexism but against men so it's seen to be ok, which is completely hypocritical as those using the phrase probably identify as feminists.
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LuciusAR wrote: Privilege exists certainly, but the whole progressive new-speak ‘privilege’ seems based on arbitrary factors such as age, gender, race etc as opposed to any genuine privilege.
I’m a white, heterosexual male in my 30’s. Apparently I’m about as powerful as it gets and this makes my opinions on any subject irrelevant due to my ‘privilege’.
It’s particularly grinding to be lectured on my ‘privilege’ by big city based journalists writing articles for the Guardian or Huffington Post who earn 5 times as much as I do.
Shut up we don't need your while male dominant oppression here! You are the 1% holding 99% of all the wealth and teef!!! *RAEG*
On a serious note the whole lefty journalism thing is its own circlejerk. People bitching about petty 1st world issues when people are starving, being bombed, or being shafted by their government.
Soteks Prophet wrote: IPeople bitching about petty 1st world issues when people are starving, being bombed, or being shafted by their government.
The next time you go to McDonalds and they forget to give you your soda, I hope you remember that humans are incapable of working on more than one thing at a time, and you're be a pretty big jerk to ask the cashier to bring the soda you paid for when he or she is possibly working on a cure for cancer.
Don't dwell on your first world problem! There are children in Africa who have never had a McFlurry!
focusedfire wrote: Left it in because it pertains to a Catch 22 in political correctness. The Catch 22 is that the concept of mansplaining was originally and still is used to denote when men would use what women considered as overly technical terminology to describe something from their career field (ex. A mechanic that throws out a bunch of technical jargon at his female customers).
No, the term was originally used to denote when men would discuss stuff with a woman as if she had no knowledge of the subject, despite being knowledgeable about it. The woman who originally coined it did so in reference to a man at a party she had recently attended who insisted on explaining the premise of a book that he really liked to her, ignoring the fact that she was the author of said book, and only stopping when a male friend of hers informed the guy that she was the author.
In your example it, it would be like the mechanic explaining the issues with a car to a woman as if she were a five year old, when she works in the engineering department for Ford and designed the car's engine, and him refusing to accept that she actually knows what she's talking about.
This discussion is silly, based purely on the fact that most of the arguments in this thread (as above) are against misuses of the term, not the term as intended.
focusedfire wrote: Just want to focus on your base premise, not the part that could ironically be considered by some types as "mansplaining".
Could you please explain why this concept is relevant or somehow appropriate?
Because too many oblivious people are happy to go on and on about their opinion on a particular subject while ignoring the fact that the person they're lecturing actually knows more about the subject than they do. At best it's rude and condescending, at worst it drives the people who have actual experience out of the discussion in favor of someone who just has a lot of opinions. For example, a tv news/opinion show where a bunch of rich white guys sit around talking about how racism isn't a big deal anymore and they never see it happen. Or just look at the examples Chongara posted, they're all completely inappropriate things to say and we should criticize them.
To many words, too much assumption and hyperbole.
I ask you again, "Could you please make a case for this concept?". When making such a case, it would be helpful to explain what the concept is in its most pure and basic form.
The concept as I perceive it, is one group using passive aggressive techniques to censor and dictate the behaviour of others that are differ in sex, ethnicity and ideologies.
In the instance that you give of someone just sitting and allowing one of less expertise lecture without saying a word. That person in your example would then go on to complain to others about the individual to where they develop a dismissive and insulting label .
This is text book passive aggressive behaviour.
Peregrine wrote:
focusedfire wrote:Now these same people are castigated for using long simplified explanations as their being condescending.
No, that isn't it at all. Nobody is criticizing people for simplifying a complex subject for a person who isn't familiar with it and needs a simpler explanation. The actual issue is simplifying things when that simplification isn't needed. For example, the story Piston Honda mentioned with a guy simplifying and explaining football to a woman who was a football referee. Of course we should consider that inappropriate, as the guy was blatantly assuming "she's just a woman, she can't know anything about a manly thing like football".
I respectfully disagree. The criticism of people (usually men) for simplifying is and has been an issue for a long time. Leaders in the feminist movement have put forward a thought process where a man is lording his power and authority over women for using technical jargon while at the same time claiming that men who simplify their descriptions are emotionally abusive by being patronizing or condescending.
Ahtman wrote:
Left it in because it pertains to a Catch 22 in political correctness. The Catch 22 is that the concept of mansplaining was originally and still is used to denote when men would use what women considered as overly technical terminology to describe something from their career field (ex. A mechanic that throws out a bunch of technical jargon at his female customers).
These men have had the concept of technical jargon = being bad in respect to use with people outside their professions. As such for the past 20+ years they have been encouraged to use simpler terminology...basically they are supposed to dumb it down.
Either you don't really know what a catch 22 is or you didn't explain it very well but on the other hand you do give a good example of a man saying "you don't really understand" while seeming not understanding a thing.
If you had used the 21 minutes it took to come up with a dismissive bit of snark to read all of the material and attempted a simple basic understanding of what was there, we could be having a productive discussion.
Still, being incorrect in order to score interwebz snark points is a preference for some I guess.
Btw, my above reply to Peregrine more clearly details the Catch-22
in this type of concept/behaviour.
Peregrine wrote:
Sining wrote: Yes. I at least think privilege isn't a thing
You are wrong.
And really, what else is there to say when someone posts the equivalent of "I think 1+1=3"?
focusedfire wrote: I ask you again, "Could you please make a case for this concept?". When making such a case, it would be helpful to explain what the concept is in its most pure and basic form.
In the instance that you give of someone just sitting and allowing one of less expertise lecture without saying a word. That person in your example would then go on to complain to others about the individual to where they develop a dismissive and insulting label .
This is text book passive aggressive behaviour.
Or the person being lectured is on the wrong end of an imbalance in power and is reluctant to say something that might provoke bad consequences. Or they're concerned about social pressure to be "polite" and not criticize people. There are lots of reasons why someone wouldn't openly and directly criticize bad behavior, and failure to do so does not justify the original offense.
I respectfully disagree. The criticism of people (usually men) for simplifying is and has been an issue for a long time. Leaders in the feminist movement have put forward a thought process where a man is lording his power and authority over women for using technical jargon while at the same time claiming that men who simplify their descriptions are emotionally abusive by being patronizing or condescending.
I really have no idea what you're talking about. Could you provide some examples of these feminists who object to men using technical jargon in an appropriate technical context AND object to men simplifying their descriptions? Because I really find it hard to believe that this kind of thing exists as more than a tiny and irrelevant minority.
focusedfire wrote: Left it in because it pertains to a Catch 22 in political correctness. The Catch 22 is that the concept of mansplaining was originally and still is used to denote when men would use what women considered as overly technical terminology to describe something from their career field (ex. A mechanic that throws out a bunch of technical jargon at his female customers).
No, the term was originally used to denote when men would discuss stuff with a woman as if she had no knowledge of the subject, despite being knowledgeable about it. The woman who originally coined it did so in reference to a man at a party she had recently attended who insisted on explaining the premise of a book that he really liked to her, ignoring the fact that she was the author of said book, and only stopping when a male friend of hers informed the guy that she was the author.
In your example it, it would be like the mechanic explaining the issues with a car to a woman as if she were a five year old, when she works in the engineering department for Ford and designed the car's engine, and him refusing to accept that she actually knows what she's talking about.
This discussion is silly, based purely on the fact that most of the arguments in this thread (as above) are against misuses of the term, not the term as intended.
Just to note, the term and concept have been around for a long time. Can't remember the name of the comedian in the '80s that used it, just that she had a good/funny set.
This may disagree with your origins of the term story but such is common when looking into the etymology of sayings.
Not saying either of us is wrong. Just that my first introduction to the concept was through 1970's feminists and the first time I heard the term was from a comedian a long time ago.
If you still consider me incorrect, oh well. At least hopefully some will realize that this concept, like many others discussed on the forums is niether new or exclusive to just this generation.
focusedfire wrote: If you had used the 21 minutes it took to come up with a dismissive bit of snark to read all of the material and attempted a simple basic understanding of what was there, we could be having a productive discussion.
Still, being incorrect in order to score interwebz snark points is a preference for some I guess.
Btw, my above reply to Peregrine more clearly details the Catch-22
in this type of concept/behaviour.
So it is that you both don't really understand how a Catch-22 works and you didn't explain yourself very well. That was my bad for leaving out that option.
Also, if you are going to try be insulting about someone being snarky and misunderstanding it helps to also not be snarky and show gross misunderstanding. It just makes you come across as insolent and petulant.
cincydooley wrote: So this has come up twice in the past month in FB threads that I've been a part of, mostly as a condescending way to basically say, "you're a man, your opinion doesn't count here."
I guess my real question is why is this vernacular acceptable? I've read a few articles on it online, and to me all they're doing is making excuses for their misandry.
Bear in mind that neither time has it come in an instance where the poster (it wasn't me, in one case) wasnt trying to explain something, but was rather simply disagreeing or asking a question.
So...someone help me here. I don't understand it.
'Mansplaining' is when a man uses his position of natural authority and knowledge as a man to explain something to the 'little woman' who could not be be expected to know or understand owing to her inferior intellectual status as a woman.
cincydooley wrote: So this has come up twice in the past month in FB threads that I've been a part of, mostly as a condescending way to basically say, "you're a man, your opinion doesn't count here."
I guess my real question is why is this vernacular acceptable? I've read a few articles on it online, and to me all they're doing is making excuses for their misandry.
Bear in mind that neither time has it come in an instance where the poster (it wasn't me, in one case) wasnt trying to explain something, but was rather simply disagreeing or asking a question.
So...someone help me here. I don't understand it.
'Mansplaining' is when a man uses his position of natural authority and knowledge as a man to explain something to the 'little woman' who could not be be expected to know or understand owing to her inferior intellectual status as a woman.
It's nothing to do with so-called misandry.
I'd say that mansplaining has sprung up from the slight difference in the way men and women communicate. A woman just wanting to express her feeling/ideas on a subject might view a mans tendency to go for a solution as condescending and unneeded or unwanted. I don't think there's any inherent thing wrong with mansplaining it's just what guys do, and training yourself out of the behavior is hard. Using it as a put down is the same as saying "women just talk pointlessly about thing..natter, natter, natter" ...ect.
I think some people need to check their victim privilege
focusedfire wrote: In the instance that you give of someone just sitting and allowing one of less expertise lecture without saying a word. That person in your example would then go on to complain to others about the individual to where they develop a dismissive and insulting label .
This is text book passive aggressive behaviour.
Or the person being lectured is on the wrong end of an imbalance in power and is reluctant to say something that might provoke bad consequences. Or they're concerned about social pressure to be "polite" and not criticize people. There are lots of reasons why someone wouldn't openly and directly criticize bad behavior, and failure to do so does not justify the original offense.
Everything you have listed here is a rationalization. An excuse that a person would use to not be assertive. It is not the demagogues fault that the person sitting there is being passive/ passive aggressive. Being assertive is how mature people politely deal with such issues.
And when I say assertive, it does not mean to rudely or angrily throw out a term like "mansplaining".
Perigrine wrote:
focusedfire wrote:I respectfully disagree. The criticism of people (usually men) for simplifying is and has been an issue for a long time. Leaders in the feminist movement have put forward a thought process where a man is lording his power and authority over women for using technical jargon while at the same time claiming that men who simplify their descriptions are emotionally abusive by being patronizing or condescending.
I really have no idea what you're talking about. Could you provide some examples of these feminists who object to men using technical jargon in an appropriate technical context AND object to men simplifying their descriptions? Because I really find it hard to believe that this kind of thing exists as more than a tiny and irrelevant minority.
The practices of Intellectual Obscurantism, Elitism and Jargon have been noted as problems for the Feminist cause to struggle with f
since, at least, the late 1960's/early 1970's.
It is the struggle against these that have formed the foundation upon which the concept of "mansplaining" is based.
Ahtman wrote:
focusedfire wrote: If you had used the 21 minutes it took to come up with a dismissive bit of snark to read all of the material and attempted a simple basic understanding of what was there, we could be having a productive discussion.
Still, being incorrect in order to score interwebz snark points is a preference for some I guess.
Btw, my above reply to Peregrine more clearly details the Catch-22
in this type of concept/behaviour.
So it is that you both don't really understand how a Catch-22 works and you didn't explain yourself very well. That was my bad for leaving out that option.
Also, if you are going to try be insulting about someone being snarky and misunderstanding it helps to also not be snarky and show gross misunderstanding. It just makes you come across as insolent and petulant.
Got it, all snark no substance. At least you admit to such. Oh, fyi, replying to sophomoric snark with superior snark does indeed help/work.
When you are ready to stop using this derailing tactic and want to engage in an honest discussion....we can talk.
So it is that you both don't really understand how a Catch-22 works and you didn't explain yourself very well. That was my bad for leaving out that option.
Also, if you are going to try be insulting about someone being snarky and misunderstanding it helps to also not be snarky and show gross misunderstanding. It just makes you come across as insolent and petulant.
Um, the thought process outlined, whether it is relevant to the discussion or not, certainly sounds like a catch-22 to me. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Actual mansplaining is a bad thing, I think we can all agree on that. The issue at hand isn't that. The point is that there are people who are misusing the word to shut down someone's argument because that someone is a man, not because of the strength or weakness of his arguments.
This is just as bad, and possibly more damaging to the cause of feminism because if it happens often enough, it will cause the person accused of mansplaining (or whatever other sexist/racist/other -ist cause/issue/whathaveyou at hand) to dismiss all such accusations as groundless regardless of actual relevance.
I'm almost 100% certain that privilege is to do with wealth rather than gender. Specifically in the West.
I can see the point if we were talking about the plight of women in the developing world, but it focuses on what seem to me to be fairly trivial or misrepresented issues.
The wage gap myth is one that always gets me. It's been shown to be grossly inaccurate.
Then again as a white male maybe I'm just not understanding.
The wage gap myth is one that always gets me. It's been shown to be grossly inaccurate.
Then again as a white male maybe I'm just not understanding.
The Wage Gap is awesome. If you see anyone bringing it up, you know that this person does not know anything about what (s)he's talking about and can safely shut her down.
...wait, is being more knowledgeable a privilege now?
Ashiraya wrote: Wait, people think privileges isn't a thing?
I don't think anyone this side of Bill O'Reilly doesn't understand that being white and male confers a degree of unearned privileges in society.
The problem is "check your privilege" has become an annoying parrot phrase meant to silence people's opinions, and has the effect of making the target want to go out and vote for the most retrograde stone-age politician on the market.
Bugger. The best I can do is wind up equal against a Christian who scores 0 on all other points. (I always assume I'm more intelligent than whoever I'm talking to, so my opponent automatically gets 10 points for nonvisible disability
Peregrine wrote: It's a bad term because it stereotypes the inappropriate behavior in question as "man" thing and ignores the fact that women can do it too, but the basic concept is a relevant one. Way too many people think that their opinion as an outside observer is more important than the opinions of the people who are actually involved in a given situation, and so you get awkward "let me tell you how I'm an expert on your life" conversations. At best it is an awkward eyeroll moment where you just wish the person would STFU and stop digging their hole even deeper, at worst it drives the people with direct experience of a problem out of the discussion and lets it be dominated by uninformed outsiders. So we shouldn't stereotype it as a "man" thing, but we shouldn't pretend that it isn't bad behavior or a legitimate problem.
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jasper76 wrote: I long for a day when "mansplaining" and "check your priviledge" are just a bad memory.
And I long for the day when people stop dismissing relevant concepts because the words are "silly" and/or they have the privilege of dismissing it as "tumblr feminiazis" or "SJWs" or whatever other ridiculous cliche is popular these days.
Nothing to add, and nothing to subtract to this message. The thread should have ended here.
Peregrine wrote: Yep, you're just confirming what I said. You don't see any problem with the Katy Perry thing because you're not part of the culture that's being appropriated and stereotyped. Perhaps you should read this article where it gives reactions from people who are part of that culture.
Well, Japan is also terrible at culture appropriation. See this and weep. Or, a bit more seriously, this whole fashion thing that draws a lot into stereotypes of European historical fashion. The thing is, there are very few people annoyed by it, because if you live out of Japan it is a non-issue, and there are very few Europeans that live in Japan and not out of a conscious choice made as an adult.
Of course, saying “They do worse” is not an excuse to not improve ourselves. But I think this is something to keep in mind when talking about the issue. At least with Asians, since many Asian countries have a huge national cultural production, the people that would suffer from it are the (ethnic or “racial”, for lack of a better term, because those two terms cover very different things) Asian that are being brought up in the U.S. or Europe.
In my opinion, just getting to a point where you can be considered ethnically French/American/whatever no matter what your “race” is, by everyone, by default, without having to prove or show anything would already be a pretty big thing.
Medium of Death wrote: People make assumptions all the time, based on many factors other than gender.
Why not just use the word "condescending"?
Because being condescending is usually the fault of an individual. Mansplaining makes it the fault of ~50% of the population, serves as a barrier to that person's argument, acts as a shield to your own, and brings the victim card into play.
Peregrine wrote: It's a bad term because it stereotypes the inappropriate behavior in question as "man" thing and ignores the fact that women can do it too, but the basic concept is a relevant one. Way too many people think that their opinion as an outside observer is more important than the opinions of the people who are actually involved in a given situation, and so you get awkward "let me tell you how I'm an expert on your life" conversations. At best it is an awkward eyeroll moment where you just wish the person would STFU and stop digging their hole even deeper, at worst it drives the people with direct experience of a problem out of the discussion and lets it be dominated by uninformed outsiders. So we shouldn't stereotype it as a "man" thing, but we shouldn't pretend that it isn't bad behavior or a legitimate problem.
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jasper76 wrote: I long for a day when "mansplaining" and "check your priviledge" are just a bad memory.
And I long for the day when people stop dismissing relevant concepts because the words are "silly" and/or they have the privilege of dismissing it as "tumblr feminiazis" or "SJWs" or whatever other ridiculous cliche is popular these days.
Nothing to add, and nothing to subtract to this message. The thread should have ended here.
The irony here should be apparent. Dismissing relevant concepts because of silly parrot phrases goes both ways. "Tumblr feminazis" or "SJWs" (I honestly don't know what that means) are ridiculous cliches that lead people to dismiss the fact that there is a segment in the feminist community that takes things way, way overboard, and would prefer a neutered male populous with no opinion and no voice, because of what boils down to an accident of birth. You'd have to have blinders on not to notice that, and I am a pretty liberal type of guy.
I'm sure it's a work of parody though, considering how I scored the rank of "gaklord" In fact, I suspect most of these privilege charts are a work of parody; they cannot be legit. They are just so...bad.
Well, Japan is also terrible at culture appropriation. See this and weep. Or, a bit more seriously, this whole fashion thing that draws a lot into stereotypes of European historical fashion. The thing is, there are very few people annoyed by it, because if you live out of Japan it is a non-issue, and there are very few Europeans that live in Japan and not out of a conscious choice made as an adult.
I don’t think you’ve quite understood the rules here.
When westerners are inspired by non western culture and incorporate aspects of it into their own that’s Cultural Appropriation by westerners which is racist and bad.
When non westerners are inspired by western culture and incorporate aspects of it into their own that’s Cultural Imperialism by westerners which is also racist and bad.
The wage gap myth is one that always gets me. It's been shown to be grossly inaccurate.
Then again as a white male maybe I'm just not understanding.
The Wage Gap is awesome. If you see anyone bringing it up, you know that this person does not know anything about what (s)he's talking about and can safely shut her down.
...wait, is being more knowledgeable a privilege now?
Also, because relevant:
Spoiler:
I always thought that check your privilege was about realizing that other people would have different experiences and challenges from you. That just because you found something easy or that you don't see a big deal doesn't mean it is the same for other people. In that respect there is smart privilege. I just muse that smart people check it and do what they can to accommodate people who are less smart and less knowledge buy not being dismissive or condescending them.
I always thought that check your privilege was about realizing that other people would have different experiences and challenges from you.
In my experience its simply another way to tell me my opinion doesn't matter.
I also understand that, as a -10 on that privilege-o-meter, I'm actually not allowed to have an opinion on anything
I think that every option matters, but I am something of a stupidly open mind. I think every option matters and that even a udderly uninformed one can offer context to a talk by giving you a idea you may never have thought of.
Can you give me an example of what your talking about with people telling you your option doesn't matter?
It's not my image and it's not meant to be serious. It's a humorous approach to the, sadly, recently uprising idea that you can call people out on any privilege and shut them down.
I always thought that check your privilege was about realizing that other people would have different experiences and challenges from you.
In my experience its simply another way to tell me my opinion doesn't matter.
I also understand that, as a -10 on that privilege-o-meter, I'm actually not allowed to have an opinion on anything
Here's a question for you:
When somebody is critical or dismissive of a point you made do you consider it a possibility that you've said something dumb, insensitive or poorly supported? That is lets assume you make some comment, and it is brushed aside or said to be wrong without someone directly addressing on a point for point basis. Of these five possibilities (there certainly more than 5 but let's keep it to just these the sake of argument), how would you assign the probabilities. For each of these five possibilities just assign them a % of likelyhood such that all five add up to 100%.
Someone has dismissed something I've said without addressing it and has maybe made a less-than supportive comment about me or my position....
A) They just don't want me to have an opinion because they're biased against me.
B) I've correctly pointed out a flaw in their argument, or refuted their point and this frustrates them.
C) They were just venting or complaining and not looking for a real discussion.
D) I've made some kind of error or assumption that wasn't readily apparent to me when I made the statement.
E) They didn't understand what I said and don't know how to address it, or possibly they feel intimidated by it.
Please humor me, this is just a very general case. Total disclaimer it's just a kind of broad conceptual look at the matter and doesn't speak to any specific discussion or argument.
Medium of Death wrote: People make assumptions all the time, based on many factors other than gender.
Why not just use the word "condescending"?
Apparently people just love to make up snarky new words rather than just use existing words. I don't understand it either. It happens all the time, people feel the need to combine the names of famous people who are dating and add "gate" to the end of every political scandal and all kinds really innane things which all seem to contributing to the dumbing down of pop culture and discourse.
Peregrine wrote: It's a bad term because it stereotypes the inappropriate behavior in question as "man" thing and ignores the fact that women can do it too, but the basic concept is a relevant one. Way too many people think that their opinion as an outside observer is more important than the opinions of the people who are actually involved in a given situation, and so you get awkward "let me tell you how I'm an expert on your life" conversations. At best it is an awkward eyeroll moment where you just wish the person would STFU and stop digging their hole even deeper, at worst it drives the people with direct experience of a problem out of the discussion and lets it be dominated by uninformed outsiders. So we shouldn't stereotype it as a "man" thing, but we shouldn't pretend that it isn't bad behavior or a legitimate problem.
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jasper76 wrote: I long for a day when "mansplaining" and "check your priviledge" are just a bad memory.
And I long for the day when people stop dismissing relevant concepts because the words are "silly" and/or they have the privilege of dismissing it as "tumblr feminiazis" or "SJWs" or whatever other ridiculous cliche is popular these days.
Nothing to add, and nothing to subtract to this message. The thread should have ended here.
The irony here should be apparent. Dismissing relevant concepts because of silly parrot phrases goes both ways. "Tumblr feminazis" or "SJWs" (I honestly don't know what that means) are ridiculous cliches that lead people to dismiss the fact that there is a segment in the feminist community that takes things way, way overboard, and would prefer a neutered male populous with no opinion and no voice, because of what boils down to an accident of birth. You'd have to have blinders on not to notice that, and I am a pretty liberal type of guy.
SJW = Social Justice Warrior at least that's been my experience there's so many abreviations and acronyms on twitter and txt and whatnot that it's hard to be sure I don't partake in social media much so I'm not up to speed on it all
I see your "Check your Privilege" and raise you a "I have 1/8 Irish blood!"
If black people today can claim they're oppressed because their ancestors were enslaved 2 centuries ago, can I complain I'm being oppressed because I just maybe have some ancestors who died in the Irish potato famine?
If black people today can claim they're oppressed because their ancestors were enslaved 2 centuries ago, can I complain I'm being oppressed because I just maybe have some ancestors who died in the Irish potato famine?
Nope you're excercising even more privilege by trying to compare your whiteness to others' blackness.
If black people today can claim they're oppressed because their ancestors were enslaved 2 centuries ago, can I complain I'm being oppressed because I just maybe have some ancestors who died in the Irish potato famine?
If black people today can claim they're oppressed because their ancestors were enslaved 2 centuries ago, can I complain I'm being oppressed because I just maybe have some ancestors who died in the Irish potato famine?
It depends. Are you 1/8 Black Irish?
Dude... I'm 1/8th American Indian.
If you want to talk about a "chip on your shoulders"... get the off my land!
If black people today can claim they're oppressed because their ancestors were enslaved 2 centuries ago, can I complain I'm being oppressed because I just maybe have some ancestors who died in the Irish potato famine?
If black people today can claim they're oppressed because their ancestors were enslaved 2 centuries ago, can I complain I'm being oppressed because I just maybe have some ancestors who died in the Irish potato famine?
If black people today can claim they're oppressed because their ancestors were enslaved 2 centuries ago, can I complain I'm being oppressed because I just maybe have some ancestors who died in the Irish potato famine?
It depends. Are you 1/8 Black Irish?
Only when I turn the lights off
Not sure if that's a sexual innuendo.
Nah, if it were a sex thing he would have said "only in my pants"
First heard of this on CBC with the author.
This article is quite good and "splains" it well:
https://www.guernicamag.com/daily/rebecca-solnit-men-explain-things-to-me/ The crux of the matter:
"Though I hasten to add that the essay makes it clear mansplaining is not a universal flaw of the gender, just the intersection between overconfidence and cluelessness where some portion of that gender gets stuck."
I do find the term a good reminder to not spout off too much and to assume others may very well know more than I.
I could not find the article but I remember it stems from men needing to "show off" knowledge for status while women use it more to connect with others.
Another "shot" at men is unfortunate but it do feel it has merit in common behaviors.
hmmmm....regarding 'Black Irish', its actually a thing:
from WIkipedia:
Black Irish is an ambiguous term sometimes used (mainly outside Ireland) as a reference to a dark-haired phenotype appearing in people of Irish origin.[31] However, dark hair in people of Irish descent is common, although darker skin complexions appear less frequently.[32] One popular theory suggests the Black Irish are descendents of survivors of the Spanish Armada, despite research discrediting such claims.[33] In his documentary series Atlantean, Bob Quinn explores an alternative 'Iberian' hypothesis, proposing the existence of an ancient sea-trading route skirting the Atlantic coast from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula to regions such as Connemara. While preferring the term "The Atlantean Irish", Quinn's reference to certain phenotypical characteristics (within elements of the Irish populace and diaspora) as possible evidence of a previous Hibernian-Iberian (and possibly Berber) admixture mirrors common descriptions of the Black Irish.
Talizvar wrote: The crux of the matter:
"Though I hasten to add that the essay makes it clear mansplaining is not a universal flaw of the gender, just the intersection between overconfidence and cluelessness where some portion of that gender gets stuck."
In my experience it's not exclusive to men. Not noticably more common among men either.
I'm all in favour of having a term for the behaviour, because it is a pretty gakky behaviour, but the way I see it there is no reason to slip "man" in there, because women too will try to "educate" people (men and women both) that don't need and/or want it.
Geez, is it 18:55 already? Better go check my privileges.
If you see someone using an obviously biased / loaded term, just do the same as you'd do when about to step into a pile of dog poo: make your way around it.
You don't stop in your tracks, loudly shouting at it, cursing the dog that made it, do you?
Sigvatr wrote: If you see someone using an obviously biased / loaded term, just do the same as you'd do when about to step into a pile of dog poo: make your way around it.
You don't stop in your tracks, loudly shouting at it, cursing the dog that made it, do you?
Thing is, it doesn't have to be a biased/loaded term. I see this behaviour quite a bit, and it'd be nice to have a proper name for it. I disapprove of "Mansplaining", not because it's somehow offensive to men, but because it's inaccurate.
I have no problem with the dog that took the dump, but it'd still be nice to have it cleaned up.
The guys from Sudan I work with would laugh at all this gak. These are people who spent half their lives in refugee camps and somehow seem to have the best attitudes i've ever seen. Bring up racism and they say "people are people" and they have a very "just get on with it " attitude, however they also say people in this country have it too good as they think we complain about too much small stuff. KInda refreshing to talk to really.
The guys from Sudan I work with would laugh at all this gak. These are people who spent half their lives in refugee camps and somehow seem to have the best attitudes i've ever seen. Bring up racism and they say "people are people" and they have a very "just get on with it " attitude, however they also say people in this country have it too good as they think we complain about too much small stuff. KInda refreshing to talk to really.
I can say the same things about the guys from Angola I'm working with, minus the refugee camps bit, as Angola is currently a fairly stable country.
Sigvatr wrote: If you see someone using an obviously biased / loaded term, just do the same as you'd do when about to step into a pile of dog poo: make your way around it.
You don't stop in your tracks, loudly shouting at it, cursing the dog that made it, do you?
Thing is, it doesn't have to be a biased/loaded term. I see this behaviour quite a bit, and it'd be nice to have a proper name for it. I disapprove of "Mansplaining", not because it's somehow offensive to men, but because it's inaccurate.
I have no problem with the dog that took the dump, but it'd still be nice to have it cleaned up.
The people who "mansplain" are really being condescending narcisists so we can combine those two words and make a new one like narciscending. It's a made up word, means the same thing but is gender neutral. Bam, problem solved, problem staying solved, Rangers lead the way.
For crying out loud Samantha, stop being so narciscending!Dang it Paul why do you always have to be so narciscending!
jasper76 wrote: Dismissing relevant concepts because of silly parrot phrases goes both ways. "Tumblr feminazis" or "SJWs" (I honestly don't know what that means) are ridiculous cliches that lead people to dismiss the fact that there is a segment in the feminist community that takes things way, way overboard, and would prefer a neutered male populous with no opinion and no voice, because of what boils down to an accident of birth.
Well, actually that “segment” of feminists is irrelevant not because of silly parrot phrase, but because of lack of power and influence on… anything, really.
And this is not double standard. Wizardchan is full of terrible, terrible misogyny from people that have the exact same lack of power and influence, and that misogyny is no more of a concern to me than the people you are talking about. Actually, I do feel sorry for them, and rather than trying to fix their misogyny, I would work on trying to fix their social/relational, and for some of them work, problems.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: I don't think Sigvatr actually believes in that system.
I know. He still called me a zero .
I know his opinion on the subject well enough to even if my sarcasmometer had broken down, I would still notice something was off .
CthuluIsSpy wrote: I'm sure it's a work of parody though, considering how I scored the rank of "gaklord"
In fact, I suspect most of these privilege charts are a work of parody; they cannot be legit. They are just so...bad.
Of course they are. And unless people are running in the famous “oppression Olympics”, your “privilege level” is irrelevant. What is relevant is your privilege related to a specific issue that is being discussed. For instance, if I am arguing with Ashiraya about how strong Space Marines are compared to Imperial Guard, the fact I am a man and she is a women is completely irrelevant. If we do discuss about how welcoming to outsiders game shops/clubs are, it is not anymore. Because that means she has experienced first-hand some stuff I did not experience first-hand.
If black people today can claim they're oppressed because their ancestors were enslaved 2 centuries ago, can I complain I'm being oppressed because I just maybe have some ancestors who died in the Irish potato famine?
It depends. Are you 1/8 Black Irish?
Dude... I'm 1/8th American Indian.
If you want to talk about a "chip on your shoulders"... get the off my land!
focusedfire wrote: Everything you have listed here is a rationalization. An excuse that a person would use to not be assertive. It is not the demagogues fault that the person sitting there is being passive/ passive aggressive. Being assertive is how mature people politely deal with such issues.
Sigh. It's like you didn't even read the post where I explained that there can be reasons why a person wouldn't be in a position to be assertive. Maybe you don't understand this because you've never been on the wrong end of one of those relationships (OH GOD HE'S TALKING ABOUT THE 'P' WORD), but you should try to see it from that perspective.
The practices of Intellectual Obscurantism, Elitism and Jargon have been noted as problems for the Feminist cause to struggle with f
since, at least, the late 1960's/early 1970's.
I have never heard of any of that. Not from actual feminists, and not even from "feminists say stupid stuff" trolls who would love to quote something so ridiculous. Could you provide some examples of actual feminist arguments about this, along with evidence that the people making them are part of mainstream feminism and not just a random person with a blog that nobody pays any attention to?
It is the struggle against these that have formed the foundation upon which the concept of "mansplaining" is based.
No it isn't. The concept of "mansplaining" comes from people (usually men) acting like the women they're explaining things to are ignorant children, even when the women likely know more about the subject than the man. In fact, you know this already because you've had at least one person explain it for you. Let me quote their post again:
No, the term was originally used to denote when men would discuss stuff with a woman as if she had no knowledge of the subject, despite being knowledgeable about it. The woman who originally coined it did so in reference to a man at a party she had recently attended who insisted on explaining the premise of a book that he really liked to her, ignoring the fact that she was the author of said book, and only stopping when a male friend of hers informed the guy that she was the author.
LuciusAR wrote: I don’t think you’ve quite understood the rules here.
When westerners are inspired by non western culture and incorporate aspects of it into their own that’s Cultural Appropriation by westerners which is racist and bad.
When non westerners are inspired by western culture and incorporate aspects of it into their own that’s Cultural Imperialism by westerners which is also racist and bad.
Remember non western good, western bad.
Sigh. I don't really see why this is so difficult to understand.
"Westerners" appropriating "non-western" culture and using blatant racial stereotypes/treating religious icons as a toy/etc is bad because it reinforces existing racist attitudes and the ugly history of western imperialism. Essentially you're just adding one more insult against people who are already in a vulnerable position.
"Non-westerners" appropriating "western" culture can be disrespectful and tasteless, but because the power difference doesn't exist it's far less harmful. It's much easier to dismiss that kind of appropriation as "lol Japan" or whatever when you probably never experience racism directed at "western" culture.
So it's not that appropriation only works one way, it's that appropriation is a much bigger issue when it's a more powerful group appropriating things from a less powerful group.
jasper76 wrote: Dismissing relevant concepts because of silly parrot phrases goes both ways.
No, you're missing the point here. "TUMBLR FEMINAZI SJW LOLOLOLOLLOL" was a response to posts that said exactly that. There was no relevant concept, there was only "LOL THIS WORD IS SO STUPID". If people want to make a relevant argument about something that's fine, but there needs to be an argument, not just spam.
"Tumblr feminazis" or "SJWs" (I honestly don't know what that means) are ridiculous cliches that lead people to dismiss the fact that there is a segment in the feminist community that takes things way, way overboard, and would prefer a neutered male populous with no opinion and no voice, because of what boils down to an accident of birth. You'd have to have blinders on not to notice that, and I am a pretty liberal type of guy.
Yes, those people exist. But you know what? They're a tiny and irrelevant minority. There are very, very few people advocating those extreme positions like "crush the men and turn them into breeding slaves" or whatever, and nobody pays any attention to them unless they're laughing at how stupid they. You're doing the equivalent of pointing out the crazy guy on the corner who spends the whole day screaming about government mind control in the chemtrails and claiming that we need to recognize that there's a segment of the "people who have a complaint about the government" community that is completely insane. It's technically true, but it's not a very relevant thing to talk about and its only purpose is to dismiss mainstream elements of that community by associating them with irrelevant lunatics.
Peregrine wrote: "Westerners" appropriating "non-western" culture and using blatant racial stereotypes/treating religious icons as a toy/etc is bad because it reinforces existing racist attitudes and the ugly history of western imperialism. Essentially you're just adding one more insult against people who are already in a vulnerable position.
"Non-westerners" appropriating "western" culture can be disrespectful and tasteless, but because the power difference doesn't exist it's far less harmful. It's much easier to dismiss that kind of appropriation as "lol Japan" or whatever when you probably never experience racism directed at "western" culture.
So it's not that appropriation only works one way, it's that appropriation is a much bigger issue when it's a more powerful group appropriating things from a less powerful group.
Sorry, but I disagree here. Really, Japan has been just as big and as imperialistic as “western powers” since the beginning of the previous century. Calling Japan a “less powerful group”, especially when talking about culture, seems flat out wrong to me, with the whole anime fan craze thing. I would bet you a lot of money than France imports a lot, lot more cultural products from Japan than Japan does from France. Out of all the possible examples you could have used to illustrate your point, it was certainly the worst you could have chosen.
I wrote something earlier in this thread about what I felt was the real reason that made us just go “lol Japan”, but you did not address it.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh my goodness, Dakka's word filter will turn the somehow pejorative word for people obsessed with Japanese pop culture into “anime fan”. Was that really necessary?
Peregrine wrote: "Westerners" appropriating "non-western" culture and using blatant racial stereotypes/treating religious icons as a toy/etc is bad because it reinforces existing racist attitudes and the ugly history of western imperialism. Essentially you're just adding one more insult against people who are already in a vulnerable position.
"Non-westerners" appropriating "western" culture can be disrespectful and tasteless, but because the power difference doesn't exist it's far less harmful. It's much easier to dismiss that kind of appropriation as "lol Japan" or whatever when you probably never experience racism directed at "western" culture.
So it's not that appropriation only works one way, it's that appropriation is a much bigger issue when it's a more powerful group appropriating things from a less powerful group.
Sorry, but I disagree here. Really, Japan has been just as big and as imperialistic as “western powers” since the beginning of the previous century. Calling Japan a “less powerful group”, especially when talking about culture, seems flat out wrong to me, with the whole anime fan craze thing. I would bet you a lot of money than France imports a lot, lot more cultural products from Japan than Japan does from France. Out of all the possible examples you could have used to illustrate your point, it was certainly the worst you could have chosen.
I wrote something earlier in this thread about what I felt was the real reason that made us just go “lol Japan”, but you did not address it.
And lets not forget the horrible unforgivable injustice of Nintendo appropriating Italian American cultural stereotypes to crassly profit off of Super Mario Bros. That was mean.
From these results, it’s clear that—like most Americans—millennials see racism as a matter of different treatment, justified by race, that you solve by removing race from the equation. If we ignore skin color in our decisions, then there can’t be racism.
The problem is that racism isn’t reducible to “different treatment.” Since if it is, measures to ameliorate racial inequality—like the Voting Rights Act—would be as “racist” as the policies that necessitated them. No, racism is better understood as white supremacy—anything that furthers a broad hierarchy of racist inequity, where whites possess the greatest share of power, respect, and resources, and blacks the least.
Eliminate differential treatment based on race and racism ( i.e. treating people differently on the basis of race ) ends, but that doesn't encourage a victim mentality. Thus the "white supremacy" bovine excrement argument. You can replace racism with gender bias or western cultural supremacy or anything else because people who want to construe interactions as always being oppressor vs victim need to continually change the parameters of perceived bias to always have a "victim" for whom to champion. Some people don't want to acknowledge that people are less bigotted today than ever, they still want somebody to be a victim so you get concepts like "privilege" where even mere existence or subconscious actions are acts of oppression even when if somebody exhibits no overt evidence of prejudice.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: Sorry, but I disagree here. Really, Japan has been just as big and as imperialistic as “western powers” since the beginning of the previous century.
I should clarify that this is talking about a US context (since the original question of appropriation involved a US singer on a US tv show). And in the US Japanese-Americans are still a minority and subject to racism, as pointed out by the quote I posted from someone with personal experience of that racism. Japan has been imperialistic and has some major issues with its neighbors, but that has to be treated separately from the experiences of Asian-Americans in the US. Remember, it hasn't been all that long since it was considered acceptable to label everyone with any ties to Japan as a possible traitor, evict them from their homes, and put them into concentration camps for a few years.
Calling Japan a “less powerful group”, especially when talking about culture, seems flat out wrong to me, with the whole anime fan craze thing.
Honestly that's kind of proving my point. A lot of the "Japan fans", at least in the US, don't really love Japan, they love a stereotypical version of Japan. You know, kind of like the music video that was cited earlier. And while they're common enough in certain geek communities they're still a pretty tiny minority in US culture as a whole.
Peregrine wrote: And in the US Japanese-Americans are still a minority and subject to racism, as pointed out by the quote I posted from someone with personal experience of that racism. Japan has been imperialistic and has some major issues with its neighbors, but that has to be treated separately from the experiences of Asian-Americans in the US.
Emphasis mine. That is precisely what I was talking about in my previous message that you did not address. Maybe you missed it. This is not about Japanese living in Japan, this is about Japanese living in the U.S.A.
Peregrine wrote: A lot of the "Japan fans", at least in the US, don't really love Japan, they love a stereotypical version of Japan.
I am going to keep talking about France because that is where I live and what I know most about, but just like French anime fan like a stereotypical version of Japan, Japanese people that like France like a stereotypical version of it. Furthermore, the stereotypical view of Japan from France has been fashioned and modeled by Japanese cultural products. If you want to blame anyone for this stereotypical version of Japan becoming so prevalent, you cannot put the blame on anyone but the Japanese people running the Japanese company that export those Japanese anime and manga and even music video made by Japanese artists, can you?
Peregrine wrote: And while they're common enough in certain geek communities they're still a pretty tiny minority in US culture as a whole.
In France, manga completely outsells comics, by a huge margin. Hollywood still beats the Japanese movie industry, sure. Same for TV shows. And there are still much more U.S. bands than Japanese bands on TV or radio. But as soon as drawings are involved, be it comics or cartoons, Japan just obliterate the U.S. competition.
The thing is, all those US cultural products comes along with all the mention of the US on the news, and we learn about bits of the US history in school. Therefore there is generally a pretty critical view of the US that balance and influence how the US media are received. The ignorance of Japan politics and history, though, is pretty bad, meaning you get people that end up idealizing Japan in ways they would never idealize the U.S.
That may surprise you as someone from the US, but here I have met way too many fans of Japanese culture that had no clue about the whole Japanese war crimes during WW2.
Therefore, you will understand why I am so reluctant to see Japan as a victim in a cultural war…
LuciusAR wrote: I don’t think you’ve quite understood the rules here.
When westerners are inspired by non western culture and incorporate aspects of it into their own that’s Cultural Appropriation by westerners which is racist and bad.
When non westerners are inspired by western culture and incorporate aspects of it into their own that’s Cultural Imperialism by westerners which is also racist and bad.
Remember non western good, western bad.
Sigh. I don't really see why this is so difficult to understand.
"Westerners" appropriating "non-western" culture and using blatant racial stereotypes/treating religious icons as a toy/etc is bad because it reinforces existing racist attitudes and the ugly history of western imperialism. Essentially you're just adding one more insult against people who are already in a vulnerable position.
"Non-westerners" appropriating "western" culture can be disrespectful and tasteless, but because the power difference doesn't exist it's far less harmful. It's much easier to dismiss that kind of appropriation as "lol Japan" or whatever when you probably never experience racism directed at "western" culture.
So it's not that appropriation only works one way, it's that appropriation is a much bigger issue when it's a more powerful group appropriating things from a less powerful group.
I don't think taking elements from other cultures is always a bad thing like Sergio Leone's highly praised "Fistful of Dollars" trilogy is great and it's cinematography is clearly inspired by the style of Akira Kurosawa's work. Or many well known blues rock groups/artists such as Led Zeppelin,
Eric Clapton, Deep Purple, etc take blues elements (music that is often associated with black culture) and give a rock style to it (music that is usually associated with white culture).
Mansplaining is when you try to use facts, reason and logic to prove your point and this is somehow seen as condescending because some people value their personal feelings above truth.
lord_blackfang wrote: Mansplaining is when you try to use facts, reason and logic to prove your point and this is somehow seen as condescending because some people value their personal feelings above truth.
lord_blackfang wrote: Mansplaining is when you try to use facts, reason and logic to prove your point and this is somehow seen as condescending because some people value their personal feelings above truth.
What if the person doing "mansplaining" thinks he is super logical, reasonable and factual but it turns out his point(s) is/are full of faults, also just because feelings are involved doesn't mean that logic is completely absent.
lord_blackfang wrote: Mansplaining is when you try to use facts, reason and logic to prove your point and this is somehow seen as condescending because some people value their personal feelings above truth.
What if the person doing "mansplaining" thinks he is super logical, reasonable and factual but it turns out his point(s) is/are full of faults, also just because feelings are involved doesn't mean that logic is completely absent.
Then he's simply wrong.
No need to slap a made up derogatory gendered verb on it.
lord_blackfang wrote: Mansplaining is when you try to use facts, reason and logic to prove your point and this is somehow seen as condescending because some people value their personal feelings above truth.
What if the person doing "mansplaining" thinks he is super logical, reasonable and factual but it turns out his point(s) is/are full of faults, also just because feelings are involved doesn't mean that logic is completely absent.
The term didn't arise from men repeatedly being wrong, it arose from men repeatedly trying to make a reasoned argument to someone who has decided in advance not to listen.
lord_blackfang wrote: Mansplaining is when you try to use facts, reason and logic to prove your point and this is somehow seen as condescending because some people value their personal feelings above truth.
What if the person doing "mansplaining" thinks he is super logical, reasonable and factual but it turns out his point(s) is/are full of faults, also just because feelings are involved doesn't mean that logic is completely absent.
The term didn't arise from men repeatedly being wrong, it arose from men repeatedly trying to make a reasoned argument to someone who has decided in advance not to listen.
Just saying, you're making a rather good illustration of the phenomenon discussed.
lord_blackfang wrote: Mansplaining is when you try to use facts, reason and logic to prove your point and this is somehow seen as condescending because some people value their personal feelings above truth.
What if the person doing "mansplaining" thinks he is super logical, reasonable and factual but it turns out his point(s) is/are full of faults, also just because feelings are involved doesn't mean that logic is completely absent.
The term didn't arise from men repeatedly being wrong, it arose from men repeatedly trying to make a reasoned argument to someone who has decided in advance not to listen.
Just saying, you're making a rather good illustration of the phenomenon discussed.
Meaning... Blackfang is trying to make a reasoned argument and you & Cheesecat have decided in advance not to listen?
If you think someone's arguments are full of faults, then you have to identify those faults and back up your argument and why you think his points are wrong. You don't just get to hand waive away and dismiss an opinion you don't like as "Mansplaining" without even bothering to supply a counter argument.
Simply labelling a faulty argument as "mansplaining" is lazy.
Anyway, is it still Mansplaining if its two guys talking?
The term didn't arise from men repeatedly being wrong, it arose from men repeatedly trying to make a reasoned argument to someone who has decided in advance not to listen.
The universe must love me, because the Irony be a flowing today
Score one 'internets' for the Walrus.And you got your quoting mixed up there, Hatlord
But yes, anyhow, 'mansplaining' is just a term for a specific thing in specific situations that people have experienced. Or, in some cases, done. I can't really understand, myself, why someone would feel offended by the very existence of the term. Just think of it as a 'colloquial shorthand' for a condescending attitude in certain situations discussed in a certain way, with certain participants.
lord_blackfang wrote: Mansplaining is when you try to use facts, reason and logic to prove your point and this is somehow seen as condescending because some people value their personal feelings above truth.
But yes, anyhow, 'mansplaining' is just a term for a specific thing in specific situations that people have experienced. Or, in some cases, done. I can't really understand, myself, why someone would feel offended by the very existence of the term. Just think of it as a 'colloquial shorthand' for a condescending attitude in certain situations discussed in a certain way, with certain participants.
Fair point. Some men can be and are condescending towards women. And vice versa.
But if you think an argument is faulty, then point out those faults and justify/explain why you think its faulty by way of a counter argument.
Labeling an argument as "mansplaining", without bothering to explain why you think its wrong sounds like lazy Ad Hominem.
On the subject of "Cultural Appropriation", you have to remember that there's a fanatical sub-set of those - I'll call it Tumblr Cultural Appropriation - that say that using anything from another culture is a form of cultural appropriate and is always 100% without exceptions bad. And when I say "using", I mean:
Eating food from another culture (going out for Italian, ordering in Chinese food when you are neither Italian nor Chinese)
Speaking the language of another culture (learning Spanish, casually inserting German phrases into English despite not being Spanish/Latino or German/Swiss)
Using the dress of another culture (the aforementioned Katy Perry + Kimono nonsense... or it might've been Geisha, but whatever - that was bad simply because she did it, even if she did it with 100% respect for its origins and significance).
Like most of these "warrior" types, they're not worth worrying about because they are a pitiable bunch of attention craving professional offence takers all competing in the Oppression Olympics. Nevertheless, it's always good to be specific if you're talking about real cultural appropriation, or made up Tumblr-level appropriation.
The same applies to abelism.
lord_blackfang wrote: The term didn't arise from men repeatedly being wrong, it arose from men repeatedly trying to make a reasoned argument to someone who has decided in advance not to listen.
So the Dakka equivalent would be "Peregrinesplaining", yes?
lord_blackfang wrote: Mansplaining is when you try to use facts, reason and logic to prove your point and this is somehow seen as condescending because some people value their personal feelings above truth.
What if the person doing "mansplaining" thinks he is super logical, reasonable and factual but it turns out his point(s) is/are full of faults, also just because feelings are involved doesn't mean that logic is completely absent.
The term didn't arise from men repeatedly being wrong, it arose from men repeatedly trying to make a reasoned argument to someone who has decided in advance not to listen.
Well, your definition of the term arose from a man (in this case you) being repeatedly wrong, but that's because you keep on saying the wrong definition. It arose, as has been said many times in this thread, from women (specifically Rebecca Solnit) being talked down to about things they know more about than the explainer. Not "making a reasoned argument to someone who has decided in advance not to listen" but attempting to explain the premise of a book to that book's author, for example.
I do, however, find it ironic that you've made a post about how people that use the term dislike facts, reason and logic, whilst also showing a disregard for facts, reason and logic. Well done on that.
It's Brianna Wu. She's a high-ranking Oppression Olympian, and experienced in long-distance offence taking. She also competes in the flying-off-the-handle-at-imagined-provocation section at the elite level.
So the Dakka equivalent would be "Peregrinesplaining", yes?
I have to say although it was mentioned previously abelism is a new one to me. I guess I need to social media more. Abelism : Where you act the victim so, much your brother decides to murder you - also known as the Caine effect.
Brianna Wu seems to think being talked down to = stating a general fact. I guess I need to social media more... who knew that this level of offence taking was around (not I said the Bullockist)
Yeah, abelism was a new one for me up until August. Basically it amounts to people taking the concept of "discrimination against those with disabilities" and - thick with irony - going full slow with the definition.
So, in the same way that Tumblr Cultural Appropriation centres around how doing anything related to a culture that is not yours is somehow bad (to the point where getting sushi when not Japanese is racist/evil), "abelism" is the policing of words that might (and I use "might" in the loosest possible sense) offend people with disabilities.
So this goes beyond the work Dakka censored above. This extends to things like "stupid" or "blind", or really any innocuous thing. So if someone misses something and you say "What are you, blind?", that's abelism. Now you're not actually discriminating against someone who is blind, and there might not even be a blind person for 1000 miles in every direction of you, but to the Tumblr crowd, simply using the word "blind" is a demonstration of just how evil you are, and how uncaring you are towards people with disabilities.
It goes even further though with the levels of mystifying stupidity, such as the conversation I saw the other day where someone used the phrase "hoisted by their own petard". Someone replied with, essentially, "I agree, but I find the suffix troubling." Naturally the first person asked "What suffix?", to which the other said "You said 'tard'". Yes, apparently real words that contain other "abelist" words are wrong now. It's a bit like people getting upset over the word "niggardly".
So, in the same way that Tumblr Cultural Appropriation centres around how doing anything related to a culture that is not yours is somehow bad (to the point where getting sushi when not Japanese is racist/evil), "abelism" is the policing of words that might (and I use "might" in the loosest possible sense) offend people with disabilities.
Is this cultural appropriation thing a slight (is that abelist?) bit racialist? I mean jusging whether someone can do something based solely on their culture they were born into/raised in? I don't get it but i can tell you one thing. No bastard is stopping me eating kim chi ,
This world is getting slowed.......
*stomps over to where frazzled is standing next to a grill holding a sign saying "Get off my lawn", takes a sign off the pile on the ground and holds it up. It reads "Men", stop saying good morning to my teenage daughter"*
If I can't eat other cultures food then I'm stuck with pies and fish and chips for the rest of my life, unless you count England as a seperate culture (which sjws wouldn't because they think all white people are the same) in which case I'm stuck eating... nothing.
EmilCrane wrote: If I can't eat other cultures food then I'm stuck with pies and fish and chips for the rest of my life, unless you count England as a seperate culture (which sjws wouldn't because they think all white people are the same) in which case I'm stuck eating... nothing.
I think anglophone nations are so irredeemably steeped in racism and privilege that we can all eat each others foods without making things worse.
I think he's from that other, slightly smaller island. The ones with the hobbits.
- hah, can't take it back now, I was too quick!
God damnit
In my defence I'm using a kindle tablet. The flags are the size of a pin head on my screen.
Which one? I got the 8.9" not too long ago and I love it. Which - to be on topic - I spend inordinate amounts of time explaining the easy to grasp and readily available technical specifications of to my female acquaintances. Or something.
I think he's from that other, slightly smaller island. The ones with the hobbits.
- hah, can't take it back now, I was too quick!
God damnit
In my defence I'm using a kindle tablet. The flags are the size of a pin head on my screen.
Which one? I got the 8.9" not too long ago and I love it. Which - to be on topic - I spend inordinate amounts of time explaining the easy to grasp and readily available technical specifications of to my female acquaintances. Or something.
Kindle fire (not the large hd version). It's going on 3 years old now.
What about the new Zealand Maori culture? Doesn't t have some good traditional cuisine?
But that would be cultural appropriation stealing their food and their land. It's not like we mutually agreed to the whole colonisation arrangement by treaty in 1840 or anything.
lord_blackfang wrote: Mansplaining is when you try to use facts, reason and logic to prove your point and this is somehow seen as condescending because some people value their personal feelings above truth.
What if the person doing "mansplaining" thinks he is super logical, reasonable and factual but it turns out his point(s) is/are full of faults, also just because feelings are involved doesn't mean that logic is completely absent.
The term didn't arise from men repeatedly being wrong, it arose from men repeatedly trying to make a reasoned argument to someone who has decided in advance not to listen.
Just saying, you're making a rather good illustration of the phenomenon discussed.
EmilCrane wrote: If I can't eat other cultures food then I'm stuck with pies and fish and chips for the rest of my life, unless you count England as a seperate culture (which sjws wouldn't because they think all white people are the same) in which case I'm stuck eating... nothing.
If you are 1/8 Maori (everyone seems to be 1/8 something) you can eat hungies, extinct birds and skinny white guys in red coats who are good at losing wars in far flung places.
Also you get to wield a long stick like a kick arse ninja on elephant steroids.
EmilCrane wrote: If I can't eat other cultures food then I'm stuck with pies and fish and chips for the rest of my life, unless you count England as a seperate culture (which sjws wouldn't because they think all white people are the same) in which case I'm stuck eating... nothing.
If you are 1/8 Maori (everyone seems to be 1/8 something) you can eat hungies, extinct birds and skinny white guys in red coats who are good at losing wars in far flung places.
Also you get to wield a long stick like a kick arse ninja on elephant steroids.
My ancestry is about as white as they come. I'm half American and half kiwi, both sides originating in England, so I cant even claim to be Irish and oppressed by the English. I think I'm 1/8th French.
Out of all the international customs I know of, the one that blows my mind the most is the willing ingestion of Vegemite.
Vegemite is great. Have you tried it? It's like someone took leftover beer yeast and made a food out of it! (because they did!)
Time to break the OzCode again though:
Spoiler:
It's an Australian practical joke to give non-Australians a spoonful by itself. Don't eat it straight unless you have a hangover - it's meant to be spread over butter.
Sorry for the Ozsplaining everyone
Automatically Appended Next Post:
H.B.M.C. wrote: Hey, I live here and I can't see the appeal either.
Out of all the international customs I know of, the one that blows my mind the most is the willing ingestion of Vegemite.
Vegemite is great. Have you tried it? It's like someone took leftover beer yeast and made a food out of it! (because they did!)
Time to break the OzCode again though:
Spoiler:
It's an Australian practical joke to give non-Australians a spoonful by itself. Don't eat it straight unless you have a hangover - it's meant to be spread over butter.
H.B.M.C. wrote: On the subject of "Cultural Appropriation", you have to remember that there's a fanatical sub-set of those - I'll call it Tumblr Cultural Appropriation - that say that using anything from another culture is a form of cultural appropriate and is always 100% without exceptions bad. And when I say "using", I mean:
Eating food from another culture (going out for Italian, ordering in Chinese food when you are neither Italian nor Chinese)
Speaking the language of another culture (learning Spanish, casually inserting German phrases into English despite not being Spanish/Latino or German/Swiss)
Using the dress of another culture (the aforementioned Katy Perry + Kimono nonsense... or it might've been Geisha, but whatever - that was bad simply because she did it, even if she did it with 100% respect for its origins and significance).
Like most of these "warrior" types, they're not worth worrying about because they are a pitiable bunch of attention craving professional offence takers all competing in the Oppression Olympics. Nevertheless, it's always good to be specific if you're talking about real cultural appropriation, or made up Tumblr-level appropriation.[…]
So, in the same way that Tumblr Cultural Appropriation centres around how doing anything related to a culture that is not yours is somehow bad (to the point where getting sushi when not Japanese is racist/evil), "abelism" is the policing of words that might (and I use "might" in the loosest possible sense) offend people with disabilities.
Is this cultural appropriation thing a slight (is that abelist?) bit racialist? I mean jusging whether someone can do something based solely on their culture they were born into/raised in? I don't get it but i can tell you one thing. No bastard is stopping me eating kim chi ,
This world is getting slowed.......
*stomps over to where frazzled is standing next to a grill holding a sign saying "Get off my lawn", takes a sign off the pile on the ground and holds it up. It reads "Men", stop saying good morning to my teenage daughter"*
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: I quite like Indian curries, doner kebabs and French oysters. Guess that makes me racist.
What about the new Zealand Maori culture? Doesn't t have some good traditional cuisine?
But that would be cultural appropriation stealing their food and their land. It's not like we mutually agreed to the whole colonisation arrangement by treaty in 1840 or anything.
EmilCrane wrote: If I can't eat other cultures food then I'm stuck with pies and fish and chips for the rest of my life, unless you count England as a seperate culture (which sjws wouldn't because they think all white people are the same) in which case I'm stuck eating... nothing.
If you are 1/8 Maori (everyone seems to be 1/8 something) you can eat hungies, extinct birds and skinny white guys in red coats who are good at losing wars in far flung places.
Also you get to wield a long stick like a kick arse ninja on elephant steroids.
So, they might not be worth worrying about, but we still tons of message putting down this nice strawman, and none discussing about “real cultural appropriation”. I guess it is easier to make fun of ridiculous stuff than to talk about serious matters…
lord_blackfang wrote: Mansplaining is when you try to use facts, reason and logic to prove your point and this is somehow seen as condescending because some people value their personal feelings above truth.
Case and point:
Not sure she was in her normal state when she wrote that. Given the kind of “discussions” she has gone through recently, it is understandable. I am pretty sure if she looks at this later with a cooler head, she will feel stupid.
Sining wrote: All this cultural appropriation talk makes me think of this
lord_blackfang wrote: Mansplaining is when you try to use facts, reason and logic to prove your point and this is somehow seen as condescending because some people value their personal feelings above truth.
What if the person doing "mansplaining" thinks he is super logical, reasonable and factual but it turns out his point(s) is/are full of faults, also just because feelings are involved doesn't mean that logic is completely absent.
The term didn't arise from men repeatedly being wrong, it arose from men repeatedly trying to make a reasoned argument to someone who has decided in advance not to listen.
Just saying, you're making a rather good illustration of the phenomenon discussed.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Yeah, abelism was a new one for me up until August. Basically it amounts to people taking the concept of "discrimination against those with disabilities" and - thick with irony - going full slow with the definition.
So, in the same way that Tumblr Cultural Appropriation centres around how doing anything related to a culture that is not yours is somehow bad (to the point where getting sushi when not Japanese is racist/evil), "abelism" is the policing of words that might (and I use "might" in the loosest possible sense) offend people with disabilities.
So this goes beyond the work Dakka censored above. This extends to things like "stupid" or "blind", or really any innocuous thing. So if someone misses something and you say "What are you, blind?", that's abelism. Now you're not actually discriminating against someone who is blind, and there might not even be a blind person for 1000 miles in every direction of you, but to the Tumblr crowd, simply using the word "blind" is a demonstration of just how evil you are, and how uncaring you are towards people with disabilities.
It goes even further though with the levels of mystifying stupidity, such as the conversation I saw the other day where someone used the phrase "hoisted by their own petard". Someone replied with, essentially, "I agree, but I find the suffix troubling." Naturally the first person asked "What suffix?", to which the other said "You said 'tard'". Yes, apparently real words that contain other "abelist" words are wrong now. It's a bit like people getting upset over the word "niggardly".
I'm deaf... (well, damn near deaf with two hearing aids blasting my eardrums... specially with Metallica/A7X blaring ).
Honestly I had never heard this term before and since the creation of this thread I have seen it twice. This is more proof that everything originates in Dakka's OT and radiates outward.
Ahtman wrote: Honestly I had never heard this term before and since the creation of this thread I have seen it twice. This is more proof that everything originates in Dakka's OT and radiates outward.
You just culturally appropriated the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon from the Germans. Check your imperialist cismale privilege.
cincydooley wrote: Also, I have to say I hate this "cisgender" nonsense.
It bothers me, though I think mostly because in Greek 'cis~' isn't the opposite, or anything really, of 'trans~'. If I recall they are opposites it is in chemisty, but that still means lopsided language as one comes from the language in general and the other from a specific term in chemistry. It is forced and much like 'mansplain' more often muddies any real issues through loaded language.
Sigvatr wrote: Gosh, "cisgender. By people who are offended by the term "normal".
What is the problem with cis-gender? I mean, you certainly cannot propose the term normal as an alternative. Because that would imply all cisgender people are normal, and deep down bellow, you know this is completely false.
Sigvatr wrote: Cisgender is a made-up term that serves no purpose. Transgender serves as a purpose for people who want to identify themselves from the normal.
Pretty much this.
Really, when it comes to it, mansplaining is the same thing, only it attaches a gender to the made up term in order to be used as a derogatory.
I can't even imagine what the uproar would be if someone tried to use "femsplaining."
Ahtman wrote: Honestly I had never heard this term before and since the creation of this thread I have seen it twice. This is more proof that everything originates in Dakka's OT and radiates outward.
You just culturally appropriated the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon from the Germans. Check your imperialist cismale privilege.
The illusion in which a word, a name or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards (see also recency illusion).[37] Colloquially, this illusion is known as the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.
Who knew we'd gain something pretty interesting from this thread?
Sigvatr wrote: Gosh, "cisgender. By people who are offended by the term "normal".
What is the problem with cis-gender? I mean, you certainly cannot propose the term normal as an alternative. Because that would imply all cisgender people are normal, and deep down bellow, you know this is completely false.
Sigvatr wrote: Cisgender is a made-up term that serves no purpose. Transgender serves as a purpose for people who want to identify themselves from the normal.
So, you are arguing the usage of “non-transgender” as a replacement for “cisgender”. Is that really it? That… seems like a non-issue to me. If people want to use a shorter word, what is the problem with this?
Also, stop implying I am normal .
Sigvatr wrote: Cisgender is a made-up term that serves no purpose. Transgender serves as a purpose for people who want to identify themselves from the normal.
So, you are arguing the usage of “non-transgender” as a replacement for “cisgender”. Is that really it? That… seems like a non-issue to me. If people want to use a shorter word, what is the problem with this?
Also, stop implying I am normal .
There's no need for any replacement word. Normal fits perfectly in this case as (context) we're talking about gender. Normal means male or female. People who identify differently are "transgender", "gay" or "bi"...or anything else they might want to come up with. In regards to gender, male or female are normal by the very definition of the word. You aren't normal if you identify yourself differently. This is without any positive or negative connotation, it's by the word's definition. Highly intelligent people aren't normal either.
Sigvatr wrote: There's no need for any replacement word.
No problem with one either.
Sigvatr wrote: Normal fits perfectly in this case as (context) we're talking about gender.
Oh no, it does not. Some people are born with unusual mix of chromosomes and sexual organs. This is something completely different from someone deciding to change gender. And this is what I would understand if you spoke about someone being or not being normal. Cisgender allow for no confusion, is pretty clear, concise, neutral and not connoted as far as I can tell…
Yeah, I just looked up the actual meaning of the prefix. I'm concerned that it appears to have no real relevance to the meaning applied to it. I guess then that this is finally the point in time where we're not even trying to bother with troubling ourselves with silly things like etymology, and we derive words from whatever feels good and apply them until they stick, with only context being the thing carrying true meaning.
I will heartily refer that people who think they're what they physically are as grape-gendered, whereas anyone else will become ceiling-tile-gendered. As an aspiring contra-automobile-thumbtack, I'm particularly cis-florescent about it.
Sigvatr wrote: Cisgender is a made-up term that serves no purpose. Transgender serves as a purpose for people who want to identify themselves from the normal.
So, you are arguing the usage of “non-transgender” as a replacement for “cisgender”. Is that really it? That… seems like a non-issue to me. If people want to use a shorter word, what is the problem with this?
Also, stop implying I am normal .
There's no need for any replacement word. Normal fits perfectly in this case as (context) we're talking about gender. Normal means male or female. People who identify differently are "transgender", "gay" or "bi"...or anything else they might want to come up with. In regards to gender, male or female are normal by the very definition of the word. You aren't normal if you identify yourself differently. This is without any positive or negative connotation, it's by the word's definition. Highly intelligent people aren't normal either.
Ignoring the fact that your assertion that not being normal doesn't have any negative connotations is so plainly absurd to the point of being laughable self-parody, it's just not terribly useful. We need specific terms for specific things, whatever they may be. "Cisgender" is no less valid than "Heterosexual", "Sighted", "Literate" or "Healthy" just because the set of people that fit into that categorization is broader than the others.
Certainly the utility of it is probably limited in day-to-day conversation where people aren't discussing issues of gender and sexuality. However in conversations about those things it's appropriate. It describes a relationship between someones identity,feelings and their body. Just because that relationship is by far the most common one, doesn't mean it should be framed differently than others.
Ignoring the fact that your assertion that not being normal doesn't have any negative connotations is so plainly absurd to the point of being laughable self-parody, it's just not terribly useful.
Were tumblr the barometer of negative connotations we used to calibrate our instruments, I'd argue that being "normal" is far worse than not.
We need specific terms for specific things, whatever they may be. "Cisgender" is no less valid than "Heterosexual", "Sighted", "Literate" or "Healthy" just because the set of people that fit into that categorization is broader than the others.
Aside from the fact that those all mean what they define, yeah. Don't be all di-shoes about this.
Sigvatr wrote: If people are offended by being called "not normal" because they're part of less than 1% of the population, then the problem lies in those people.
Did I, at any time, implied anything about anyone taking offense at anything?
Ignoring the fact that your assertion that not being normal doesn't have any negative connotations is so plainly absurd to the point of being laughable self-parody, it's just not terribly useful.
Were tumblr the barometer of negative connotations we used to calibrate our instruments, I'd argue that being "normal" is far worse than not.
We need specific terms for specific things, whatever they may be. "Cisgender" is no less valid than "Heterosexual", "Sighted", "Literate" or "Healthy" just because the set of people that fit into that categorization is broader than the others.
Aside from the fact that those all mean what they define, yeah. Don't be all di-shoes about this.
The term is used to describe something. Something that exists. If both parties understand what's communicated by the term, then the term serves its purpose just fine. Getting hung up the fact that whoever first coined the term didn't have all their etymological ducks on the row is semantic nitpicking of least productive kind.
Sigvatr wrote: If people are offended by being called "not normal" because they're part of less than 1% of the population, then the problem lies in those people.
Did I, at any time, implied anything about anyone taking offense at anything?
I did not intend to aim that at anyone in this thread
Cisgender is a stupid term. It's made up and serves no purpose. There's the normal. Then there's people who identify differently and consider themselves being different and then have their own titles to identify with. Now...what is the point of using a term that basically has no own semantic value and serves nothing but identifying the people using it?
To be clear: I am not discussing anything here. The term is stupid and I laid out why. People using it want to be special among the special - and I can just sigh at that.
Chongara wrote: [
The term is used to describe something. Something that exists. If both parties understand what's communicated by the term, then the term serves its purpose just fine. Getting hung up the fact that whoever first coined the term didn't have all their etymological ducks on the row is semantic nitpicking of least productive kind.
If a person is uncomfortable with a term being applied to him or her (or it, or whatever), for any reason however "unproductive" or "nitpicky", is it still right to use it?
Chongara wrote: [
The term is used to describe something. Something that exists. If both parties understand what's communicated by the term, then the term serves its purpose just fine. Getting hung up the fact that whoever first coined the term didn't have all their etymological ducks on the row is semantic nitpicking of least productive kind.
If a person is uncomfortable with a term being applied to him or her (or it, or whatever), for any reason however "unproductive" or "nitpicky", is it still right to use it?
This depends on the nature of their objection. If they've a personal trauma with it or the term is broadly pejorative looking for alternative terms is probably a reasonable accommodation to ask of people. Whatever that term is will have to be similarly descriptive, minus whatever harmful consolations the original was carrying. If their complaint boils down to "I'm a dude that's OK with being a dude. The fact that's something that can be recognized and contrasted with dudes who aren't OK with being dudes...skeeves me out." they can go get bent.
Chongara wrote: [
The term is used to describe something. Something that exists. If both parties understand what's communicated by the term, then the term serves its purpose just fine. Getting hung up the fact that whoever first coined the term didn't have all their etymological ducks on the row is semantic nitpicking of least productive kind.
If a person is uncomfortable with a term being applied to him or her (or it, or whatever), for any reason however "unproductive" or "nitpicky", is it still right to use it?
that depends, are peoples feelings more important then everything else, up to and including reality?
does one persons feelings that they dont like being called cis over ride another persons feelings about being in a fringe/non normal group, being called out accuratly as not conforming to the norm?
using the term CIS can offend some people, using the term normal affects others, technically speaking, normal is a correct term whil CIS is not, so reality is the tie breaker here.
using CIS doesnt even make sense, you have males, females, hermaphrodites, and transgendered people... CIS is superfluous at best..
I mean, it doesn't offend me in anyway, really, other than the fact that I think it's stupid and unnecessary.
But then again, I'm sure it has something to do with my white privilege.
I've gotten to the point that I know, and begrudgingly accept, that because I'm a white middle class male I'm going to be told by multiple groups that my opinion doesn't count on all sorts of things.
Frankly, I feel the term is asinine and forced, and have generally only seen it applied seemingly as a pejorative (see: Tumblr). Beyond being the people who use it in such a way, the guys who think they're gals or vice versa don't really figure into my distaste for the term.
using CIS doesnt even make sense, you have males, females, hermaphrodites, and transgendered people... CIS is superfluous at best..
I mean, yeah. This is kind of how it makes sense to me. Males are male. Females are female. Cis is something I'm labeled as by angry people on blogs in the dark recesses of the Internet I marvel over during bouts of insomnia.
cincydooley wrote: From here on out, I'd like to be referred to as "pickle-pantsed."
As a name, or as a classification of abstract state of being? Does it exist as a pronoun? Is it okay if I use it with protofrozz, or would you rather people floroform it?
daedalus wrote: Frankly, I feel the term is asinine and forced, and have generally only seen it applied seemingly as a pejorative (see: Tumblr). Beyond being the people who use it in such a way, the guys who think they're gals or vice versa don't really figure into my distaste for the term.
At the end of the day people who are transgender and those who deal with and discuss their issues with them need a term for those who aren't transgender, that also does not diminish their own identities.
You can't just call them "Male" or "Female" this either invalidates their own identities (those people are male/female, we actually aren't) or it just describes biology, which isn't useful enough.
You can't just assign them "Normal", it's too alienating.
Some of the other frameworks such as used such as those to describe transitions "Male to Female" are all somewhere between really clumsy at best, to running into the same invalidation problem at just using "Male", "Female" as seperate to transgender.
The term cleanly fills a useful niche when discussing transgender issues, or placing transgendered people in a broader context. That a few vitriolic teenagers on tumblr make a screaming mess of the discussion really isn't the best measure here. I won't argue it was the most elegantly coined term I'm not a linguist, but like I said useless semantic nitpicking.
To put it another way: How much have you actually sought and watched or engaged with discussions on gender identity? Or even related topics like sexual orientation, or the role gender plays in society? Have you looked into these issues at all beyond the silliest examples of virotic teenagers that make to /r/tumblrinaction ?
At the end of the day people who are transgender and those who deal with and discuss their issues with them need a term for those who aren't transgender, that also does not diminish their own identities.
I actually hadn't considered this. I still hate the phrase, but this does make me a bit more empathetic to it.
So...should I rename this thread "cismalesplaining" ?
daedalus wrote: Frankly, I feel the term is asinine and forced, and have generally only seen it applied seemingly as a pejorative (see: Tumblr). Beyond being the people who use it in such a way, the guys who think they're gals or vice versa don't really figure into my distaste for the term.
At the end of the day people who are transgender and those who deal with and discuss their issues with them need a term for those who aren't transgender, that also does not diminish their own identities.
You can't just call them "Male" or "Female" this either invalidates their own identities (those people are male/female, we actually aren't) or it just describes biology, which isn't useful enough.
You can't just assign them "Normal", it's too alienating.
Some of the other frameworks such as used such as those to describe transitions "Male to Female" are all somewhere between really clumsy at best, to running into the same invalidation problem at just using "Male", "Female" as seperate to transgender.
Personally, I disagree. You need to use multiple forms of male/female to explain which of the myriad of types of transgender you are anyway, right? Even then, hell, even monogendered, implying that you only have one would make more sense.
After thinking about it a while, the problem here is I think is a philosophical divide. I can't personally reconcile the notion of a separate gender of the psyche within myself, mostly because being a bland white male, I don't really associate any of those qualities with my psyche, except perhaps ironically. I am not a male in a male's body. I'm just a male, and that's not even really a strong vector of personal identity for me to begin with anyway. That's not to say that I expect other people to feel the same way, or that I'm demanding any special concessions out of anyone else. I just don't think I like the use of the term because when directed toward me, it implies a division of forms in myself that I cannot myself see. It's establishing a dotted line on my schematic where I see none to begin with.
The term cleanly fills a useful niche when discussing transgender issues, or placing transgendered people in a broader context. That a few vitriolic teenagers on tumblr make a screaming mess of the discussion really isn't the best measure here. I won't argue it was the most elegantly coined term I'm not a linguist, but like I said useless semantic nitpicking.
To put it another way: How much have you actually sought and watched or engaged with discussions on gender identity? Or even related topics like sexual orientation, or the role gender plays in society? Have you looked into these issues at all beyond the silliest examples of virotic teenagers that make to /r/tumblrinaction ?
Not particularly much, to be honest. There was the thread I started here weeks ago to try to better understand it, which didn't go very far.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the notion that male and female are now mentally different and not social constructs, while society has screamed at me my entire life otherwise.
daedalus wrote: Frankly, I feel the term is asinine and forced, and have generally only seen it applied seemingly as a pejorative (see: Tumblr). Beyond being the people who use it in such a way, the guys who think they're gals or vice versa don't really figure into my distaste for the term.
At the end of the day people who are transgender and those who deal with and discuss their issues with them need a term for those who aren't transgender, that also does not diminish their own identities.
Perhaps, but cisgender wasn't created by them, it was popularized in the armpit of the internet as a way of differentiating in a negative. It isn't about understanding or inclusion, it is about distance and dislike. It is hard to get to a better place by creating a gap between yourself and the other 99.7%*. If I thought this would help people understand each other I'd be all for it, but it is a wedge more than anything else.
*The numbers I saw put transgender at roughly .3% of the population. I imagine it varies but probably not excessively.
Ahtman wrote: It is hard to get to a better place by creating a gap between yourself and the other 99.7%
Do you mean, calling out the gap that already exists? I think 'cis-' is meant to point out that 'rans-' is just another (that is, among other) gender orientation and not a defect when measured up against normative gender identity.
At the end of the day people who are transgender and those who deal with and discuss their issues with them need a term for those who aren't transgender, that also does not diminish their own identities.
I actually hadn't considered this. I still hate the phrase, but this does make me a bit more empathetic to it.
So...should I rename this thread "cismalesplaining" ?
Empathy is good, as is understanding you may not have considered everything. In fact they're both good tools to approach just about anything involving other people with, the best even.
So if these folks and their issues need a term, what should it be? Why is this particular term so "Stupid"?
It can't really be that the term is "Made Up" all our words are made up, and meanings of words drift from the original ones and can become divorced from their roots, it's not coherent position unless you wish to decry everything that came after our species first whistles and clicks. It
Being pejorative would be fair but I think it takes more than a few disgruntled 14-year olds off tumblr to establish that as the norm - again if your only exposure is people picking out blog entries to highlight how absurd they are, consider that may not be the most informed perspective.
Now I'm going to speculate a bit and draw on my feelings as a-man-born-a-male-who-is-attracted-to-women-and-only-women-and-is-totally-OK-with-all-of-that*. I think what's so initially off putting about it is that its' a rather jarring change from what we're used to. My way of being is so common, and commonly accepted that I have no need to categorize myself. I'm surrounded by people like me, by people who meet my expectations and people's whose expectations I meet. My identity is so obvious and seemingly self evident I almost can't even see it for what it it is. The box I'm in so big it's really not evident I'm even in one.
Then somebody in a different box comes along and they wanna talk about how being in their box is different, what it means for them and how they relate to people in boxes unlike theirs. And suddenly it's like: Whoa! What'd you mean I'm in box? I'm not in a box, I'm just here like everyone else! Don't put me in a box, you're the one being in a tiny little box!.
The fact my identity kind of has a classification and isn't just the way things is, it's a bit off-putting at least initially.
*that was really clumsy and could benefit from some terminology to shorten it up, don't you think?
So if these folks and their issues need a term, what should it be? Why is this particular term so "Stupid"?
It's unnecessary. It reinforces being different when you already got a term for expressing that you're different. Feel free to use it, but it just clutters up a field that's swarmed by meaningless terms already.
You could argue (as Chongara has pointed out) that "cis-" is unnecessary to you because you gender identity is so common. But can you really argue that it isn't necessary to transgendered people? (This would probably be "cisplaining.") I would say, it serves a useful purpose for cisgendered people, too, inasmuch as the notion that there are people and then there are transgendered people leaves transgendered people on the outside. The concept of "cis-" evens the playing field in the sense of pointing out that being trans- is not some kind of deformity.
So if these folks and their issues need a term, what should it be? Why is this particular term so "Stupid"?
It's unnecessary. It reinforces being different when you already got a term for expressing that you're different. Feel free to use it, but it just clutters up a field that's swarmed by meaningless terms already.
Ahhhhhhh. You got me hooked Siggy. I gotta know: What are all these meaningless terms? If an exhaustive list would be too much, would you just mind giving me a taste? Maybe a "Top 12 most useless terms according to Sigvatr."
whembly wrote: I'm deaf... (well, damn near deaf with two hearing aids blasting my eardrums... specially with Metallica/A7X blaring ).
I fething hate this crap. PC'ism at it's worst.
My left eye, if I look at someone with it, is capable of discerning that there is a person in front of me, but that's about it. I can't make out even the features of their face. I know where their eyes, nose and mouth should be, I just can't specifically identify them. And this is after a cornea transplant operation. Thank God form my right eye.
And I'm not about to scream "abelist" at someone who uses the word 'blind', or phrases such as 'blind as a bat' in regular conversation. Why? Because I'm not a fething moron...
Ahtman wrote: Honestly I had never heard this term before and since the creation of this thread I have seen it twice. This is more proof that everything originates in Dakka's OT and radiates outward.
As I said, the entire concept of "abelism" was an unknown to me until a few months ago, but it's by far the most normal of all the stupid Internet-based extremist PC bull gak out there. "Headmates" is where the really crazy crap is. Look that up. Yikes...
If people are offended by being called "not normal" because they're part of less than 1% of the population, then the problem lies in those people.
Thank you.
Normal isn't a bad word. Normal is just that: Normal. It represents the majority. A woman being a woman or a man being a man doesn't require any special titles, because the titles already exist - man and woman - and that's normal.
Chongara wrote: At the end of the day people who are transgender and those who deal with and discuss their issues with them need a term for those who aren't transgender, that also does not diminish their own identities.
Well you kinda just did that.
"... aren't transgender..."
There. That covers it.
Sigvatr wrote: Last time I checked, there were more than 50 different terms for gender identification. And yes, that's overly excessive to say the least.
Including baffling things like:
Male-to-Female and MtF. IIRC, this is someone transitioning from male to female (probably via a reassignment medical procedure). The opposite of these exist as well, but why have two that mean the same thing? And before someone says "It's just an acronym", well, I've seen forms that contain all the wonderful and wacky "genders" our convoluted culture of snowflakes has created (they usually come from college campuses - what a fething surprise!), and they list those two (and the FtM opposites) separately.
I want to see an argument between someone who identifies as Male-to-Female and someone who identifies as MtF, if only to watch a literal example of "pointlessness" take places before me.
So if these folks and their issues need a term, what should it be? Why is this particular term so "Stupid"?
It's unnecessary. It reinforces being different when you already got a term for expressing that you're different. Feel free to use it, but it just clutters up a field that's swarmed by meaningless terms already.
Ahhhhhhh. You got me hooked Siggy. I gotta know: What are all these meaningless terms? If an exhaustive list would be too much, would you just mind giving me a taste? Maybe a "Top 12 most useless terms according to Sigvatr."
Really the only reason I dislike "cisgender" is because the only time I've ever seen it is on Tumblr where the nutjobs rattle away with some maddening bile and twisted sense of egotistical fun. As per the word, only care for it is whether there is a better term for it as it isn't actually the opposite of trans.
As per mansplaining. Never heard of it before. It's stupid and has no point to have the man before. Simply put, it's just when somebody tries to explain something and the individual already knows it (so it comes off as not expecting the individual to understand the jargon, etc) with the extra caviat that the MAN is doing it. It's stupid and a blatantly loaded term.
Cis- is not supposed to be the opposite of trans-. It's not meant to define gender as being either this or that. It's trying to do the opposite of that -- to open gender up from "either normal or not normal."
Really the only reason I dislike "cisgender" is because the only time I've ever seen it is on Tumblr where the nutjobs rattle away with some maddening bile and twisted sense of egotistical fun. As per the word, only care for it is whether there is a better term for it as it isn't actually the opposite of trans.
Have you looked anywhere but tumblr? Heck have you even looked at tumblr to any meaningful degree?
Is your only exposure to these issues and the vocabulary around them threads like these, and folks posting screen caps/links of the zaniest "Kill all men" blogs?
If so, is it at all surprising that's the only place and context you've seen it in?
Cis- is not supposed to be the opposite of trans-. It's not meant to define gender as being either this or that. It's trying to do the opposite of that -- to open gender up from "either normal or not normal."
Said it incorrectly. Anyways looked up latin for far too long and overall I don't really have a problem with the word being cis. Also wait whoa what about normal? All I know is about MtF and FtM but really I frankly just think that they are a male or female (depending on what they identify with). Then I'm done unless they have both genitals which is far more complicated. On a side note, it made me actually look up when heterosexual first was coined. First time was in 1900s but it seems to not have gained much speed until about the 1960s or something. Actually interesting to learn.
Really the only reason I dislike "cisgender" is because the only time I've ever seen it is on Tumblr where the nutjobs rattle away with some maddening bile and twisted sense of egotistical fun. As per the word, only care for it is whether there is a better term for it as it isn't actually the opposite of trans.
Have you looked anywhere but tumblr? Heck have you even looked at tumblr to any meaningful degree?
Is your only exposure to these issues and the vocabulary around them threads like these, and folks posting screen caps/links of the zaniest "Kill all men" blogs?
If so, is it at all surprising that's the only place and context you've seen it in?
No because I don't try to seek them out tumblr is mostly a place where people just post about fanbases, artwork, or something else. The group at tumblr that's nuts is a very small subset. Only way I know about them is because they'll lash out sometimes. And issues as to what? I'm really confused on that. Are we talking like LGBT stuff? Are we talking the interwar within the very "united" force itself?
"Normal" as in people who identify with the gender that is traditionally associated with their biological sex. The word "normal" denotes "usual" or "most common" but also connotes "correct" or (in the context of medicine, for example) "healthy" (see also "normative"). So understanding cisgendered as "normal" can and has fostered confusion/bigotry that people who are not cisgendered are deformed, sick, wrong (including morally wrong), etc. The word "normal" also implies a binary: there is normal and abnormal. The term "cis-" does not imply any binary.
"Normal" as in people who identify with the gender that is traditionally associated with their biological sex. The word "normal" denotes "usual" or "most common" but also connotes "correct" or (in the context of medicine, for example) "healthy" (see also "normative"). So understanding cisgendered as "normal" can and has fostered confusion/bigotry that people who are not cisgendered are deformed, sick, wrong (including morally wrong), etc. The word "normal" also implies a binary: there is normal and abnormal. The term "cis-" does not imply any binary.
Alright, I can get that. I dunno I've just always considered everyone within LGBT to be, simply put, abnormal. Even in the most outrageous of surveys it has at best been a small minority and really, it's probably closer to the margin of 3% at most (and that's probably with some hardcore high margins). Simply put, it is abnormal. Not bad, just abnormal. You are right that the term abnormal is a word that nobody likes simply because usually one associates it with something bad. So yeah, I can see an attempt to make a name for the normal to be instead cisgender. It makes it so that people don't just think abnormal and since abnormal normally means something bad trans = bad.
StarTrotter wrote: Not bad, just abnormal. You are right that the term abnormal is a word that nobody likes simply because usually one associates it with something bad.
Sure, exactly. Not being straight or cis seems to be rarer than being those things. No argument. In fact, those things being rare contributes to non-straight or non-cis being comparatively vulnerable to prejudice. For people who are part of the majority in terms of gender, sexual orientation, race, etc, language is often no big deal -- and that's because language is often defined by the majority, at least in terms of its everyday use. But even so I know I would not want to be called abnormal.
StarTrotter wrote: Not bad, just abnormal. You are right that the term abnormal is a word that nobody likes simply because usually one associates it with something bad.
Sure, exactly. Not being straight or cis seems to be rarer than being those things. No argument. In fact, those things being rare contributes to non-straight or non-cis being comparatively vulnerable to prejudice. For people who are part of the majority in terms of gender, sexual orientation, race, etc, language is often no big deal -- and that's because language is often defined by the majority, at least in terms of its everyday use. But even so I know I would not want to be called abnormal.
And speaking for myself I accept that I am abnormal
Jokes aside, I getcha now. It'll be interesting to see what will happen in the next fifty years on this terminology for sure. Will this become more common or perhaps something else entirely. Anyways, it's rather off topic so apologies for that. I'll stop conversing with this post.
I don't think it's off-topic (else as a moderator, I would have asked that people get back on-topic rather than participating) because the argument against using a term like cis- is a good example of "__splaining" (in this case, cisplaining).
I am a little wary of the ___splaining concept because it is sometimes used to unfairly shut down discussion, in the sense of saying something like "you are not X so you cannot speak about it." But I also think this is abusing the concept.
Using the concept correctly, I think it is very useful and important. It reminds us that we need to be more empathetic, as Chongara noted above, and not assume that our experience is the standard to judge everyone else's (because it might be socially dominant or most common, for example).
Manchu wrote: The term "cis-" does not imply any binary.
Of course it does in this case. The whole point of the term 'cisgender' is to separate people, not to draw attention to a problem. It also isn't something that many, if not most, transgender people go with. Transgender is a process not a destination. Anecdotally the people I know that went through a transition (omg 'trans'!) have reconciled their body/mind issue and are the gender they are, not a FtM, but just a male; not a MtF just a female. 'Cisgender' ends that process and sets people into two groups permanently. One will never be who they are and will always be defined by what they were. I doubt that is what it was meant to do, but in practice that is what it does, and therefor is problematic.
As I said earlier if it helped people empathize and understand the mind/body problem I would be all for it, but it doesn't do that it just creates a new binary and one that is far more permanent and problematic; 'normal' can have problematic attachments, but 'cisgender' absolutely does. People dealing with these issues need to be marginalized less and accepted for who they are more, but 'cisgender' creates another roadblock and misunderstanding. Hell this thread is a good example of that. All it does is make people argue the semantics and not deal with the reality, and that is frankly all the word will do; it is a verbal Molotov Cocktail.
I am a little weary of the ___splaining concept because it is sometimes used to unfairly shut down discussion, in the sense of saying something like "you are not X so you cannot speak about it." But I also think this is abusing the concept.
Manchu wrote: The term "cis-" does not imply any binary.
Of course it does in this case.
No it doesn't. Cis- is just a category of people who identify with the gender traditionally associated with their biological sex. The only thing it implies about other categories is that there could be others. It certainly does not imply that there is only one other category, i.e., "non-cis", any more than the word "blue" implies the only other color is "non-blue."
Manchu wrote: The term "cis-" does not imply any binary.
Of course it does in this case.
No it doesn't.
Well suddenly I agree since you said "no".
I obliviously disagree with your assessment and don't find the analogy very apt or comparable, but I don't think continually arguing about it will make a difference either. We could both probably go on till we are both not-blue in the face but I don't see either agreeing with the other on this point.
You are obliviously wrong and nothing will change that.
Could we please leave tumblr out of this? tumblr is on the same level as 4chan on some topics, just on the other side of things, and I don't see anyone bringing up 4chan. Fortunately.
Ahtman wrote: Well suddenly I agree since you said "no".
Then I wrote the rest (which you did not quote and merely dismissed) of that post for nothing, drat.
I am not just ignoring your point about setting up a category (called "non-cis") of people who "will never be who they are and will always be defined by what they were." But the point about implying a binary is more basic and needs to be covered first. That's why the color analogy is apt -- yes of course there being a color called blue indicates that there are other colors BUT it does not indicate there is only one other color. The same is true of the term cis-.
So here is the binary you suggest, between people who are who they are and people who "will never be who they are and will always be defined by what they were." Cis- does not give rise to this binary, either. The underlying binary you are pointing out is the traditional gender binary that cis- undermines. "Who they are" and "who they were" in your phrasing refer to the categories of men and women, not cis and trans.
Manchu wrote: which you did not quote and merely dismissed
I didn't merely dismiss it, I read it, saw nothing new or compelling, and purposefully demised it. There is no need to repost everything as I imagine you remember what you stated. Just as, essentially, I didn't see the need to repost every bit from before as you restating the same thing for a third time hasn't made it more real or compelling as an argument.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Manchu wrote: "Who they are" and "who they were" in your phrasing refer to the categories of men and women, not cis and trans.
This perhaps is the fundamental disagreement. People who go through the transition are men and women, not cis or trans. The language itself creates an artificial barrier to acceptance as the people they are and really only sees them for the people they were. In academics it is most likely used differently, but used outside that setting it is more of a way of attacking and shutting down conversation, which is how most use it and the prevalent use. Your definition seems more academic in nature, and while I understand your point I don't think it works when placed in the real world like Kool-Aid, Communism, or Vegimite. Sure they sound good on paper, but the real world applications are far more problematic.
Ahtman wrote: hasn't made it more real or compelling as an argument
Bit of the pot calling the kettle black as you are just declaring that an argument is non-compelling. Certainly that is the least compelling argument of all.
Ahtman wrote: People who go through the transition are men and women, not cis or trans.
That is a false dichotomy. The terms cis- and trans- are not mutually exclusive with the terms man and woman. Bifurcating gender from sex (which you have casually conflated ITT*) is a basic premise here. A transgendered person will indeed never have been born with the sex to which their gender is normatively assigned. This historical reality is an inescapable context. Ignoring it, stifling it, pretending it away all amount to denial.
Ahtman wrote: The language itself creates an artificial barrier to acceptance as the people they are and really only sees them for the people they were.
The barrier already exists and it is far, far worse to let it stand at "normal v. abnormal" than to open up the scope of how we conceive of gender.
Ahtman wrote: Sure they sound good on paper, but the real world applications are far more problematic.
I'm very sympathetic to your point about terms being twisted by those propounding opposing agendas. Much of this thread is a testament to that principle. And I also concede that the usefulness of terminology can be diminished if it is "captured" by those who are hostile to it, as with "reappropriation" campaigns (e.g., the word "gay" is no longer a very effective slur). On the other hand, there seems to be no convincing reason to abandon terms like cis- and trans- to people who would rather declare that gender and sex are the same and anyone not conforming to that "reality" a freak.
* here:
Ahtman wrote: Anecdotally the people I know that went through a transition (omg 'trans'!) have reconciled their body/mind issue and are the gender they are, not a FtM, but just a male; not a MtF just a female.
jasper76 wrote: Someone asked me how to do something at work today, and I started by saying, "Let me mansplain it to you." True story...she thought it was funny
Try actually mansplaining something to her and see if it gets a laugh. Actually, don't. I can't advise you to go out and be a jerk to someone, even in a tongue-in-cheek way.
I'd hate to quote Bill Clinton but here it is
“I believe that in ways large and small, peaceful and sometimes violent, that the biggest threat to the future of our children and grandchildren is the poison of identity politics that preaches that our differences are far more important than our common humanity.”
Taken from http://gladwinput.com/poison-identity-politics-biggest-threat-future-says-bill-clinton/
Honestly I think we might be arguing different things, and that is leading to problems in dialogue. You seem to be arguing what it should be used to mean whereas I am arguing how it is used, and unless we can reconcile the should/is problem I don't know that we will agree, as we are talking past each other. While it may have started out as a benign indicator it has moved well beyond that to something more troubling. I also had a sentence at one point that used 'vis-a-vis' but decided to edit it out. I don't get to say that very often so it pleases me that I could.
Manchu wrote: Similar to mansplaining, I think people who know what the term means do use it properly.
I know what the term is supposed to mean and how it is supposed to be used but whenever it is brought up it is almost invariably never in that context, which brings us back to the hopes and dreams of what it really means versus how it really is used. Whether a person wants it to mean something different doesn't change the fact that it isn't how it is used the majority of the time. Actual use has outpaced intended use by a far margin.
To avoid a battle of the anecdotes, perhaps it would be best to stick with the actual meaning of the term.
Which we can't agree on whether it is actually in use by most or not, and thus are back at an impasse. I don't think irregardless should be a word yet there it is in the dictionary and in spell check.
It'll be interesting to see how long this back and forth goes on. Ahtman's made one attempt at saying 'hey, maybe we're just talking back and forth' and Manchu has firmly rebutted that. Who will win? Who will outlast the other? Who MUST have the last word?
Sining wrote: It'll be interesting to see how long this back and forth goes on. Ahtman's made one attempt at saying 'hey, maybe we're just talking back and forth' and Manchu has firmly rebutted that. Who will win? Who will outlast the other? Who MUST have the last word?
My money's probably on Manchu
Well yeah, the pattern's pretty obvious by this point. We'll have a page or two of back and forth, and then he'll lock the thread.
You could at least base your personal attack on something resembling truth.
What, like Your comments over the last two pages or so?
How do my comments over the last few pages indicate that I would lock the thread? In fact, I have argued for pages on end with HBMC and never locked the thread. Recently I argued with you for pages on end without locking the thread. It's a petty personal attack based on a lie.
You could at least base your personal attack on something resembling truth.
What, like Your comments over the last two pages or so?
How do my comments over the last few pages indicate that I would lock the thread? In fact, I have argued for pages on end with HBMC and never locked the thread. It's a petty personal attack based on a lie.
Never mind. Thought I recalled reading a thread recently with 2 or so entire pages of you bickering back an forth with just one or two others then checked back and round you hadn't commented on the previous page. Must hah got confused with someone else, or a different thread.
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: Never mind. Thought I recalled reading a thread recently with 2 or so entire pages of you bickering back an forth with just one or two others then checked back and round you hadn't commented on the previous page. Must hah got confused with someone else, or a different thread.
I'm fine with people disagreeing with me on Dakka; I'm here to discuss things (it is a message board after all). I'm not going to shut down a discussion because someone disagrees with me and I never have.
Manchu wrote: We can agree what the term means but you refuse to discuss it because it is abused out of ignorance or bad faith. Absurd.
Absurdity is pretending original use is the common use. We agreed that there are different meanings and that the original use is less problematic, but not that the original is what is used most of the time. It is bad faith and ignorance to ignore actual context in the hopes in the hopes of negating it. I can pretend 'irregardless' isn't a word either but that doesn't change the fact that it is now a word, and that we can agree that 'cisgender' had a different use at one time doesn't change that it has been used more outside that context at this point than in it.
I was just going to let it go to be honest but it seems we are entertaining.
Manchu wrote: We can agree what the term means but you refuse to discuss it because it is abused out of ignorance or bad faith. Absurd.
Absurdity is pretending original use is the common use. We agreed that there are different meanings and that the original use is less problematic, but not that the original is what is used most of the time. It is bad faith and ignorance to ignore actual context in the hopes in the hopes of negating it. I can pretend 'irregardless' isn't a word either but that doesn't change the fact that it is now a word, and that we can agree that 'cisgender' had a different use at one time doesn't change that it has been used more outside that context at this point than in it.
I was just going to let it go to be honest but it seems we are entertaining.
Well, to argue against that is to accept that I should be able to talk about the [see forum posting rules] of wood I carried in to burn in my fireplace.
I suppose, to be objective, all that remains is showing that the common use is the pejorative.
daedalus wrote: Well, to argue against that is to accept that I should be able to talk about the [see forum posting rules] of wood I carried in to burn in my fireplace.
It sounds like you are trying to disagree with me, but you are actually proving my point that original intention doesn't change actual intention. What something used to mean doesn't mean much if it actually means something else now. Sometimes it is better for the change, sometimes it is worse, and others it is just a change with no good or bad. I'm arguing that the term 'cisgender' may have started out benign but at this point is such a loaded and conflicted word that it is no longer benign. Just because Manchu wants to continue using in a benign manner won't really change how the word is moving, if not moved, away from that start.
daedalus wrote: Well, to argue against that is to accept that I should be able to talk about the [see forum posting rules] of wood I carried in to burn in my fireplace.
It sounds like you are trying to disagree with me, but you are actually proving my point that original intention doesn't change actual intention. What something used to mean doesn't mean much if it actually means something else now. Sometimes it is better for the change, sometimes it is worse, and others it is just a change with no good or bad. I'm arguing that the term 'cisgender' may have started out benign but at this point is such a loaded and conflicted word that it is no longer benign. Just because Manchu wants to continue using in a benign manner won't really change how the word is moving, if not moved, away from that start.
I do agree with you, actually. I'd just like to try to argue against your point simply because I do agree with it. I find I cannot.
Ahtman wrote: Absurdity is pretending original use is the common use.
So how about the term mansplaining? Do you think it is a totally useless term because a lot of people abuse it?
And how does one prove "common use"?
daedalus wrote: I suppose, to be objective, all that remains is showing that the common use is the pejorative.
Sure -- can Ahtman or anyone else show that cisgender and transgender are primarily used pejoratively?
I mean, the crux of Ahtman's argument is that basically no one actually uses those terms to indicate a non-binary perspective on gender. In my experience, that is severe hyperbole. I don't have a study backing it up -- yes, it's just anecdotal. But like I said, when we have anecdote against anecdote, isn't it best to just assume the actual definition rather than what amounts to a hypothetical misuse of the word?
This whole "not how it is actually used" angle seems like a very weak red herring to me.
I mean, the crux of Ahtman's argument is that basically no one actually uses those terms to indicate a non-binary perspective on gender. In my experience, that is severe hyperbole. I don't have a study backing it up -- yes, it's just anecdotal. But like I said, when we have anecdote against anecdote, isn't it best to just assume the actual definition rather than what amounts to a hypothetical misuse of the word?
Well, here's a gay man on the topic:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/j-nelson-aviance/i-am-not-cisgendered_b_5598113.html wrote:I am NOT "cisgendered." I reject that label. Why? From what I've read, "cisgendered" is a label that began in academic discourse as a way of describing people who weren't trans. But the meaning of it was akin to what we might call "normatively gendered." That means your gender identity is within a limited range of what society considers to be acceptably "normal." Normative is a word of negation and resistance. It rejects the boundaries delineated as "normal" by illustrating their discursive construction, i.e. not essential. However, while "cisgendered" operates within a broader language of gender as a means of description, it is also prescriptive and limiting. The reason I place it in quotations is because it sets up a binary that is antithetical to the purpose for which it is employed in popular discourse. If gender isn't binary, if it is fluid and can transgress boundaries, than a binary between cisgender and transgender cannot exist. If it does, then we must delineate what "real" transgender or "true" transgender means, and who is allowed to inhabit it.
If "cisgendered" means your gender identity matches the social construct attached to the sex you were assigned at birth, than there cannot be a male gender identity that acts outside those normative social boundaries. And if you say there is variation on gender identity, but "cis-" just means you were born with a penis and identify and live as a man, than you negate the many variations on what it means to "be a man" or even to "live as a man." You are imposing your concept of those things onto me, enforcing a binary that is paradoxical. Moreover, you are denying the gender fluidity of those who have a penis and identify as male, but prefer women's underwear or wear makeup or transgress norms in innumerable other ways. Adding more labels -- like "cisgendered male transvestite" -- in order to justify your act of aggression defeats the purpose of simplifying things with words like "cisgendered."
What is perhaps most disturbing in being called "cisgendered," is that it imposes an identity on me. Doing so invalidates my complicated experience of gender. Don't tell me that I am somehow normatively gendered for my body when my life experience has led me through periods of deep confusion about my gender identity and living as gender queer. How is living gender queer normative? How does that reconcile with the sex and gender roles society associates with having a penis? Moreover, you don't get to make a reductive statement about my gender identity or how I embody my gender while trying to argue for recognition of the diversity of other peoples' embodied genders. If you are going to argue for a less simplistic reading of others' embodied genders, than you have to do so with mine too. That includes recognizing that as a queer person, I'm automatically not inhabiting the normative roles society has constructed for those with a penis. My behavior, and sexual and romantic attachments aren't normative for "men." My intuitiveness isn't normative. My choices of profession haven't been normative. My mode of speech isn't normative.
By imposing the label "cisgendered" onto me, you do me psychological and intellectual violence. You are saying that I am the same as all the people who do accept and inhabit the normative roles attached to the social construct of "men," "male," or "masculine." You are silencing my voice and rejecting my right to determine my own identity. You have put me into a binary that alienates me from gender discourse. You are telling me, "check your privilege," a phrase that has been weaponized and become popular to use in ways that are adolescent and regressive to the discourse. You are saying -- especially with the implication of that last phrase -- that I need to reexamine my privileged position. That assumes I am unaware of my privilege and how my privilege affects. It is a phrase that in this context has one purpose -- to invalidate the opinions and silence the voices of those who you disagree with. It is aggressive and hurtful language -- weaponized. The fact that some people may not see those connections, may want to disavow them and the weaponized nature of how these terms are currently used shows a lack of understanding of the nature of discourse and how it shapes our world. By imposing your label on me and then questioning why I'm offended by it, you are questioning and invalidating my right to feel. That further silences my voice.
This has happened to me several times in the past few months since I began blogging on The Huffington Post. It follows a trend of invalidating men's opinions and voices in gender discourse, as though we don't have gender or don't have worthwhile experiences of it. Meanwhile we have to sit and listen as society demands us to be strong and silent, but sensitive and intuitive to the needs of our partners; as news stories and the media identify all men as predators who enjoy and participate in rape culture; as our experiences of sexual abuse and sexual assault are made into jokes and not challenged by anyone -- as opposed to the uproar over rape humor with female victims. Men who cherish their children suffer exponentially and disproportionately in custody cases. Men who don't fit easily within a handful of archetypes are still forced to seek out alternative communities and cohorts, sometimes being alienated from fathers and family members.
The term "cis-" has also participated in an increasing hostility toward gay men, and in particular white gay men. Race is, of course, a complicated issue within the LGBTQIA community. But when did gay men become the enemy? I hold no rosy belief that our community's political power is spread out equally among all our groups. But the attacks within the community only erode our unified political force when that unity is required. Infighting begets enmity and isolation. Throwing angry and hateful rhetoric -- essentially demanding everyone acknowledge your pain by lashing out -- erases those voices who might otherwise make important contributions to our cause.
Yet, as a "cisgendered" man I'm not allowed an opinion, not allowed a voice, not allowed to disagree, not allowed to have a lived experience of embodying a gender identity that is diverse and varied and absolutely out of step with the norm I'm ascribed to by the word "cis-." Instead, I'm supposed to reflect on my privilege before I am allowed to interrupt the people whose opinions matter. I'm supposed to "check my privilege." I am a binary male within a binary "cisgendered" vs. transgendered paradigm. I'm the enemy because I'm afforded privilege by my family background, my skin color, my penis, and my "cis-"-ness. Somehow that fails to take into account the fact that I haven't been able to hold down a full-time job because of a mental illness that sometimes leaves me incapacitated. It ignores the fact that my experience of everything has been shaped by a lifetime of being large and marginalized within gay male and Western European cultures. If someone doesn't understand why I find the term "cisgendered" offensive, why I refuse to allow someone else to define me or inscribe their ideas onto my body, then perhaps I'm not the ignorant one. I'm just the evil white gay guy with too much privilege.
Offtopic to the offtopic, LGBTQIA? I feel like it grows more letters every time I turn my back on the term. I think I know what the first four mean, but I'm not sure if the remainder of it was a typo or what.
Ahtman wrote: Absurdity is pretending original use is the common use.
So how about the term mansplaining? Do you think it is a totally useless term because a lot of people abuse it?
As I am fairly unfamiliar with it I have no opinion at this time. I'm not just going to make up an opinion to please you.
Manchu wrote: I mean, the crux of Ahtman's argument is that basically no one actually uses those terms to indicate a non-binary perspective on gender.
That isn't even close to my argument, so either you don't really understand the argument* and we are talking past each other, or you are purposefully not understanding it. Either answer goes back to the point that this is really all a waste as neither is going to convince the other of the rightness of their perspective on the use.
Especially when you are still so wrong.
*For any number of reasons, not just an inability to understand. This isn't always the best medium for dialogue after all.
If gender isn't binary, if it is fluid and can transgress boundaries, than a binary between cisgender and transgender cannot exist.
You can't do much with an argument like this because the premises are incorrect. The conclusion assumes cisgender and transgender are genders rather than relationships between the gender one identifies with and one's biological sex. If anything, the fact that there can be multiple relationships or orientation between sex and gender shows that gender is fluid. "Fluidity" after all is conceptually relative.
But the attacks within the community only erode our unified political force when that unity is required. Infighting begets enmity and isolation. Throwing angry and hateful rhetoric -- essentially demanding everyone acknowledge your pain by lashing out -- erases those voices who might otherwise make important contributions to our cause.
And I suspect this is an example of cisplaining.
Ahtman wrote: I'm not just going to make up an opinion to please you.
Rhetorical nonsense. If you are ignorant about a topic, admitting as much is sufficient. There's no need to pretend I could force you to come to a message board and have a discussion.
Ahtman wrote: you don't really understand the argument
Let's assume I don't. To be clear, here's what I think you are arguing -- Whatever cis- and trans- are intended to mean, the terms are used to set up an oppressive binary view of gender. If that is incorrect, can you please explain your actual argument?
So my question is, if every argument about why the term is obnoxious or pejorative is wrong, why are so many people finding it obnoxious or pejorative?
focusedfire wrote: Everything you have listed here is a rationalization. An excuse that a person would use to not be assertive. It is not the demagogues fault that the person sitting there is being passive/ passive aggressive. Being assertive is how mature people politely deal with such issues.
Sigh. It's like you didn't even read the post where I explained that there can be reasons why a person wouldn't be in a position to be assertive. Maybe you don't understand this because you've never been on the wrong end of one of those relationships (OH GOD HE'S TALKING ABOUT THE 'P' WORD), but you should try to see it from that perspective.
Oh, the delicious irony. You trying to throw out the perspective argument. You are so blinded by your own personal views that you have completely failed to notice that my entire argument has been one of perspective through time.
You seem to think that this entire concept is something new or revolutionary. As many youngsters do.
I have been trying to enlighten you as to the fact that this concept has been around for a while. You can trace it through the decades and centuries via the dictionary. That there are already words for such behaviour....and these words are not nearly as offensive.
As to assertiveness, everything you listed were "rationalizations", (excuses people make to not step up and be assertive).
You don't seem to understand that one "always has the right to be and is in the position to be assertive". It is not the fault of anyone else if that person chooses to not exercise that right.
Peregrine wrote:
focusedfire wrote:The practices of Intellectual Obscurantism, Elitism and Jargon have been noted as problems for the Feminist cause to struggle with f
since, at least, the late 1960's/early 1970's.
I have never heard of any of that. Not from actual feminists, and not even from "feminists say stupid stuff" trolls who would love to quote something so ridiculous. Could you provide some examples of actual feminist arguments about this, along with evidence that the people making them are part of mainstream feminism and not just a random person with a blog that nobody pays any attention to?
Ah, yes. If the mighty Peregrine has never heard of it then it must surely not have ever existed.
Dude, check your privilege.
As I have already mentioned. The concept itself has neen arround for quite a while. Second wave feminists brought the behaviour of men doing this into the cultural forefront.
In the 1980's there was a popular show that heavily satirized certain stereotypical male behaviours. One of the characters had the behaviour of being patronizing to women and everyone while spewing forth mountains of misinformation. The satire was so effective that to engage in such behave was to "be this characters name".
The show was "Cheers" and the character was Cliff Claven.
To this day, the terms "you've been Claven-ed" or "You're being a Claven" are still in use.
This phenomena was also brought up in the first season of "Home Improvement" and commented upon in the Rosanne tv show.
Sandra Bernhardt touched on this subject in some of her stand up as well as a few other notable feminist comedians of the 70's, 80's and 90's.
Please note that I normally would not use of mainstream media as reference material but in this case it seemed to fit your request.
Peregrine wrote:
focusedfire wrote:It is the struggle against these that have formed the foundation upon which the concept of "mansplaining" is based.
No it isn't. The concept of "mansplaining" comes from people (usually men) acting like the women they're explaining things to are ignorant children, even when the women likely know more about the subject than the man. In fact, you know this already because you've had at least one person explain it for you.
Haven't missed a thing, have only tried to inform you to the fact that this concept did not arise with the offensive term of "mansplaining".
That this concept has been around for quite a while and that I have seen it re-appear through the years with different names that were a lot less offensive.
Also, that each time it has come back into the forefront that there has always been a radical element that tries to use the concept to censor/suppress the right of an entire gender to speak.
Sigvatr wrote: Cisgender is a made-up term that serves no purpose. Transgender serves as a purpose for people who want to identify themselves from the normal.
So, you are arguing the usage of “non-transgender” as a replacement for “cisgender”. Is that really it? That… seems like a non-issue to me. If people want to use a shorter word, what is the problem with this?
Also, stop implying I am normal .
There's no need for any replacement word. Normal fits perfectly in this case as (context) we're talking about gender. Normal means male or female. People who identify differently are "transgender", "gay" or "bi"...or anything else they might want to come up with. In regards to gender, male or female are normal by the very definition of the word. You aren't normal if you identify yourself differently. This is without any positive or negative connotation, it's by the word's definition. Highly intelligent people aren't normal either.
Ignoring the fact that your assertion that not being normal doesn't have any negative connotations is so plainly absurd to the point of being laughable self-parody, it's just not terribly useful. We need specific terms for specific things, whatever they may be.
What's with the negative waves, Moriarity. You seem to ignore that not being normal can have positive connotations. Your entire point here seems to be that we replace an already serviceable terms like transgender and non-transgender (norms, mundanes, vanillas) with an easily misused and already abused term just because some transgenders are overly cynical or have a self-esteem problem .
I... I honestly don't know if I want the answer to that question. Frankly, I'm still considering whether it's worth more of my time to try to understand the seemingly fantastic things I read on the internet, or if I should devote more time to technical matters. It's quickly becoming more clear to me as these kinds of things come up and I participate that I'm not really cut out for discussing societal matters, and it's probably less of a waste of time for everyone involved if I nod politely and smile, and then go back to making things. This may be a reasonable time to bow out.
daedalus wrote: So my question is, if every argument about why the term is obnoxious or pejorative is wrong, why are so many people finding it obnoxious or pejorative?
I don't know about every argument. We've only seen two, well three if you count people ITT who have pretty much admitted they don't know what it means but still don't like it. As to the argument you posted, I think that essay boils down to the queer alliance breaking down as homosexuality finds more popular acceptance but other orientations remaining marginalized (that is, the interests of the gay community are turning out to be different from the interests of others) and so the issue he has with cisgender is really a matter of queer politics.
daedalus wrote: So my question is, if every argument about why the term is obnoxious or pejorative is wrong, why are so many people finding it obnoxious or pejorative?
I don't know about every argument. We've only seen two, well three if you count people ITT who have pretty much admitted they don't know what it means but still don't like it. As to the argument you posted, I think that essay boils down to the queer alliance breaking down as homosexuality finds more popular acceptance but other orientations remaining marginalized (that is, the interests of the gay community are turning out to be different from the interests of others) and so the issue he has with cisgender is really a matter of queer politics.
My personal statement from about 2 or 3 pages ago:
I can't personally reconcile the notion of a separate gender of the psyche within myself, mostly because being a bland white male, I don't really associate any of those qualities with my psyche, except perhaps ironically. I am not a male in a male's body. I'm just a male, and that's not even really a strong vector of personal identity for me to begin with anyway. That's not to say that I expect other people to feel the same way, or that I'm demanding any special concessions out of anyone else. I just don't think I like the use of the term because when directed toward me, it implies a division of forms in myself that I cannot myself see. It's establishing a dotted line on my schematic where I see none to begin with.
daedalus wrote: That's not to say that I expect other people to feel the same way, or that I'm demanding any special concessions out of anyone else.
That's a great position to start any discussion like this. In all seriousness, it is really the best position.
daedalus wrote: It's establishing a dotted line on my schematic where I see none to begin with.
I think the underlined part is really important. I have no doubt whatsoever that the term cisgendered would have very little meaning/relevance to your self-perception. As Chongara explained earlier:
Chongara wrote: My way of being is so common, and commonly accepted that I have no need to categorize myself. I'm surrounded by people like me, by people who meet my expectations and people's whose expectations I meet. My identity is so obvious and seemingly self evident I almost can't even see it for what it it is. The box I'm in so big it's really not evident I'm even in one.
The term cisgendered is not really around to help people whose self-view as to gender creates (basically) no issues for them. The term is there to account for how someone else sees/experiences the world.
The same thing is true of "mansplaining." The fact that a lot of men don't think "mansplaining" is a thing based on having never experienced it is moot. The term is supposed to explain how people who are not men sometimes experience interactions with some men.
Manchu wrote:
The same thing is true of "mansplaining." The fact that a lot of men don't think "mansplaining" is a thing based on having never experienced it is moot. The term is supposed to explain how people who are not men sometimes experience interactions with some men.
Given that there are already words that do this job in a less offensive manner, "Can you understand why many find this term unnecessary?".
We already have the words "patronizing" and "condescending". As such, "What purpose is there for the term "mansplaining" other than a perjorative one?".
Are there other phrases that specifically call out what it is like for someone who is not a man to be condescended to by a man? That is to say, is there another phrase that specifically calls out the issue of gender in this kind of interaction?
The phrase undoubtedly implies an argument -- to (probably inadequately) sum it up, men are used to dominating non-men in many situations in our society and as a result sometimes do so whether they notice it or not. Is it that the term is pejorative or that you disagree with the premises and conclusions of this argument?
- men traditionally and in many ways still play dominant roles in society - all other things being equal, men tend to act in accordance with that fact - one way this manifests is by condescending to people who are not men
I may be missing some key points (open to any additions or clarifications) but I think that is the basic jist of the term. As far as I can tell, the term does not suggest men are bad/inferior or intend to be condescending or consciously patronize people who aren't men (or other men for that matter). If anything, the phrase tends to suggest that men can sometimes be prisoners to a man-centric point of view and act in a way that, if they saw it from a different perspective, they would regret/prefer to act differently.
focusedfire wrote: You don't seem to understand that one "always has the right to be and is in the position to be assertive". It is not the fault of anyone else if that person chooses to not exercise that right.
Sigh. You really do have trouble understanding this "other people have different experiences thing". Let's consider a hypothetical situation: it's a bad economy and jobs are hard to get, but you have one that pays your bills. But here your boss is, being a condescending to you. Do you exercise your right to be assertive and risk getting fired, or do you just accept the awkward conversation as the price of securing your paycheck?
Ah, yes. If the mighty Peregrine has never heard of it then it must surely not have ever existed.
{random historical anecdotes that have nothing to do with what I asked for proof of}
First of all yes, if I haven't heard of something despite participating in a lot of arguments like this it's probably a sign (though not absolute proof) that the view in question is probably held only by a small minority.
Second, your little story about Cheers has absolutely nothing to do with what I was talking about. I asked for examples of feminists who actually make your supposed argument about how use of technical jargon (even in contexts where it is appropriate) is a man "lording his power and authority over women". And you responded with a story about how the concept known as "mansplaining" had a different name in the past. Do you see a problem here?
You seem to ignore that not being normal can have positive connotations.
It can, but you're talking about a context where "not normal" has been used as an insult. Can you imagine why it might be a problem to define everyone who isn't like you as "normal" in that situation?
Your entire point here seems to be that we replace an already serviceable terms like transgender and non-transgender (norms, mundanes, vanillas) with an easily misused and already abused term just because some transgenders are overly cynical or have a self-esteem problem .
I really fail to see how using the opposite of "trans-" as a prefix to mean "not transgender" is a term that is "easily misused and abused". Or did you think that "cis-" was a term invented by SJW feminazis just to annoy you instead of an existing prefix used in the appropriate manner?
focusedfire wrote: Could this be why the word is "patronizing" instead of "matronizing" or "personizing"?
I don't know the actual etymology. My guess is, it has to do with the meaning of "patron" -- which is someone who provides for a client and is usually the client's social superior. So "patronizing" could have developed as an ironic usage, meaning to act as if you are someone's superior. That's just my guess. As for why "patron" rather than "matron," I think that is because all of the languages in question (Latin, French (probably?), English) are products of patriarchal rather than matriarchal cultures to the point where even a woman who, for example, supports an artist is called that artist's patron while the word matron simply refers to an older woman (e.g., in contrast to maid[en]) or a (female) nurse. So in other words, I don't think the word "patronize" either (a) does call out anything about the gender of who is being condescending or being condescended to or (b) was ever intended to do so.
To avoid a battle of the anecdotes, perhaps it would be best to stick with the actual meaning of the term.
Oh, oh, oh, is this like when feminists hide behind the dictionary definition of the term so they can brush off all allegations of fascist and misandric currents in their movement?
To avoid a battle of the anecdotes, perhaps it would be best to stick with the actual meaning of the term.
Oh, oh, oh, is this like when feminists hide behind the dictionary definition of the term so they can brush off all allegations of fascist and misandric currents in their movement?
Wait, there is a subsection of feminism that is in support of authoritarianism in order to unify a nation though political violence, war, imperialism, extreme nationalism, etc as a means to achieve national rejuvenation and feels that stronger nations have the right to expand their territory by
cincydooley wrote: I guess my real question is why is this vernacular acceptable?
It isn't. It's along the same lines as things like "tone policing" and other made-up words created specifically to shut down debate, shut people up, and push a specific ideology devoid of logic.
Falls into a similar category to things like "cultural appropriation" and "ableism", that is to say things that don't really exist, or, at the very least do but not quite to the same extreme as those that bang on about them would have us believe.
While I wouldn't use the word "ableism", because it's stupid, the idea there isn't a systemic and pronounced problem in developed nations regarding discrimination against those with physical and mental disorders, whether socially or professionally, is demonstrably false. Do you have any concept of what it's like to go through life never knowing whether the next person you meet is going to judge you as either totally incapable/defective, or a lying chancer just out for sympathy/welfare? Have you ever seen the expression on an interviewer's face in the moment they go from viewing you as a serious prospect for a job to a "don't call us..." as soon as they find out you have a disorder, even if it has no bearing on your ability to actually do the job you're applying for(and before anyone smartarses; some prospective employers require you to disclose any ongoing medical issues you have, whether they're relevant or not)? Do you go through life having to watch people use the medical term for your disorder as a casual insult, based in crude stereotypes? Is a group you belong to, not through choice and which you cannot leave, regularly demonised in the media?
Has it occurred to you that the reason people "bang on about [it]" is because there are still plenty of people like you floating around asserting that these issues "don't really exist"?
cincydooley wrote: I guess my real question is why is this vernacular acceptable?
It isn't. It's along the same lines as things like "tone policing" and other made-up words created specifically to shut down debate, shut people up, and push a specific ideology devoid of logic.
Falls into a similar category to things like "cultural appropriation" and "ableism", that is to say things that don't really exist, or, at the very least do but not quite to the same extreme as those that bang on about them would have us believe.
While I wouldn't use the word "ableism", because it's stupid, the idea there isn't a systemic and pronounced problem in developed nations regarding discrimination against those with physical and mental disorders, whether socially or professionally, is demonstrably false. Do you have any concept of what it's like to go through life never knowing whether the next person you meet is going to judge you as either totally incapable/defective, or a lying chancer just out for sympathy/welfare? Have you ever seen the expression on an interviewer's face in the moment they go from viewing you as a serious prospect for a job to a "don't call us..." as soon as they find out you have a disorder, even if it has no bearing on your ability to actually do the job you're applying for(and before anyone smartarses; some prospective employers require you to disclose any ongoing medical issues you have, whether they're relevant or not)? Do you go through life having to watch people use the medical term for your disorder as a casual insult, based in crude stereotypes? Is a group you belong to, not through choice and which you cannot leave, regularly demonised in the media?
Has it occurred to you that the reason people "bang on about [it]" is because there are still plenty of people like you floating around asserting that these issues "don't really exist"?
Yeah, no one is saying that doesn't suck; but you kind of took a sharp turn away from what HBMC was saying there. "Ableism" is a term and thought process dreamed up to take offense at any term that even mentions a theoretical disability. It isn't a guy not hiring you because you are in a wheelchair. That is discrimination based on disability status which is illegal in America, at the least. Ableism is some scarf wearing early twenty year old - usually without any of the conditions they are decrying the shaming of - freaking out in your general direction because you used common turns of phrase. It's saying that using terms like "That's lame" "That's crazy" "What are you, deaf?" "Are you nuts?" are offensive language that should be variously discouraged, banned or criminalized, depending on the ardor of the complaining individual.
focusedfire wrote: You don't seem to understand that one "always has the right to be and is in the position to be assertive". It is not the fault of anyone else if that person chooses to not exercise that right.
Sigh. You really do have trouble understanding this "other people have different experiences thing". Let's consider a hypothetical situation: it's a bad economy and jobs are hard to get, but you have one that pays your bills. But here your boss is, being a condescending to you. Do you exercise your right to be assertive and risk getting fired, or do you just accept the awkward conversation as the price of securing your paycheck?
No problem understanding others points of view. Just very little empathy for those that won't help themselves.
In your hypothetical situation why is the woman not taking the issue to HR?
Why doesn't she use her smartphone to record the mans behaviour and then go talk to a lawyer?
The past 40+ years have shown a steady process in which protections for women and minorities have been enacted through legislation.
If someone won't try to stand up for themselves when they are able it is usually pointless to try and stand up for them.
In the end, the choice is hers to assert herself or not.
Yes, she could still lose her job, and have a court battle, but sometimes sacrifices have to be made to do the right thing.
(Edit to add)
Are you aware how ironic your hypothetical situation is here?
You chose to portray the woman as powerless. Maybe you hold some stereotypes that you are unaware of.
Peregrine wrote:
focusedfire wrote:Ah, yes. If the mighty Peregrine has never heard of it then it must surely not have ever existed.
{random historical anecdotes that have nothing to do with what I asked for proof of}
First of all yes, if I haven't heard of something despite participating in a lot of arguments like this it's probably a sign (though not absolute proof) that the view in question is probably held only by a small minority.
Second, your little story about Cheers has absolutely nothing to do with what I was talking about. I asked for examples of feminists who actually make your supposed argument about how use of technical jargon (even in contexts where it is appropriate) is a man "lording his power and authority over women". And you responded with a story about how the concept known as "mansplaining" had a different name in the past. Do you see a problem here?
First, don't alter my words (part in red)without noting such. Your doing such speaks volumes about who you are as a person.
Second, Your refusal to comprehend how such behaviour was being lampooned in the mainstream media also says a bit about your intentions in this discussion.
Third, I figured such a learned feminist as yourself was aware of the works of all the notable/published feminists.
......hmm, lets see. Ever heard of Gloria Jean Watkins also known by the nom de plum bell hooks ?
She authored the book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, in which she comments on how "jargon" is used as a tool of oppression.
Peregrine wrote:
focusedfire wrote:You seem to ignore that not being normal can have positive connotations.
It can, but you're talking about a context where "not normal" has been used as an insult. Can you imagine why it might be a problem to define everyone who isn't like you as "normal" in that situation?
Yes, am aware of context. Also am aware that we as a people have the ability to create a positive context just as easily as a negative one.....if we are willing to be positive and do the work.
Take the word abnormal for instance. It does not have a purely negative/pejorative meaning. It can also mean exceptional....and was often used for such until the clinical diagnosis became commonly used.
Peregrine wrote:
focusedfire wrote:Your entire point here seems to be that we replace an already serviceable terms like transgender and non-transgender (norms, mundanes, vanillas) with an easily misused and already abused term just because some transgenders are overly cynical or have a self-esteem problem .
I really fail to see how using the opposite of "trans-" as a prefix to mean "not transgender" is a term that is "easily misused and abused". Or did you think that "cis-" was a term invented by SJW feminazis just to annoy you instead of an existing prefix used in the appropriate manner?
The term has been around for about 20 years. Hence I know that it would be impossible for you to have invented it.
Seriously, go back and reread the post. It is very clear that I am referring to the term cisgender as the misused and abused term.
At this point I will bow out. Any continued discussion with you would seem to be pointless and futile. While I may be abnormal and a little crazy....I'm not far enough gone to keep doing this and expect a different result.
cincydooley wrote: I guess my real question is why is this vernacular acceptable?
It isn't. It's along the same lines as things like "tone policing" and other made-up words created specifically to shut down debate, shut people up, and push a specific ideology devoid of logic.
Falls into a similar category to things like "cultural appropriation" and "ableism", that is to say things that don't really exist, or, at the very least do but not quite to the same extreme as those that bang on about them would have us believe.
While I wouldn't use the word "ableism", because it's stupid, the idea there isn't a systemic and pronounced problem in developed nations regarding discrimination against those with physical and mental disorders, whether socially or professionally, is demonstrably false. Do you have any concept of what it's like to go through life never knowing whether the next person you meet is going to judge you as either totally incapable/defective, or a lying chancer just out for sympathy/welfare? Have you ever seen the expression on an interviewer's face in the moment they go from viewing you as a serious prospect for a job to a "don't call us..." as soon as they find out you have a disorder, even if it has no bearing on your ability to actually do the job you're applying for(and before anyone smartarses; some prospective employers require you to disclose any ongoing medical issues you have, whether they're relevant or not)? Do you go through life having to watch people use the medical term for your disorder as a casual insult, based in crude stereotypes? Is a group you belong to, not through choice and which you cannot leave, regularly demonised in the media?
Has it occurred to you that the reason people "bang on about [it]" is because there are still plenty of people like you floating around asserting that these issues "don't really exist"?
Yeah, no one is saying that doesn't suck; but you kind of took a sharp turn away from what HBMC was saying there. "Ableism" is a term and thought process dreamed up to take offense at any term that even mentions a theoretical disability. It isn't a guy not hiring you because you are in a wheelchair. That is discrimination based on disability status which is illegal in America, at the least. Ableism is some scarf wearing early twenty year old - usually without any of the conditions they are decrying the shaming of - freaking out in your general direction because you used common turns of phrase. It's saying that using terms like "That's lame" "That's crazy" "What are you, deaf?" "Are you nuts?" are offensive language that should be variously discouraged, banned or criminalized, depending on the ardor of the complaining individual.
And just like most of the complaints about these terms in this thread, "what HBMC was saying there" is a gratuitous strawman, branding the most extreme and irrelevant(to serious discourse) examples of misuse of a term as representative of that term, and dismissing it out of hand on that basis.
I find some aspects of the idea behind "ableism" questionable, but it has valid aspects; casual, almost unconscious discrimination does exist, and language does play a part in that - it's not something you should club people over the head with unless they're being deliberately offensive gits, but in the context of seriously discussing the subject, debating where exactly the line is in terms of what language is appropriate in a given situation is a perfectly valid aspect of the discussion, and trying to shut that down with this faux-victimhood "oh-em-gee I'm a middle-aged white male, I'm so hard-done-by because some berk on a tumblr told me to check my privilege once, I better turn myself in because obvious being white and male must be illegal now, lulz" drek is getting seriously tiresome.
Bromsy wrote: Yeah, no one is saying that doesn't suck; but you kind of took a sharp turn away from what HBMC was saying there. "Ableism" is a term and thought process dreamed up to take offense at any term that even mentions a theoretical disability. It isn't a guy not hiring you because you are in a wheelchair. That is discrimination based on disability status which is illegal in America, at the least. Ableism is some scarf wearing early twenty year old - usually without any of the conditions they are decrying the shaming of - freaking out in your general direction because you used common turns of phrase. It's saying that using terms like "That's lame" "That's crazy" "What are you, deaf?" "Are you nuts?" are offensive language that should be variously discouraged, banned or criminalized, depending on the ardor of the complaining individual.
Thank you, Bromsy. That is exactly what I was getting at when I say "abelism isn't real", and when I refer to the discrimination of people with disabilities I say "the discrimination of people with disabilities". It's more accurate, and removes all the idiotic (abelism!) and bonkers (abelism!!!) notions from blind (abelism!!!) morons (abelism!!!!!!) who continue to go on about it.
Yeah, the real problem in this situation is clearly the person being condescended to not being assertive enough, not the other person being a condescending ...
First, don't alter my words without noting such. Your doing such speaks volumes about who you are as a person.
I didn't alter your words. In fact I literally copy/pasted "lording his power and authority over women" from your post. The fact that you try to blame me for "altering your words" speaks volumes about who you are as a person.
Second, Your refusal to comprehend how such behaviour was being lampooned in the mainstream media also says a bit about your intentions in this discussion.
I understood it perfectly well. Objecting to the fact that your "answer" to my question had nothing to do with that question does not mean that I somehow failed to understand what you said.
......hmm, lets see. Ever heard of Gloria Jean Watkins also known by yhe nom de plum bell hooks ?
She authored the book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, in which she comments on how "jargon" is used as a tool of oppression.
Now we're getting somewhere. But can you explain this argument of hers in detail?
Seriously, go back and reread the post. It is very clear that I am referring to the term cisgender as the misused and abused term.
I know. And it is very clear that I'm pointing out your ignorance of what that term means. "Cisgender" isn't some SJW feminazi invention that exists just to annoy you, it's the inevitable opposite of "transgender". You know, because "cis-" and "trans-" are opposite prefixes.
Peregrine wrote: You know, because "cis-" and "trans-" are opposite prefixes.
Except they aren't. The prefix trans means beyond, change, or through, thus transgender, transition, transportation, ect ect. Cis as a preface means nearby. Near and Change are not antonyms. Near and Far are opposites, and stagnant and change are also opposites. In chemistry they are the opposites, but transgender doesn't come for the chemistry use, yet to make them mean the opposites you have to use cis from chemistry. If it is the term that is going to be used so be it, but they aren't opposite prefixes in standard latin, except in technical use describing atoms.
Bromsy wrote: Yeah, no one is saying that doesn't suck; but you kind of took a sharp turn away from what HBMC was saying there. "Ableism" is a term and thought process dreamed up to take offense at any term that even mentions a theoretical disability. It isn't a guy not hiring you because you are in a wheelchair. That is discrimination based on disability status which is illegal in America, at the least. Ableism is some scarf wearing early twenty year old - usually without any of the conditions they are decrying the shaming of - freaking out in your general direction because you used common turns of phrase. It's saying that using terms like "That's lame" "That's crazy" "What are you, deaf?" "Are you nuts?" are offensive language that should be variously discouraged, banned or criminalized, depending on the ardor of the complaining individual.
No, ableism is a term to describe discrimination against people with disabilities. Yohdrin not being hired (entirely) because he's in a wheelchair is absolutely ableism; just because something is illegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen. You wouldn't go up to someone that wasn't hired due to their race and say 'oh, "racism" is a term and thought process dreamed up to take offence at any term that even mentions race (I know so because I saw people on the internet using the term stupidly). It isn't a guy not hiring you because you're [insert race here]. That is discrimination based on race which is illegal in america, at the least.' That would be an idiotic argument, so why do you feel okay making such an argument now? Is it because you saw some screenshots of people on Tumblr misusing the term and then decided that that must be the only, and original use of the term? Because it's not.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Thank you, Bromsy. That is exactly what I was getting at when I say "abelism isn't real", and when I refer to the discrimination of people with disabilities I say "the discrimination of people with disabilities". It's more accurate, and removes all the idiotic (abelism!) and bonkers (abelism!!!) notions from blind (abelism!!!) morons (abelism!!!!!!) who continue to go on about it.
A) Seriously, it's spelt Ableism. Either you can't spell the word properly, or you've somehow made the exact same spelling mistake more than five times.
B) How often do you actually hear all these people in real life? I ask because it seems that every single argument you've made in this thread seems to be dismissing a word based on your perception of how a small section of Tumblr uses it, followed by arguing that their over the top usage is the main usage and so the term shouldn't be used.
Ableism is a useful word that describes an actual thing; just because you don't feel that you suffer from it doesn't mean that others don't either, it just means that you're lucky.
Also, I don't see you arguing that people should just use 'discrimination against people of another race' instead of racism, so why should ableism be any different? It's more accurate, and removes the stupid connotations associated with it, so why not just use it instead? I mean, it's almost like having an actual word for a phenomenon helps codify it as an actual thing.
Anyhow, on to 'cisgender'. For one thing, Cisgender doesn't mean 'not trans*', though that was how the actual word was chosen, because it means anyone who was born with their biological sex matching up to their gender identity. This means that my friend Bethany, who certainly isn't trans*, but doesn't consider herself to be entirely female, isn't Cisgender. This means that Ada, who doesn't consider themselves to be any gender, isn't Cisgender. This means that actually just going 'not transgender' isn't helpful, as their are far more gender identities than just transgender, so saying 'not-transgender' really isn't descriptive.
Anyhow, it Is a useful term, and just because you have seen some young teenagers on Tumblr being idiots doesn't mean that the rest of us don't find the term useful.
This thread seems to largely consist of people for whom these terms aren't useful, or the people the terms are used about, deciding that because they don't use them, and because they've seen people misusing them, that the terms aren't needed. Just because you don't use/need a term doesn't mean that it's useless, it just means that you don't use it. The ability for people non-cisgender identity identities to identify separately from those with cis identities is helpful; I tried to write that sentence without using the term Cisgender, and couldn't find a way that wasn't insulting, like 'normal or not', which bring me onto my final point.
People that are arguing in this thread about 'why not just use the word normal' have either never been a part of any discussion involving gender/sexuality, or they're just being wilfully mean. This is a conversation about gender/sexuality. At what point has any of you ever heard the term 'not normal' be used in a positive manner? For a stupid number of years, to be 'not normal' meant ridicule and discrimination, so why the feth do you think people that aren't Cisgender would identify as not normal? 'Oh, I guess I'm a freak' isn't exactly a sentence that people are likely to want to say, but that's the implication when you try to differentiate between normal and not. Seriously, the fact that people want to use the term normal describe straight white male is the whole reason this discussion exists in the first place!
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Yodhrin wrote: And just like most of the complaints about these terms in this thread, "what HBMC was saying there" is a gratuitous strawman, branding the most extreme and irrelevant(to serious discourse) examples of misuse of a term as representative of that term, and dismissing it out of hand on that basis.
I find some aspects of the idea behind "ableism" questionable, but it has valid aspects; casual, almost unconscious discrimination does exist, and language does play a part in that - it's not something you should club people over the head with unless they're being deliberately offensive gits, but in the context of seriously discussing the subject, debating where exactly the line is in terms of what language is appropriate in a given situation is a perfectly valid aspect of the discussion, and trying to shut that down with this faux-victimhood "oh-em-gee I'm a middle-aged white male, I'm so hard-done-by because some berk on a tumblr told me to check my privilege once, I better turn myself in because obvious being white and male must be illegal now, lulz" drek is getting seriously tiresome.
This is a pretty succinct summary of my feelings on the matter.
Sining wrote: It'll be interesting to see how long this back and forth goes on. Ahtman's made one attempt at saying 'hey, maybe we're just talking back and forth' and Manchu has firmly rebutted that. Who will win? Who will outlast the other? Who MUST have the last word?
My money's probably on Manchu
Well yeah, the pattern's pretty obvious by this point. We'll have a page or two of back and forth, and then he'll lock the thread.
You get ban-threatened first. Get your pattern right, son!
Someone do explain the "abelism" and "ableism" debate first - I am kinda confused as I can only find non-typo versions of "ableism" and it makes sense as it refers to "able". Can anyone enlighten me?
A) Seriously it's spelt Ableism. Either you can't spell, or you've already decided the term is unimportant so you can misspell it because it doesn't matter, I'll leave the decision up to you, but please try and spell it correctly, you look like a buffoon.
"Seriously, (COMMA) it's SPELLED (the correct way to pretty much everyone NOT in the UK).....[run on sentence that's barely intelligible] you look like a buffoon"
Don't be a condescending douchenozzle about spelling and syntax if you can't get it right yourself.
)changing its definition as its popularity increases.
.
off my land!
