कारतोफ्फेलस्क्रिप्ट™
RocketmanInsisting that everyone should have a clear, recognizable and unchangeable gender only makes sense if you want to treat people of different genders differently.
Which you clearly shouldn't.
ethagnawl
Pat@ethagnawl @slothrop that distillation packs many truths on several levels.
fedops 💙💛@slothrop the usual counter argument is that males would change their gender to female and then compete in their sports events, winning everything.
Yup, sure sounds like complete BS. Just look at the Venn diagram of transphobes and fascists.
@fedops The other major counterargument is that men(tm) would disguise themselves as women(tm) in order to sneak into female-only spaces, and assault and rape women.
Which they already do, all the time, usually without being caught, let alone punished.
THRILLHO@slothrop @fedops yeah, right? The reason this happens is a lack of security, not because some bloke found the cheat code of putting on a dress and bamboozling everyone.
Lockable single person loos and dressing rooms, don't tuck public toilets down a blind alley, bloody cameras and people around. That's how you stop opportunistic sexual assault.
Chronic-migraine Ken 
@slothrop @fedops I hear this a lot and it sounds like such a weak excuse for hate because when you throw transition into the mix honestly it sounds like lots of extra steps to me. Its life changing. There are actual cis men who SA people without dressing femme or going for gender affirming treatments/care all the time.
I wish they would leave trans women alone already. It shows me how little they understand about what it means to transition. Such hate has also lead to butch cis women being accosted when they go to the toilet as well. 
dragonfrog@slothrop @fedops not to mention - if we assume that creepy cis men are going to go into women's washrooms, which condition makes it easier for them to do so?
- trans women can use women's washrooms, creepy cis men must invest in women's clothing to sneak in
- trans men must use women's washrooms, creepy cis men can walk in without even shaving their moustache or changing their clothes, at all and if challenged just claim to be trans men forced by law to use the women's bathroom
SchACABfstelze 🎗🖤@dragonfrog @slothrop @fedops trans or otherwise women might have a moustache and wear clothes from the 'men's fashion' department as well. Since there's no way to tell another person what gender it is meant to be, the only solution for the "bathroom issue" are unisex bathrooms. Works perfectly in trains and in private households, why not everywhere?
@dragonfrog @slothrop @fedops So, imo the only situation where i have a legit interest to know the gender of a person is if i want to have sex with that person. Every other situation: None of my fcking business.
su_liam
Hugs4friends ♾🇺🇦 🇵🇸😷
Irina
Nini
walfischbuchtT-Shirt-stuff. Nicely put.
Nathan Salwen@slothrop Well said!
Leigh Silvester@slothrop
Insisting that people must have a clear recognisable and unchangeable gender does not take into account the one fly in the ointment.
Biology.
The Equaiity Act and the recent judgement both avoid defining what a biological woman, or man, actually is. There is a good reason for that.
Anyone who has studied biology beyond primary school will know that biology is a tricksy thing.
This link explains a bit more and has a fun quiz at the end....
https://daily-twerk.com/science/uk-supreme-court-judgement-sex-farce/
@leighms Such claims also ignore the fact that gender is a social construct, not a biological fact.
As such, it’s inherently malleable.
Jay@slothrop @leighms Speaking of fun quizzes, it’d be hilarious to build a quiz where people are presented with a written description of behaviours that the majority of people from Time Period A within (Sub)Society A would recognize as “male” or “female” and see how many people can actually tell the “inherent” difference between men and women.
And yes, it would include societies that have third genders and two spirit and non binary and the like.
A classic example is from the 18th century when pink was considered a *manly* colour
Army officers would wear 'scsrlet* jackets, but with the dyes they had at the time these would quickly fade to pink.
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.@slothrop I've asked this before, but what do I do with my polite "ma'am" and "sir"s that are in my speech patterns?
I think last time I asked, we settled on "comrade", and 86'd "boss" or "jefe". But, I still haven't been able to fix my speech.
It's stupid, but I do have a no-ill-intent reason to want a clear, recognizable gender
@BoydStephenSmithJr Understandable, but lazy.
You could always go for “oi!”
(I constantly update my speech patterns for lots of things, so this doesn’t look like a relevant hurdle.)
@slothrop Oh, it's not for trying to get someone's attention. It's primarily used for short responses like "No, Sir" and "Yes, Ma'am" or "Thank you, Ma'am" or "You're Welcome, Sir", to show the polite respect that we all at least pretend to have in "The (U.S.) South".
It needs to be something that is grammatically a stand-in for a name, but for someone I haven't exchanged names with.
If I have exchanged names with them, I'll just use the term that matches their preferred pronouns if not their name.
I find "Hey!" or "Hey, you!" is usually sufficient for getting someone's attention.
Parsnicketty@BoydStephenSmithJr @slothrop the programming is definitely hard. I, too, wish there was a gender neutral term that wasn't super quirky.
@ProcessParsnip @BoydStephenSmithJr Ah! Here in Germany, we overcome this problem by simply not being polite 🤣
@slothrop @BoydStephenSmithJr a solution that is elegant in its simplicity.
PedestrianError 
@BoydStephenSmithJr @slothrop Saying please or thank you is in itself being polite. You don't need to add a label to it. For yes/no, "no, thank you" or "yes, please" are options. The level of harm done when you gratuitously misgender someone far outweighs any appreciation some people might have for being labeled with an outdated indicator of class status that has become everyday throwaway language.
@BoydStephenSmithJr @slothrop Sir and ma'am haven't always been universally applied regardless of class status and ma'ams have never been afforded the same respect as sirs. Historically, sirs were the oligarchs, ma'ams were materially privileged property of the oligarchs (remember, it's short for madam which implies married status), and servants and lower classes were not sir or ma'am and punished for not using the terms for bosses. Why did everyone want to use the language of the decadent rich?
@BoydStephenSmithJr @slothrop One more addition to this rant because I selfishly want to get out there anything that might help people break the habit (which I know is tough given how it's pushed on us in early childhood and beyond):
Notice how Donald Trump is obsessed with being called sir and claiming that people called him sir even when they didn't?
@PedestrianError @slothrop I don't know why, but it's what I was taught by all the adults around me when. I was forming my speech patterns back in the 80s. I wouldn't be surprised if the real root is racism, with whites getting nominatives of respect and BIPOC being refused them, as a not-so-subtle exclusionary tactic. The town I was born in used to be a "Sundown Town".
I will try to do better, comrade.
@PedestrianError @slothrop IME, I have had more people become visibly offended (and often complain) when I unintentionally elided the nominative than when I use the wrong nominative.
I'm sure that is biased around who I interact with, but it's the only guide I have unless you have some data and analysis I can review.
Lily Star@BoydStephenSmithJr @slothrop "your excellency" and "your majesty" are both gender neutral...
@BoydStephenSmithJr @slothrop Friend is another option, or literally anything that doesn't put the baggage of a gender (particularly if it's the second class citizen one) on someone who doesn't have a gender or doesn't have the one you think. I actively avoid going out in public because my boobs get me ma'amed even though I do nothing to signify compliance with femininity. I want to die every time someone does it to me, intentional or not. Please find a way to stop.
@PedestrianError @slothrop Yeah, "ma'am" has bothered some cis women since the '90s at least. It carries a connotation of age that some want to avoid/deny that doesn't attach so strongly to "sir".
"Miss" is too agency-reducing for me to use for most people; it feels as dismissive as "boy" used as a nominative.
"Friend" is okay, but it carries a level of familiarity that some people will find presumptive.
I have been successful at eliding the nominative in cases where I'm genuinely unclear, but if I have mentally assigned a gender, the "sir"s and "ma'am"s happen without thought.
John BurnsEveryone should have recognizable & unchangeable:
Number of fingers & toes - 10 each
Same colors of eyes in both eyes and only one color across the population of the world.
Same color and type of hair across the population of the world.
2 arms and 2 legs
Be of standard heights & weights
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No allowance for accidents which result in differences.
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* this is why the 2-gender argument is nonsensical. The human body is never perfect and only "one way"...
Kevin RussellObediance. Its what they seek. Its a genetic flaw in some humans needing to dominate and control, needing obediance and bowing, a sickness, a cancer, a threat to humanity and life.
Nicole ParsonsQuote from Susan (wife of Warren Buffett).
Susan Buffett: I was talking to him one day about some racial issue, and he said to me, "wait till women discover they're the slaves of the world." Now how many men were cognizant of that, and even women then?
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6438096/quotes/?item=qt6478826
https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/18/how-slaves-built-american-capitalism/
Bigots freak out about African-Americans "who pass" for the same reasons transphobes freak about trans "who pass".
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/us/pope-leo-creole-new-orleans.html
https://www.theroot.com/the-pope-has-black-roots-but-heres-15-more-white-passi-1851780447
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How can an exploitative economic system be perpetuated without an easy way to impose bigotry?
Gender, skin color, accents, age, disability...are just a few examples.
Conservatives seek a society with "stay poor & stay put" rigid social castes.
To get out the evangelical vote, fossil fuel funded fascists will target those changing their status from "exploitable outcast" to "upwardly mobile demographic".
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/why-is-the-gop-escalating-attacks-on-trans-rights-experts-say-the-goal-is-to-make-sure-evangelicals-vote
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Past victims of this political ploy & "divide & conquer" propaganda narrative included black & brown voters, immigrants, LGBTQ, women, union members, & climate activists.
https://www.advocate.com/voices/transgender-passing
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/28/passing-as-a-woman
https://www.vice.com/en/article/not-all-trans-people-want-pass-lgbtq-sex-gender-acceptance/
Vitlöksbjörn@slothrop
i've legit seen someone mention that weird canadian transphobic prof who i'll not mention say "gender must be apparent, or else I don't know how to treat you"
nice self own prof, way to admit sexism, eh
Juho MäntysaloI mean, the weird Canadian prof probably only speaks languages which gender not only people, but animals and many objects as well.
And if you start speaking in consciously nongendered way (when no additional clear information isn't available), you're sticking out of the herd in a way conservatives seldom want to be.
Peter Skov Larsen ★Of course you shouldn't.
But the "different approaches to different genders"-attitude is systemic. It is both entrenched in the social structures we inhabit and in our minds, as the way we were raised to see the world.
Which is why some people, especially conservatives, get very insecure when confronted with a gender-fluid reality.
Not understanding the mechanisms behind their insecurity, they invent ridiculous scenarios to verbalize their discomfort.
Ginette Dincar@slothrop Exactly and precisely spot-on !
Flaming Cheeto@slothrop as I've said before, stop worrying if the tall hot barista is actually trans because you're never going to fuck the tall hot barista.
You're getting an Americano.
You're getting an Americano.
Mysturji
Nonya Bidniss 
@slothrop Perfectly stated.
@slothrop Unfortunately it's becoming increasingly trendy to
openly admit to believing in strict hierarchies and enforced conformity rather than equality and diversity.
openly admit to believing in strict hierarchies and enforced conformity rather than equality and diversity.
Gemma gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭@slothrop Don't forget that the concept of "fuckable" is a major component of why so many cis people have such a problem with trans people.
MidgePhoto@slothrop
In a medical sense there are specific examples where you should, and as understanding of genesets increases these will multiply.
Considerable trouble was caused in Devon years ago by an individual who insisted on a cervical smear as of right, but had no cervix nor ever had. Bothering busy people will not be popular.
@slothrop Aside from control issues, cis men seem to have serious problems with Being Able To Identify (real) Women. Don't these yobbos ever grow up?👶
⚧Celeste⚧חי♿θΔ&
🇵🇸🏳️🌈🏴☠️1312@slothrop Yes, it's about control. The authoritarianism the fascism are the Modus Operandi the Vocatio quotidiana the Exquisita Solutio Finalis. It is awful and I fight against it
@slothrop @jesterchen that is actually a good point. I’d exclude medicine and other anatomical issues like safety belts that are not designed with breast in mind
@xuxxux @jesterchen Sure. Things that are meant for everyone to use must be designed with everyone in mind.
Both medicine and engineering have been pretty shit at this for a long, long time.
viq@slothrop @dalias there's very few situations where it's relevant what people have between their legs, and even fewer where it's relevant what they do with it.
Reminds me of Pratchett's dwarves, where with everyone sporting massive beards and fancy chainmails, the first step of courting someone was tactfully finding out what it is that they have under said chainmail.
Wendy Nather