ageedizzleWhat’s your most controversial opinion?
https://piefed.ca/c/asklemmy/p/563749/whats-your-most-controversial-opinion
[deleted]Being mtf or ftm trans is conforming to gender stereotypes with extra steps. Abolishing gender stereotypes and letting everyone express themselves however they want would be far better for society overall.
I don’t mean that in a negative way and fully support respecting self identification because that has the best outcomes in the real world.
definitely_AIMy controversial opinion is that if everyone has the right to self identification, I have the right to reject that identification. I am under neither logical nor moral obligation to accept another person’s beliefs about themselves or the world. Keep in mind I firmly assert that all people deserve to be treated with kindness and respect, I am making a descriptive not a normative statement. This is strictly a question of retaining the right to epistemological determination, “self identification” being based on that same exact fundamental premise.
That’s a fair perspective.
I appreciate your acknowledgement that all people have the right to their own self-determination; and I appreciate your affirmation that all people deserve to be treated with kindness and respect.
I would also ask, though, when you assert your right to your own evaluation of another person, do you also practice awareness that it is fundamentally your interpretation, and that your interpretation may be factually inaccurate?
Do you say, “My experience is that I think that person is a man,” or do you say, “I declare based on my observations that I know that that person is a man” ?
Most of the time, we have no way of knowing what sex organs someone has, regardless of the expression of their outward appearance. It’s true that we may often recognize certain characteristics that lead to familiar assumptions, but in almost all scenarios we are still either making our own guesses about someone else, or we are choosing to believe that they are whoever they say they are.
Also, when considering intersex people and other variations in sexual development, even if we guess correctly about the sex organs or characteristics that someone may have been born with, we may still be wrong about the person’s underlying genetic make up or hormone balances.
I guess I wonder, when you hold your right to determine your own evaluation of another person, is your thinking flexible enough that you can hold your own assumptions lightly?
JohnnyCanuckI don’t fully understand. Can you give a concrete example? Like you meet someone who seems like a woman to you, they say they’re a man, and you’re like, “no, no, you’re a woman, I reject your self identification of being a man”?
I don’t see you as less of a person, I don’t see you as a bother, I don’t see you as challenging to my views or, a shock at all, really.
I guess the cold hard truth is that I just don’t care.
If you wear your gender as your first outstanding personality trait, it doesn’t speak much for the rest of you.
Do I care if you keep it up, don’t stop and tell everyone you know? Have at it.
It’s just not my business. It’s not important in the grand scheme of whether or not you’re an asshole or not.
Huh. I defer to your argument, it perfectly encapsulates how I see it, no notes.
This sounds similar to the “I just don’t see race” perspective.
Do you also just not see race?
If they’re different, what differentiates them in your thinking?
I recognize the concepts of feminine and masculine and the blends of both, but I suppose that just doesn’t tell me a lot about who you are.
Thank you for your reply.
I appreciate that you recognize that masculinity and femininity are concepts, and that these can co-exist and blend within many people’s experiences.
Unfortunately, the “I don’t care” position that you’ve described does still sound to me like the practice of “colorblindess.” For instance, it sounds like you are describing a similar false dichotomy; where you are saying, broadly, that either you “just don’t care” about a person’s experience of their identity features; or that, if you do care about a person’s experience of their identity features, then you would be forced to use that information to “ponder stereotypes.”
What about a third option? Could you see people as individuals rather than stereotypes; while also acknowledging that our experiences are affected by the contexts of our lives; including multiple layers of relationships with ourselves, each other, and broader societal forces?
There might be this third path, like you are saying, but some people still might not care even about that. Like, what if someone just genuinely does not care at all about any of this stuff? Is that wrong? Are we obligated to care?