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"Science-conforming" pronouns

MarsCydonia

New Member
arg-fallbackName="MarsCydonia"/>
One of the cultural issues of the day appear to be the acceptance of transgender individuals and what to accept when it comes to this issue, with a multitude of opinion from the pleas of acceptance, to their rejection, to the boogeyman of "state-enforced pronouns" to people exposing it for the fear-mongering it was.

If you have had any interest in this social issue, you may have heard the argument that people should use "man" and "he" with trans-women/"woman" and "she" with trans-men because the words are "science-conforming".

Before I shared mine, I thought I would ask your thoughts and opinions.
 
arg-fallbackName="Greg the Grouper"/>
I was under the impression that we were referring to people as boys and girls long before science had much to say on the subject, so I'm not really sure what science those terms are supposed to be conforming to.
 
arg-fallbackName="MarsCydonia"/>
psikhrangkur said:
I was under the impression that we were referring to people as boys and girls long before science had much to say on the subject, so I'm not really sure what science those terms are supposed to be conforming to.
I've actually encountered "homogametic is female and thus inexorably "she" and heterogametic is male and thus inexorably "he".
 
arg-fallbackName="Greg the Grouper"/>
MarsCydonia said:
psikhrangkur said:
I was under the impression that we were referring to people as boys and girls long before science had much to say on the subject, so I'm not really sure what science those terms are supposed to be conforming to.
I've actually encountered "homogametic is female and thus inexorably "she" and heterogametic is male and thus inexorably "he".

That sounds to me like someone watering down scientific jargon to fit a narrative. Not that I'm an expert.
 
arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
MarsCydonia said:
If you have had any interest in this social issue, you may have heard the argument that people should use "man" and "he" with trans-women/"woman" and "she" with trans-men because the words are "science-conforming".

Before I shared mine, I thought I would ask your thoughts and opinions.


I've never heard that, and it sounds unlikely to be a shoe that fits all.
 
arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
psikhrangkur said:
That sounds to me like someone watering down scientific jargon to fit a narrative. Not that I'm an expert.

Seems less about science and more about grammar to me.

It's just a reiteration of the same notions always espoused, whether it's about boobs and willies, or ova and sperm; the argument in all its forms erroneously conflates biological sex and gender.

Biologically speaking, the vast majority of people are either a male or a female - with just a few people having some physically indeterminate traits - but gender isn't just what bits you have, and is assuredly not some Platonic category hanging around waiting to be applied scientifically.

One thing I always find amusing is how quickly the people who make such arguments show themselves to be profoundly limited in outlook - culturally provincial. Here in Thailand, there are more than 10 categories of gender relatively frequently acknowledged and used - not just lady-boys (i.e. gay male transvestites/transgenders) but also Toms and Cherries (to use a rough translation) which are gay female transvestites, and cutesy females who like gay men. In fact, it's nearly impossible to get a handle on some of these categories.... have a pic which aspires to clarify this! :)

sexuality-diagram-2.png


Suffice it to say that binary may frequently exist in the biological realm but it says nothing whatsoever about how many categories of gender there must then necessarily be, and semantic arguments are invariably fucking stupid arguments wholly lacking in any relevant understanding - rather, just a pseudo-respectable front for prejudice.
 
arg-fallbackName="Greg the Grouper"/>
I'm not entirely sure we disagree. When I said that it seems to me as if someone is watering down scientific jargon to fit a narrative, what I meant was that, from what I could find, the words "heterogametic" and "homogametic" don't translate to male/female as they seem to be claiming in MarCydonia's explanation of the argument they were presented, that this is essentially an oversimplification of the terms. The sources I've found suggest that whether or not "heterogametic" correlates to male or female has a lot to do with the species being examined, but even if we just grant them that we're talking about humans and therefore "heterogametic" would translate to male, from what I can find there are still greater issues involved such as Klinefelter Syndrome.

I think that they're forcing the terms to fit, for the sake of their narrative. Everything I've found on the topic suggests that it's far more complex than what they've conveyed in their argument, and in that sense, it seems as though their argument has little to do with the actual science. You'd probably know more about all that than I would, though.

Also, I've been trying desperately for a while now to make sense of that picture, and I can't, and I find that deeply frustrating.
 
arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
psikhrangkur said:
I'm not entirely sure we disagree. When I said that it seems to me as if someone is watering down scientific jargon to fit a narrative, what I meant was that, from what I could find, the words "heterogametic" and "homogametic" don't translate to male/female as they seem to be claiming in MarCydonia's explanation of the argument they were presented, that this is essentially an oversimplification of the terms. The sources I've found suggest that whether or not "heterogametic" correlates to male or female has a lot to do with the species being examined, but even if we just grant them that we're talking about humans and therefore "heterogametic" would translate to male, from what I can find there are still greater issues involved such as Klinefelter Syndrome.

Indeed, I wasn't strictly disagreeing, just expanding and forwarding a different approach. I genuinely think most of the discussion on this topic is semantic and lazy rather than rigorous or scientific.

With respect to the terms used, they do represent a valid biological/typological distinction between male and female in species which exhibit a distinction in the sex chromosomes, but as you say, between different species it may be the male or female which is homogametic or heterogametic. Obviously, in humans, females are homogametic possessing two X chromosomes.

psikhrangkur said:
I think that they're forcing the terms to fit, for the sake of their narrative. Everything I've found on the topic suggests that it's far more complex than what they've conveyed in their argument, and in that sense, it seems as though their argument has little to do with the actual science. You'd probably know more about all that than I would, though.

I think the best way of framing it is that gender is a predominantly socio-cultural and has only the most tenuous links to biological sex. So perhaps in our culture women traditionally performed a particular suite of tasks, took on particular roles, or exhibited certain behaviors which became associated with them, then were later misconstrued and socially reinforced as being quintessentially female tasks, roles and behaviors, whereas there is no actual biological predilection for them, just contingent social history and traditions.

I saw a good example of this today. On the BBC news website, it was considered story-worthy to have an article about a female brick-layer, as if it's breaking some kind of new ground in terms of gender perception. However, here in Thailand there are approximately equal male and female construction workers and apparently this has been the case basically forever, so a story about a female brick-layer would be a bit redundant.

psikhrangkur said:
Also, I've been trying desperately for a while now to make sense of that picture, and I can't, and I find that deeply frustrating.

Good luck! I've lived here for 16 years and I'm a trained anthropologist, and it's still mostly beyond my comprehension! :D
 
arg-fallbackName="Greg the Grouper"/>
Oh. Gotcha.
Sparhafoc said:
psikhrangkur said:
Also, I've been trying desperately for a while now to make sense of that picture, and I can't, and I find that deeply frustrating.

Good luck! I've lived here for 16 years and I'm a trained anthropologist, and it's still mostly beyond my comprehension! :D

If nothing else, looking at that picture makes me think that, as far as gender roles go, I might have always assumed them to be, for lack of a better word, reciprocal? If I understand that picture at all, it suggests that several of those roles play out in such a way where they're feeling or giving something to another role that isn't necessarily reciprocated? I never even considered that gender roles could actually play out in such a manner. It's kind of bizarre to me.
 
arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
psikhrangkur said:
If nothing else, looking at that picture makes me think that, as far as gender roles go, I might have always them to be, for lack of a better role, reciprocal? If I understand that picture at all, it suggests that several of those roles play out in such a way where they're feeling or giving something to another role that isn't necessarily reciprocated? I never even considered that gender roles could actually play out in such a manner. It's kind of bizarre to me.


That is absolutely correct. Or at least, not usually reciprocal. But Thailand's a bit odd in many ways, and romance isn't always the point of a relationship.

Funnily, I saw a couple tonight that would be a Tom and a Dee according to the picture... and they looked EXACTLY like their archetype picture! :D
 
arg-fallbackName="he_who_is_nobody"/>
MarsCydonia said:
One of the cultural issues of the day appear to be the acceptance of transgender individuals and what to accept when it comes to this issue, with a multitude of opinion from the pleas of acceptance, to their rejection, to the boogeyman of "state-enforced pronouns" to people exposing it for the fear-mongering it was.

If you have had any interest in this social issue, you may have heard the argument that people should use "man" and "he" with trans-women/"woman" and "she" with trans-men because the words are "science-conforming".

Before I shared mine, I thought I would ask your thoughts and opinions.

Since I will never take the time to inspect someone's genitals or take blood to test their chronozones, even if "he" or "she" actually mapped to bio-sex men or women, I would still use whatever pronouns the person I am talking to prefers. Much like if I meet a person and they say their name is David. I am not going to ask for their ID or birth certificate to confirm if that is true.

The truly funny thing about this is that for the most part, the people screeching about it being unscientific to call a trans-women she are the same people that deny climate change and evolution.
 
arg-fallbackName="Greg the Grouper"/>
Even if we assume for the sake of argument that this type of argument is absolutely correct and infallible, to be honest I might still ignore it. As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of communication is mutually beneficial cooperation, and I can't imagine that I would spend a great deal of time talking to someone when it seems as though said cooperation is untenable. Perhaps if I were close friends with someone, then I might start arguing with them about something like this?
 
arg-fallbackName="RestrictedAccess"/>
Be nice when you can? That's about all I can offer.

If I'm speaking with a trans person who presents obviously as they gender they identify with, I'll use the pronoun I assume they want. If they're trans and I use the wrong pronoun and I am corrected, I'll stive to use the right pronoun. That's just the decent person thing to do.

You lose me the moment you want me to call you anything outside of him/her or he/she or they/them. I don't do the xim/xer/attack helicopter thing. There's two options, pick one and stick with it. Anyone that disagrees can bite me.
 
arg-fallbackName="DonaldKronos"/>
...
If you have had any interest in this social issue, you may have heard the argument that people should use "man" and "he" with trans-women/"woman" and "she" with trans-men because the words are "science-conforming".
...

I honestly think science has nothing to say on the issue, unless perhaps you mean linguistics, the science of language. What makes someone a man or a woman depends on what it meant by those terms. If one means a male adult or a female adult, then sure, we could go with a biological definition of male being designated by that which produces relatively smaller gametes and female being designated by that which produces larger gametes, however some of the procedures involved in a so-called gender change might render the individual incapable of producing any gametes at all (or might not) so would they wand to call then that person by a neuter pronoun? Are they going to start asking people for a sample of their gametes to look at under a microscope in order to determine what pronoun to call them by?

As for language science, the Esper' language family does have a solution which can be easily brought into English, although I doubt it would catch on because people are set in their current usage patterns.

All Esper' languages have the masculine pronoun "hi" which is pronounced much like the English pronoun "he" or like the English word "hip" without the "p" on the end. All Esper' languages also have the feminine pronoun "ci" which is pronounced much like the English pronoun "she" or like the English word "ship" without the "p" on the end. In addition, all Esper' languages have the epicene pronoun "li" which is pronounced much like the English adverb ending "ly" or like the English word "lip" without the "p" on the end.

So if one wanted to, one could simply take the Esper' pronoun "li" into English as "le" in order to conform to the spelling patterns of the existing masculine and feminine English pronouns, and use it as a universal gender-unspecified pronoun! The counterpart of "he/she" would then be "le". The counterpart of "him/her" would be "lem". And the counterpart of "his/her" or "his hers" would be "les". It's far from ideal, but it could be adapted with respect to all genders and explained as necessary until it became well known enough to be considered a standard English pronoun with standardized conjugations.

[Edit: I'm adding this paragraph to address WHY it seems to me that switching to an epicene pronoun by default makes sense. Consider the case of identifying people by race rather than gender. Imagine if the linguistic convention had been to use race-based pronouns rather than gender-based pronouns. People who most other people immediately recognized as belonging to a specific race would end up with the pronoun for that race being used on them even if they were that race but were racist AGAINST THEIR OWN RACE and hated being a member of that race, even if they were non-racist but felt that being identified by race at all was insulting, and even if they were not that race at all! The sensible thing to do if the language had such a feature would be to augment it with a race-unspecified pronoun and use that except when there seems to be a good reason for specifying a perceived race. Likewise, since that is exactly the case with regard to sexual gender based pronouns, it seems to me that the sensible thing to do would be to augment it with a gender-unspecified pronoun and use that except when there seems to be a good reason for specifying a perceived gender. And yes, I would say a perceived gender rather than a claimed gender, and I will explain why. Imagine you meet someone who looks not only very obviously female but also extremely feminine in your opinion and has also apparently gone out of les way to dress up in a way that seems intended to present as feminine and female, but when you call lem by the pronoun "her" le gets upset and insists on being called "he". Now imagine you apologize, have a nice conversation, and go your separate way only to run into this person later among friends of yours. So you introduce your new "friend" to your old friends, stating: "Hey everyone, this is my new friend Jo. I think you're all going to get along well with him." Only to find out that your new friend Jo is as opposed to being called "him" as to being called "she", or worse yet had set you up to be made a fool of and in fact prefers to be called "she" but just wanted to get a bunch of your friends to point out how feminine le was to stroke her ego. Obviously, you could not know for a fact what gender she was in the scientific sense of what size gametes le produces, nor would that whole ordeal really answer that question. But if your pronoun usage reflects YOUR PERCEPTION then it is YOUR COMMUNICATION and that is how freedom of speech should work. Still, you could just leave that irrelevant bit of personal perception out of it in the first place and simplify things immensely.]

Is this potentially helpful at all? Or did I miss the point completely?
 
Last edited:
arg-fallbackName="DonaldKronos"/>
This is my second reply. I already edited my first reply to add a paragraph for clarification, and I don't want to edit it again, so I'm making this one.

The epicene pronoun "le" which I suggested earlier is basically a singular for the plural epicene pronoun "they". Since many people already use "they" as number ambiguous, the addition of a strictly singular form is obviously not needed. However, it would allow for a certain level of additional clarity and would also be a way around the problem of some people insisting that "they" is ALWAYS plural and must remain that way.

Also, I wanted to touch on the human memory issue. If you know only one person who insists on being called by a pronoun which reflects a gender that the person in question appears not to fit, you can get used to it. However, the more common that gets the more likely you are to eventually forget what pronoun a given person prefers, just as you might forget a person't name. Or you might just not recognize someone. In fact, in the case of someone planning on going through gender change surgery and hormone therapy, the chances of not recognizing that person may be somewhat increased. Now imagine how you would feel if you don't see a good friend for a few years and when you do see that person again their gender-change treatments have not been very successful in making lem look, to you, like the gender le had in mind, but had been successful in making lem look enough different that you failed to recognize your friend and ended up using the wrong pronoun by asking another friend a question like "who is he" or "who is she" instead of using some gender neutral or epicene alternative.

Seriously, this sort of thing could happen to anyone. It's unlikely, but still possible and could be devastatingly embarrassing for both the speaker and the person being spoken of.
 
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