At the risk of getting into a tedious multi-quote battle, I'll try pick out some of the main things here.
Your very first post on this barged in with "People who give out about pro-nous are the very definition of snowflakes imo" - no context or discussion. Just a dismissal of people as snowflakes. You can do that if you want, but it does make it harder to take your posts seriously when that's your opening argument.
Well first off, again, an e-mail signature makes no sense for this, as I've suggested. You don't use pronouns when talking to someone in an e-mail. So to put them there is people thinking they're helping but not really actually doing anything. So what's the point? Adam described people who do this as self-obsessed, which ties in with social media in general making people more self-obsessed, so I'd agree with him on that.
But if we're inclusive of every little thing people think about themselves, are we not in danger of doing more harm than good? You don't (or shouldn't) indulge kids in everything they want for example; sometimes saying "no" brings pain, but can be far better in the longer term. And given rising mental health issues in modern times, maybe society could do with being told "no" every now and again. Are we just perpetuating the problem rather than addressing it? Are people really suffering from this condition, or is it a form of social media groupthink? How do we/they even know? This is the sort of debate - and there's probably more nuanced arguments too, but time doesn't permit - that this approach can smother.
Organisations should maybe be forced to make you add pronouns to your signature? Wow. Forcing people what to think is a good way towards rational constructive thought, isn't it?
The D&I stuff is getting off topic again, but it's in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling cult, and I sense you're fully invested in it. The irony in everyone becoming diverse is that if we all do it the same way, then we become the exact same, and can't break away from that mindset. (I'm reminded of this article on the hipster who sued a newspaper for using his stock image in an article on how all hipsters look the same, only to find out it wasn't actually him in the photo, thereby proving the article's point - the more diverse people think they are, the less diverse they actually are.) I'm sure there's merit in the basic idea, but taken to the conclusions I've seen, with D&I groups that aren't remotely diverse and have no-one on them to bring balance to the discussions, is something that needs to be examined more closely.
Gender pay gap is even further off topic, but calculating a basic average hourly rate for your employees is far, far too coarse a mechanism to have any real meaning. I think it falls down by aiming for equality of outcome (a Communist-style utopia where everyone's the same) rather than equality of opportunity. If you and I have the same opportunities and I achieve more with them and earn more as a result, that's not an inequality. I don't think there's any real evidence that, for example, women are routinely offered 80% of men's pay just because. But people are different, and that will feed into pay rates. Is it really a problem, for example, if more women than men want to take a career break to raise a family, and lose out on pay as a result?
So I think some critical introspection there might be no harm on your part.
It really is hard to see what else it could be in fairness. And given the criticisms of the NHS already discussed (where there's a very serious suggestion of confirmation bias towards identifying gender dysphoria, and bullying of those who don't agree), are they entirely trustworthy in that regard?
Yet your own quote says "There is some evidence to show a link between gender dysphoria and autism" (my emphasis). Just because you mightn't like a conclusion doesn't mean you can dismiss it.
But you're just dismissing my point here with no reason. Can I identify as black? Why/why not? What about the example I linked about people identifying as disabled? Or someone who identifies as Korean? Why should identifying as a different gender be ok while other cases (eg identifying as someone 20 years younger) aren't ok? Where do you draw the line? Or are you just making it up as you go along?
Again, you're just trying to shut down discussion by telling me I'm wrong rather than try engage in the matter. I have no problems in thinking that raising a three-year-old boy as a girl because he once said "I'm not a boy any more" is wrong. Three year olds repeat anything they hear and don't necessarily know what it is they're saying. Social services should be investigating that case before the kid is put on a course of puberty blockers they will in all probability end up regretting.
Bookmarks