CharonY

The general point that iNow made stands, the racial groups you mentioned were developed during the enlightenment period (Blumenbach, I believe) and arose from the Linnaean idea of classifying, well, everything. The problem of course was that these ideas were not entirely scientific (as biological knowledge was limited) and perhaps worse, were heavily influenced by existing ideas on human populations, which were heavily influenced (or developed) into an imperialistic view of humankind. We now know that populations below the species level are mostly defined by the geospatial grouping (i.e. whatever can mix in a given area, tends to do so) as well as the fact that these 19th century ideas of grouping folks does not really fit what we know about human diversity. Many genetic studies have now shown, for example that African populations have the highest genetic diversity, which is basically expected from the out of Africa model. Fundamentally we find higher divergence between African population than, say between European and African population. As such the old 19th century classification you refer to does not make sense. So if we wanted to create subpopulations of the human species and have roughly equal distance between groups, it would not make sense to put all Africans in one group. Rather, they would be several groups and Europeans as well Asians would only be one of the subgroups. However, as Swansont already pointed out, classifications below the species levels are mostly arbitrary various degrees. Often they are used to create certain groups rather than a means to track actual genetic diversity. Especially in humans that would be difficult as there is a lot mixing and the way we use "race" in common usage rarely follows biology. Terms like black and white for example are more historic than anything else. Which is why folks like Barrack Obama are often considered black (which is a legacy of the one drop way of thinking about race).

Maybe you are thinking of "I have no mouth and I must scream"? IIRC the protagonist was made unable to kill himself by transforming him into a kind of immortal blob (hence having no mouth). Of course as all stories there are even older ones, Prometheus being perpetually eaten by an eagle comes to mind. Zapatos' story sounds maddingly familiar but I cannot recall the title of the story nor whether I actually read it...

And that in turn just demonstrates that his opposition to C-16 was just to gain attention. After all the bill itself (as well as the existing provisions on the provincial level) failed to manifest in actual compelled speech by law. I.e. he is just making a bit thing out of nothing and it seems to have seen more traction than proponents of alternative pronouns. I.e. I have seen more folks claiming that there is a law regarding pronoun use vs folks demanding the use of "ze".

I can't as a) I have not seen it happening and so far it looks like a suggestion. If it transforms into the real world I may have more thoughts about it. Who forces though in your mind? Society? And if the balance is forcing minorities to conform or forcing part of the majority to conform, where should the balance be? Because clearly social pressures are happening whether you like or not, because actions (and in case of certain minorities the mere existence) has consequences.

It is also everyone's right to criticize views as part of their freedom of expression. Not doing it is also a courtesy. The question for each individual is really who we want to accommodate. Folks based on their gender identity, because that is who they are, or folks that decide to be against accommodations. In the past, the majority decision was usually that minorities have to accommodate majority opinions. E.g. if folks decide that being gay in unnatural, well you just have to deal with it. Now, we do have a societal shift in trying to be accommodate more (even if it is sometimes only in a performative way) but it is also supported by science which some (but certainly not all) give it more weight than just opinions. So at least some of the demands have shifted from affected minorities to the majority and this is where much of the pushback comes from. In the past one does not have to accommodate much as part of majority. Most decision by the majority group was considered the norm and deviations suffered pushback. While it seems to be a reversal, it is important to note that it really only affects a rather limited area (i.e. the area where discrimination can be demonstrated). I will also invite folks who seem to treat gender identity as an opinion or fake to investigate their own sense gender. I assume it is the same for almost everyone else, but I do not recall ever to make a conscious decision regarding how I feel about my gender or sexual orientation. I certainly never had to karyotype myself or double-check my reproductive organs. As such I find it easy to understand how others might feel about their gender but having a mismatched body. We are only starting to understand how biology causes a certain gender identity, but dismissing it outright is certainly not something that follows our current understanding.

OK, so as someone on the other side I can tell you that while we do all that, it is a burden on us and one that many of us feel unnecessary. Why should we be required to do the extra work just to earn the same level of respect that others get for free? I mean, of course it is a waste of time since every time you resolved an issue, another pops up. And if you address it too frequently, your are considered the one being disruptive. So we keep our heads down, don't complain too much if folks keep misspelling our name just to remain in folks' good graces. That being said, as it turns out that this attitude can hurt you in positions with higher visibility. For example, I did not mind too much about misspelling my name or that folks for some reasons keep forgetting to put my PhD to my name (but interestingly remembered for everyone else). However it resulted in folks thinking that a fresh postdoc was the project lead, for example or that my name ended up not appearing in press releases in time. I mean, especially in hindsight it is very clear why that happened, but in the past, who would dare to voice it? The way folks reacted when asking folks to do simple things like check spelling before sending things out (or give me a copy so that I could check) was almost asking them for a kidney or two. It was a bit refreshing that in countries USA or Canada folks actually apologized for misspelling your name, so I actually liked that blast of PC (which, again to me is just a basic level of mutual respect). Sure, you can characterize that as whining, if you want, but to me it is not having yet to deal with another thing on my plate. There is now a growing body of literature showing that the cumulation of this small things are adding to measurable levels of stress on the molecular level, so it is not just performance, it is something with an actual health impact. Now going back to sexual minorities, that effect has been found to be rather profound and one good summary can be found here: https://www.apa.org/pi/aids/resources/exchange/2012/04/minority-stress

I would not be too hopeful about that. Even before the pandemic the most common specific question you get is "will it be part of the exam". During the pandemic, it has become awfully clear that not only cheating is rampant. Even worse, often you can find copy/pasted answers where the first sentence kind of make sense, but the rest is just nonsense. I.e. folks do not read past the first couple of lines. And unfortunately that is also often the case when they are given reading materials. The generation of especially premeds I have seen makes me afraid for the future of the medical system.

Simple answer is probably psychoactive drugs. Sci-Fi answer could be activating the reward centres in the brain without drugs. It is not really that sci-fi as it has been done in animal models (there is even a wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_stimulation_reward). I think the range of potential issues are well described, starting from addiction, withdrawal from reality, lack of motivation and so on).

So now you are fine with disobedience? But I assume we have moved on from the notion that this was all about pronoun use? Based on his publication records he has not worked in the area of gender-related mental health so not sure what his specialization is. That being said, there are recommendations by professional psychology associations and if Peterson follows those (even if they run counter his personal convictions), it may fall within the realm of his expertise. If he does not, it would be akin to an antivaccination MD. I am not sure what your ultimate point is, but I am pretty use that I probably am not going to an ob/gyn when I need a proctologist. And I would be critical regarding medical advice if they have developed their own idea about diseases and conditions that are not based on established medical frameworks. Perhaps the criticism folks not using thou will be criticized for using you and thou wrongly. Thou was the second person singular and the use of the plural form you is obviously wrong as there is only one koti. Bigotry depends on context on motivation. Just using a word does not tell folks either. And that is the crux of the anti-pronoun folks, they see the use in isolation (like in an online forum) and do not seem to realize that all is context-dependent. This is why also why folks do not simply get arrested for using a certain pronoun and why folks generally are not offended by accidental misgendering. In real life folks often also visually represent themselves a certain way, which already gives social cues how they want to be addressed and it I would assume it to be normal to follow such cues. Online you can make rather outrageous claims without any effort which cuts away a lot of the context. I also want to add that we have not pivoted away from argument A) (legal challenge) and are now again at B) (I don't wanna). Here the argument is you can be an arse if you want and you won't be legally challenged. However other folks might consider you an arse, including your employer.

The issue here is that the whole matter would be the same if there the minor had a different medical condition. I am not sure which laws specifically apply but I assume the court order was in place because a) a minor was involved and b) medical records were involved. What I found was this: So in other words for the most past it appeared there were breaches in privacy rights. Can you see that the issue leading to jail has virtually nothing to do with pronouns or even just voicing opinion? Or conversely, do you think that folks' medical records should be allowed to be released without consent? But regardless whether you think the court order was just or not, it is about publishing specific records, not about someone's opinion or that someone was offended (well, besides the judge maybe). As such it does not really solidify the assumption that indeed many folks have been impacted by the law over misuse of pronouns. And again, if it is so hard to actually find actual examples, it may be time to re-thing the veracity of the assumption. Folks here are science-minded, and as such evidence-driven, aren't they? So why not apply the same skills to other topics?

Actually no, I asked you to provide evidence there is ample evidence of folks being prosecuted based on Bil C-16 or because of pronouns. So let's the question again before we claim moving the goalpost, shall we? And that was prompted by So after all this outrage all you can come up with is one, and as the links indicated not because of pronouns or offending someone, but because contempt of the court? I mean, if that was such a big deal one would expect to come up with at least a couple of cases where someone was "charged" because someone did not "use their preferred pronoun?" If someone has stretch so much to find one case that is at best tangentially related, why spend so much energy on being offended by the situation? In contrast to clearly documented violence and discrimination against transgender folks this seems rather excessive.

That is a poor analogy as it is well understood that the economy is not a zero sum game. In your example additional folks coming in could pool their resources and increase the size of the house (i.e. incoming population both consume and produce). The relationship between pop size and economy can be complex, depending on the overall economy under investigation e.g. But clearly the empirical evidence does not support a zero sum model.

Again, outrage sells, and some are very good at fueling it (including folks like Peterson). Is the perpetuum mobile of money-making (and why facebook was so bloody reluctant to take off deadly misinformation who cares if a few hundred thousands might die if money is to be had?).

Note that no one has provided any evidence of pronoun persecution. Just made the claim based on nothing as far as I can tell.

I see we have reverted to argument A). Again, there is no legislation for that and folks are not prosecuted for misgendering. It is not about enforcing proper pronouns.

And many do feel the same way. You forget that communication is also a social tool. You interact with that person. So if I decide to repeatedly call you a feminized version of your name, for example, it could be considered endearing if you are good friends, or perhaps intimidating if, say I was your boss. You may be OK with it either way or not. You are free to express your satisfaction/dissatisfaction to me. I had only few interactions with transgender folks and have misgendered a couple of times for different reasons and the interactions were always amicable. I did agree to call them their chosen name, but they were generally fine when I got confused and made my he/she dance. Slightly embarrassing for everyone involved but no big deal. As others noted, it only becomes a deal when it becomes a pattern of abuse. If I make it clear that I single them out. Same goes for religious folks. If I keep making disparaging comments about religion, religious students are likely to complain. If I on top single out the catholic student and make pedophile priest jokes at them, I may be in real trouble. Again, not an issue of law and something that has been around since human interaction and language existed. Why some folks think pronoun are such a big thing compared to all our other limits of social interactions, is still not clear to me. You make it so that every non-binary person wants to have things just right for them. Yet in reality there are real persons and as far as I have seen the only demand is to have the same baseline respect as other folks. I have therefore no idea why folks would be upset about books in your example (unless somehow the author creates a caricature of e.g. transgender people, but I suspect that is not what you had in mind). Of course there are always a small number of folks in every group that are unreasonable. However, I suspect that if we count the number of folks being offended to be "forced to use a pronoun" vs folks that are actually offended by certain pronouns the former would outnumber the latter. It is really that social media and certain news outlet make it so big of an issue that it appears to be a huge boogeyman of sorts.

I think that actually that is not quite clear. In the US it seems that the courts are split whether the use of that word is so bad and historically loaded as a slur that it only is evidence for discrimination. Others consider it more of an utterance and does not pass the level of discrimination. And yet that person was not fired, it was remark in the personal file, and he sued the university for it. Moreover, most firings are not based on laws per se. They can be for breach company policy. Because folks cannot behave themselves many companies have such policies in place to at least seem to sanction discriminatory or harassing behaviour (which makes it easier for them to fire folks for cause). If a Walmart greeter says "Welcome to Walmart, arsehole", they can be fired, even if they did not broke laws nor even used a pronoun. I.e. it is a policy and not a legal thing. So since you consider it such a big deal, kindly let me know the rough number of folks charged under C-16 then? If failing that, how many folks were let go because of pronouns alone (i.e. without any further acts of discrimination). Again the one case you brought up was a policy breach that did not even result in firing (also was in the US, but that is probably not a big thing as they are similar provisions, I believe). Edit: Not to mention that it was a single case whereas these antidiscrimination laws have been around for close to a decade. Depends on how often you do it and how you do it. If it is wrapped in a clever joke I might laugh, if it is mean-spirited I would think you might be an arse. At no point would legal actions be involved.

No I am just trying to figure out what parameters you consider to be objective enough to make the classification you do. You have specifically mentioned child-bearing, so fair enough I wanted to figure out whether that is a sufficient parameter. It relates to the points Arete (repeatedly) made. It requires us to ignore biological sciences (on a science forum no less) and if that is the case one would need to know whether other classifications are at least useful, if they do not follow the science. It is also an invitation to think whether the classifications we make in daily life are indeed as universal as we think they are. Basically we could ask ourselves, if there is a person looking like what we would consider a man or woman based on clothing, behaviour etc. How should we treat them. Should we first determine what we think their sex it and then insist on addressing that way (and why?). And if so (and that is already a big if), what are the parameters that tell you that person has a perceived mismatch between sex and gender? You brought up child bearing and rather obviously that is a) not an universal parameter an b) it cannot be used in casual determination as far as I know. But yes, youtube videos are obviously going to make everything better. At some point folks just want to feel outraged, don't they? Fundamentally the argument goes in circles. A) we treat everyone with respect but we just don't want a law that forces us to. If pointed out that the law is not forcing you treat folks with respect per se, just not discriminate against them it then goes to B) they are delusional and I do not want to engage in delusions. That goes away from the forced by law argument but then becomes they are not real (somehow) and I just want to do things the "correct" way (which in the past included rather horrendous elements, but I digress). Asking who is going to be the arbiter of what is "correct' and why folks cannot just be civil with each together it somehow goes back to A.

So after a hysterectomy or menopause that would be fine then?

That is the whole point that pretty much all of the opponents of C-16 fail to understand. It is not about being offensive. Note that all the laws that C-16 amends are already on the books since the 70s. How many of those folks have been arrested? How many folks where arrested for calling Lutherans Catholics, for example? By your own logic, if that was the case wouldn't heaps of folks making fun of religions already have been arrested, too? As Arete, me and others have pointed out, the law is about discrimination so unless misgendering is part of a suite of discriminatory behaviour directed at a specific person based on their identity (or sex, or religion, or age), then and only then the law applies. I.e. the victim has to demonstrate negative outcomes for them, which is why discrimination cases are very difficult to win: https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=5889&context=lalrev;Why There is a lot handwringing about using the right pronouns and whatnot. That is not part of the law, regardless how folks like Peterson try to make it to be (again, folks like actual lawyers have already explained it, repeatedly). The fact that folks try so hard to build this alternative reality where it is all about petty pronouns and forcing you to speak in a certain way is disconcerting. Edit: It seems that some folks want to build a victim complex by highlighting how things potentially closer to their heart are underreported. However, even if there are real grievance to be had here (I am not sayin there aren't) shouldn't it be rooted in actual facts? Even the comments above that the church burnings are not reported, I have read reports about them in national and international outlets as well as folks, including indigenous folks condemning them. I understand that the media landscape has made it easier to wrap oneself in a certain reality and it nowadays takes real effort to shake it off. On the other hand, I hoped that older folks more used to traditional media would recognize that trend and not fall into these social media traps (which Peterson really mastered).

These are great points. A couple of things to add are that the bill amends three sections, the one that seems to spark most discussions is the amendment to the Canadian Human Rights Act which basically just adds gender-diverse folks to protected groups, which already includes things like race, sex, religion and so on. It does not limit your ability to express yourself, unless it becomes harassment or is part of an act of discrimination (which again, needs to be evidenced by the accuser). The argument against in then really is that folks are against laws that restrict someone's ability to harass others. The big issue why there are protected groups to begin with is not because we wanted laws that force us to be nice, but rather because these groups were disporportionately targeted and have suffered real consequence beyond just being offended. The other areas apparently seem to be less controversial are additions to the criminal code, which basically makes it an offense to advocate genocide or public incitement of hatred and allows for classification of gender-based hate crimes. The reasoning for these additions are in part based of Arete's information on violence against the trans community. The interesting bit is that many provinces already have made amendments by including gender identity or expression into their books for years and this is basically just codifying it on the federal level. That basically shows to me that this is just seizing it to fuel an artificial outrage machine rather than true worries about the impact of the law. "They" as a third-person singular pronoun has been in use since the 14th century. To be fair, it has dropped somewhat in popularity around the 18th century but has seen increases over the years again. This only shows how malleable language really is. Funny bit is that even if language is malleable, it really only changes through broad use (after all, it is communication tool). While I know that there folks trying to redesigning the system, I really doubt that it will have any traction (and I wasn't really aware of any of them). It is a bit like Esperanto, which while in theory had benefits, practically di not really take off. So far I have not heard of anyone ever having made the request for their use. Moreover, if it causes so much pain, surprisingly non-binary folks still actually have names. Real overreach, if you want to call it, are rarely related to laws, most of them is just a group of folks within institutions, corporations and so on and try to brand themselves a certain way or want to make a mark and appear productive. At one point or another there will be a reality check and if it turns out to be nonsense, often it gets dropped. But I am sure that silly policies are not restricted to this topic alone (but generally causes less outrage. Why is that?).

! Moderator Note I think members are a bit frustrated by relatively vague assertions connected with belittling their points. I would be very helpful if you an refer to specifics and provide some data that we understand what the foundation for the discussion should be. Thanks.

So the question is what is the baseline of normal? So what precisely do you measure and what value does it need to be considered neurodivergent?

I think the fundamental argument is that Peterson has shown that he wades into a lot of topics related to social and political sciences as well as law and philosophy where typically experts demonstrate that he has no clue what he is talking about. Even if OP was oversimplifying his argument, there is little to assume that his reasoning would make more sense in that area. I think context is important. As you mentioned, there are different social norms in different groups and hence, folks feel offended by different issues. That being said, not all is similar. The big issue is whether there were social norms allowing systematic unfair treatment of folks. And here is a bit of the crux of the matter, there are ideals both in law and society (say equal treatment regardless of a person's identity) and there there is the reality of folk having been marginalized both by unjust laws (e.g. related to severity of punishment, but also starting with overpolicing) as well as de fact unequal treatment (resulting in reduced job chances due to certain perceptions). In the latter case it is more of just being offended but it becomes more about entrenching certain stereotypes that have tangible effects on outcomes (i.e. inequity). The issue of course is that the lines are blurry when either of these things happen. However, often it is not an equal side kind of thing.

No, that is not how things generally work. First, you cannot change all chromosomes in a developed individual. Each of your cells carries the complete genome so you would basically need to change the DNA of all your cells in your body (with few exceptions). The second issue is that reproductive organs are developed early on in life. What can be done is to mimic steroid of either sex by hormone therapy.