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Comment by rukittenme | Hacker News Reader

"Immutable characteristics"? So religion, sex, race, and sexual orientation are fair game then?

You must have missed the part where half of our society has declared these things as social constructs. They are mutable by definition and people can and do take advantage of this mutability. (Note: I'm not making an argument for or against mutability of these traits -- only acknowledging the arguments existence).

How about we outlaw inter-group conflict? Imagine a world where Democrats and Republicans are not allowed to disagree. That will solve all of our political problems.

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> sex, race, and sexual orientation

You're going to have a hard time convicing me that any of these are mutable. While the presentation of sex and sexual orientation may be mutable (someone can be female passing or straight passing) their orientation or sex itself is not. Similarly while someone can be white passing or codeswitch, their race itself cannot be changed.

Mutability of presentation doesn't make the underlying thing mutable. Nor does something being a social construct make it mutable.

To put it concretely, if I'm bisexual, just because I can date only opposite-gendered people doesn't mean that I'm straight. Similarly, just because race is in many ways socially constructed doesn't mean that I can stop being black or white or whatever, at least not without convincing society to change its definitions.

Sex is NOT mutable and is NOT a social construct.

Gender is.

To some, that's hate speech. The argument is being made by others. Don't correct me for pointing it out.

This comment has no place being downvoted and grayed (as of the writing of this comment.) It's a direct sign of people misusing the downvote per guidelines.

You made your point very well across this subthread. The fact it's being downvoted is a truly great illustration of the particular fuzzy borders problem with policing speech that you point out.

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