That being said, it means the rest of us dont really need to try to match that up with our own forms of inclusivity. It is always important to poll and gauge the consensus.
Right now, what goes on in BC/Vancouver with maybe a little spillover into Washington is not representative of anything the rest of us need to be aware of or adapt in our vocabulary as if it is consensus.
Useful to know if you’re in vancouver or meet indigenous from vancouver, as there is significant overlap in the inclusionary efforts and indigenous representation.
The commenter indicating that it's 'A Vancouver' thing is not quite right: it's broadly an Aboriginal issue, not just an issue of the West Coast tribes. That said, the commenter is correct in that it's more sensitive issue among the Woke Left in the Vancouver area as it's part of their social consensus lingo.
I suggest if you live in Canada, it's probably something to be aware of as this language will show up in institutions in the East as well.
Despite my reluctance around the kinds of groups running these programs, in the United States sadly there seems to be no effort at all to support Aboriginals as part of the core minorities, in lieu of other groups. And so I don't think we'll see this language on MSNBC anytime soon, though I wish there was more attention to this group as a whole.
How thats evolved seems very different from (and frankly incompatible with) the US side.
Are you a biological man that enjoys maintaining a household? Two-Spirit.
It is an indigenous cultural construct for allowing variation in gender constructs.
its more analogous to nonbinary. the rest of us that care to validate this just say nonbinary. the people that aren't trying to take hormones to pass as a different gender, but wish to be called "they" anyway
In that case, perhaps google it rather than make glib remarks about it?
Frankly I'm not sure whether to laugh at the idea a gender identity can be limited to a specific ethnicity or to condemn it as inherently racist. This is entirely too meta.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender
> [Third gender is] a social category present in societies that recognize three or more genders.
This article provides some examples from around the world of cultures which recognize nonbinary genders. I'm not used to that, and evidently you aren't either, because the concept isn't "specific to" the cultures we grew up in.
I do get that young people seek to gain a labeled identity (mine was “metalhead”) but that does not mean the rest of the society should play along. This creates a dangerous feedback loop: the more acceptable the complex set of identity drawers gets, the more difficult it is for a person to validate their inherent feeing of being different. Thus, through pain they invent new boxes, these get picked up and normalized globally making it harder for the next guy to answer “I’m different than any of this, who am I?” There’s a balance to the tension of discovering one’s identity. Making it too easy will cause suffering as will making it unnecessarily hard.
And then conform that to majority society while trying to maintain representation and respect. Thats why it looks sillier than it is.
They retroactively adopted the LGBTXYZ
Its not meta, its ignorable
It has nothing to do with us or the level of inclusion we learn to tolerate/appreciate, if you arent in vancouver area (or any place in Canada with pre-colonial civilizations nearby, as someone else wrote)
That's not what is happening here at all. It's a specific term regarding sexuality from a specific culture.
The paradox is - if there isn't an objective way to identify these groups, then arguably they do not exist other than purely in terms of 'self identification' which is a serious blow to the legitimacy of anything, really.
So if LGBTQ+ were formal categories, then we could just use those instead of adding 'Two Spirit'. We wouldn't use the Aboriginal, German or Japanese words for them, because that would make no sense, we have words for things which exist already.
But because categories are culturally defined, but more paradoxically - self-defined - then it exposes a serious problem of postmodernism.
Everyone should apply to the position as 'Two Spirit' - there literally is no material definition for the categorization, and the Canadian Supreme Court would be bending itself backwards in Asana Yoga poses to find out how to apply the Woke Terminology that lacks any definition.
The Law is inexorably funded on objectivity, it can't very well function otherwise.
Pulling the thread on this Sweater will undo it completely, the best thing to do is start pulling on it hard because it will expose the inanity of it all.
I actually do support people in vulnerable situations, and getting people from marginalized communities into systems which they feel they can't participate in, but this isn't the playbook we should be using.
Self identification is entirely how social categories function.
Postmodernism isn't prescriptive, it's descriptive - it describes how things already work.
The gov. actually do this in some cases i.e. when donating blood and on some other surveys for research.
Of course, you can be gay and celibate, for all intents and purposes (or can you? That's another question) ...
... but we do have a set of objective behaviours for what constitutes being gay.
With Nonbinary trans, Two Spirit, and some of the more exotic categories - we don't.
This is where the Trans effort is going to fall apart: 90% of citizens will accept someone who 'Roughly looks, talks and acts like a woman' - as 'Basically a Woman'.
Trans people could win the war instantly on those terms.
And I'll bet about 75% of Trans people would be happy with that - most of them want safety, equality, dignity.
I believe the majority of Trans people are not hugely concerned that the Pharmacy row for Feminine Hygiene uses the term 'Feminine'.
I will go further: the majority of Trans men and women actually want to be identified as those genders in more traditional terms, and they are not offended that our normative, popular view is that 'Women Have Babies' and 'Men Don't Have Babies'.
But a lot of the people (I believe the minority) promoting the movement want to push it further by dereferencing all popular ideals of 'Male' or 'Female' to make it entirely self-referential.
For example, some want to expunge normative ideals such as 'Women Have Babies', because of course '(Trans)Men have babies as well'. And since 'Trans Men' are '100% Men' in every way, and to contemplate otherwise is bigotry, an erasure of their identities, and therefore a form of 'harm' and 'violence' - the type of language those people use.
It's bit sad actually because the most aggressive voices in the community I don't think are pushing for material progress. Much like regular politics in the US I suppose.
As for UBC, I think they need a better way to accomplish their objectives, which are complicated by the fact that minorities are already technically hugely over-represented at the school.
So what's the objective time period? And if a gay man has an unlucky streak for that length of time, do they auto default back to straight?
What about bi or pan people? If someone identified as bisexual but you have only ever seen them in relationships with the opposite gender, can you reasonably say "you're actually objectively straight"?
The idea of objective metrics for social categories falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. The government can assign objective markers but only for things that are objective - the whole "gay men not being allowed to donate blood" thing for example is meant to screen out HIV right? So the metrics are aligned around that goal (also it's a messed up system but that's another subject).
The government measuring certain metrics does not make them the objective definition, because the government is not the definer of reality.
I think you're confused by a lack of understanding of some of these ideas, plus a healthy mix of "there are quite a few insane or poorly reasoned progressives", but mainly the former. For example, sex and gender are different things, and some of the things you have said confuse the two, but also some arguments from trans activists also do that.
This is definitely false, even from the most socially progressive perspective.
That some categories are not perfectly defined, that we don't always agree, that some are 'self-defined', and that definitions can overlap - does not mean that those objective definitions do not exist.
This "There is no Black or White because there are Infinite Shades of Grey" is not reasoning, it's just postmodern rabbit-hole rhetoric.
Whoever you are, you categorize all day, every day.
Literally when you walk out the door you are making concrete, objective assertions about all sorts of categories, including, and especially gender.
You're a living breathing counter-example to your own argument.
I understand perfectly well the current Western ideology around 'Gender and Sex' so you can save the ad hominem.
Gender is so deeply and broadly rooted in human culture across cultures and time, that it almost doesn't matter how we want to argue about in 2021 in North America, because time will prevail and leave these arguments in the dust.
People will generally accept Katlyn Jenner and frankly, accept her moderate views on Transgenderism, but people will never accept the opposite of gender essentialism i.e. 'Gender is a Pure Construct' without overwhelming thought programming.
Those fighting for the 'Gender Is a Construct Absolutism' are like Violent Angry Puritans trying to stop people from consuming alcohol, a few battles may be won here and there, and they may be able to keep people in their cult with a lot of constant programming, but the war will definitely be lost eventually.
That said, we may be in for a pretty nutty ride for a couple of decades as the Justice System rolls over itself trying to cope.
My point is that there's an obvious legal and moral conundrum with identities that are entirely self applied, which is made evident by someone making a claim to said identities and being rejected of those claims.
Try it: Identify as Two Spirit, get rejected, sue on the basis of discrimination that UBC would not recognize your (completely arbitrary) claims to Two Spirit.
Then force them to make the argument, in court.
It'd be impossible other than to demonstrate the absurdity of the reasoning:
"I define myself as this kind of gender, which is my right, therefore I deserve this privilege"
"But that person over there cannot define themselves as this kind of gender, because their ancestors are from a different continent"
It's Monty Python all the way down the rabbit hole.