Hacker News Reader

Comment by eadmund | Hacker News Reader

You can believe that gender is irrelevant and only sex matters, but you should still make an effort to be polite and nice to your coworkers - for example call them by the name they go for even if it is different from the one on their ID, use the pronouns that they prefer, etc.

Of course, like all things related to politeness, there is no absolute rule - if I change my pronouns every week I shouldn't expect people to keep up. But it should not be surprising that you can be fired for not making a minimal effort to be nice to your colleagues.

In case anyone is genuinely confused: this is the kind of bigotry people expect to get away with sans consequence, and complain about “heresy” when they’re called out on it.

Exactly! And the fact that I found GP comment, which is discussing this in good faith flagged and dead, proves the point being made.

Somewhere in the last 10 years a norm emerged that transgender identity is sacrosanct and its doubters are bigots, but transracial identity is a lie and people like Rachel Dolezal are frauds.

GP's brusque language aside, can there be any amount of uncertainty on either of these points? Doesn't it seem a bit arbitrary that these two new norms are opposite to each other?

Even though gender and race are both social inventions, they’re not really interchangeable like that.

To cite one example: race is considered heritable, and there have historically been harsh consequences of that lineage. In the US, the one-drop rule ensured that anyone with even a single Black ancestor would be subject to the legal discrimination that status entailed (this is called “hypodescent”). So the idea of someone saying “I identify as Black” is… fraught, to say the least.

Society deems it so? If you were of the opinion you were a cat the diagnosis would be that you are delusional.

Still, if there is no other negative effects, then accepting them as a different gender seems like a simple way to ‘heal’ the condition. Certainly in the absence of a way to fix it in the other direction.

I don’t think a lot of people would be well served by accepting that someone is a cat.

It is not compassion to lie to people and pretend they are what they are not.

Gender dysphoria is real, social contagion is real, and we shouldn't accept or embrace a self-destructive ideology that radically derails the lives of teenagers and younger.

Adults can behave however they want, but it should be considered child abuse to foster transgenderism and transsexuality in minors.

You're simply using a completely different concept of gender to this person. I'd argue that not only do you both have reasonable points of view, your assertions don't actually conflict! You can both be correct.

I don't think it is reasonable for you to hold that your definition of gender is the only correct one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com