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Comment by crowselect | Hacker News Reader

1. If the goal is to remove LGBTQ content, or stuff related to diversity, they’re using a rocket launcher not a scalpel - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/diversity-documen...

2. 7.6% of americans are LGBTQ - that’s about 26 million people - does the government not serve them as well? Is the government only there to serve some of the people?

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Ok, but how many articles that were about DEI were removed compared to that weren't? If they do a big amount of work with a small error margin that wouldn't be so dramatic.

Also, 7.6% seems very high, what is this number based on, and in which cases does it really matter what your gender is? In what cases does the information need to take your gender into account, unless it's about specific organs, which are either masculine or feminine?

I’d say you’re looking at this wrong - the harm of a “dei” article staying up is nonexistent. The harm of an article about women’s health or workplace safety being taken down because it includes the word “gender” or “diverse” has the potential to cost people their lives.

7.6% is based on the google results for “percentage americans lgbtq” - if you want to know more about that number you can find more on said search engine. Is there a number you have in mind where the gov no longer has a responsibility to serve them?

> In what cases does the information need to take your gender into account, unless it's about specific organs, which are either masculine or feminine?

You’re confusing gender and sex. Gender is a description of social and cultural traits - sex is the one relating to organs and chromosomes. But either way, taking down pages about women’s health because of a law that claims to have the goal of protecting women is just dumb.

But it's maybe also dumb to alter health articles to DEI when it's about scientific sex and not imaginary genders. In what case does a scientific health article need to take someone's gender preference into account?

When trying to communicate information to people, it’s best to meet them where they’re at. If i start calling you she when you would like to be called he or they, will you hear what i am saying or will you get hung up on being misgendered?

And btw, all genders are imaginary. Like many things, gender is made up.

Yeah, well in personal circumstances , and you can take someones preferred pronoun into account. But why would you be offended in general texts where the gender doesn't even matter.

Can you give an example of gender being put into texts where it doesn’t matter? Or are you just buying the talking points of an administration that has no qualms deleting women’s health data and osha regulations wholesale?

Well if you have a vagina, and you have a period every month, and you need to take care of that in a hygenic way, it doesn't matter as what gender you identify, the vagina doesn't care.

And that’s exactly the kind of gender inclusive language they are purging. Because this executive order attempts to define a person with a vagina as a women and only a women.

Yes and what does that matter? If you have a vagina and you identity as a whatever, the article is still true for you. The medical advice doesn't matter what you identity yourself as. The information is about the specific organs. It doesn't matter what you identify yourself as. It shouldn't matter. It's weird that people think that these articles need to be adjusted for DEI. They are about the body, not about the mind.

And in the end, it's correct that this information is meant for the biological woman, and not the biological man. So it would just become confusing if you say it also applies to men. Because biological men don't have a vagina.

If you are a woman that identifies as a man, then you will know that you are biologically a woman, and that the medical advice for woman applies to you.

Well. We’ve come full circle. If you want to go back to the comment where i said “When trying to communicate information to people, it’s best to meet them where they’re at.” And then you can have the conversation as many time as you like.

Fundamentally, what is happening is not removing inclusive language. It’s removing useful documents because they contain words that are not allowed to be spoken anymore. Setting aside your feelings about binary gender - imagine this was about some cultural group: goths or birders or whatever. Would it not be concerning that the gov was trying to eliminate any acknowledgement that birders exist?

A page with advice for lgbtq travelers had “LGBTQ” changed to “LGB”. That’s not removing references to gender that had been forced in to be inclusive. That’s trying to erase actual people from the official record. Not wanting them to exist. If that doesn’t alarm you, idk what would.

Well I think that it's a bit of waste of time and money to spend so much to adjust articles to please some people that, in my opinion, are complaining about unimportant things.

I don't see how it's a big problem in our society that medical texts aren't explicitly acknowledging the existense of "other genders" when it's not even relevant.

Why don't we focus ourselves on real world problems?

I'm not necessarily supporting that they're changing stuff back now, but I'm also not necessarily supporting the changes in the first place. I think it's a silly fight between idealists in opposite camps. And to be honest, I think the idealists in the opposite camp had too much of a run, and it went way too far, and now the other side is trying to win back some ground, and of course they also exaggerate and go too far. But maybe we will eventually end up in in the balanced middle. So in that sense I'm not too worried about these changes. Also because I don't think it's a very important issue anyway compared to the many issues going on in the world. I think LGBT people are living in the best time ever. I think there is more acceptance, recognition and tolerance for that, more than ever before. So I don't understand why some people are pushing this forward so much as if it is a major issue. If you let the current trend continue, it will get better by itself. Now that they are pushing for it so much it actually works contraproductive, as you can see. Many people now are fed up with all these changes where we need to make a special arrangement for these people. But that is actually the opposite of equality. So I can understand that many people are getting fed up with it and want to get rid of it.

So I don't see a threat here. I don't think that there are many people that actively wants to erradicate the LBGT movement, of course there are always extremists, but it's not the majority. People just want that we can live our lives without having to take someones preferred pronoun into account all the time. We want to do our work, we don't want to be a personal therapist for every LBTQ person.

The fact only that this abbreviation is being updated all the time because some new group feels excluded itself shows how pathetic this whole thing is. Why can't we just say that we are all human, and be done with it? Why would I care if some document from the government names me by my biological gender? That doesn't define who you are.

You know you can make a problem out of anything if you want. I could be upset because my preffered color is green and I want the letters to be in green font. And I can start a whole religion based on that and get many people all worked up about the fact that they're receiving letters where their preferred color is ignored. It doesn't sound that weird actually, now in these times. 20 years ago it would have been a joke.

> 2. 7.6% of americans are LGBTQ - that’s about 26 million people - does the government not serve them as well? Is the government only there to serve some of the people?

It's an explicit goal of Project 2025 to take rights away from queer people.

Project 2025? You mean that thing that they’d never heard of?

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