Comment by alyeska2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alyeska2 | Hacker News Reader

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Perhaps you should take a moment to understand what people on the left actually mean, instead of taking memes as sources of truth.

For instance, "men can have babies" is a simple result of politeness and observable reality. Transgender people exist, and can become pregnant and have babies. The polite, sympathetic and decent thing to do when interacting with a transgender person is to use their preferred gender terms. This is true whether you're a small-government, live-and-let-live libertarian conservative (you live your life, I'll live mine) or a Christian values social conservative (Jesus spent his entire life around lepers, beggars and prostitutes and washed their feet as an act of love and compassion).

Combine those two facts 1) you've got a person who had a baby at one point in their life and 2) who should be referred to as a man today, and the result is you get a man who had a baby. Nothing left-wing or liberal about it, just basic civility and politeness to another person, which are values we should all embrace.

Everyone is aware that that is what the left "really means". You have not elucidated anything for anyone. A lot of people just disagree with your premise that the pregnant person should be, for any reason, called a man.

It's incredibly unfortunate that anyone could be stubborn enough to not consider "suicide prevention" a sufficient reason.

As a rhetorical strategy, bringing suicide into an argument in a way that pressures the other person to comply has to be amongst the most contemptible forms of moral coercion.

Oh, why? Because it clearly shows the horrible consequences of decisions you align with?

Trans people have above-average suicide rates. Gender-affirming care is one of the only proven ways we can reduce these rates. If this makes you uncomfortable, consider that the issue might not be on my side.

Adult men have high suicide risk, due in large part to loneliness and low self esteem, but no one would suggest that women have an obligation to pretend all men they meet are sexy and desirable. Broadly, culture should not be manipulated by a small cohort holding themselves hostage. Coercive threats like "if you don't give me this job I will shoot myself" or "if you don't affirm Christ is our Savior I have a high chance of suicide btw" (or the third party proxied version like you posted) are not compatible with liberal society.

People who destroy any chance of productive discussion by creating ridiculous strawmen are not compatible with liberal society.

Leftists who pretend not to understand things as a form of argumentation, also

I simply don't consider "if you don't do this I will kill myself" to be an appropriate argument to make me do something. I don't accept moral culpability for that outcome. It is unfortunate for them that they cannot be what they want to be, but that does not put the onus on me to pretend they are that thing.

Society does not have an obligation to say falsehoods under duress. I think you'll probably agree with me for most other thought experiment examples I could come up with where people would need to collectively say what they don't believe lest the aggrieved party hurt themselves.

> I simply don't consider "if you don't do this I will kill myself" to be an appropriate argument to make me do something.

Woah, not even one sentence in, and you're already pretending to lack the ability to properly read my words. I genuinely have no idea how any form of productive conversation could be possible.

You are just proxying the quoted argument indirectly to make it sound less coercive, but the end result is the same: I should do something, and not be "stubborn", because it reduces risk of suicides, which is "sufficient reason". Whether the suicider is in the first or third person, or whether they are an individual or an aggregate statistic, is irrelevant.

- Society should do something because it reduces risk of suicide in this group

- I should do something because it reduces risk of suicide in this group <-- you are here

- I should do something because it reduces risk of suicide to this person

- I should do something because if I don't there's a high risk this person will kill themselves

- I should do something because if I don't this person credibly says they will kill themselves <-- my post

- I should do something because this person is truly mentally ill and if I don't they definitely will kill themselves

These are all the same argument. You are being disingenuous. Your post says that "'Suicide prevention' is a sufficient reason [to call a female a man]." What exactly were you implying then if not that I should do something because otherwise someone might kill themselves? You are uncomfortable with me clarifying your position in more direct verbiage; that is the insidiousness of your position: it only sounds nice when you ignore its implications.

> observable reality

Man, really? The same argument transphobes use?

"It's observable reality. Just LOOK at her! It's obvious!" compared to "It's observable reality. Just LOOK at him! It's obvious!"

> simple result

I wish it were that simple -_-

I mean, there is such a thing as reality, and it exists regardless of your observing it; we can agree on this much, I'm sure?

Not really in this case because the label given to these people is socially constructed. It's not 'reality' that they are or are not their proclaimed gender, just as it's not reality that they are or are not pretty. Saying that there is some objective reality of their prettiness or ugliness doesn't make much sense either way, in the same way.

It's my opinion that the words man and woman should refer to the biological sex, not the person's desired sex/gender, so I use the words in that way. Obviously some people feel strongly about using the words in the opposite way. That's okay, but I'm just not going to use them that way. Neither of us have a stronger claim to "observable reality", but I think I at least have a stronger claim to historical/traditional normalcy.

>It's my opinion that the words man and woman should refer to the biological sex, not the person's desired sex/gender, so I use the words in that way. Obviously some people feel strongly about using the words in the opposite way.

And it's other people's opinion that the word "bigot" refers to people who call transgender women men.

>but I think I at least have a stronger claim to historical/traditional normalcy.

Why on earth would you think appeal to tradition gives your opinion any legitimacy.

History is full of backwards thinking that seems insane in retrospect.

> And it's other people's opinion that the word "bigot" refers to people who call transgender women men.

That's fine, people can call me that if they want to

> History is full of backwards thinking that seems insane in retrospect.

Sure, and I'm not saying historicity makes me right, just that I didn't pull the opinion out of thin air like it's a crackpot theory; most people in the world today and throughout history agreed with me. I have essentially 0 Agreeableness in the big 5 so any argument about social pressure in present decade USA doesn't sway my opinion.

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