This is perfectly true, people are people, and there will be idiots in any group of sufficient size. But we need to be aware that the other side of this is true as well, there are people who dislike concepts such as gender fluidity or homosexuality, and will cite individual examples of LGBT people being assholes in an attempt to argue that this non-representative minority is actually the norm, and they are all like that. See also the farcical "Black crimes" P&S thread.
I hope it is clear that it is not that I like or dislike the concept, it is that it is nonsense.
And I also hope you are not alluding to me indirectly, because my brain is capable of more than thinking that:
1) Person A has big ears.
2) Person A is an idiot.
3) Conclusion: all people with big ears are idiots.
It's just that in the last thread you already came out with such an absurd argument.
No, I certainly wasn't referring to you, or to anyone else in this thread, merely to the sort of "argument" put forth in that "Black crimes" thread.
And I am also certainly aware that your brain is capable of complex and nuanced thinking. We have had some good discussions in the past (as well as the inevitable disagreements)!
I take your somewhat combative thread title to be more a question of the semantic distinction between "sex" and "gender" than anything else, and wouldn't regard you as someone who is against people
feeling a certain way.
Yep, but gender is exactly about how someone feels. You have a natural gender (or two) and then you have a psychological gender which is actually determined by internal psychological factors. There is no limit to how people may feel and how fluid that may be.
I think that is more or less the same as CNut237's view.
There is a limit: contradiction.
According to the leftist vision of gender inequality, women are discriminated against, and to alleviate this discrimination, quotas must be reserved for them in certain jobs.
Note that it is called "gender" inequality, not sex inequality.
If gender is something subjective that depends only on my feelings, simply by declaring myself a woman I have the right to access that reserved quota. Let's see who can prove that I don't feel like a woman.
If we go to objective facts, to sex, that does not happen.
To defend that there is gender discrimination and that gender is simply what one feels is contradictory.
Women
are discriminated against, sometimes, in certain situations, by certain people. I wasn't aware this was a contentious point; I thought it was an almost universally-accepted truth rather than a "leftist vision" (which implies a minority viewpoint and something theoretical rather than real and empirically verifiable).
I would agree with you that the word gender has been used as a synonym for biological sex, and indeed often is still used that way. In fact I've no doubt used it that way myself. And I would agree that this adds to the confusion. But if we are talking about the distinction between the way someone feels and their biological situation, then this is the distinction between gender and sex.
No, you could not get onto a women-only shortlist for a job by simply declaring that you feel like you are a woman. This is because if you are applying to strangers for a job, they will go by your apparent gender (your sex), because they don't know your intimate thoughts, nor those of everyone else at the company. Similarly with racial equality, you can't get onto an ethnic-minority-only shortlist if you're ethnically white but "feel" black.
Of course, if you are a biological man but believe you are being discriminated against by certain people because you've told them that you identify as female gender, then that's an entirely separate issue (equivalent to applying to people-you-know-and-in-whom-you've-confided for a job).