On 3/4/22 2:59 PM, glen wrote:
Well, what this seems to ignore is that sex/gender attitudes do change.
In support of this I have myriad of my own anecdotes which might not have much universal appeal. An overview: I grew up with the idea (learned from my subculture) that "gay" or "homo(sexual)" or "queer" were almost synonyms for "Pedophile". I didn't understand there were even category for what I use those terms for today. Of course, I was mostly pre/proto-pubescent during that time and didn't have a dog in that fight really. Though I *did* have a dog in the "pedophile" fight... not because I actually encountered any blatant pedophiles or pedophilic attentions, but because I felt warned enough that I had to be *vigilant*.
I even acted as a teacher's aide as a Senior to a teacher who was labeled (potential) pedophile and presented as (having no better word ) as "smarmy". I was in his classroom 3 days a week for a whole year and every day saw him saying and doing things that *could* be taken wrong, but which I *never* saw as objectively inappropriate (once I thought about it). Nobody ever said it in so many words, but I am sure in retrospect I was in the class as some kind of "chaperone" or "witness". It didn't help that he was single father of a teenage girl who was her own kind of awkward misfit, but best I could tell they were just >1sigma away from the norm in their presentation and neither of them was up to anything they were being suspected of.
When I went to college there was a sexuality/gender-confounding student in my entering classes who everyone insisted had a "crush" on me. He had a wide range of odd (to me) affectations but for the most part he was witty and clever and fun and gave me as well as others lots of flattering attention. This was out of character for the men I knew up to that point but he was smooth enough to "sell" it. I found him to have unconventional enough boundaries that I avoided any and all overtures to "be friends" beyond friendly acquaintances in class, and he seemed not to take offense and remained his (overly) friendly self in the face of my mild rejections. I also worked nearly full-time and kept met most of my social needs in the workplace instead of extracurricular activities like most of my peers. I declined plenty of other gestures of friendship from classmates as well.
I took the admonitions that he was "gay and crushing on me" to be snarky talk by people who liked to be snarky ... directed 70% at him and 30% at me with the naive overtones of "pedophilia" even though we were both big strapping young men and there was no age/status/power differential (long before I knew of Maplethorpe and the Leather Scene). 4 years later, not having much more contact with him, I had a woman as a lab partner who was his (non-romantic) roomate's fiance' (they were very Christian and saving themselves for eachother) . She told me in much less snarky terms that Bruce (yes, his name was Bruce) still talked about me often and said he still had a crush on me. By then I was a little more sophisticated and realized that there actually were men who preferred other men as objects of sexual desire and engagement and it was a quaint shock to realize how naive I had been 4 years before (and of course still was in many ways). I occasionally think to seek Bruce out and let him know how profoundly HE changed my mind. From a flat/naive/empty understanding of all those gay/queer/homo labels to a very personal experience of what a gay man *might* be. Or maybe just educated me by example.
Since that time I have had uncountable gay and lesbian friends including one first cousin. I eventually partnered with a woman for nearly 20 years who was bisexual (technically probably closer to pan-sexual) and who introduced me to quite the pantheon of gender-alternative individuals and couples and ideations. She also insisted on my having an acceptance for (if not affinity to) pretty much any combination of variants you could think of. I found myself "threatened" by this a few times, but generally in a very limited/transient way. She was so acutely matter-of-fact about these spectra of gender/sexuality and had her own prejudices (minor compared to mainstream folks) that I took it all at face value and didn't have more than one or two occasions to take umbrage to how someone presented to (or more importantly engaged with) me.
Out of the "trans" people I know, I think only one counts as more than an acquaintance and I have to admit that part of that has been the awkwardness of their own presentation. I found them to be still (naturally) struggling with their own identity and place in the world so they tended to "throw their elbows" a lot to try to make space for themselves where there was no existing room for them. That can be very tedious to be around (but surely harder for them?!). I've tried to be open and sympathetic to that, but it mostly didn't lead to our becoming friends. I was "present" for one man who who transitioned to a woman very abruptly. I found it very disorienting and difficult to cope with, but my sympathies were with her as she tried to settle into her new persona/role/presentation. She was a very handsome, fine-featured, well groomed, well spoken middle aged man who became quite a gawky, overly gussied, awkward, occasionally hostile woman. I haven't seen her in a decade. I suspect from the quality of her presentation as a man that she got it all under control and became quite the looker as a woman eventually. Of the trans people I've had an opportunity to *try* to become friends with, I found that they had some pretty high defenses up which translated to some pretty strong controlling behaviour and language around gender and sex and identity. I didn't "blame" them, as I recognized that they had a *lot* more going on and invested in all of that than I did. But that didn't make it any easier to become friends. From my experience with the more successful/mature transitions, I realize that I may well have friends or at least acquaintances who are transgendered and I'd not know it. I find that to be a strong sign of a successful transition in our culture from it being a complete outlier to being a *near* widely accepted thing. I think we are a better people for that acceptance/embrace.
I feel lucky to have known and related to all of these people, albeit fairly limited outside of the near-20 year relationship. I still get confounded and distracted with the spectra of gender/sexual presentations which I encounter, but only for a heartbeat until I get oriented again. I feel thankful that none of this ever threatened me particularly. I can see how it could for some and I am sick for the pain they must feel and the pain they cause as a result. Seeing someone scared and angry over something that does not scare or anger me is very sad. I've not been around much overt racism personally, but that is a very similar experience for me.
My parents were congenitally homo-judgmental if not quite homo-phobic. They were also highly tolerant and polite. They would never have confronted or directly mistreated anyone who was not hetero-normative. My cousin who was bisexual and married another man in his 30s became my mother's favorite nephew pretty smoothly after she came to realize that his "friend" was in fact his husband and together they took very good care of her "favorite brother" in his final years. This came after my own father's death. I'm sure he would have been polite and civil to him, but would have had plenty of judgements to express behind their back. He was (deliberately?) oblivious to my bi/pansexual partner, but then she did not throw it in anyone's face and was generally charming enough nobody wanted to confront or judge her about anything. The last being part of the reason we are no longer together!
</end tedious anecdote>
Calling the changes nonsense doesn't do any work. When something changes, there are some people who, for whatever reason, want to study them and understand what makes them work and what's changing.I don't see any reason to get more worked up about these changes than the changes expressed by any other dynamical system. But my apathy doesn't imply that they're nonsense. I also don't play poker. But it doesn't mean poker is nonsense.On 3/4/22 12:41, Prof David West wrote:One of the segments of the undergraduate cultural anthropology course I taught, the one that I enjoyed teaching the most, focused on sex, gender, and marriage. I took great pleasure (yes Nick, schadenfreude) destroying all the preconceived notions and asserted "Truths" of my, mostly Catholic and upper class students.Sex is a linear spectrum: everyone is conceived female and, at about 6 weeks, males start to become differentiated. But no one is 100% male. The closest thing to binary, is the ability to produce viable eggs versus the ability to produce viable sperm.Gender is a complex multi-dimensional space with almost no consistency across cultures. The closest thing to a gender universal: among all known hunter-gatherer societies, women always gather and men always hunt. No one knows why and every proposed "reason" is shot down convincingly by empirical evidence.Sexuality (behavior) is also a complex multi-dimensional space and there are far more variations, dear Horatio, than dreamt of in your philosophy. Several aspects of sexuality appear to have a biological 'cause' with same sex attraction being the most researched.Although it is possible to form, at least tentative, correlations across the two complex spaces and the spectrum; those correlations tend to be statistical 'patterns' more than anything else.The 'Great Hurrah' regarding sex/gender the past few years is, IMHO, mostly nonsense, oversimplification, and reification in service of politics and power.But, I am more than happy to call you 'It' or other term of your choice if you notify me in advance of your desire.davew On Fri, Mar 4, 2022, at 9:50 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:The differences between men and women in prison might give some ideas about how gender roles are independent of cis-gender.https://mcasa.org/providers/resources-on-specific-topics/prea/prea-resources-and-webinars/underThe concept of "gay for the stay", being more intentional, and associated with women prisoners seems to be a kind of cognitive flexibility that I associate more with the femaleness (in a good way). -----Original Message----- From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen Sent: Friday, March 4, 2022 7:06 AM To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedom I'm entirely ignorant of yeast biology, though a tiny bit informed of yeast engineering for brewing. But, still in analogy with gender teams, it seems preposterous that isolation could be common. Even if we considered individual cells flying around in the air and compared yeast in {all contexts facilitating reproduction} versus {all contexts inhibiting reproduction} and the latter contained a larger absolute number of cells, *that* the other contexts facilitate reproduction implies a dependency between the two. I.e. dependency ≠ isolation. I suppose if we add temporal isolation, we could say {time spent in isolation} versus {time spent in nutrient bath} and we (I think counterfactually) found that most yeast spends most of its time separated from its team, those relatively brief periods in the latterstate would be definitional to the organism, not to mention the species.In the analogy, there is also no such thing as an isolated human. Sure, we might consider "wolf children", abandoned as babies and found living in the forest or somesuch. But that would be too rare for any science. So "decoupled from [sex|society]" must mean something else, perhaps prisoners in the SHU? My guess is there's a half-life to team identity. Stay in the SHU for X time and the time spent in milieu is comparatively infinite. Stay in the SHU for Y time and the isolation screws you up deeply, down into things like proprioception and hallucination. Studies of team identity, being relatively fungible on top of those deeper traits, would then be unreliable due to a swamp of confounders. So, there's no science there, either. [⛧] But the language angle does make some sense, especially in the context of biologists who are so used to using terms like "male" and "female" jargonally, then suffering a kind of memory error and thinking their jargonal term has meaning outside their domain. Before enculturation, they took "[fe]male" as the typical social role the laity takes it as, conflated with "masculine", "feminine", etc. After enculturation, they take it as "producer of ova" and "producer of sperm". But I worry that such semantic shift isn't as easy as EricS seems to suggest. Sure, perhaps it's much easier than phonemes and grammar. But it takes a lot of work, a lot of steeping, a lot of immersive learning. I guess it's a bit like the Necker cube or Magic Eye graphics. You start out only able to see it one way. It takes focus and randomness to plunk into the other view. And the more you practice plunking from one to the other, you gain enough mastery to choose which way to view it as a function of context. And that embeds both the temporally piecewise isolation of yeast and humans back into the conception of the narrative self. [⛧] I feel like someone, perhaps Dave, will mention monks who may seem like good candidates for decoupled from [sex|society]. And I imagine most monks, Christian, Buddhist, whatever, have methodical techniques for [de]categorizing their selves in parallax to the laity. Because we do some science with a relatively large cohort of monks, it might be reasonable to compare to a control cohort from the laity. But, again, I worry about the confounders ... like McDonalds french fries, Instagram addiction, orthorexia, etc. In order to make a clinical trial over monk-hood credible, we'd have to have other isolates ... perhaps InCels living in their parents' basements? Furries? Coomers? Agoraphobics? Those poor people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder? Setting the control protocol for decoupled/isolation seems fraught. On 3/4/22 03:27, David Eric Smith wrote:Marcus’s comment below is a fun and insightful angle for the analogy-mongers.An area nobody gets angry about is the evolution of the genetic code (the assignment of amino acids to nuclease triplets by the translation system). In modern life, coding is heavily heavily conventionalized and translation has very low error rates in complex organisms. Since that can be presumed, vast complexity has developed that presumes and makes use of those predictabilities. Hence, there are very very few ways a code can change, because touching anything in that tiny finite assignment table breaks an indefinitely large list of critical infrastructure.So the Origins question turns to: in what kind of a world could coding ever have been an evolvable feature? The general belief is: in a world where much much less is standardized in genomes, and “translation” is a stochastic enough process that, if one tried to describe it in terms of “reliability”, it would be rated very unreliable. In such a world, the notion of memory -> function cannot be one of sequence -> structure, and must be more like cloud-of-sequences -> moment-of-distribution-of-structures. There are fewer distinctions that can be made in such a world robustly, and by that categorization “less” that one can do. But the restriction of what can be done that makes a system at all robust also makes it tolerant of evolution of the code. All this, on a sliding scale.The second case is language change, and the people who get angry over that are people nobody cares about or listens to anyway. Languages can change by shift of the semantic scope of lexical roots, by phoneme scope and values, and by aspects of grammar ranging from morphology to phrase structure. The only redundancies that put limits on semantic shift within a functioning language are at higher levels of composition or pragmatics. Since those are pretty fluid anyway, semantic shift is probably the most atomic of all the shifts, and the one most amenable to simple (meaning, not requiring typological priors) comparative modeling. Phoneme and phonological shift are more constrained, because their roles are massively redundant, so they can only change “within tracks” if intelligibility of words is to be preserved. Along those tracks the movement is still fairly frictionless, but you need to correctly characterize the tracks to make valid interpretations from comparative data. The aspects of “grammar” (morphology to phrase structure) are the worst-accreted into interdependent systems. So they are resistant to change, when they do change they tend to “shatter” and re-arrange (or so I have been told by a colleague who is professional in this area), and the allowed changes are very hard to predict and thus to use in forward Monte Carlo modeling.If we believe the yeast biologists most-fully understand The True Nature of Life, and that isolation is the default, and the relinquishment of isolation is a hazardous and fraught negotiation, then Marcus’s teams probably grow up in the shade of a difficult and long-standing negotiation of how it is possible to have a manageable life in society. For there to be difficulties in changing many things within those systems would then be the zero-knowledge prior.EricOn Mar 3, 2022, at 5:05 PM, Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com> wrote:I guess I'd approach it by trying to see what gender means to people decoupled from society and decoupled from sex. To the laity, I think it probably has something to do what team you are on, and the implicit rules of the teams and whether one respects them or disrespects them. Changing rules is one thing that can get people this wound up.-----Original Message----- From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 1:51 PM To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedomBiologists are NOT held to a higher standard. But when they do just go on speaking without ever listening, then they deserve some pushback. In this particular context, there was no bad faith on either side. But one of the biologists is accusing bad faith on the part of the non-cis people.As for a symbol being used without introduction, that's nearly impossible with "male" and "female" ... in English, anyway, which was the language we were all speaking. It would be like using pi to mean e in a paper. You *already* know that's a bad idea. So if you do it, and the readers don't know what the hell you're saying, it's your fault, not theirs. It's not a higher standard ... it's a standard standard.On 3/3/22 13:26, Marcus Daniels wrote:It seems to me it is like a paper where some symbol is used without introduction, but it becomes clear from context and reflection. Not clear why a biologist should be held to a higher standard for explaining themselves when speaking to the laity. I mean their reality feels real to them so it must be true. ;-) FEELING is everything! It seems evil to me to limit "ordinary conversation" to a restricted, banal vocabulary. That's how people like Trump get their claws in. People should be able to listen and not just speak, to imagine the possible and not just what is right in front of them.-----Original Message----- From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 1:14 PM To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedomThe jargon being used by the biologist came in the form of "male", "female", "gametes", and such. "Male" and "female", when used by the biologists means something very different from what it means to the laity. And the biologists should know that. If they don't, they're stupid. If they do, but they don't dial down their jargonal use, then they're evil. And the use of "gamete" in an ordinary conversation is just Scientismist confabulation.On 3/3/22 13:10, Marcus Daniels wrote:The distinction I'd make is between talking about identity in principle and talking about the details of my identity. That's not a question of jargon, but of detachment. Jargon is a tool for detachment.-----Original Message----- From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 1:04 PM To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedomMaybe. But I don't think it's generosity that's required. I think it's humility that's required. Anyone who both engages a group of strangers about identity *and* identifies in a non-standard way is already demonstrating that they're not too damaged. Or, I'd turn the tables and say that the snowflakes in this conversation (the Scientismists) are too damaged for the conversation ... damaged by their entrenched, enculturation into, Scientism. The one guy's exclamation "Gametes are real" was obviously an indicator that the other participants would either have to play by *his* nutty rules or wait for him to dial down his jargon-laced gobbledygook and have a real conversation with ordinary people.On 3/3/22 12:56, Marcus Daniels wrote:Glen writes: < I think they're just defense mechanisms they've learned over years of abuse. >The defense mechanisms could be more like acquired allergies and do harm. Once one is dealing with reflexive mechanisms, I start to worry that a conversation is not possible. Because they would 1) need to learn to control those mechanisms (and who wants to take the time for them to do that) or 2) claim "You [the man] made me this may, now live with it." (and then adapt to their nutty rules).There seems to be a need for some generosity to help people cope, but it seems plausible to me some people are just too damaged. Does the absence of generosity make one a snowflake?-----Original Message----- From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 12:47 PM To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedomYeah, that's a good take. It also helps in distinguishing between reflexive defense mechanisms and cryptic character traits. Where me and the biologist who felt shut down disagree is in the interpretation of the non-cis participants word and body language choices. He thinks they're reflections of character traits. I think they're just defense mechanisms they've learned over years of abuse. In the non-binary person's case, they have an entire non-estranged, continually engaged, family that rejects their identity. So their body and word language is probably an example of them saying to the white cis biologists "pull yourselves together and we'll try again later." But I'm willing to be shown wrong if that's the case.On 3/3/22 12:36, Marcus Daniels wrote:Hmm. Another experience I have had while deconstructing someone with "charged feelings" is coming to the ought-to-be-obvious recognition that neither of us care about the other, but nonetheless the counterparty who feels compelled to share their boring feelings believes it is my job to patiently listen to them work through their issues (even though they would never do the same for me). Canceling could just mean "Pull yourself together and we'll try again next week."-----Original Message----- From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 12:28 PM To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedomHa! No, I was making a point about freedom of speech, in particularly "academic" speech, and canceling or shutting down others. Sorry if my anecdote got in the way. I pared it down for you below.On 3/3/22 12:16, Marcus Daniels wrote:Anyway, I guess you were making some point about people getting riled up at a pub, and that it being informative somehow. (Or at least entertaining?)On 3/3/22 11:02, glen wrote:Nobody was actively trying to shut anyone down. But the more conservative biologist actively claims the non-binary and queer participants *were* trying to shut down the biologists and had clearly shut down their reasoning. I disagree completely.-- glen When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. .-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - . 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