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Parents always shape their child. You're making the mistake of assuming the 'norm' is better in some way simply because it is the 'norm'
Not too long ago the common argument would be that raising your child not as an athiest but as nothing (IE. do not give them religion or tell them religion is wrong, simply give them the option to choose whatever they wish when they are old enough) is absolutely abusive and inviting a great deal of harm for your child.
In fact I would imagine the majority or at least a great deal of them feel this way today.
Uhm. What?
No, seriously, what?
Your argument is amazingly goosey and hypocritical. I can't believe this. Nobody said that. No. Body. At all. I will never live to see a more androgynous society. Neither will my theoretical and unlikely children, or grandchildren. Nobody has said there would be a massive upheaval in society. Anywhere. Except you and those who've been arguing alongside you.
Get this. Getting tolerance going in society would pretty much lead to...an androgynous society! Because tolerance and eventual acceptance in regards to unconventional gender roles, transgenders, and whatnot would upheave gender-related issues quite a bit!
How about those of you who are preaching this actually be tolerant instead of incredibly reactionary?
This isn't what they're doing.
How do you document precedents if nobody has done it before, and it's considered irresponsible to do it without documented precedent?
1. Children should not be raised without giving them a gender because it could be harmful, but we don't know.
2. "Experimenting" would be unethical despite the harm forcing gender roles on children can cause.
3. This results in a catch 22.
Now replace gender and gender roles with practices now considering abusive. The argument still works.
Cool. So in order to do this we'll try to get some people to raise their kid and allowing them to choose their gender. Good plan.
oof, salmon of doubt. You're being extremely naive.
Hey quid I heard about some people in sweden who were going to try this!
Seriously?! Fuck I hope Sweden has scientists!
If you completely eliminated people's racial biases we would have a society where race was unimportant beyond some degree of aesthetic recognition. Whether someone is black, white, asian, or whatever, it won't matter to how they're treated.
The same is not true of gender. Even in a world where there are no gender biases whatsoever with regard to what people 'should' do or 'can' do, you're never going to reach a point where everyone treats everyone else the same. For 90% of society, one gender is composed of potential sexual partners and the other gender is not. So for 90% of people, half of everyone they meet is someone they might potentially be interested in having a romantic or physical relationship with. Completely disregarding matters of gender role, the classification into "someone I would pursue romantically", "someone I will not pursue romantically" and "someone I do not consider a viable target of romance", by itself, will change how they treat those people.
Arch, you want to talk about the "damage" inflicted on kids by being raised in a gendered fashion. The only possible damage comes from either a really old fashioned approach in which you are teaching girls to stay in the kitchen and boys to expect dinner and open-hand slap their wives if it's not right or from continuing to enforce a gender on a child who is rejecting it due to a being trans.
Assuming we are not advocating the first, rather cretinous possibility, I am instead attacking that second one.
Because it's far better to raise your child as the gender he or she presents as physically. If on the off chance your kid starts to reject that gender, then reassess and probably consult a psychologist to assess if the kid might be transgendered.
But raising your kid as a non-gendered thing just in case it might want to choose the gender that doesn't match it's genitals is dumb. And it's also not the same thing as raising your kid to be transsexual, which you have twice now accused me of claiming when I am not doing so.
So really, it's time to start either reading my posts or not responding to them.
Science has these things called "controlled environments". Go check them out sometime, you might be surprised.
Or did you really think we test every social theory in real life first?
Removing the groups does not solve the problem though because then some other group arises and gets ostracized for whatever reason. (and ostracizes back)
Teaching acceptance (which our society slowly is working on with each passing generation) is the best way to solve the root problem.
Sure they are. They aren't even using pronouns in private.
You really have no idea what you are talking about.
I mean, sure, using incredibly vague definitions of those things, you're possibly right, but...isn't that basically what parents do? Like, if parents think that-for example-private school is better than public school, they're not going to send their kid to a public school just to 'avoid making a political statement' or whatever. They're going to send their kid to a private school because they think that is what is best for their child.
No, it really isn't. And additionally, you repeatedly have said that you dislike these people raising a "transgendered child" which they are not doing. I am not the only one who called this out.
And I am fairly certain I have never accused you of advocating what you say I did.
jeeps, what exactly do you think transgender means?
We did with interracial couples. Were/are they wrong?
That does not mean they are raising it to be transgendered
The word here is NOT TRANSGENDERED
it is agendered
This is a false dichotomy. There is plenty of gender baggage that isn't HUR HUR DUDE IN A WIFEBEATER WOMAN IN THE KITCHEN. Surely you all of people would be aware of this?
What the fuck?
Seriously, when we have new theories about how child development occurs under certain conditions, we used controlled experiments first before recommending those methods to parents.
Are you living under a rock, dude?
Yeah, you guys are the ones attacking the straw man here.
You seem to be confused when I said "raising the kid as if it were transgendered" and keep attacking me as if I'd said they are raising it to be transgendered.
It sure looks like someone is advocating experimenting on children.
Either way, you are still wrong because the word transgender in no way applies to this situation.
Not if, as has been theorized, everyone is a little bit bisexual.
To take a slightly different tack, when I meet a woman for the first time, I almost always do not treat or even consider her as a potential sexual or romantic partner. So there's that.
I think you will find that you and I strongly disagree on how much of that "gender baggage" is a negative thing.
So when you pursue a woman you assume they're not a lesbian and you're correct 100% of the time? That's very convenient, how are you able to manage that?
Your position is totally incoherent.
You say parents shouldn't experiment on children.
Yet you are advocating subjecting children to controlled scientific studies on child development.
You are twisting yourself into a logic pretzel in the vain attempt to justify an irrational phobia.
And there we will find that you may actually be objectively wrong here.
In a controlled environment, with both the child's and parents consent (the child's consent is key here, people), and after the ethics board examines the proposal for the experiment and determines no real harm can come to the child.
We do, after all, study child behavior in controlled environments.
It absolutely does. The kid is going to have a gender eventually anyway. It's either going to match his or her genitals or not. If not, the kid is transgendered.
I honestly don't see how they expect this to work out, or why anyone is worried about it.
The whole non-gendered thing will last precisely as long as Pop can't talk. Three minutes into playing with other children Pop is going to come ask one of Pop's parents whether Pop is a boy or a girl. Barring the case where Pop is male but just loves dresses or Pop having a significantly different psyche than any young child I've ever met, Pop will be dressing and acting like every other little boy or girl that Pop knows in order to fit in because 3 year old Pop will not understand the social impact of denying gender roles and boundaries.
Also, writing without pronouns is weird and awkward for me.
I'm very surprised. But you're probably right.