This happened in Multnomah County, which happens to be a county name I know, because it's that county with the idea of spending $22 million building 300 "tiny houses" in the backyards of homeowners who agree to take in a homeless family for 5 years.
The linked article is at HeatStreet — which has an attitude that I find unappealing and where there's a Gender Identities quiz that's freeze-framed on an image that I'm not going to click on but is either snarkily or unwittingly trading in surprising phallus placement:
I'm creating a new tag — "gender privacy" — for this and yesterday's post "What a deceptive headline at The Daily Caller!"
Yesterday's post was about a teacher who, after losing her breasts to cancer, wanted to present herself as gender neutral and to say to any children who wondered about her gender: "We all have private lives, and it would not be appropriate to talk about our private lives during the school day." In the comments, people focused on the problem of what pronoun to use (which really is troublesome as we maintain an interest in speaking in a natural way), and I said:
I didn't take a position on the pronouns.These are questions I really want to discuss.
I talked about etiquette and decency in interpersonal relationships.
Note that this isn't a woman demanding to be spoken of as a man or raising the issue whether she somehow really is a man. This is a person who is asking for no reference to be made to her sex. It's a request for privacy about her body.
Out of simple empathy, you could respect that.
You could also ask why a person's sex is considered properly in the public realm. Why don't we all demand privacy about the body parts we cover up and demand that others cover up. If they must be covered up, why do we feel entitled to talk about them?
Also, I see an analogy to something that happened in the development of the same-sex marriage issue. Many people started to ask why the government is involved in recognizing people's personal/sexual relationships at all. Why not privatize the whole thing, get government out of marriage? Now, you might want to think about why government concerns itself with our private parts. If you want to say gender is more than genitalia, that it's a state of mind, the question of privacy is only heightened: Why should government concern itself with how we feel deep inside?
As for those pesky pronouns, we have freedom of speech. That too belongs in the sphere of the individual. We get to decide for ourselves how to speak. There are many difficult decisions here, and the government should not be solving them.
________________________
* Let's never forget what the Saturday Night Live people found hilarious in the early 90s:
The movie was a big flop, but the character had been hugely successful on SNL in many sketches.
Posts
409 comments:
1 – 200 of 409 Newer› Newest»The obsession with gender mystifies me.
The problem with getting government out of marriage is there are many financial benefits derived from being married on the justification that married couples take on the significant investment in having and raising children, something vital to the perpetuation of a society. Merely being a "couple" with no children is a kind of loophole.
BS we have freedom of speech. Use the wrong pronoun for one of these dillusionional snowflakes and you'll end up before a campus gender bias panel, an HR investigation or a human rights tribunal.
#genderidiocy #sharemydillusionorelse
A government properly outside these considerations doesn't award someone $60,000 for being called "she" or "Miss". I always call someone what they want to be called, but if not doing so carries legal sanctions, my respect for it is now zero.
As for those pesky pronouns, we have freedom of speech. That too belongs in the sphere of the individual. We get to decide for ourselves how to speak
I assume you have missed the stories about different levels of government and several college campuses that have actually passed laws and regulations about this?
In the Oregon case she has actually claimed that using a pronoun to refer to her that she doesn't approve of is a form of harassment.
This is about power...not freedom. The power to dictate others' speech and behavior.
Out of simple empathy, you could respect that.
I could... but I won't.
Nobody found the "it's Pat" skits funny more than once. At least nobody with discernment.
That judge should be removed from office. Lawless.
Your first link is all effed up, BTW.
" Why should government concern itself with how we feel deep inside?"
If the government didn't have all kinds of affirmative action programs that are driven by racial or sexual identity, pure subjectivity could let a thousand genders/races bloom. But it does. (Same with marriage definitions in tax and family law policy--marriage of any number of consenting adults may be a libertarian paradise, but what prevents it from becoming tax loophole abuse and what do courts do when "divorce" creates class action child custody/alimony suits?
"I assume you have missed the stories about different levels of government and several college campuses that have actually passed laws and regulations about this? "
You assumed wrong.
Speech in the workplace is a big problem. Too big to fit in this post. Could write a book on it. Don't assume the absence of an entire book that can be written means I haven't thought about it. I've thought about it enough to know what a big topic it is.
You assumed wrong
Then why the incorrect assertion that we have freedom of speech on this issue?
As for the teacher who sued, I think there's a big question of fact about the harassment she complained about: Were other people in the school just speaking naturally and the word "she" came up or were they deliberately giving her a hard time, bearing down on the "she" and trying to make her feel like an outsider? I don't know, but it makes a huge difference. There's legal doctrine that talks about whether what's going on is "severe or pervasive enough to create a work environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive." I chose in writing about that teacher to call traditionalists to the values of etiquette and interpersonal decency.
It's Sunday at the Althouse blog. Time for worship services in the right-wing religion of gender boundary hysteria!
"Then why the incorrect assertion that we have freedom of speech on this issue?"
Your question is defective. Care to rephrase it? You have a strawman problem.
Original Mike said...
The obsession with gender mystifies me.
It is merely a tool of the left to destroy as much of the fabric of American society as possible and a bunch of big government people on the right to try to tell people how to live.
Same old fight different subject.
Thanks for the heads-up on the bad link. Fixed.
"The obsession with gender mystifies me."
So does that mean you want to embrace the idea of gender privacy?
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
It's Sunday at the Althouse blog. Time for worship services in the right-wing religion of gender boundary hysteria!
I would be remiss if I left out that the left wants to destroy as much of the fabric of America because freedom is the target and freedom to worship something other than government most of all.
We'll get more Trump if judges continue to be assholes.
Better discussion of etiquette.
Call a person what they wish? Or call them what their momma called them?
Should we allow our language be controlled? By whom? When? Over what topics?
Speech in the workplace is a big problem. Too big to fit in this post. Could write a book on it. Don't assume the absence of an entire book that can be written means I haven't thought about it. I've thought about it enough to know what a big topic it is.
No doubt. The best advice you can give to a new worker or someone entering the US workforce from a foreign country is to remind them that Americans prefer to channel their fascist tendencies into the workplace over any other institution. Provide no opinion - especially on any social issue, keep quiet, and expect that your workplace will be as rife with gossipy, evil backstabbers as North Korea or Putin's Russia. Restrict the amount of ammunition they can use against you to a plausibly deniable low trickle. Remember that personnel officers are as perversely interested in prudery as Jesse Helms and as sensitive to hurt feelings as a viewer in Mr Roger's audience.
The "Pat" sketch on SNL was hilarious, and I am never going to think otherwise. Julia Sweeney has always been one of the more thoughtful and least exploitative people in comedy.
I actually like Althouse bringing up "Pat" in light of the current transgender hysteria, which is of course callously political and every bit as hystetical as its critics make of it. Extremely clever and insightful for Althouse to have recalled it in this context.
The "Pat" sketch was funny because nobody was trying to make a point. "Pat" wasn't ramming her androgyny down anybody's throat. "Pat" wasn't demanding anything of anybody. Pat was just trying to get by, and trying not to care about others. Or better yet, I should say that unlike today's LGBTQ that is trying to bend American society to their will, "Pat" was just trying to fit in.
This is the same difference we saw, for instance, with Irish and Italian immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries, who wanted to fit in in America, who served in the Army and tried to make it in major league baseball... Versus 21st century immigrants (and especially their ennablers) whose first and main argument is that Main Street America is racially and religiously bigoted and fundamentally flawed.
"The problem with getting government out of marriage is there are many financial benefits derived from being married on the justification that married couples take on the significant investment in having and raising children, something vital to the perpetuation of a society. Merely being a "couple" with no children is a kind of loophole."
And once you have that loophole, can you confine its size using sex discrimination? The Supreme Court said no. I agree.
Meade and I got in the loophole as a heterosexual couple that could not produce children. Why should other couples be excluded from the loophole (if that's how you choose to think about it)? You're distinguishing who gets in the loophole, not closing the loophole. Why should the govt be seen as having the power to do that?
Ann Althouse said...
So does that mean you want to embrace the idea of gender privacy?
Nobody cares what you call yourself. But if you have a penis you go in that bathroom there and people with vaginas go in the other bathroom over there. If you want to go in the bathroom for people with vaginas have a vagina. This is more about my two daughters than myself.
Thanks.
Gender is a language construct. No language, no gender.
Sex is a biological construct.
Look at the words of the title of this post. They are about language, not biology. The quote is about nouns and pro nouns.
Althouse, click the link I posted. Perhaps you have seen "Coming to America" but maybe not.
"Gender is a language construct. No language, no gender.
Sex is a biological construct.
Look at the words of the title of this post. They are about language, not biology. The quote is about nouns and pro nouns."
Yes, I agree and I was just going to try and write something like that.
No gender, no language. Gender started it all, and got into the language, and then people made distinctions about language that's not the same as biology. But the fundamental human experience, the fundamental mammal experience, is gender distinction, upon which we define other realities.
"Nobody found the "it's Pat" skits funny more than once. At least nobody with discernment."
On SNL, the method is to propose many sketches and they go with the ones they think are funny. The fact that the sketches ran and the movie was made is evidence that the powers-that-be found the idea very funny. I guess, more subtly, you could theorize that nobody making the show thought it was funny, but they had an idea about the audience and imagined that the lowly people consuming their show/movie would find it funny.
But I remember when those sketches aired. They were regarded as very funny.
You might want to listen to Julia Sweeney's excellent one woman show "God Said Ha!" She talks about a lot of things, including doing the character Pat to promote the movie (after the whole thing wasn't funny to her anymore).
You Will Be Made To Care.
But if you have a penis you go in that bathroom there and people with vaginas go in the other bathroom over there.
Great advice!
What advice to you have for these invisible nobodies?
I mean, even the Romans knew about them. But I guess despite the ballooning of the human population over 2000 years to 7 billions, that's not a good reason for even the most advanced socially concerned conservatives of America to know about them, despite nostalgia harbored for ancient Greek demi-gods.
@ Althouse
Careful to discuss reasonable persons in this situation. I identify as a Martian.
"But the fundamental human experience, the fundamental mammal experience, is gender distinction, upon which we define other realities."
The "fundamental mammal experience" is sex distinction. No mammal aside from Homo sapiens (and precious few of them, really) have any use for "gender distinction".
"c. 1300, "kind, sort, class," from Old French gendre, genre "kind, species; character; gender" (12c., Modern French genre), from stem of Latin genus (genitive generis) "race, stock, family; kind, rank, order; species," also "(male or female) sex," from PIE root *gene- (see genus). Also used in Latin to translate Aristotle's Greek grammatical term genos. The grammatical sense is attested in English from late 14c. The -d- is a phonetic accretion in Old French"
So gender can be a kind of homograph, as it translates similar words (Latin genus and Greek genos). Though as English isn't an inflected language the idea of gender as grammar isn't inherent to our own speech like it might be in other languages. To dismiss the existence of one longstanding use, in which 'he' and 'she' are fundamental human categories of description and applied to the relevant biological sex (men are masculine and women are feminine even grammatically) is a rhetorical not historical argument.
This really right-wing girl at my own work entertained numerous visits by her creepy, over-protective father. He once followed a co-worker into a single stall private bathroom, before being noticed and shooed away. Interestingly enough, this very taciturn, harsh and physically fit man had a history of breast cancer, among other ailments. How much better off the abused objects of his apparent attention toward males would have been if he'd only used another private room, or something. Not that having a breast in which to have cancer meant he was a female, or anything. But our friends on the right must be jostled into enlightenment, these days.
No mammal aside from Homo sapiens (and precious few of them, really) have any use for "gender distinction".
Sure they do. They can tell male from female for all sorts of purposes.
What advice to you have for these invisible nobodies?
Gee, life is tough.
Some people seem to believe that if a small number of people have difficult to distinguish sex characteristics, everyone must act as though no one has sexual characteristics.
Ever read "Harrison Bergeron", R&B?
As always, this discussion is about power. Some are asked to yield. Others do the asking.
Once again:
"Look at me! Look at me! But don't judge me... Bigot!"
@ Lewis Wetzel
It goes on the shelf in his garage with other "How To" manuals.
"This is a person who is asking for no reference to be made to her sex. It's a request for privacy about her body.
Out of simple empathy, you could respect that."
And yet I find it amusing that Althouse could not afford said person that respect, in a comment pleading for such respect... "her sex", "her body".
It's not such a simple request, really.
Ann Althouse said...
...
Meade and I got in the loophole as a heterosexual couple that could not produce children. Why should other couples be excluded from the loophole (if that's how you choose to think about it)? You're distinguishing who gets in the loophole, not closing the loophole. Why should the govt be seen as having the power to do that?
You are making the point that it's good policy, and it is a good and a fair idea, to extend marriage rights to non-heterosexual couples. But that isn't what was at stake in Obergefell. In Obergefell, the Court was asked if some particular part of the Constitution made those sorts of marriage rights a federal constitutional question. After 230+ years of states doing it per our carefully-developed federal system.
There were always Constitutionally-recognized ways for citizens holding views like yours to advance policies that were in accord with your tastes. Change state laws. Pass a Constitutional amendment. The kinds of social/electoral/political changes that actually measure popular sentiment and civic will.
Gee, life is tough.
That's not advice. That's your inability to think of a solution being used to hold someone else hostage to what makes sense to you socially.
Our rights our per the individual, not the mob. Societies don't have rights. This is why social conservatives will never win in the Anglo-American courts of this great land.
@ Paco Wové
Call everybody 'punk ass' because it is easier.
Sure they do. They can tell male from female for all sorts of purposes."
Sorry, Paddy. Did you not read the first sentence of my comment? "Sex" vs. "Gender". Sex is the biological reality of the world. Gender is the made-up realm of people, especially people who spend too much of their time wrapped up in language and over-exaggerate its influence on reality.
Tell me under what state law an Oregon judge can change a person's sex. Lawless.
AA: You could also ask why a person's sex is considered properly in the public realm. Why don't we all demand privacy about the body parts we cover up and demand that others cover up. If they must be covered up, why do we feel entitled to talk about them?
Any social reference (titles, pronouns, differences in expectations, treatment, etc.) is the same thing as talking about someone's dick or twat? Really?
Yes, why do human societies consider sex a fundamental characteristic of a person, but tend to surround sex organs with rules of modesty, taboos, social juju of all sorts? Can't imagine. It's entirely irrational and arbitrary!
Also, I see an analogy to something that happened in the development of the same-sex marriage issue.
Yeah, so do I. Or rather, not so much an analogy, but a predictable next step. Let's pretend something fundamentally to do with sex differences is an arbitrary social construct...and, we're off to the races.
Many people started to ask why the government is involved in recognizing people's personal/sexual relationships at all. Why not privatize the whole thing, get government out of marriage?
Yes, "many people", progs and glibertarians of all stripes, have convinced themselves that all human relationships and institutions are (or could be, or should be) matters of private contracts between individual adults, with no larger social meaning, no shared understanding of function. Eventually, some of them, too, are going to be exhausted by the never-ending, ever-expanding demands for "inclusivity", bored and alienated by the complete social incoherence they find themselves living in, or trying to raise families in, and say, "fuck this noise". A subset of them might actually revisit their glibly adopted, ahistorical "first principles" (about "equality", and "discrimination", e.g.).
Now, you might want to think about why government concerns itself with our private parts. If you want to say gender is more than genitalia, that it's a state of mind, the question of privacy is only heightened: Why should government concern itself with how we feel deep inside?
I don't recall government ever concerning itself with how I "feel deep inside" when filling out legal forms that require identification of sex. Recently, I have noticed some people trying to use the coercive powers of government to make me care about, and formally acknowledge and show public deference to, how other people "feel deep inside", though.
These are the sorts of "deep questions" that begin to be aired in public when adult society has been degraded to a open-air dorm room for spoiled post-adolescents, with growing numbers of social and emotional pathologies.
Get those questions in now, because those conditions don't tend to last to long.
@ TTR
Which group are you identifying as the hostage takers?
"As for those pesky pronouns, we have freedom of speech. That too belongs in the sphere of the individual. We get to decide for ourselves how to speak. There are many difficult decisions here, and the government should not be solving them."
Where does it end?
Will we all just fragment into individual cultures of one?
Wasn't it Churchill who said that England and America were two countries divided by a common language?
Has America become 325 billion countries united by a common language?
@ Angel-Dyne
I think Scalia predicted exactly this.
Sex is the biological reality of the world.
Or in your case, intersex.
Gender is the made-up realm of people, especially people who spend too much of their time wrapped up in language and over-exaggerate its influence on reality.
Gender is the social construction of a sexual category. Anything social is by definition artificial, and therefore subject to modification by humans.
The way hormones interact with the brain OTOH to formulate an individual's understanding of their own sexual characteristics, is entirely natural.
Ergo, in re: trannies vs. social conservatives, the trans/etc. win on the natural rights grounds.
QED. Give it up.
Did you not read the first sentence of my comment? "Sex" vs. "Gender".
Yes, but I don't think a blog comment is official language standards. You have a distinction. But the English language, historically, has blended the distinction and used the term gender to apply to sexual differences, whether people or animals. That English is not an inflected language that utilizes purely grammatical endings and pronouns adds to the weight of the common use of gender.
Until the contemporary era, gender was understood in both ways, by those who just use language not those who are obsessed by it.
"There's legal doctrine that talks about whether what's going on is "severe or pervasive enough to create a work environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive." I chose in writing about that teacher to call traditionalists to the values of etiquette and interpersonal decency."
And thank you for doing so Althouse! This is something that needs to be internalized by traditionalists who think that they are not being indecent,cruel and rude, when dealing wire trans gendered people, because theses people are abnormal or whatever stigma they pin on them.These people are someone's child, brother, sister, wife, husband, friend. Empathy goes a long way and our society falls short on it.
It will always be a regret of mine, that I could not sit quietly and respectfully in a law class taught by Professor Althouse, and listen to her teach Obergefell in connection with the long history of 14th Amendment case law.
Because I don't know how it can be done, without saying to students, "The lesson here is that sometimes the Court has a majority that just does what it is going to do. They are the justices of the Supreme Court; if they want to, they can bend rules on suspect classifications, strict scrutiny and the whole range of standard due process and equal protection analytical tools that we have been studying this term..."
I would have bought a plane ticket to Madison, to see Althouse teach the case, whether she did that or not.
"the English language, historically, has ... used the term gender to apply to sexual differences, whether people or animals."
Really? I think you're wrong about that, especially in the biological literature. But I'm willing to be enlightened.
Portland is dedicated to keeping itself weird, and doing it so well.
Blogger Inga said...
. . .
These people are someone's child, brother, sister, wife, husband, friend.
Of course Inga assumes that the people she calls "traditionalists" do not have children, wife, husband, etc, with gender confusion issues.
Check your privilege, Inga.
The government is involved in enforcing private contracts.
That's why civil unions would have been fine.
But to take over the word marriage that already means something distinct was beyond the pale and still is.
It almost always matters which you are, man or woman.
Socially speaking.
It isn't private.
It wouldn't matter alone on a desert island.
"Why don't we all demand privacy about the body parts we cover up and demand that others cover up. If they must be covered up, why do we feel entitled to talk about them?"
Most languages did not previously equip themselves for these circumstances.
As a society, we identify as a form of Introduction: Mr. Adams, Ms. Adams, etc.
If this is to be an invasion of privacy -- if the person does not want to conventionally identified -- then we come up with new words, and have done so. "Xe" etc etc. But does privacy only now work if we adopt these words?
I propose we all just refer to each other as "Hey You." Shorten it to "You" when necessary.
Might render some sentences structures weird, but it seems we will be changing the language one way or another.
All I know is if I encountered a Hooker that identified as 'Xe' I would look for a new Hooker. I don't like ambiguity in my Hookers.
I am Laslo.
Lewis. It was Althouse who classified these people who are invading others privacy as "traditionalists", but I agree with her, it's a good label for them. They could be given a worse, less neutral label, like "bigots"... or something. So I'd accept "traditionalist" if I were you.
I guess what I am saying is that -- however we may wish to be addressed -- we are giving up Privacy by the choice we prefer.
The only way to keep Privacy is to never leave the basement, with no phone, and only open mail addressed "Occupant."
I am Laslo.
Ann asked:
"So does that mean you want to embrace the idea of gender privacy?"
I guess I would have to point out this- who was making a her gender a public issue? As a word, nongendered doesn't mean what it claims it does, does it? If "she" (I bow to Ms. Althouse's choice) wanted to keep it private, then why speak up in the first place?
And I see Laslo has made the point just above mine.
Reference everybody as "fucker" and you offend the asexual.
I am not Laslo.
They could be given a worse, less neutral label, like "bigots"...
I wish those people who are currently so tongue-tied about pronouns would become similarly tongue-tied about other parts of speech... like verbs and nouns generally... thereby allowing those whose skills, knowledge, and enterprise keep civilization more or less humming, i.e. the traditionalists, can get on with it without the meaningless distractions. Inga can call them bigots if she wants to, but she should realize that without them she would starve.
Inga, the Church Lady of Progress.
Why should government concern itself with how we feel deep inside?
It absolutely, most definitely should not. The more personal something is, the less public it should be in general. Almost by definition.
Inga, the Church Lady of Progress.
So says a guy commenting under a medieval avatar of his own self-vivisection.
Which is at least, well... interesting I guess, if nothing else.
Thanks to the 2 ladies that responded!
"Inga can call them bigots if she wants to..."
But, I didn't call them bigots, did I? I stuck with Althouse's good term, "traditionalists".
Hey this could be an example of apophasis, I think.
The fact that the sketches ran and the movie was made is evidence that the powers-that-be found the idea very funny.
Evidence of other things as well...
But I remember when those sketches aired. They were regarded as very funny.
If the hand that issued that compliment were any more to the left, it would be growing out of your back.
"Reference everybody as "fucker" and you offend the asexual."
I've decided to partake of the wisdom of the East on this matter, and call everybody 'my nigga(z)' from now on.
AA: Meade and I got in the loophole as a heterosexual couple that could not produce children. Why should other couples be excluded from the loophole (if that's how you choose to think about it)? You're distinguishing who gets in the loophole, not closing the loophole. Why should the govt be seen as having the power to do that?
"Why shouldn't it" is an equally valid question. The "loophole" you're talking about has been accepted, to my knowledge, in most Western societies since forever. The people who put forward the "but what about infertile couples?" argument seem sublimely incurious about why that particular "loophole" was always accepted pretty much without question, considering the accepted understanding of the purpose of marriage, whereas polygynous marriage has been forbidden. (Short answer, basically, because evolved social institutions are just that, culturally embedded and culturally constrained institutions, not logic games. And these constraints have all sorts of important downstream consequences in a culture.)
You chose to justify the expansion of that loophole to gays on the basis of "sex discrimination", but that's really just an arbitrarily chosen premise that gives you the answer you want - it allows gay marriage but disallows polygamy. It's completely flimsy, and won't last - once you've disallowed tradition and culture as in any way binding, there is no inherent reason why "sex discrimination" applies here but "religious discrimination" doesn't.
This goes to Paco's comment, above, about people who live too much in a world of words, not reality. At some point even you would admit that some kind of "distinction" has to be made, not just about the number of people involved in what can be called a marriage, but what type of people can belong to the couple. But, after having jettisoned all the cultural underpinnings, it'll just be a word game.
Ooh I hate that.
My brain said "divided" and my fingers tapped out "united".
The toothless whatever wrote: So says a guy commenting under a medieval avatar of his own self-vivisection.
Not up on his Dante, one notes. The wounded one is Muhammad. And it isn't a case of self-vivisection, either. In the Eighth Circle, the schismatic are punished by being mutilated with a sword wielded by a demon. Thus wounded the shades crawl or stumble their way around the circle, painfully healing as the go, until they once again fall under the demonic blade.
Hi Inga! Welcome back; I've missed you!
Hi Pants! I see you haven't yet found them?👖
God this is a dumb topic.
Althouse. You are showing your age and cultural biases. You come from a time (midcentury) and culture (WASP) in which the idea of privacy was both natural and good.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but young people these days--whom, I'm told, are the future--are not at all interested in privacy as past generations and cultures have defined it.
"Welcome back Class to Basic English as a Second Language. Today we will be covering pronouns. Carlos, if Maria went to the store, and someone asked you where Maria went, how would you say that in English?"
"She went to the store."
"That's good Carlos, but that may be incorrect."
"What I do wrong?"
"You identified Maria as 'she'."
But Maria, she is a she, no?"
"That depends on if Maria identifies as a 'she'. She may choose to identify as a zie, sie, ey or ve."
"Sorry: I do not get?"
In America we recognize people's choices as to their chosen Identity. There are many choices, and it is best to learn the right one for that person."
"I do not the understand: in my country they is only the two choices."
"And Carlos, you have escaped your backwards little country to be in America. Why don't you address Maria and ask her how she wishes to be addressed."
"Okay... Maria? Are you a 'she'?"
"Wrong, Carlos. You are assuming she is a 'she' with your question. That can be hurtful."
"I no mean to hurt the Maria. She is very nice to me."
"See, Carlos? You did it again. You said "SHE is very nice." In reality, you might have needed to say 'Zie is very nice', 'Sie is very nice', 'Ey is very nice' or 'Ve is very nice'."
"But how do I know what it is to say?"
"You would begin like this: "Nice to meet you Maria. How would you like to be addressed?"
"Okay, I try. 'Maria, how you like the address'?"
"And what do you say back, Maria?"
"Uh... I say I am Maria?"
"That's good Maria, but using names only adds confusion. How would you identify yourself without using your name?"
"What again the choices?"
"Zie, sie, ey or ve."
"I like the 'she' better, Teacher. Easy to remember only two."
"Maria, you must understand: by using only the binary 'she' or 'he' you are causing great pain to others."
"Maybe I wrong, but if they don't the know if they is 'He or 'She' maybe they already in Great Pain?"
"Maria, this is Important. Not everyone is Cisgender."
"Cisgender?"
"Yes. It is the word used for people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth."
"Assigned? Are they not just boy or girl?"
"I see this is going to take some time for you all to process. Everyone, take out your pencils. I want you to write "I can be zie, sie, ey or ve" one-hundred times."
"But I don't even the know what those mean."
"That is not important yet, Maria. What IS important is that the person you address knows what they mean..."
"My mother back home, she told me America is crazy place."
"SHE told you?" Maria? Perhaps your Mother chooses to identify as a Male."
"In America I now don't know if my Mother is Boy or Girl? Learning English is HARD..."
I am Laslo.
The wounded one is Muhammad. And it isn't a case of self-vivisection, either. In the Eighth Circle, the schismatic are punished by being mutilated with a sword wielded by a demon. Thus wounded the shades crawl or stumble their way around the circle, painfully healing as the go, until they once again fall under the demonic blade.
Thank you! Secular rationalism as a defense against religious fanaticism never looked better!
But the avatar still looks like it was colored by Borat when sketching his re-creation of the famous Tishniyek massacre commemorating his people's triumphant slaughter of hundreds as part of his therapeutic art class.
Remember how being private about your homosexuality meant you were in the closet and that meant you were oppressed? Find me one--one!--person in the trans community who doesn't define success as forcing the rest of us into their reality and their language.
AAAAAAHHHHHH
*who, I'm told, are the future
I never make that mistake and just made it. I'm so ashamed.
And no, Inga, still on the lookout!
I grew up with at least two and arguably three genderless languages (Tagalog and Waray/Visayan, plus some of my dads Bicolano), and one extremely gendered one, Spanish.
The matter of linguistic gender had no bearing on the traditional culture (pre-Spanish) in their social-sexual relations, which was and is entirely compatible with European norms of whatever period applied.
To take this to an extreme, the sexual mores of unassimilated Luzon mountain tribesmen (whose country I will be visiting in a couple of months), uninfluenced by Europeans, whose women customarily went about bare-bosomed, would seem puritanical even to Jerry Falwell.
And for that matter the main local minority, the Chinese, also used genderless languages, Cantonese and Fukienese. Ditto re sexual relations.
So all of this is probably not a matter of social construction, as there are no significant deviations from "traditional" American social norms. All this modern stuff is radical innovation away not just from American, or "western" norms, but from human norms.
As for workplace values and etc., it would help certain participants to work abroad and take in the range of workplace culture. There is no substitute for true experience of the foreign, on a prosaic and intimate level, else there is a risk of a failure of perspective.
"The way hormones interact with the brain OTOH to formulate an individual's understanding of their own sexual characteristics, is entirely natural."
There is no evidence that homosexual or transgender people have brains any different than people who are not homosexual of transgender.
There is no scientific, objective test for gender identity.
"Althouse, click the link I posted. Perhaps you have seen "Coming to America" but maybe not."
Great scene, in oart because it's a lot of opinions from a lot of characters with nothing forcing us to see who's supposed to be right.
I happen to think the white guy is the one who has it right, but I also think Cassius Clay is a better name. More distinctive. And it was already enshrined in a Dylan lyric.
In part
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...
Althouse. You are showing your age and cultural biases. You come from a time (midcentury) and culture (WASP) in which the idea of privacy was both natural and good.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but young people these days--whom, I'm told, are the future--are not at all interested in privacy as past generations and cultures have defined it.
That's an interesting comment. Just because I (and maybe Althouse too, I don't know) find your comment alarming, doesn't mean you are wrong.
Count me firmly in the Althouse demographic. And uninterested in living in a future world where privacy (as we know it) is abandoned.
T-t-t-alkin' 'bout my generation. Hope I die before I get old.
There is no evidence that homosexual or transgender people have brains any different than people who are not homosexual of transgender.
There is all the evidence in the world that sex hormones interact crucially with the brain, that there is variation in human biology of every sort and that this sort is not excepted, and that people don't "choose" a sexual orientation simply by being compelled to under some sort of social pressure.
But if you disagree, maybe you might want to get in touch with whoever "taught" you how to be straight or whatever and thank them for instructing you in something that it wasn't in your own natural inclination to figure out.
There is no scientific, objective test for gender identity.
Not relevant how scientific or objective something is when the alternative is pretending that conservative social anxieties are ever really based in science or objectivity.
"after having jettisoned all the cultural underpinnings, it'll just be a word game." True, meaning that it then becomes a power game. As it is now: Tony can shove constitutional SSM down our throats, so he does. Then progs start working on "constitutional" rights to polygamy or EP protection for transgenderism or whatever else they can dream up, and if they have enough votes they'll push that through, tradition and precedent and "words" be damned, the damning being the very point of the transvaluation of values. And if you are not very nice about it, along will come a cruelly neutral observer reminding you that your tradition requires the etiquette of the kowtow. But since traditionalists know that the word games of our prog superiors are just one continual power play in the ongoing culture war, they are not inclined to be so nice and civil anymore. I suspect Trump hasn't read Foucault but he caught the drift.
> theses people are abnormal or whatever stigma they pin on them
They, where "they" are trans, intersex, and homosexual (or albino, Downs syndrome, whatever) ARE abnormal. If the word "normal" has any meaning whatsoever, a tiny fraction of the population that self-identifies as not-like-the-rest is "abnormal".
> English isn't an inflected language the idea of gender as grammar isn't inherent to our own speech
I offer you "blond" and "blonde" ;-)
The Borat bit was deliberately taken from the slaughter of the Qurayza, in the Koran and Hadith.
"All this modern stuff is radical innovation away not just from American, or "western" norms, but from human norms."
Who can be the arbiter of what is "normal" when it comes to humans? Maybe it's abnormal when it hurts others? How does one's sexual preference or gender hurt others? 150 years ago women were the property of their husbands in some societies. Who could've ever thought then it would be "normal" to see women as equal partners to their husbands in the future?
"Who could've ever thought then it would be "normal" to see women as equal partners to their husbands in the future?"
Still not normal. Just accepted.
I am Laslo.
"150 years ago women were the property of their husbands in some societies."
Today women are the property of her husband in some societies.
Ann Althouse said...
...
I happen to think the white guy is the one who has it right, but I also think Cassius Clay is a better name. More distinctive. And it was already enshrined in a Dylan lyric.
Oh, I SO agree with that!
I remember when he made the name change. And that because he was in fact "Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. (what a gorgeous-sounding name), his mother was furious and horrified when he first did it. What I never recalled, was that Clay changed it, in the style of 60's black muslims, to "Cassius X," before settling on Muhammad Ali.
"Cassius X" would have turned out so much worse than any of them. And it's weird that that would even have been the choice, given Clay's estrangement from Malcolm X and the nasty rivalry between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad.
"Who can be the arbiter of what is "normal" when it comes to humans"
"Who can be"? Well, clearly somebod(ies) can be the arbiter. It's all a fight about who is. You and your ilk are trying to wrest that power now, and some people are saying "piss off".
The Borat bit was deliberately taken from the slaughter of the Qurayza, in the Koran and Hadith.
Right of course. The only time in history when a slaughter ever took place.
There are traditional cultures with next to no expectation of privacy. Most of the world was like that. I should know, I grew up in one that was much closer to its origins than yours. Keeping any sort of secret in villages of one-room palm-leaf homes is futile, and the modern migrants to the cities did not expect otherwise, not in my time anyway.
Privacy is a very modern concept.
The only culture that had such a slaughter of its enemies as a foundational act.
"Who can be the arbiter of what is "normal" when it comes to humans"
"Who can be"? Well, clearly somebod(ies) can be the arbiter. It's all a fight about who is. You and your ilk are trying to wrest that power now, and some people are saying "piss off".
TAKE IT AWAY FROM THE SCIENTISTS AND GIVE IT BACK TO ITS RIGHTFUL MOB!
Lol. You can't write this shit.
It's a request for privacy about her body.
Since a large part of their beef was being referred to as "her," I think you're out of line here, honestly.
The only culture that had such a slaughter of its enemies as a foundational act.
Foundational act of course being words that were never uttered in the bit. Nevermind how suspect the above assertion is in its entirety. Guess we have to throw the bible away, given that whole issue with the Canaanites and Philistines. And possibly the Trojan Wars also, given how Augustus figured it into Virgil's writing of the Aeneid.
But if you disagree, maybe you might want to get in touch with whoever "taught" you how to be straight or whatever and thank them for instructing you in something that it wasn't in your own natural inclination to figure out.
Do you remember being taught that you were right or left handed, R&B?
No? Then it must be that you had no choice, and that you still have no choice about being left or right handed. It was destiny!
There is no reliable test for sexual orientation other than self-identification.
None. Read your APA on "sexual orientation."
The only people who can be told that your self-identified sexual orientation is wrong are people who say that their sexual orientation has changed.
"Who can be the arbiter of what is "normal" when it comes to humans?"
TTR,
Well, I won't count on Paco.
Ones sexual preference, or other personal traits, hurt others if these things keep them from compliance with their obligations, such as providing children for family, clan and tribe.
Humans were not evolved to be individual independent creatures, we are a social species, intended as parts of an intimate group.
Modern individualism and anonymity is inhuman.
Without realizing it Toothless brought up the subject of The Divine Comedy, which fits (rather loosely) into the subject at hand, which is whether a civil society can remain civil if a substantial minority insist on making trouble for their fellow citizens by lodging absurd complaints against their exercise of natural rights. Dante populated Hell with dozens of recognizable named figures, at least one of whom was still living when Dante's masterpiece was completed. Dante put people in Hell because he disapproved of them, and undoubtedly the families and friends of those so consigned took offense on their behalf. I quite imagine the Orsinis bristled for 500 years whenever Dante's epic was mentioned, seeing as how their second pope was treated by the poet. Dante's work and person were sometimes proscribed during his lifetime and thereafter occasionally banned by various clerics and politicians who took offense at one thing or another. Yet those same clerics and politicians are mostly forgotten. Not so Dante. Lately, there been a movement to ban the Inferno from the classroom on the grounds of being offensive, this time to Muslims rather than noble Italian families. Dante may yet survive as before, and his would-be proscribers will fade into well-deserved obscurity as before. The pronoun fascists could take a lesson here.
"Not up on his Dante, one notes. "
On a related note, I adopted that avatar during an earlier episode of free-speech policing by the progressive mob and their allies, the Big Mohammed Cartoon Controversy, a.k.a. You Can't Show Mohammed Because We Say So. Althouse's waffling on this issue provoked me into presenting his image on every comment.
"Ones sexual preference, or other personal traits, hurt others if these things keep them from compliance with their obligations, such as providing children for family, clan and tribe."
Homosexuals have been with us from the beginning of humanity. The species somehow has managed to survive.
There is no useful science in all this, because biological research into these matters has been severely restricted. It is dangerous ground.
Nobody knows why, biologically, anyone is homosexual, much less "transgender". Or if there is any hardware function involved at all.
Social science research is near-useless. A broad knowledge of history and cultures is more useful.
Who can explain, for instance, why Pathan men seem to be nearly uniformly sexually attracted to teenage boys? Is that biology?
That seems very doubtful.
Any explanation needs to take in the whole of human experience.
"The species somehow has managed to survive."
But if the species was ONLY them how would it survive?
Or would it be just One Generation, albeit with Fabulous Clothing?
I am Laslo.
I didn't bring up Dante but rather a cartoonish illustration of something described in his work (or so you claim). For whatever Dante brought to the Western cannon, let's not be ignorant of how little Christianity or Judaism or whatever contributed to Western science compared to what the Greeks and secular enlightened successors to church-ruled Europe brought to the endeavor. I find it hard to believe that people seeking inspiration from a rambling book describing multiple levels of post-expiration spiritual torture find that there would be more to teach us about human sexuality in any of that than in what accumulated, direct and controlled empirical observation and rational argumentation shows. But hey, don't let me get in your way if masochistic superstition floats your boat. I'd just caution against using it to guide society. And so will most decent, rational people.
"Any explanation needs to take in the whole of human experience."
All explanations must take in the holes of human anatomy.
Some are Reproduction Holes, some Aren't.
I am Laslo.
"The species somehow has managed to survive."
"But if the species was ONLY them how would it survive?"
But it's not. Don't borrow trouble. There will always be plenty of people who feel that the sex/gender they were born with is the correct one. These people will probably procreate. The people who can't or won't procreate will never outnumber those of us who do, not even close.
In re Dante and the Inferno, Dorothy Sayers excellent annotated translation (Penguin), is still in print and available through the Althouse Amazon portal!
No Kindle, unfortunately.
Things that to me (37 but with an old lady soul; hence my profile pic) are private but that people my age and younger do not consider private:
--Bedroom clothing and accoutrements (people routinely wear pajamas & slippers to the store and onto planes these days)
--Comments made to specific people in a non-mixed setting (Twitterstorms and secret cameras that no one seems to find objectionable anymore)
--Sex life
--Pets (everyone has to take their damn dog everywhere now)
--Personal phone conversations (ubiquitousness of public cell phone conversations)
--Entertainment (many people think it's appropriate to watch phone videos, play video games or listen to music with no headphones)
--Genitalia and the sharing of same other than with one close and intimate partner (Tinder, slut walks, etc)
--Underclothing (visible bras now common, as are wearing bikini tops as "shirts" when not swimming)
--Profanity (even 10-15 years ago it was frowned upon to curse in a non-intimate setting, and now people swear in public and even in business settings)
--Inebriation (it's more acceptable to be drunk in public)
Face it: public life now contains many many elements that used to be exclusive to one's private life. That includes displaying alternative/minority/deviant sexualities (pick your term). For better or for worse, this is how it is now, and we are all under a lot of pressure to accept it all or be labeled a hater. I see an upside and downside to this--either we're free to both Be Ourselves (TM) in public, or we're not. On the one hand I wish people would confine a LOT of the above list to their homes and their gatherings with their friends and not subject me to it--but on the other hand, there are things that I do (take my children out and about, practice my religion publicly) that some people think I should only do in my home or inside the doors of my church. So, here we are.
There is no useful science in all this, because biological research into these matters has been severely restricted. It is dangerous ground.
Oh for gods sake. The number of blind assertions you invent could fill a book of fables.
Nobody knows why, biologically, anyone is homosexual, much less "transgender". Or if there is any hardware function involved at all.
If you dispute that the brain is hardware, you may try out living or one of its other functions without one. But I'd advise against it.
There is a broad divide between naturalistic causation and social causation - the latter of which social conservatives must defend (whether they realize it or not) if their views on the matter are to have any validity. And guess which one of those causative routes is less than empirical, to the point of downright nonsensical?
As I said, if you believe it's social, and that the right amount of persuasion could convince you to be homosexual or transgender, then there's an experiment we can try out for you to prove it. Just let us know when you'd like to sign up.
Its interesting how traditional societies dealt with it. Most seem to have managed to marry (in whatever form was applicable), form families and carry on anyway, because of course these people were pieces of a whole. Others found some accomodation, but in a particular niche - that is, not a normal role with normal expectations, or normal privileges.
The most extreme cases should include the Pathans, who marry and produce a great number of children in spite of their proclivities.
Out of simple empathy, you could respect that.
You could also ask why a person's sex is considered properly in the public realm. Why don't we all demand privacy about the body parts we cover up and demand that others cover up. If they must be covered up, why do we feel entitled to talk about them?
I can respect that, but the example yesterday was a person who is teaching children. The article does not specify what grade level, but I do not think that matters. Children in school need stability and trust. With rare exceptions (maybe less rare in Portland), they understand the world in terms of male and female. (Apparently when we adults approach a stranger, gender is the first thing we notice.) Why should the kids have to sort through just what it means that their teacher is neither male nor female, or does not consider herself so. (I will bet based on tuition that the kids do try to assign a gender to her nevertheless.)
Being a teacher, like many other jobs, requires that one subvert their own needs to those of the people being served. I'm sure some will argue that the kids can sort out the problem, or that it's part of their education. Once again that is putting the needs of the server over the needs of those being served. In this case it's not about the teacher. It's about the kids.
(The actions of the other teachers are another matter, and are reprehensible. That also leaks out to the students, and these teachers also are not putting the students first, among other flaws in their conduct.)
The glory of Althouse and like-minded sites is how things as scientifically complex as computers are used by monkeylike creatures to broadcast to the world their view that science has less to teach about human sexuality than superstitions broadcast by mobs.
Such people are to be pitied, not celebrated. They are, in fact, freaks.
Recently I read an article on the completely absurd real estate scene in Seattle where a millennial expressed the view that people need to stop whining about no longer being able to afford their own private homes with living rooms and backyards. I believe his phrase was "home is for sleeping, showering, and fucking; anything else you need to do (eat, social life, recreation) should happen in public shared spaces." This is the future, guys.
I find it hard to believe that people seeking inspiration from a rambling book describing multiple levels of post-expiration spiritual torture find that there would be more to teach us about human sexuality in any of that than in what accumulated, direct and controlled empirical observation and rational argumentation shows.
And so you expose, once again, your bigotry, R&B (bigotry defined as having strong on topics of which you are ignorant).
You can't have Inferno without Purgatory and Paradise, according to Dante. Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise are all about free will. The tormented have chosen to be where they are. They hate their torment, and they hate God, but none of them hate their sins, or regret them.
Ritmo,
You evade the point. If your engine does not run, I say it is possible that the problem is not in the engine. I am not denying the existence of the engine. It could be you have run out of gas or your battery is discharged.
What there is not is a known mechanism in brain hardware that makes one homosexual. And you of course know exactly what I mean, you are just being difficult.
So enough of the malarkey. Can we just summarize that the Althouse commentariate-approved view on gender in 2017 is that hormones don't interact with the brain to form sexual identity and instead the categorization must be ascribed to supernatural causes communicated to a mere mortal's community through the appearance of the genitals?
Just be done with it and admit that that's your position already. The anatomical brain is an illusion put there to test our faith in opposition to science and reason.
Anything, anything with Kathy Griffin in it is a flop.
Including her life.
Cassius Clay was a slave name. The slave owners thought it was droll to put glorious classical monikers on their human property.
Lew Alcindor was a pretty cool name too.
If a man named Bob decides he wants to be called Fred, I will call him Fred. It's a small expression of respect that detracts nothing from me.
They hate their torment, and they hate God, but none of them hate their sins, or regret them.
Well said, Lewis. The Apostle Paul describes this perfectly in Romans chapter 1.
Private life is a modern innovation.
There are ways of living non-private lives, as this is the ancient human way.
However, these ancient ways are intensely social.
Inga wrote: I offer you "blond" and "blonde"
The gender inflection there is Medieval French, not English. I can tell by the context of your comment that you think the word blonde was applied to women and blond to men. You're mistaken. La fille a des cheveux blonds. — The girl has blond hair. The word being modified is masculine, les cheveux and takes the masculine form of the adjective. Changing the gender of the subject doesn't change the adjective. Le garçon a des cheveux blonds
To correctly use blonde in French means finding a suitably feminine word, such as toison (fleece, such as what a sheep grows on its skin) Les filles ont vendu un sac de toison blonde.
In English, we've inherited both forms from the Normans, but in our language they are just spelling variations.
I hope this cleared up the matter for you.
And so you expose, once again, your bigotry, R&B (bigotry defined as having strong on topics of which you are ignorant).
So you call me bigoted against the irrational? (Informed opinions can be irrational, or based in bizarre standards of evidence). I call you bigoted agains the rational.
You can't have Inferno without Purgatory and Paradise, according to Dante. Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise are all about free will.
Go ahead and prove that all that religiously inspired literature is necessary to believe in free will. It's like an intellectual Ponzi scheme. There is no need to build an elaborate house of Christian theology to believe in free will. The topic was discovered and argued long before Christianity.
With all due respect to your culture of origin, Buwaya, no thanks. I like my privacy, and don't care for communal living.
Just FYI, Althouse readers, what R&B writes about hormones is not scientific. It is weird, homosexual advocacy pop-sci.
Your brain has an effect on the production of hormones. It modulates production of some sexual hormones while it is also affected by them (or so we suppose).
The APA says that people have a strong sense that their sexual orientation is not a choice. The APA does not say that homosexuality is not a choice.
Sexual orientation is psychology, not physiology.
Such people are to be pitied, not celebrated. They are, in fact, freaks.
You are demented. Are hermaphrodites and intersexuals let alone transexuals even mentioned in your pre-antiquity sacred text of the bronze-age goat herders? If I know one thing about that text, lepers are. And you should see the "treatment" prescribed of them. Not that you'll ever go to a clinic and berate a modern physician for treating lepers effectively with 21st century medicine. Why? Because it's not a sexual issue and you have made your peace with non-sexual matters and non-sexual medicine in a way that still vexes you when it comes to the pee-pee parts.
Just FYI, Althouse readers, what R&B writes about hormones is not scientific.
Quote the scientific review summary you consulted to inform your imagined dissent against the obvious fact that hormones interact with neural tissue, not excluding the brain.
Even a lay wacko stops disbelieving that hormones affect the brain the minute they encounter an age category known as "teenagers."
Are you still a teenager or something?
Ritmo,
Nobody knows how, or when, or if, hormones interact with the brain to form sexual identity. This has been tried, measuring hormone levels, etc. There are cases of intersex people assigned non-chromosomal gender, with hormone treatments and etc, where the gender did not take. Its sometimes been quite a scandal actually. "As Nature Made Him", J Colapinto.
You really arent engaging.
This is a disappointment.
You are demented.
It would be interesting, Ritmo, to have both your writings and my writings analyzed by a competent psychiatrist and to see whom he/she considers 'demented'.
David wrote: Cassius Clay was a slave name. The slave owners thought it was droll to put glorious classical monikers on their human property.
David, have you any education to speak of? If not, it might behoove you to refrain from making it obvious. Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay, changed his name because an ignorant someone already a member of that notorious dull-witted sect convinced him that was a "slave name". Perhaps poor, not too bright Cassius Clay had forgotten or was never told he was named in honor of a famous Kentucky ABOLITIONIST!!! (Jesus H. Christ...)
The Leftists demand power. This is a common theme in my posts. The zealots will be unrelenting.
This is how we get worse than Trump. Much worse.
Nobody knows how, or when, or if, hormones interact with the brain to form sexual identity.
They don't have to. It's a strong enough dissent against your implication (you're not even brave enough to state it outright, given what it implies about the origin of your own sexual identity) that it's social to note that hormones interact with the brain, period. So hormones interact with the brain and the brain is where sexual identity is formed. Occam's razor compels you to accept the simpler explanation that, ergo, causation is naturalistic; because there is an obvious and precedented naturalistic pathway explanation in those observations that you have no equivalent for (and aren't even brave enough to explicitly assert) when it comes to the socially-derived alternative.
"Inga wrote: I offer you "blond" and "blonde"".
No I didn't. This is someone else's comment.
Cassius Clay's father's name was Marcellus.
The wiki on biology and sexual orientation is a rather good place to start Ritmo. It seems to include everything I recall from the last thirty years, all the theories and major studies with lots of links.
Scan that, and it should be clear that it is not at all clear.
It is a complete muddle, as no theory is useful.
"If a man named Bob decides he wants to be called Fred, I will call him Fred. It's a small expression of respect that detracts nothing from me."
One of the reasons I like you David. You're one of the decent ones.
And, as mentioned, there is no experimental or observational basis for "hormones" as an explanation. This is hand-waving.
It would be interesting, Ritmo, to have both your writings and my writings analyzed by a competent psychiatrist and to see whom he/she considers 'demented'.
Maybe. Is it a psychiatrist who accepts the concepts of rationality and responsibility or one who is as emotionally attached to the texts inspired by prehistorical bronze age goat herders as you apparently are?
Insulting someone even impolitely isn't the mark of dementia. Being afraid of one's sex and and rational thought sure might be, though. As would seeking to dehumanize based on a medical condition.
There is nothing professional - even by the low standards of the inchoate field known as "psychiatry" - in labelling someone a "freak." We have modern medicine, nowadays, you know. "Freak" is a bit pre-Victorian. Especially for someone like you who claims to have made a career in the sciences.
Impolitely pressing one's case is not a medicalizable condition. Not yet, anyway.
@ Inga 55
I neither believe you are Inga nor that you are not the user of multiple monikers. If an Unknown offers a comment, you are all responsible. Well, irresponsible, but here we are.
Inga is not a person. Inga is a terrible idea.
I suspect TTR is much better educated in biology than his detractors.
That's right Birkel, I'm not Inga.
Inga wrote: No I didn't. This is someone else's comment.
My apologies.
mockturtle wrote: Cassius Clay's father's name was Marcellus.
Many thanks. The abolitionist referred to was Cassius Marcellus Clay (1810-1903). Perhaps between the two of us, we can fill in a few of the chasms of knowledge evident in this conversation.
And, as mentioned, there is no experimental or observational basis for "hormones" as an explanation. This is hand-waving.
Only by way of three, unlikely to the point of impossible, presumptions:
1. That the same hormones that act in the brain have no effect on sexual identity.
2. That the brain is not where one's identity or sense of sexual identity is formed.
3. That hormones have no effect on personality or behavior.
You are inventing counter arguments that have never been observed. Because you are incapable of deduction and coming up with plausible conclusions, you assert that they don't exist. They might very well not. But the only reason for assuming so, as you do, is if you're irrational. Which you must be to base your science instead in the texts inspired by prehistorical bronze-age goat herders, whose batting average on all the things modern science HAS proven - usually in directly opposition to what they proposed - is like zero for a hundred.
Lewis Wetzel: Just FYI, Althouse readers, what R&B writes about hormones is not scientific. It is weird, homosexual advocacy pop-sci.
I've heard that writers for sci-fi shows (say, the various Star Treks), leave the direction "insert technobabble here" in the places in the script where the plot requires some technological or scientific deus ex machina. What gets inserted is often hilarious to anyone with any knowledge of whatever field happens to have been recruited for that purpose.
So it so often is with prog invocations of "science". They may possess a few snippets of understanding (yes, sex hormones do indeed affect brain structure and behavior), which they trot out if they think it supports what they're arguing for ("born that way!"), but promptly abandon when they want to enforce an opinion that logically contradicts it ("gender is a social construct!").
With tranny-palooza they cling to both sides at once and one or two more unsupported assumptions for good measure, along the way betraying not the slightest evidence that the scientific phrases they invoke have any more meaning for them than a magical charm.
Though to be fair, a lot of "conservatives" seem to be every bit as susceptible to the deliberate confusion and conflation about the biological facts, because they don't understand the science, either. There are certainly people (intersex, very masculinized females and very feminized males), the hormonal and genetic sources of whose conditions are understood very well. They are indeed "born that way", and they are what they are. There is a deliberate (I think) propaganda attempt to confuse the public into believing that Bruce Jenner-type transsexualism is in the same category.
Inga whimpers: One of the reasons I like you David. You're one of the decent ones.
If so many of us are indecent, why do you spend so much time here?
"Freak" as a category-concept seems rather a romantic 19th century idea. This was not typical of traditional societies. People could be singularly different, but because of a lack of communication and inability to categorize, they were just that, singularly different.
And lets not discount the tendency to infanticide. Traditional societies could be cruel. Retail rather than wholesale cruelty.
@ Inga
There was never an Inga. It was fakery that served a purpose. It is still fake.
"Inga whimpers: One of the reasons I like you David. You're one of the decent ones."
No, it would be more apt to say "Inga gushed:". I sure hope you weren't a writer before your retirement.,
"Freak" as a category-concept seems rather a romantic 19th century idea. This was not typical of traditional societies.
Which traditional society? They all seem like the were capable of ostracism, which is an obvious precursor or equivalent to designating one a "freak". That was the mere modification of the ostracized to a category where curiosity (thanks to rational enlightenment!) competed actively and/or combined with the earlier urge to ostracize.
"@ Inga
There was never an Inga. It was fakery that served a purpose. It is still fake."
That's right Birkel. Inga was a figment of all your imaginations.
This is fun, so meta.
The first two times SNL did the Pat character was mildly funny. After that it was annoying.
"If so many of us are indecent, why do you spend so much time here?"
Oh! I forgot to answer this. It's because of Althouse's writing and some of you are actually quite interesting.
PB wrote: The first two times SNL did the Pat character was mildly funny.
Ever had dentistry without novocaine, PB? Seems like you may be one of the few who can withstand it.
My problem with those who are unhappy with gendered pronouns ignore why we have them in the first place. Why is "you", at least in English, ungendered? Because it is unambiguous, at least in the singular, and usually in the plural (separate singular and plural would sometimes be helpful). Which gets us to, I will suggest, the purpose of gendered pronouns. Pronouns are a shorthand. They are convenient. I am sitting in a McDonalds in a Walmart, looking around, and cannot see anyone I couldn't put in the category of either "he" or "she". Ok, there is a fuzzy headed kid in a cart (in the basket, which is both very common, and somewhat dangerous). My guess is that she has a black father. I say "she" because they are dressed in a pink outfit with red flowers. Which is why, I think, that so many dress their very young in blue or ,pink to indicate gender, and even use those silly bows when the kids are too young to have enough hair to use its length as indication of gender. (Grandmother, who works here at McDonalds, just came over and put the kid with the fuzzy hair in the seat in the cart where "she" belongs). I would bet that if you quizzed 100 random people here, probably 99% would agree on 99% of the classifications of maybe 100 random people in the store as to being either a "she" or a "he". And, that wouldn't change if one of them preferred "xi" or some other inane pronoun.
There are two parts to this. One is that 99% agree on 99% of the classification into two categories - "he" or "she" based on external appearances. And, I would suggest that there is really no other external characteristic that is as useful in quickly separating an average population into two (mostly) distinct sets of people. Not quite proper subsets (as shown by Pat), but close. The other part of this is, maybe more problematic. We, as a species, mostly pair bond, one "he", and one "she". A lot of reasons for this, and one of the more important may be that kids raised in a dedicated pair bond of one each, female and male, have tended historically to do better. Up until recent years, they survived better, had more surviving grandkids, etc (which is one of the criteria for evolutionary pressure). My theory then is that we developed dual gendered pronouns because they could be used to efficiently identify one of the two members of a traditional two gendered pair bond.
That latter theory though is not necessary to my larger thesis, which is that two gendered pronouns can very efficiently distinguish between two possible people in large numbers of cases, due to the fact that the two genders are relatively equally distributed across the population. And, as I pointed out, at the start here, pronouns are a shorthand for identifying one of a small number of people in a group.
The natural corollary to this theory is tha personal preference in pronouns is ludicrous. They aren't based on personal appearance or secondary sexual characteristics, so cannot be used to quickly separate and identify one out of a small group. Membership in one named subset (e.g. "Xi") is not readily apparent to the general public, and none of these personal pronouns is ever likely to gain enough of a following to provide the efficiency in language that pronouns were designed to provide.
Traditional societies had limited communications and limited ability to categorize because there rarely would have been enough local experience of a given condition. The mad were mad in their own ways, the difficult personalities were just that. And living close to the bone, anyone that was too much trouble wasnt going to live long.
It took newspapers, rapid transport and capitalism to create the category.
Back in the day "freaks" were so unusual that it was fashionable for royal courts to collect blacks and dwarfs, as status-symbol servants.
"insert technobabble here"
(...)
With tranny-palooza
Talk about babble. Just without the techno part.
Traditional societies had limited communications and limited ability to categorize because there rarely would have been enough local experience of a given condition.
Ok. So let's not inflate their powers of perception, then. Ok? Neither should we inflate the perceptual powers of those who needed to ground their inspirations in their works.
@ Inga
It is not meta. Sock puppets serve a purpose. You wish to be viewed as less a minority than you are. It is astroturf all the way down. It is a transparent method.
You believe Inga is useful. But the commentariat here remains a skeptical lot. It must be fun for you but it is a wasted gambit by a poor player.
There is no techno.
Techno would be
do this, get that.
or, at least,
do this, it is known that the probability of getting that increases.
But in this case there is no such scientific or empirical model. You cant just assume this exists, or should exist.
That right Birkel. This Inga is a sock puppet. You're so smart.
No, it would be more apt to say "Inga gushed:". I sure hope you weren't a writer before your retirement.,
Funny, Inga, because I was trying to change 'whimpered' to 'gushed' when my remark was posted. I didn't feel like deleting it. And don't worry, I never was--and never will be--a writer. [Gushed is a bit banal, though, don't you think?]
But traditional societies had tremendous experience of the normal. The usual problems, risks, cost-benefit tradeoffs of ordinary existence. And they had to do this under survival pressures we have not had for generations (more or less generations here or there).
Thats the genius of tradition, it is accumulated empirical knowledge. In engineering its called "best practices".
"[Gushed is a bit banal, though, don't you think?]"
Yes Mockturtle,
it might be banal, which doesn't rhyme with anal, but it's fitting. I did gush, I sighed, I even felt my heart go pitter patter.
Can genderless people get prostate cancer?
A freak of nature is an abnormality. A mistake in the process. That is not to imply that the 'freak' should be ostracized or put into a circus sideshow but let's not pretend, for the sake of gender fluidity, that hermaphrodites are a normal outcome. Usually, in such cases, gender is decided at birth based upon predominant traits and surgically corrected accordingly.
There is no known link between hormones and sexual orientation.
Here is what the APA says:
What causes a person to have a particular sexual orientation?
There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.
http://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/orientation.aspx
Back in the day "freaks" were so unusual that it was fashionable for royal courts to collect blacks and dwarfs, as status-symbol servants.
On the matter of dwarfs, part of the fascination for such people derives from European paganism. The Celts believed that neolithic farming peoples they displaced by their migrations and conquests withdrew into the underworld where they became miniature beings endowed with mystical powers. Megalithic structures like the passage tomb at Newgrange in Ireland were attributed to these magical beings, these fairies, as were the afflictions of humanity, dwarfs especially, who were spoken of as changelings, and therefore fairies living among mortal humans. The Norse mythology held dwarfs to be members of the Niflungar, also a cunning and magic-embued race apart from Man.
Yes Mockturtle,
it might be banal, which doesn't rhyme with anal, but it's fitting. I did gush, I sighed, I even felt my heart go pitter patter.
By golly, Inga! You're a lot more fun than Unknown. ;-)
@ Tarrou
That depends if the genderless person is a woman or a man.
Thanks Mockturtle, but remember, don't believe for a minute I'm the real famous ever so much referred to "Inga". She was always a figment of certain commenters imaginations. She never existed, she still doesn't exist. There is no real person named Inga who ever commented here on Althouse.
In the end, trying to ignore basic biological reality seems like a bad idea. Ignoring hard science in pursuit of junk soft science is never a positive. I don't get how the same group that tries to define rape down to virtually any sexual interaction ALSO wants to argue that there is no inherent differences in the sexes.
The ENTIRE mentality of "gender identity" is self-contradictory and people are too polite to say so.
Transgenders have good old-fashioned body dysmorphia. No different than anorexia. Humoring them is endlessly destructive to them and society as a whole. We were PROMISED that legalizing gay marriage wouldn't negatively impact people. That was promise was a lie.
What advice to you have for these invisible nobodies?
Hey, people have issues in life. The schizophrenic are notoriously misunderstood. We don't try and pretend that their delusions are reality.
There is all the evidence in the world that sex hormones interact crucially with the brain, that there is variation in human biology of every sort and that this sort is not excepted, and that people don't "choose" a sexual orientation simply by being compelled to under some sort of social pressure.
Yet the evidence does not actually exist. You can argue it SHOULD...but it does not.
Maybe it's abnormal when it hurts others? How does one's sexual preference or gender hurt others?
How does a schizophrenic who is convinced he sees people who aren't there hurt other people?
How does an anorexic who thinks they are fat hurt OTHER people?
How does a bipolar person suffering a mental break hurt OTHER people?
The risks involved with upending all societal norms are not known in advance. The sexual revolution has, to be generous, been an utter disaster for human society. This is measures more radical than that.
But if you disagree, maybe you might want to get in touch with whoever "taught" you how to be straight or whatever and thank them for instructing you in something that it wasn't in your own natural inclination to figure out.
Who taught schizophrenics that there were really people talking to them that others did not see?
TAKE IT AWAY FROM THE SCIENTISTS AND GIVE IT BACK TO ITS RIGHTFUL MOB!
Name the scientists you wish to put in charge of it.
They don't have to. It's a strong enough dissent against your implication (you're not even brave enough to state it outright, given what it implies about the origin of your own sexual identity) that it's social to note that hormones interact with the brain, period.
Nothing says science like referring to "social" knowledge over any attempt at providing evidence of it.
The things "socially known" historically have been both accurate and laughably false.
They all seem like the were capable of ostracism
Modern progressivism, without ostracism, would cease to exist.
"If a man named Bob decides he wants to be called Fred, I will call him Fred"
Changing one's name has been uncontroversial behavior for centuries. I note that you still, however, persist in calling Bob/Fred 'him'. Twice! Thou doubly-damnéd bigot.
Social knowledge stated that ulcers were caused by stress. We know better
"Sexual orientation is psychology, not physiology."
I would respectfully disagree, having known enough homosexuals of both sexes who struggled with their sexual orientation and identity until, all of a sudden, a light went off. Them having little, if any, sexual interest in the opposite sex for years, but going through the motions for years. Dating, even having sex, but not the fulfilling experience that the rest of us have. With most males, it is pretty straight forward - hook their private parts up to electrodes, and show them nude pictures of attractive members of both sexes. Most guys react to one, and not the other. And, there is some evidence that this wiring is done in utero. Which is to say that most guys are born straight or gay. With a small number really in the middle, either reacting to both, or to neither. And, yes, experts can mostly tell male brains from female brains - but some gay male brains apparently look more female than most male brains.
I think that the problem with transvestites is that gender identity is more ambiguous, harder to tie down, than sexual orientation. You have guys who want to be, or think that they are already, female, who are sexually oriented towards men, and others towards women. Or both, or neither. I don't think that this is hard wired, like I think that at least most male sexual orientation is. Which is why, I would think that psychology would often be a much better initial approach than surgery.
A freak of nature is an abnormality.
You are not conversant in medicine, which may account for the lack of humanity that exudes in your explanations. Take even a discipline as technical as vascular surgery. Small percentages (1%, 4%, what have you), have what the professionals call "divergent anatomy" (not "abnormality" and not the monstrous, Victorian era medicine terms of "freak") where it comes to how the vasculature of the liver or even coronary vessels are routed and oriented. This greatly impacts procedural treatments. They deal with it, maturely and professionally, the patient gets decent treatment, and no one need be dehumanized. Perhaps you are a professional however in the sort of discipline where dehumanizing people as subjects serves a greater purpose that has not yet been outmoded as it has in the biological sciences actually applied to improving people's lives?
A mistake in the process. That is not to imply that the 'freak' should be ostracized or put into a circus sideshow but let's not pretend, for the sake of gender fluidity, that hermaphrodites are a normal outcome.
Again with the antiquated terminology. You must not be very conversant in molecular biology either then, I take it? If you were, you'd take account of how variation is considered normal here too (THANK THE GODS!) and more often than not we talk of polymorphisms, markers, and probably at least a half dozen other terms that note variation that we assume to be natural (since it usually is) before concluding how it might actually impact disease burden. Much more technical, precise, helpful and objective. And correct.
Usually, in such cases, gender is decided at birth based upon predominant traits and surgically corrected accordingly.
Your sense of barbarity astounds me. Surgical "corrections" are usually now thankfully realized to be mutilations since it is not clear until after childhood ends what is going on internally and behaviorally when it comes to sexual characteristics that are more important AND not outwardly observable based on something as arbitrary as an appendage. Countless cases attest to this. To insist otherwise is to insist that we're a species of bird or lizard due to the retention of useless vestiges such as the appendix. You have no idea what a baby's genitals will do until the child reaches a state of sexual maturity and gain the opportunity for what goes on in their head to interact with what's on or in their body. You might as well attach a dildo to a baby girl and raise her as a boy. Such was the ridiculous illogic of the mutilators of the past who felt so compelled to conform an infant according to social expectations as to not realize how stupid that was in comparison to waiting to see what was healthiest for the individual patient according to a sexuality that could not be witnessed at such a pre-sexual stage.
Blogger Quaestor said...
Back in the day "freaks" were so unusual that it was fashionable for royal courts to collect blacks and dwarfs, as status-symbol servants.
On the matter of dwarfs, part of the fascination for such people derives from European paganism.
The medievals were strong on reason, short on observational science. This was because they did not trust the senses. What appeared colorful under daylight appeared monochrome by moonlight. A sight that thrilled them one day (a lover) might repel them the next day (a spurned lover).
The medievals knew that human beings were born from the sexual intercourse of an adult human male and an adult human female. If a child was born that did not have the characteristics of the purported mother and father, their reason took them to strange places. The mother could always be identified, but the father -- well. This led to all sorts of mental mischief.
Thanks for the useless tirade, damikesc.
I was somewhat happily uninterested with the transgender and pronoun issue until the 2016 Obama administration's "Dear Colleague" letter, addressing Title IX, and conflating "sex" with "gender." Once I saw that, I couldn't ignore it.
The issue to me seems to be one of subjecting verifiable fact (chromosomal sex) to subjective "sense" ("gender identity")--and that's where I get off the bus.
(That, and "celebrating" a child or adolescent's searchings for his/her identity, and deciding that once a person has chosen their opposite gender, it's a wonderful thing to be encouraged, promoted, etc. They're KIDS---they're going to be confused--we should expect that, and help them through their confusion before committing to drastic hormone treatments and surgeries.)
Ah, yes, Ritmo, you are much more knowledgeable and accomplished and intelligence than any of the following bunch of sorry mackerel snappers who make up the following list of Catholic scientists. You know, those believers in nonsense who contributed jack squat to Western science and technology.
People like:
Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718–1799) – mathematician who wrote on differential and integral calculus
Georgius Agricola (1494–1555) – father of mineralogy[6]
Albertus Magnus (c.1206–1280) – patron saint of natural sciences
André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836) – one of the main discoverers of electromagnetism
Mariano Artigas (1938–2006) – Spanish physicist, philosopher and theologian who received the Templeton Foundation Prize in 1995
Leopold Auenbrugger (1722–1809) – first to use percussion as a diagnostic technique in medicine
Adrien Auzout (1622–1691) – astronomer who contributed to the development of the telescopic micrometer
Amedeo Avogadro (1776–1856) – Italian scientist noted for contributions to molecular theory and Avogadro's Law[7]
Francisco J. Ayala (1934–present) – Spanish-American biologist and philosopher at the University of California, Irvine[8][9]
Roger Bacon (c. 1214–1294) – Franciscan friar and early advocate of the scientific method
Stephen M. Barr (1953–present) – professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Delaware and a member of its Bartol Research Institute
Daniello Bartoli (1608–1685) – Jesuit priest and one of the first to see the equatorial belts of Jupiter
Laura Bassi (1711–1778) – physicist at the University of Bologna and Chair in experimental physics at the Bologna Institute of Sciences, the first woman to be offered a professorship at a European university
Antoine César Becquerel (1788–1878) – pioneer in the study of electric and luminescent phenomena
Henri Becquerel (1852–1908) – awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his co-discovery of radioactivity
John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) – British pioneer in X-ray crystallography in molecular biology[10][11]
Claude Bernard (1813–1878) – physiologist who helped to apply scientific methodology to medicine
Jacques Philippe Marie Binet (1786–1856) – mathematician known for Binet's formula and his contributions to number theory
Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774–1862) – physicist who established the reality of meteorites and studied polarization of light
Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848) – priest and mathematician who contributed to differentiation, the concept of infinity, and the binomial theorem
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608–1679) – often referred to as the father of modern biomechanics
Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711–1787) – Jesuit priest and polymath known for his atomic theory and many other scientific contributions
Blogger Bruce Hayden said...
"Sexual orientation is psychology, not physiology."
I would respectfully disagree, having known enough homosexuals of both sexes who struggled with their sexual orientation and identity until, all of a sudden, a light went off.
Bruce Hayden, a lot of what you mention is pop science otr anecdote or self-reporting.
The only link I've heard about between self-identified homosexual men and hormones is that second sons supposedly have a greater chance of identifying as homosexual than first born sons. It is hypothesized that the first born son changes the hormonal makeup of the mother by injecting male hormones into her bloodstream. The statistical link is not strong, however.
Ditto the superficial likeness of male homosexual brains to female brains. No strong link, and certainly no proof of causality.
Back in the 50s and 60s the US armed forces were desperate to find a homosexuality test so they could exclude homosexuals from the military. They looked at physiology and psychology, even resorting to measuring erection while showing subjects pornographic images.
They never were able to devise a working homosexuality test.
List of Catholic scientists continued:
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1736–1806) – physicist known for developing Coulomb's law
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) – first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology
Johann Baptist Cysat (c.1587–1657) – Jesuit priest known for his study of comets
René Descartes (1596–1650) – father of modern philosophy and analytic geometry
Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (1805–1859) – mathematicians who contributed to number theory and was one of the first to give the modern formal definition of a function
A few more for you, Ritmo:
Alberto Dou (1915–2009), Spanish Jesuit priest who was president of the Royal Society of Mathematics, member of the Royal Academy of Natural, Physical, and Exact Sciences, and one of the foremost mathematicians of his country
Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) – historian of science who made important contributions to hydrodynamics, elasticity, and thermodynamics
Jean-Baptiste Dumas (1800–1884) – chemist who established new values for the atomic mass of thirty elements
John Eccles (1903–1997) – Awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on the synapse[17]
Stephan Endlicher (1804–1849) – botanist who formulated a major system of plant classification
Gerhard Ertl (1936– ) – German physicist who won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces[18]
Bartolomeo Eustachi (c.1500–1574) – one of the founders of human anatomy
Hieronymus Fabricius (1537–1619) – father of embryology
Gabriele Falloppio (1523–1562) – pioneering Italian anatomist who studied the human ear and reproductive organs
Mary Celine Fasenmyer (1906–1996) – Roman Catholic sister and mathematician, founder of Sister Celine's polynomials
Hervé Faye (1814–1902) – astronomer whose discovery of the periodic comet 4P/Faye won him the 1844 Lalande Prize and membership in the French Academy of Sciences
Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665) – number theorist who contributed to the early development of calculus
Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) – awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his work in induced radioactivity
Jean Fernel (1497–1558) – physician who introduced the term physiology
Fibonacci (c.1170–c.1250) – popularized Hindu-Arabic numerals in Europe and discovered the Fibonacci sequence
Hippolyte Fizeau (1819–1896) – first person to determine experimentally the velocity of light[19]
Léon Foucault (1819–1868) – invented the Foucault pendulum to measure the effect of the earth's rotation
Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787–1826) – discovered Fraunhofer lines in the sun's spectrum
Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788–1827) – made significant contributions to the theory of wave optics
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) – father of modern science[20]
Luigi Galvani (1737–1798) – formulated the theory of animal electricity
William Gascoigne (1610–1644) – developed the first micrometer
Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) – French astronomer and mathematician who studied the transit of Mercury and named the aurora borealis
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778–1850) – chemist known for two laws related to gases
Riccardo Giacconi (1931– ) – Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist who laid the foundations of X-ray astronomy
Paula González (1932–present) – Roman Catholic sister and professor of biology
Francesco Maria Grimaldi (1618–1663) – Jesuit who discovered the diffraction of light
Robert Grosseteste (c.1175–1253) – called "the first man to write down a complete set of steps for performing a scientific experiment"[21]
Peter Grünberg (1939– ) – German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics laureate[22]
Johannes Gutenberg (c.1398–1468) – inventor of the printing press
Jean Baptiste Julien d'Omalius d'Halloy (1783–1875) – one of the pioneers of modern geology[23]
John Harsanyi (1929–2000) – Hungarian-American economist and Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner[24]
Here's some more ignorant Papists, Ritmo:
René Just Haüy (1743–1822) – priest and father of crystallography
Eduard Heis (1806–1877) – astronomer who contributed the first true delineation of the Milky Way
Jan Baptist van Helmont (1579–1644) – founder of pneumatic chemistry
George de Hevesy (1885–1966) – Hungarian radiochemist and Nobel laureate[25]
Charles Hermite (1822–1901) – mathematician who did research on number theory, quadratic forms, elliptic functions, and algebra
John Philip Holland (1840–1914) – developed the first submarine to be formally commissioned by the US Navy
Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748–1836) – first to propose a natural classification of flowering plants
Mary Kenneth Keller (c.1914–1985) – Sister of Charity and first American woman to earn a PhD in computer science, helped develop BASIC
Eusebio Kino (1645–1711) – Jesuit missionary and cartographer who drew maps based on his explorations, first showing that California was not an island as was then believed
Athanasius Kircher (c.1601–1680) – Jesuit scholar, has been called "the last Renaissance man"
Brian Kobilka (1955– ) – American Nobel Prize winning professor who teaches at Stanford University School of Medicine[26][27]
Nicolas Louis de Lacaille (1713–1762) – French astronomer noted for cataloguing stars, nebulous objects, and constellations
René Laennec (1781–1826) – physician who invented the stethoscope
Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) – mathematician and astronomer known for Lagrangian points and Lagrangian mechanics
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) – French naturalist, biologist and academic whose theories on evolution preceded those of Darwin
Johann von Lamont (1805–1879) – astronomer and physicist who studied the magnetism of the Earth and was the first to calculate the mass of Uranus
Karl Landsteiner (1868–1943) – Nobel Prize winner who identified and classified the human blood types
Pierre André Latreille (1762–1833) – pioneer in entomology
Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) – father of modern chemistry[28]
Jérôme Lejeune (1926–1994) – pediatrician and geneticist, best known for his discovery of the link of diseases to chromosome abnormalities
Georges Lemaître (1894–1966) – father of the Big Bang theory[29]
Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694) – father of comparative physiology[30]
Étienne-Louis Malus (1775–1812) – discovered the polarization of light
Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714–1774) – anatomist and anatomical wax artist who lectured at the University of Bologna
Re: my 3:18 on the APA's rambling about the cause(s) of homosexual orientation
. . .most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.
They never identify what it is that experiences the "sense of choice" other than to use the woefully imprecise term "people."
I'm waiting for this to come up in the criminal law sphere (other than the question of appropriate placement for defendants serving jail or prison terms).
Should 911 dispatchers omit a suspect's sex when they describe the person police should be looking for? If eyewitnesses described the suspect to the police as a male, but the defendant charged with the crime identifies as female and is convicted at trial, does the misidentification by all the witnesses present an appealable issue? If the judge, prosecutor, and witnesses consistently use the "wrong" pronouns at trial, has some right of the defendant been violated?
Who cares? And Fran Collins sequenced the human genome. There's irrationalism in people's lives, but seeking to preserve more and more of it while engaging in successful, directed rational empiricism (such as science is) becomes increasingly difficult the more the "god of the gaps" goes away. It's for good reason that your list dwindles and dwindles the closer you come to the 20th and 21st centuries. And you invert the whole problem anyway. Your mob justice fans in this comments thread are seeking social answers in doctrinaire theology. The scientists you name were not.
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