Chat Hels Chatroom IV: Helen High Water

I did not see that. That is too much. Do you have a link? Are you sure it wasn't a daily mail article?

 

You did not sound angry to me, don't worry. Regardless I'm standing by what I said. And although they want to be special snowflakes, I guess you're right. They aren't making an apocalyptic scale fuss about it.

This though, is wrong. There is a definition of what genders a human can be. If they got breasts, vagina and uterus, they are classified a woman. If they got a penis, prostate and a beard on their chin, they are classified a man.
Science has proven there's nothing in between or combined unless we make it so.

And to repeat myself for a third time, I have absolutely no problem with the fact that they want to be gender neutral or whatever. If they want to be, they should!
I just don't agree with the municipality changing "Dear Sir or Madam" - which has been the traditional neutral way of addressing people in letters for ages - with something special and more specific (in the case of "Dear Amsterdammers" or "Dear citizens of X") because someone can't pick which gender they want to be.

That doesn't work with official letters. You can't address people you've never met as a friend, nor is it a term you should use in business-related letters. "Friend" is too personal.

That's becoming a thing too. I think that's based on the fact that women who became men can still carry children but don't want to be called "Mother" for it, as well as mothers who get a gender change want to be called fathers then.

yao whot.
Did he not tell you why?

I had an rage against a friend a while back but at least I told him what for. (And we've become friends again since then.)

 

you still have us tho ~

True. The main purpose of life and what drives is the creation of offspring. You need a man and a woman for that (aside from a few exceptions such as snails or monocellular lifeforms). Now, we humans, as a very complex species, might have people reclassifying themselves as neutral, trans, genderless, attack helicopters etc. but it doesn't change biological reality. The "old" definition of gender if you will is based on this biological distinction.

Also, if you ever receive a government letter, chances are the contents will be non-inclusive to you no matter what you identify as, since those barely bear good news. Oh, and another point - in German, we have a distinction between two types of "you" - the informal "Du" and the formal "Sie". I am part of a small but growing minority who much prefer the use of the informal "Du". I don't get represented in government letters on this one either. And I don't really care because this is basically a non-issue.

 

Unfortunately your definition of gender is not everyone's definition. People with either set of genetalia can identify as either gender. This entire argument is about arguing what the definition of gender is. Anti-trans people will say "the scientific one!" but fail to realise that there are actually at least three scientific ones (physicaly/genetic/hormonal), and none of them are exclusive to a specific gender identity - people from every option in every category have identified as either gender.

I think we should refer to people as the gender they want to be referred to as, and not what their genitals/chromosomes/hormones are.

Aaaaagh i just had a really long argument about this. The purpose of life is a philosophical debate, not a scientific one. We do not have evidence of life being 'designed', so there is no 'biological purpose'. There is nothing saying that the species currently alive are better than the dead ones. There are no 'successful' nor 'unsuccessful' organisms, only old ones and older ones.

 

If he says such mean things to you, well, he's a jerk. I know it's hard for now, but in the end, if he doesn't wanna be your friend that's his loss. There's so many good people out there.

 

I'm sticking with my words. For letters that address multiple people, "Dear Sir or Madam" should be just fine. Outside of that, yes, refer to them as they would like to be - it's just a nice thing and courtesy.

 

@Witch Cat
@The Purple Dragon
You guys are so cheesy, but AT LEAST YOU GAVE ME SOMETHING!?

Sounds like you have a case of welcome to "America's top ten problems". Women mainly for some reason... are accusing men of being sexist and fascist, and say they demand equal rights to men, when the fact is our COUNTRY'S LAW says they have every right as anyone else.

They have seems to forgotten about the Constitution and its amendments.

Which quickly rose to both women and men demanding that they make up their own "genders" and that people should have to legally comply. I'm a guy, I'll always be a guy, I will always use the male pronouns and never complain, even though sometimes I like to be smothered kinda like a girl... *coughs a little and stops for an awkward silence*... People are just making shiet up to get attention, sorry if you're one of those people who does this, but seeing as you're my frens I will respect u. (As long as you aren't being a snob about it!)

Anyway... how are you she's, he's, and it's?

 

Ah, yeah, my bad.

Huh, interesting. Thanks.

This is NOT an easy task. Just expanding our language a little to allow one extra gender isn't too bad though.
Huh, I'm bored so I'll just try to think through for myself how much work would need to happen to garentee you are never called the wrong gender.

1. Okay, first comes the question of how many gender options there are. The way I see it you can argue for 3 genders, given there are three possible sexes based on Surenu's defintions. Ones who can reproduce with males, ones who can reproduce with females, and ones who can't reproduce. Male, female, and other. (I'll get to a broader view later.)
2. The second question comes to how do you distinguish your gender to anyone looking at you with ease in such a way that you can't be mistaken for the wrong gender. This gets difficult. You can mis-read genders already, but in general it's not hard, and it rarely happens. But there's no clothes that we think of as an other's clothes, but we DO have gender specific clothes. Skirts are for females, tight pants are for females, high heels are female; wait, are there any male specific clothes? Anyway, we'll ignore that issue and just slap a solution down. Togas, that'll do. togas and cloaks, let's bring back some old clothing!

• Hair styles are a way to tell genders apart, long hair for female, short hair for male, the first thing I can think of that's not too gender specific is bald, so we'll have bald toga+cloak wearing others.
• Beards are distinctly male since females can't even wear them, so that's generally an easy tell. But other could be a male wanting to be other, or a female. It's possible that you want to be other and have a beard, but we'll just say the norm is to not have a beard.
• Color wise we have pink as a female color, but I can't think of any other gender specific colors, let's say that other gets blue. I like blue. The color of an other is blue.

3. The third issue is language. This isn't a big issue, just expand the dictionary to include all the pronouns for an other gender and you're good. Make the right word and it'll flow perfectly with other gender specific words, he she ni? And then a few extra types of words need added for a few other things, like our respectful title. I suppose for now we'll just merge it all into "Master" since that's gender neutral enough, and it really doesn't come up that often.​

So, we have 3 genders and a way to tell if they're female, or if they're other, and if it fits none of those then it's male. I'm sure you could go through a lot more, and I'm sure there's something more that's male specific but this will do for now. Others here are bald, beardless, and wear blue togas and cloaks. So at a glance you can tell what this person's gender is. If you want people to refer to you as a different gender, try to look like the other gender. Anyone could do with these definitions as they want. Not a perfect system, but give society time and it would be workable.

This is for a 3 gender system, I have no idea if people actually try to invent new genders, but if they do then things get SO much more complicated. I would be willing to do this ^^ for a many gender system.

Alright. Finished the anime No Game No Life. I am sad that there's no second season. And I haven't found a good place to watch Fate/Apocrypha, but I did learn that it exists, so that's cool! And I'm making good progress in Skyrim. I now own 3 separate Elder Scrolls, soon I shall be able to kill the Vampire Lord, and gain entrance to Bruma!!

 

Hurr, after a couple of refreshing matches of Dirty Bomb with people who's pings are higher than the Eiffel Tower, to the point where the death screen literally shows them firing bullets out of their arses, it's time to move on to something that's less depressing and doesn't make me think I'm in fact playing with Martians.

 

Had a not so good day today. Nothing major happened, just a lot of little things going wrong frustratingly often.

 

good...

bad... I'm still here if you or anyone needs to talk.

 

Thanks buddy. It's really just a bunch of minor things going wrong in minor ways that just sort of ruined the good mood I woke up with today.

A Eurocopter Tiger crashed in Mali today. No word on cause or casualties yet. I hope the two pilots made it out alive.

 

Hrm, Eurocopters? Aren't those the kind short, almost stubby military copters?

Anyway, I hope you don't mind if I hope with you. At least they don't have a lot of buildings in Mali. Crude as that may sound, there's a very good possibility that they didn't crash straight into a village, on top of civilians.

 

Of course I don't mind that, buddy. These two guys are from the same club as me, if you catch my drift.

 

Darn. Well then, like you said, let's hope they're going to be alright.
(Though I'd have done the same if they were complete strangers.)

 

Have this cool song I found!

 

My thoights on this gender thing: Sex matters in your day to day life and how you are treated. Gender, while similar to sex is a social construct and only really matters when sex and gender are unattuned and the person feels ba about it.
So all in all, not a big deal and people that make it a big deal are laughable.