In 2015, the Fortingall Yew, one of the oldest trees in Europe, decided trans rights are tree rights and switched its sex to female š³ļøāā§ļø eat shit transphobes
I'm cis and they give me environmental stress. "Dude, I'm just trying to order lunch. Why are you sharing these inside thoughts with me?"
I wouldn't trade it, but one bad thing about being an old white guy is assholes think I'm safe to unmask around, and Christ it skeeves me out. No, man, take those fucking thoughts to your grave.
š¤ Being trans has to do with gender identity, not sex. The whole foundation of transgenderism as a concept is that sex and gender identity are independent elements of a person. So as a corollary (I think, haven't used that word in a while lol), no non-sapient creature can ever be trans, because you need consciousness to have a gender identity in the first place.
I think you could say part of one's identity exists outside of the person. Their self-identity should be respected and often will align with what they project outwards, but that's where people get confused about a person and then stubborn ones get fed up with the whole idea.
Anyway, in this case since the tree lacks sentience, it wouldn't have an internalized gender that we could know, but we can see that its sexual characteristics have changed and give it a transexual label. The trans label can cover both.
I think you could say part of oneās identity exists outside of the person.
That doesn't really make sense to me. It would imply that some part of who you are is defined by outside perception, and I definitely don't agree with that, especially considering that there are an indefinite number of outside perspectives, and some number of those perspectives could definitely be mutually exclusive with others, making it impossible for them both to be correct.
Simple analogy: if a triangle is viewed 'face-on' by one person and directly 'edge-on' by another, the former will perceive it as a triangle, and the latter, as a line. Something can't be a line and a triangle simultaneously, so how can these outside perspectives both be any part of what defines the identity of that object?
Every person who knows you has a concept of you in their minds. This is a part of your identity which you donāt have direct control over, you can only negotiate with them over that.
This concept is intuitively known by everyone. Itās why people are negatively affected when others misgender them.
Itās also true in a formal sense. Part of your identity exists in the formal documents and information about you. This is the part that is vulnerable to identity theft which is painful in ways beyond the financial losses people incur as victims of this crime. Having to prove you are who you say you are is extremely exhausting and traumatizing to deal with despite essentially consisting of a bunch of paperwork and phone calls.
Every person who knows you has a concept of you in their minds.
Yes, of course.
This is a part of your identity
I don't agree with calling that concept "identity". Others' "concept of you" is just that, their idea of you. That does not define you, in any way.
Itās why people are negatively affected when others misgender them.
Actually, I think this bolsters my point, not yours. The whole reason being misgendered is a negative experience is because that person's "concept of you" is wrong. They see you that way, but that is not the way you are. Your identity comes from you, and you alone.
In the end, it's obvious we have different definitions of "identity" and that's what our disagreement is rooted in. I define identity as the sum of what comprises one's sense of self.
What happens when a person has a brain injury causing retrograde amnesia, or dementia, or Alzheimerās disease and forget the details of their lives? Are those forgotten aspects of their identity just gone? Or can they live on through their loved ones? What happens when we die and lose all possible sense of self? Is it like we never existed in the first place?
You can indeed become a completely different person when afflicted with Alzheimer's, dementia, or a brain tumor. It doesn't retroactively change who you were before, of course...but it can absolutely fundamentally change you.
I never asserted that identity is immutable, nor that only that it is not defined by outside perception of other people.
Right but part of identity is our relationships to other people. If I get Alzheimerās disease and forget who my mother is, sheās still my mother even though I no longer remember her.
Edit: similarly, my aunt passed way over a decade ago. Sheās still a person and still has an identity, even though sheās no longer living.
I think you're being too strict with your definition of an identity because it is not just one thing. Identities are multi-faceted and fluid. I think that you ignore an important part of the picture when you ignore perceptions of you as part of your identity. They add to a conceptual cloud around you that is you and how you come across to others. I rather like to avoid oversimplification which I feel you are falling for, although I still do believe that one's own identity is most important of those and ought to be respected by others.
Have you seen the Clayton Biggsby sketch on the Chappelle show with the blind black white supremacist? He had no knowledge of being black, but I think most people would still argue that it formed a major part of his identity regardless of his own concept of himself.
To nuance your previous point, being misgendered is a negative experience because that person's "concept of you" does not agree with yours, becoming a point of conflict between you two and even inside yourself, not necessarily because they are wrong (although you are free to have that opinion). Sometimes people close to you will know you better than you know yourself.
I think that you ignore an important part of the picture when you ignore perceptions of you as part of your identity.
But I'd argue that allowing those perceptions to shape your identity, to any extent, is equivalent to forfeiting part of who you are to them, and allowing others to define you. That seems really unhealthy to me.
Have you seen the Clayton Biggsby sketch on the Chappelle show with the blind black white supremacist? He had no knowledge of being black, but I think most people would still argue that it formed a major part of his identity regardless of his own concept of himself.
I have, and yeah, I guess I just don't see it that way. His identity ironically clashed with his biology, but it doesn't make sense to me that an aspect of yourself you have literally no knowledge of can be considering part of your "identity".
Maybe I just see the concept of "identity" as borne of, and residing fully in, one's own consciousness.
Sex and gender are distinct elements. So whilst they're not the same thing, they do interact with each other and influence each other to some extent or another. If they didn't, then the world wouldn't be full of people whose gender and sex are in alignment. For that matter, if they didn't, we wouldn't even understand the concept of sex and gender being in alignment.
Also, "transgenderism" is a term popular with transphobes, because it frames trans people as a belief/ideology, rather than acknowledging their identity.
no non-sapient creature can ever be trans, because you need consciousness to have a gender identity in the first place.
But for all of that, strictly speaking, this is true.
Also, ātransgenderismā is a term popular with transphobes, because it frames trans people as a belief/ideology, rather than acknowledging their identity.
What am I supposed to call it, when talking about this as a concept, outside of referring to a specific person. Transgendericity? Transgenderology?
Throw me a bone here, don't just insinuate I'm a transphobe just because I casually tossed 'ism' onto the end of a word to noun-ify it in a sentence, without even offering a correction.
When youāre talking about gay folk and same sex attraction conceptually, you donāt call it āhomosexualismā or āgayologyā. You would use the term homosexuality or same sex attraction.
Okay, so if I want a single word, "transgenderality"? That really just sounds bizarre, I have to say. Not to mention I've never seen any person talking about trans issues ever say/write that.
The issue is explicitly the āismā. The -ism suffix is used to denote political and ideological beliefs
That's only one way that suffix is used, and it's assumption on your part that when you see that suffix, that that's the way it's being used. In other words, I think you should allow for the possibility that it ain't that deep. Was it not obvious from the context of what/how I was writing that I wasn't coming from a transphobic place?
-ism is used for all sorts of nouns that simply describe a state of being (e.g. autism, alcoholism, absenteeism), and that's all I aimed for. And from what you said in your comment, it seems like this is uncharted territory, if there's no actual single word term regularly employed for this particular state of beingāall of your examples are multiple words.
P.S. By the way, I'm not at all dissuaded by something that is inherently benign being popular among shitty peopleāin my opinion, all the more reason to take it away from them, by using it benignly more often than they use it pejoratively. It was successfully done with "queer", I say keep that train running!
Well, plants really don't have to deal with our binary bullshit. Most of them don't have any sex because they have perfect flowers anyways, meaning their flowers have male and female gametes.
I was today old when I found out a yew is an evergreen and that I grew up around them (because I remember squishing those berries as a kid). Because they have needles I thought they were some kind of hemlock, and I had it in my head that yew leaves looked something like a willow's.
Were it a "curious, socratic style question" you wouldn't have framed your question with loaded terminology designed to make trans people sound unreasonable and fake.
True. I do I think a human could internally decide to be trans, make any or no changes, declare it to others and still be valid as trans. Humans just really value certain observable indicators to tell what's going on. There's some kind of interesting metaphor about how humans being this way gives us a lot of interesting freedom to express ourselves but also limits us in many ways overlaid with what the tree is doing.
39 Comments
als@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 91 pts · 245d
Y'all ever undergo a sex change due to environmental stress?
Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it · 63 pts · 245d
No but a trans friend of mine is having environmental stress because of transphobes.
MagicShel@lemmy.zip · 42 pts · 245d
I'm cis and they give me environmental stress. "Dude, I'm just trying to order lunch. Why are you sharing these inside thoughts with me?"
I wouldn't trade it, but one bad thing about being an old white guy is assholes think I'm safe to unmask around, and Christ it skeeves me out. No, man, take those fucking thoughts to your grave.
cheers_queers@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 245d
" you probably shouldn't be telling people that" should shame them and make them think twice, but idk if they have any shame left.
skvlp@lemmy.wtf · 9 pts · 245d
Show this to republicans, or similar groups, and theyāll lose their shit and have a really bad day š
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 244d
On a totally unrelated news the rest 50% of the US population supports ending global warming now.
damnedfurry@lemmy.world · 34 pts · 245d
š¤ Being trans has to do with gender identity, not sex. The whole foundation of transgenderism as a concept is that sex and gender identity are independent elements of a person. So as a corollary (I think, haven't used that word in a while lol), no non-sapient creature can ever be trans, because you need consciousness to have a gender identity in the first place.
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 245d
if consciousness is imperative for gender. do sleeping people loose their gender?
Naptime is trans erasure š
io@piefed.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 244d
everyone is agender atleast once a day /s
dvoraqs@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 245d
I think you could say part of one's identity exists outside of the person. Their self-identity should be respected and often will align with what they project outwards, but that's where people get confused about a person and then stubborn ones get fed up with the whole idea.
Anyway, in this case since the tree lacks sentience, it wouldn't have an internalized gender that we could know, but we can see that its sexual characteristics have changed and give it a transexual label. The trans label can cover both.
damnedfurry@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 245d
That doesn't really make sense to me. It would imply that some part of who you are is defined by outside perception, and I definitely don't agree with that, especially considering that there are an indefinite number of outside perspectives, and some number of those perspectives could definitely be mutually exclusive with others, making it impossible for them both to be correct.
Simple analogy: if a triangle is viewed 'face-on' by one person and directly 'edge-on' by another, the former will perceive it as a triangle, and the latter, as a line. Something can't be a line and a triangle simultaneously, so how can these outside perspectives both be any part of what defines the identity of that object?
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 245d
Every person who knows you has a concept of you in their minds. This is a part of your identity which you donāt have direct control over, you can only negotiate with them over that.
This concept is intuitively known by everyone. Itās why people are negatively affected when others misgender them.
Itās also true in a formal sense. Part of your identity exists in the formal documents and information about you. This is the part that is vulnerable to identity theft which is painful in ways beyond the financial losses people incur as victims of this crime. Having to prove you are who you say you are is extremely exhausting and traumatizing to deal with despite essentially consisting of a bunch of paperwork and phone calls.
damnedfurry@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 245d
Yes, of course.
I don't agree with calling that concept "identity". Others' "concept of you" is just that, their idea of you. That does not define you, in any way.
Actually, I think this bolsters my point, not yours. The whole reason being misgendered is a negative experience is because that person's "concept of you" is wrong. They see you that way, but that is not the way you are. Your identity comes from you, and you alone.
In the end, it's obvious we have different definitions of "identity" and that's what our disagreement is rooted in. I define identity as the sum of what comprises one's sense of self.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 245d
What happens when a person has a brain injury causing retrograde amnesia, or dementia, or Alzheimerās disease and forget the details of their lives? Are those forgotten aspects of their identity just gone? Or can they live on through their loved ones? What happens when we die and lose all possible sense of self? Is it like we never existed in the first place?
damnedfurry@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 245d
You can indeed become a completely different person when afflicted with Alzheimer's, dementia, or a brain tumor. It doesn't retroactively change who you were before, of course...but it can absolutely fundamentally change you.
I never asserted that identity is immutable, nor that only that it is not defined by outside perception of other people.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 245d
Right but part of identity is our relationships to other people. If I get Alzheimerās disease and forget who my mother is, sheās still my mother even though I no longer remember her.
Edit: similarly, my aunt passed way over a decade ago. Sheās still a person and still has an identity, even though sheās no longer living.
dvoraqs@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 245d
I think you're being too strict with your definition of an identity because it is not just one thing. Identities are multi-faceted and fluid. I think that you ignore an important part of the picture when you ignore perceptions of you as part of your identity. They add to a conceptual cloud around you that is you and how you come across to others. I rather like to avoid oversimplification which I feel you are falling for, although I still do believe that one's own identity is most important of those and ought to be respected by others.
Have you seen the Clayton Biggsby sketch on the Chappelle show with the blind black white supremacist? He had no knowledge of being black, but I think most people would still argue that it formed a major part of his identity regardless of his own concept of himself.
To nuance your previous point, being misgendered is a negative experience because that person's "concept of you" does not agree with yours, becoming a point of conflict between you two and even inside yourself, not necessarily because they are wrong (although you are free to have that opinion). Sometimes people close to you will know you better than you know yourself.
damnedfurry@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 244d
But I'd argue that allowing those perceptions to shape your identity, to any extent, is equivalent to forfeiting part of who you are to them, and allowing others to define you. That seems really unhealthy to me.
I have, and yeah, I guess I just don't see it that way. His identity ironically clashed with his biology, but it doesn't make sense to me that an aspect of yourself you have literally no knowledge of can be considering part of your "identity".
Maybe I just see the concept of "identity" as borne of, and residing fully in, one's own consciousness.
Fedizen@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 245d
Okay but the tree is still trans.
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 245d
Not so much.
Sex and gender are distinct elements. So whilst they're not the same thing, they do interact with each other and influence each other to some extent or another. If they didn't, then the world wouldn't be full of people whose gender and sex are in alignment. For that matter, if they didn't, we wouldn't even understand the concept of sex and gender being in alignment.
Also, "transgenderism" is a term popular with transphobes, because it frames trans people as a belief/ideology, rather than acknowledging their identity.
But for all of that, strictly speaking, this is true.
damnedfurry@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 245d
What am I supposed to call it, when talking about this as a concept, outside of referring to a specific person. Transgendericity? Transgenderology?
Throw me a bone here, don't just insinuate I'm a transphobe just because I casually tossed 'ism' onto the end of a word to noun-ify it in a sentence, without even offering a correction.
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 245d
damnedfurry@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 245d
Okay, so if I want a single word, "transgenderality"? That really just sounds bizarre, I have to say. Not to mention I've never seen any person talking about trans issues ever say/write that.
That's only one way that suffix is used, and it's assumption on your part that when you see that suffix, that that's the way it's being used. In other words, I think you should allow for the possibility that it ain't that deep. Was it not obvious from the context of what/how I was writing that I wasn't coming from a transphobic place?
-ism is used for all sorts of nouns that simply describe a state of being (e.g. autism, alcoholism, absenteeism), and that's all I aimed for. And from what you said in your comment, it seems like this is uncharted territory, if there's no actual single word term regularly employed for this particular state of beingāall of your examples are multiple words.
P.S. By the way, I'm not at all dissuaded by something that is inherently benign being popular among shitty peopleāin my opinion, all the more reason to take it away from them, by using it benignly more often than they use it pejoratively. It was successfully done with "queer", I say keep that train running!
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 244d
Kirp123@lemmy.world · 32 pts · 245d
People have no idea what is or isn't natural. A lot of animals and plants change sex due to various factors during their life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip · 20 pts · 245d
It's the same idiots who said being gay is unnatural, completely ignoring the multitude of gay animals.
SantasMagicalComfort@piefed.world · 8 pts · 245d
That's basically the plot of Jurassic Park.
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de · 17 pts · 245d
Hey, I think this is highly toxic!
;-)
fossilesque@mander.xyz · 12 pts · 245d
plactagonic@sopuli.xyz · 8 pts · 245d
Every part of the plant except the "berry" (it isn't berry) is toxic.
I want to try eating it but I heard that it isn't that good.
flora_explora@beehaw.org · 12 pts · 245d
Well, plants really don't have to deal with our binary bullshit. Most of them don't have any sex because they have perfect flowers anyways, meaning their flowers have male and female gametes.
romanticremedy@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 12 pts · 245d
"Is it possible to learn this power?"
far_university1990@reddthat.com · 14 pts · 245d
"Not from a conservative"
stiephelando@discuss.tchncs.de · 12 pts · 245d
Many plants have both sexes at the same time, it is not uncommon. And some plants change sex under some circumstances, e.g. Papaya trees can do that
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 245d
I was today old when I found out a yew is an evergreen and that I grew up around them (because I remember squishing those berries as a kid). Because they have needles I thought they were some kind of hemlock, and I had it in my head that yew leaves looked something like a willow's.
Tracaine@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 245d
JadedBlueEyes@programming.dev · 13 pts · 245d
A human doesn't have to cut any pieces off or inject any chemicals to be transgender.
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 245d
Were it a "curious, socratic style question" you wouldn't have framed your question with loaded terminology designed to make trans people sound unreasonable and fake.
Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 245d
Just another transphobe JAQing off. I did report this 8 hours ago but it seems to have been ignored.
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 245d
Yep. I removed their comment locally after replying to it. The reply was because those removals won't federate
JesusChristLover420@lemmy.sdf.org · 5 pts · 245d
Trans people are in the Bible. Elohim made Eve from a male rib, and Jesus had no Y chromosome.
Fourth@mander.xyz · 5 pts · 245d
True. I do I think a human could internally decide to be trans, make any or no changes, declare it to others and still be valid as trans. Humans just really value certain observable indicators to tell what's going on. There's some kind of interesting metaphor about how humans being this way gives us a lot of interesting freedom to express ourselves but also limits us in many ways overlaid with what the tree is doing.