Demi Lovato chooses their pronouns

[Avataг]

12 hours ago, Expanditor said:

You literally came into a dead thread that had been abyssed, said this and then started talking about this exact thing...

@MarshallT replied in the original thread. His answer was abyssed with all the rest afterwards.

And Marshall, I too miss those simpler times, where everything was easier and not so fucking complicated. But those times are over, life isn't as black and white as it used to be.

I tend to not give a fuck about their pronouns because their sexual identity is nothing of my business. One can't deny that the LGBTQ+ movement is a thing, but no one said that I need to care about it. Just let them live their lifes as they let you live your life. Isn't it great that we live in an era where everyone (in the western world) can seek their heaven in their own fashion?

[Boned]

19 hours ago, FluffyButtLover919 said:

Huh?

She. Buddy that grammar makes no sense.

[dragonageguy]

41 minutes ago, Boned said:

She. Buddy that grammar makes no sense.

Guy must be the Usain Bolt with a run-on sentence like that 

[thadrou90]

It's simple, people. Just use the pronouns someone prefers. And don't complain about grammar: the singular "they" sentences like "If someone's confused, they should find out more" dates back to Elizabethan times.

[Avataг]

23 minutes ago, thadrou90 said:

It's simple, people. Just use the pronouns someone prefers. And don't complain about grammar: the singular "they" sentences like "If someone's confused, they should find out more" dates back to Elizabethan times.

[Guest Marshall7]

4 hours ago, Avataг said:

One can't deny that the LGBTQ+ movement is a thing,

I never have denied this, nor do I have a problem with them. Ive worked with and been friends with many and have never had issues between us. The thing is, I will always see someone like Demi as a beautiful female woman. I dont apologize for this. She can be whatever she wants - doesn't change how I look at the human being. Bottom line is, people can NEVER force your mind to comply lol. Just words

[thadrou90]

Just now, MarshallT said:

The thing is, I will always see someone like Demi as a beautiful female woman. I dont apologize for this. She can be whatever she wants - doesn't change how I like at the human being. Bottom line is, people can NEVER force your mind to comply lol. Just words

This is like looking at a lesbian and saying, "I will never not see her as a woman who wants to have sex with me." Sure, no one can "force you to comply," but it doesn't mean you're not just wrong. And even if you still don't agree, the least you can do is give a person the basic level of respect by referring to them the way they want to be referred to.

[Avataг]

7 minutes ago, MarshallT said:

I never have denied this, nor do I have a problem with them.

Then stop beefing about what pronouns other users apply to speak about her them, thank you.

[Guest Marshall7]

Ive seen people say that they are actually a different species. Do I comply with them? Where does this line ot thinking end? Part of my resistance to all of this is I don't see everything in a vacuum. Some things are absolute and it just seems more and more people act like EVERYTHING is fluid and changing and there is nothing concrete anymore. A 57 year old man identifying as a 6 year old girl....a 27 year old female identifying as a 2 year old dog. Ive seen both of these instances. Just because they're extreme, doesn't mean they shouldn't be addressed. Im not short-sighted and as much as some people want people like me to stop asking these questions or "going here", my mind won't. Hopefully someday you people will acknowledge this line of thinking as a problem for western culture. Until then, you can think of me as a bigot if you must. This will be the last thing I say on any of this. I just hope you guys give this some serious thought and don't just throw it out.

[thadrou90]

22 minutes ago, MarshallT said:

Ive seen people say that they are actually a different species. Do I comply with them? Where does this line ot thinking end? Part of my resistance to all of this is I don't see everything in a vacuum. Some things are absolute and it just seems more and more people act like EVERYTHING is fluid and changing and there is nothing concrete anymore. A 57 year old man identifying as a 6 year old girl....a 27 year old female identifying as a 2 year old dog. Ive seen both of these instances. Just because they're extreme, doesn't mean they shouldn't be addressed. Im not short-sighted and as much as some people want people like me to stop asking these questions or "going here", my mind won't. Hopefully someday you people will acknowledge this line of thinking as a problem for western culture. Until then, you can think of me as a bigot if you must. This will be the last thing I say on any of this. I just hope you guys give this some serious thought and don't just throw it out.

You don't have to reply, as you said this is the last thing you want to say on the subject, but I do want to take your question seriously. Why, you ask, should we accept people's personal accounts of gender identity but not "species identity" or "age identity" or literally anything else? To my mind there are basically two answers. One is that affirming people's stated gender identities, whatever they are, and empowering them to express them without fear of disapproval, punishment, or harm enables them to live safer, more fulfilled, more love-filled lives and comes at no real cost to the rest of us. The second is that there are thousands of years of historical documentation that diversity of gender identity isn't a new thing, but rather something inherent to human life across all ages and societies. It's not a pathology, an indulgence, or a fluke. To all appearances, it's an inherent part of the diversity of human life, and not something we should or even can deny or eliminate.

Perhaps you still don't find this answer satisfying. My next response might be even less satisfying but, I think, touches on the fundamental distinction between gender identity and other forms of (mis)identification. Maybe we shouldn't see gender as something "real," in the sense of out there in the world independent of our perception or judgement. What is real are the way our bodies are and the way we want them to be; our sexual desires and practices; the way we want others to perceive us in relation to these other things, and the ways we present ourselves in order to achieve that. Maybe "gender identity" or even just simply "gender" are categories and labels we come up with to try to name these clusters of "real" things. Some clusters/labels are common, socially sanctioned, familiar, and accepted or rewarded. Others are less familiar, stigmatized, and sometimes punished. When a person speaks their gender in a ways some of us may find surprising or unintuitive, maybe one of the things they're doing is asking for recognition, safety, and respect when their particular cluster of desires, behaviors, and self-presentation sits isn't one of the socially sanctioned ones.

In that sense, you can't get your gender identity wrong the way you can get your age of species wrong. The ways we talk about gender identity are always "made up," but they're made up in order to try to grasp "real" things about our desires, bodies, and self-presentation, and to try to find recognition and safety as we live those things.

[Guest Marshall7]

I understand the gender thing, at least I understand what you're saying. However, my issue still is IS there a limit to this? For you, or any of you, is there a line where we don't go along with certain identities people claim? Without boundaries, society and people are open to harm. Ultimately my main concern is with children and their innocence being protected. It's no secret that there are many people (some even in high positions of power) who wish to sexualize children and change laws to allow adults to take advantage of them. If we allow adults to claim to be younger than they are, aren't we endangering children? Just because people "identify" as something, doesn't mean we should go along with it. This is where my mind goes the further down the "identity" rabbit hole we go. I just hope people think about these things and we don't end up becoming the proverbial boiling frog in the end.

[Guest Marshall7]

20 minutes ago, thadrou90 said:

you can't get your gender identity wrong the way you can get your age of species wrong

My fear is progressive schools of thought in higher education, the medical community and social media giants will in the end disagree with you. Ive already seen so much of society shift in it's belief in any kind of absolute reality over the last 20 years especially. We need to come to agreement on some foundation of humanity, or we will all be destroyed. Im sorry, but the Jedi were wrong - the sith are not the only ones who deal in absolutes. 

[thadrou90]

23 minutes ago, MarshallT said:

However, my issue still is IS there a limit to this? For you, or any of you, is there a line where we don't go along with certain identities people claim? Without boundaries, society and people are open to harm. Ultimately my main concern is with children and their innocence being protected. It's no secret that there are many people (some even in high positions of power) who wish to sexualize children and change laws to allow adults to take advantage of them. If we allow adults to claim to be younger than they are, aren't we endangering children? Just because people "identify" as something, doesn't mean we should go along with it. This is where my mind goes the further down the "identity" rabbit hole we go. I just hope people think about these things and we don't end up becoming the proverbial boiling frog in the end.

I guess this is where the historical part comes in for me again. I don't see this a slippery slope because there have been trans people for as long as there have been humans, and while we see movements for trans inclusion and trans rights, and some societies where a diversity of gender identities are recognized and institutionalized, I have yet to see a political movement for "age identity" or "species identity." If this were a slippery slope, I imagine we would have seen that by now, but we haven't. And that stops me from worrying that we're just a few steps away from a movement of pedophiles who will win laws that allow them to identify as children and abuse children.

Plus, we know that children get abused all the time within perfectly traditional lines of gender and sexuality. People don't need to come up with new excuses to perpetrate those kinds of horrors. In fact, we know that the risk is exactly the other way around: at least half of trans people are sexual abused at some point in their lives. The urgency of the movement to recognize, validate, and support people of all gender identities is, among other things, to help stop this hurricane of violence against them.

[FluffyButtLover919]

14 hours ago, jtkirk1701 said:

you used she pronoun  when refering to demi that is incorrect demi uses they them  pronouns  as demi  is non binary   

Haha this seems really silly. Isn’t gender based on, oh I don’t know genitals? I just wanted to enjoy and comment the comparison. 

[fat_elf]

9 minutes ago, FluffyButtLover919 said:

Isn’t gender based on, oh I don’t know genitals?

A - No, it is not.

B - What you are thinking of is the sex of a person, not their gender, nor their pronouns.

C - That still is not based solely on genitals.

D - It is weird that you want to know about any given stranger's genitals, outside of a porn. 

[FluffyButtLover919]

13 minutes ago, fat_elf said:

A - No, it is not.

B - What you are thinking of is the sex of a person, not their gender, nor their pronouns.

C - That still is not based solely on genitals.

D - It is weird that you want to know about any given stranger's genitals, outside of a porn. 

I don’t understand. How is your sex and gender not the same thing? What’s the difference?

[Avataг]

11 minutes ago, FluffyButtLover919 said:

I don’t understand. How is your sex and gender not the same thing? What’s the difference?

Let me help you out with this quote:

Quote

The distinction between sex and gender differentiates a person's sex from that person's gender, which can refer to either social roles ascribed on the basis of the sex of the person (gender role) or personal identification of one's own gender based on an internal awareness (gender identity). In some circumstances, an individual's assigned sex and gender do not align, and the person may be transgender. In other cases, an individual may have biological sex characteristics that complicate sex assignment, and the person may be intersex.

 

[thadrou90]

33 minutes ago, FluffyButtLover919 said:

I don’t understand. How is your sex and gender not the same thing? What’s the difference?

To add to Avatar's helpful answer: you may still be confused because this definition of gender might feel circular. I.e., "you're a man if you identify as a man, regardless of anything else." What, then, you might ask, does it even mean to be a man? I think it's helpful to think of everyone having an internal "map" of their gender--your mental sense not only the kind of body you "should" have, but also they way you want people to perceive and interact with you accordingly. This is a simplification that doesn't cover every case, but basically: for cis people, that internal map more or less aligns with the gendered aspects of their physical and social existence, and for trans and nonbinary people, it doesn't, in various and varying ways.

[FluffyButtLover919]

I do want to understand but I really don’t. I really don’t have any problem with people wanting to have different gender roles. But you are changing the definition of gender. Gender is a synonym of sex. When you say gender role you’re talking about the stereotype of the gender like girls play with barbies and boys play with action figures. Gender is biological not feelings. If a girl wants to be more masculine that’s fine.  But you can’t change your biology. I get the transgender stuff, but I didn’t know there were more gender stuff than that. So to me when i call someone a boy or girl im talking XY chromosome or XX. What I understand from you is that you’re talking about the gender roles, is that correct?

[decadent]

1 hour ago, FluffyButtLover919 said:

  But you can’t change your biology. I get the transgender stuff, but I didn’t know there were more gender stuff than that. So to me when i call someone a boy or girl im talking XY chromosome or XX. What I understand from you is that you’re talking about the gender roles, is that correct?

Wait a second, are you trying to invoke science to dismiss scientific consensus?  Do you really consider yourself qualified to speak on chromosome arrangements?  Did you even bother taking a second to Google "transgender genetics" before you decided to give an 80s/90s high school biology lesson?  Take some time to research it using more than just juvenile memories, please.  If you had an interest in understanding like you claim in your comment, I would think you would actually put an effort into researching it.

[FluffyButtLover919]

3 hours ago, showmeyourbellygirl said:

Wait a second, are you trying to invoke science to dismiss scientific consensus?  Do you really consider yourself qualified to speak on chromosome arrangements?  Did you even bother taking a second to Google "transgender genetics" before you decided to give an 80s/90s high school biology lesson?  Take some time to research it using more than just juvenile memories, please.  If you had an interest in understanding like you claim in your comment, I would think you would actually put an effort into researching it.

It is most certainly not scientific consensus otherwise there would be no debate. What physical proof tells someone what gender you are? All I ever find is how someone feels they are and that’s where i get lost. 

[Avataг]

@FluffyButtLover919 Why is it that you get lost when someone has feelings?

[Guest Marshall7]

5 minutes ago, Avataг said:

@FluffyButtLover919 Why is it that you get lost when someone has feelings?

He's wanting evidence beyond how people "feel" when people are talking about "scientific consensus." 

[Guest Marshall7]

1 hour ago, FluffyButtLover919 said:

It is most certainly not scientific consensus otherwise there would be no debate. What physical proof tells someone what gender you are? All I ever find is how someone feels they are and that’s where i get lost. 

People do this same thing with "climate change" and more recently everything to do with corona virus. Whatever the current giant government/corporate world wants the masses to think, they will only have on scientists and expert's who agree on their narrative and actively "discredit" and ignore anyone (no matter how much of a doctor or scientist) who disagrees. It is truly a religious cult in many ways. So, in the end, you really just have to put up with or ignore them. At least, that's what I've had to do. It's been almost enough to make me lose my mind at times lol. 

[FluffyButtLover919]

1 hour ago, MarshallT said:

People do this same thing with "climate change" and more recently everything to do with corona virus. Whatever the current giant government/corporate world wants the masses to think, they will only have on scientists and expert's who agree on their narrative and actively "discredit" and ignore anyone (no matter how much of a doctor or scientist) who disagrees. It is truly a religious cult in many ways. So, in the end, you really just have to put up with or ignore them. At least, that's what I've had to do. It's been almost enough to make me lose my mind at times lol. 

I know what you mean, but I really do want to understand why people believe things that make no sense to me. I don’t want to offend anyone but how else do you learn if you don’t ask? I even asked my ethics professor recently and he couldn’t give me an answer either.