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I remember an old 4chan joke from, I think, over a decade ago. It’s an old memory so I hope I don’t butcher it:
A 4chan user found a genie. He was tired of getting no action, so he told the genie his 1st wish was the ability to turn on sight that would let him see everyone willing to sleep with him. “Your wish is granted”, replied the genie. “You can now close your eyes.”
In the modern version I’d make it one of these misogynist assholes.
Boy here, identified as a boy, and definitely still covering my drink.
I had to drive a friend of a friend to the hospital because some scumfuck drugged his drink. I don’t even like the guy but I obviously wasn’t going to leave him like that.
When talking to the doctor I was surprised to find out that men also often get drugged and it’s not talked about for some reason.
I’ve had it happen to friends and I’m pretty sure it happened to me once but at least in my case I think I was collateral damage. That said, without really knowing the strategies of that sort of thing hitting the wrong target seems like something that would happen fairly often if you don’t care about other people which, presumably, you don’t.
Had it happen to my wife-to-be when we started dating (like one week in).
We were at a party in a field, with tents and all that, and she was sat on my lap. She complained she was feeling a bit tired, stood up and after a few steps, she just collapsed on the ground. I just had the time to launch myself and catch her before she hurt herself, because she really fell like a lifeless doll.
I brought her in our tent, checked her heart rate, breath, all was normal, she was just really asleep. I was young and didn’t think it was more than alcohol, but thought that she maybe had a condition, or didn’t eat enough that day or something, so just decided to bid everyone goodnight to stay with her instead off calling the hospital. I stayed awake a few hours with her to make sure her vital sign didn’t degrade and after some time she woke up and threw out (outside of the tent, luckily), before telling me she was okay and I could sleep.
The next morning she told me she hadn’t any prior condition, had eaten correctly, hadn’t drank that much, and after she collapsed she was fully conscious, just unable to move any muscle. So she heard everything I said and did, and she wanted to tell me she feels ok, but just couldn’t.
It’s years later that it clicked for both of us: that night, a guy at the party wanted to get some action with one of our lady friends and was very vocal about it. At one point, my girlfriend jokingly took said girl’s beer from her hands and drank it, and I remember her mentioning that she must already be drunk because it tasted funny. And the said guy was a known drugs user (not a junkie, but still).
Our group of friends was pretty respectful and basically were just decent human beings overall, so we didn’t think, at the time, that one of us could pull something like this out. In insight, if it had to happen, this guy was the best candidate, as an alpha male apologist and insane enough to have been fired from the army.
The irony is that he indeed ended up smashing with our friend, in the morning, when she had sobered up and consenting. And trust me, she was conscious and consenting, as we all heard, so good for her I guess.
Unfortunately we don’t have any contact with both of them anymore and wouldn’t know how to find them again. But this story stays in my mind forever. I cannot fathom how our friend could have lived with a rape that horrible, while still perfectly conscious and unable to even cry for help. And I cannot imagine how we would all have lived with the fact that it happened under our nose, separated by a thin layer of tent fabric.
I’m glad it didn’t happen this time, but unfortunately I’m sure if he tried it that time, he tried it again with someone else, possibly wasn’t his first time. And it horrifies me that we didn’t think about the obvious explanation at the time so we could have warned other girls and involve the police.
Nobody is getting laid for talking about men’s problems except maybe the dadvocate on YouTube. It’s all a game to a huge portion of the population.
Hell I’d cover the dog bowl
If bro can sedate my little rage monster, I’m gonna let him.
“What’s a woman?”
What’s a man?
A miserable pile of secrets.
But enough talk, have at you!
What is love?
I think the best response that’s always worked for me is:
“Who cares!” Person riled up about this inclined to agree with me because they think I’m on the two genders “side of the debate”. “Just try your best to call people what they want to be called and move on. If someone’s name is x, try call them x, if they say ‘I am a y’, try calling them a y. If you get it wrong accidentally, oh well, just say sorry and try again. Why are we even still talking about this? It’s such a non-issue”
Highly effective on those who aren’t super conservative and just been swept up in the (in my opinion) astroturfed outrage.
That’s why I like names, that’s why we have em. When I first meet you, tell me your name and that’s what I’ll call you. The rest we can learn as we go
I’m a god. My pronoun is “Master”.
My response is still the same. Because the more uncommon something is (i.e. not He/she/they) then it’s also reasonable to expect people to get it wrong a bunch. Also, I really feel pointing toward odd pronouns is such a stawman too, because it’s overwhelmingly people asking for he/she/they (male/female/neither).
If there is someone non-binary out there really getting mad at people who mis-gender them without being told first (again, never met anyone like this, ever), then I’d encourage them to practice some empathy and be realistic.
I’m betting there is practically no one out there seriously asking to be called master.
Though smeagol uses it for master. Master is nice to smeagol.
I really think this “debate” is such a waste of time. Just try to accommodate people if it’s easy.
And calling someone by the name they choose (and are often legally called), and the gender they identify with, is such low effort, and making mistakes is such a non-issue if your attitude is good.
What is the fuss all about. (I know the answer, I just think the answer is stupid)
I’m not making any kind of point. I just want you to call me master.
We do not grant you the rank of Master
Wait no go back, you’re getting a lecture filled with maximum toxicity!
<Smashes glass on the floor>
a genetic experiment.
Everyone is an X until a weird little Y comes along.
I like the premise of the joke but it’s confusing sex with gender. 😅
A miserable pile of secrets and lies. But enough talk, have at you!
Gezundheit!
Es ist entweder “Gesundheit” auf Deutsch, of “gezondheit” in het Nederlands.
gezondheid*
If you say so. It was a joke I stole from the comedy group The Firesign Theater because of what “at you” sounds like.
And I was just making a lame joke about your spelling being exactly one typo away from two differently valid spellings.
The opposite of a man.
What is a man? A miserable pile of secrets.
Which makes a woman a joyous iota of public.
But enough talk, have at you!
🔥
Sees woman in public
“Quick! Cover your mouth! That’s how they get inside you to lay their eggs!”
A woman is sugar and spice and everything nice. Until she is scorned. Then hell hath no fury.
I thought the first part only applied to little girls.
an old cake still has the same ingredients in it.
Women were little girls until they were scorned?
Little girls != women
It’s a quip, not a manifesto.
Is the latter dude calling the former a creeper? Or complaining about agency from rufinol?
he has the patriot emojis but also a pirate one so I assume he’s a leftie that somehow still enjoys living in America
Maybe libertarian
he’s american and illegally downloads foreign movies not available to him
Yes
w ryugewwus
Idk who is that, and probably is a moron.
But it is a genuinely good question: “what’s a woman?” “what’s a man?” “what’s gender?”
Not an easy question, with not universally accepted answer.
Honestly I think, as a cis man, cis people are probably very bad at answering the question.
humans tend ignore “harmony”. When you walk through the field, do you look each blade of grass or at the cow? Do you feel “non-pain”? How could you possibly explain someone pain that doesn’t know pain? Do you remember the last time, you sat next to your friend watching a show on tv, in the same detail, you remember the conflict/discussion that you had with them?
Generally we will remember and pay attention to the things that are “wrong”.
If your gender is right for you, why would you pay attention? What would you even pay attention to?
If it is wrong for you, you feel the “pain”, see the cow and remember the conflict.
Outside of a philosophy discussion, it’s not a genuinely good question because it is irrelevant to our daily lives. In any way that matters to society, a woman is a person who says they are a woman. It’s that complicated.
If the question is so irrelevant, why do you even try to answer it in the same comment? Not only answering it, but also making it a fact. As if your opinion is the only one that matters and suddenly it’s irrelevant when there’s a different opinion.
My opinion is not the only one that matters. I’m not sure where you got that impression unless you think people should automatically agree with you for no reason other than you want them to when they do not.
I base my opinion on my observations on how the world works. I could be wrong, so feel free explain to me how it negatively affects in our society in any significant way if you don’t define a woman as someone who calls themselves a woman.
If other opinions matter, then it is not an irrelevant question. Since it prompts people to tell their opinions.
You did not explain to me what I asked you to explain to me. I think you just want someone to fight with since you’re clearly not discussing this in good faith and I’m not particularly interested.
I didn’t answer your “request” because that has nothing to do with what I originally said.
If I wanted to get into an hours long conversation about gender I would’ve said something completely different. Got better things to waste my time on.
Then I have no idea even what your issue is? That I dare to think my opinion on something is correct? Isn’t that how opinions work?
Can you tell me about one of your incorrect opinions?
So long as society feels it necessary to provide protections for women, the distinction has real consequences. Drawing a line anywhere is a tradeoff between inclusivity and effectiveness.
Taking the party line “high ground” stance of either conclusive self-determination or dodging the question entirely is why this question is so effective.
I’m sorry, is “conclusive self-determination” the wrong answer? Why?
Assuming good faith on the part of those involved, I don’t see how inclusivity comes at the cost of effectiveness. Would you care to elaborate?
Assuming good faith, that’s a hell of an assumption
Gendered bathrooms? It certainly does not require a lot of good faith to come up with this example.
That’s a terrible example. Gendered bathrooms would still fulfil their function if anybody could use them regardless of gender, causing no measurable harm to anyone.
Assuming I’m a bicycle, I’d have wheels.
Protections presuppose bad faith.
What protections? Give me some concrete examples of what you’re talking about here.
And your solution is what?
Not the person who you were talking with, but I think it’s nuanced. Short term tradeoffs should be made for effectiveness, while long-term strategies should be relentlessly pursued for inclusivity.
E.g. as a man, I think that the women-only carriages in a lot of SEA countries are a necessary thing, but it has to be a short term solution with a healthier society should be always consistently pursued, for example with educational measures.
Honestly? I think that equal treatment should be afforded regardless of gender. I also know that opinion is wildly unpopular, and so long as society expects unequal treatment there has to be hard conversations and hard decisions made to support those structures. You can’t have it both ways, and no amount of party-line fingers in your ears "wouldn’t you like to know"ing makes that go away.
This would be nice if we lived in a vacuum an didn’t have thousands of years of patriarchy built up…
That was essentially what I was saying.
I don’t think it is that simple.
Women are treated different that men in many societies. In my country there are multiple laws that apply different to a person if it is a woman or a man.
If we are making legislative differentiation because those words, we ought to have them well defined and understand what we are meaning and why we say that a women gets X law applied that a man gets not.
If it is irrelevant it should be, at least, legislatively irrelevant. If it’s meaningful we should be clear on what we are defining by woman (or any other gender that gets particular legislation applied for all that matters).
That without talking about the social importance of being a gendered society. I don’t know any single society that is not gendered. Once again, if it is irrelevant then we should aim for genderless society. If it is relevant we should know and agree on what it is to be one gender or other.
Why do you think such legislation is necessary? In fact, what legislation are you talking about that requires gender to be taken into account?
I didn’t say I thought it was necessary. It exists, that’s just it.
Necessary or not, is, again. A very complex question.
I’m Spanish, from Spain/Europe. We have some laws made in favour of women. For instance, a special court of law that is only invoke in a case of a man hurting a woman he had a romantic relationship with. It’s called “Juzgados de la mujer”. We have also gender quota por power positions they have historically not being allowed to occupy.
This may seem logical, as there are thousands of women killed by their male partners
We also have, recently, a law that allows anyone to change their gender at any time, no questions, no prove requires to being trans to do so. You can just go to the civil office and change your gender.
This also may seem logical. As trans are usually prosecuted and can get denied a gender change if the civil official didn’t like them.
But with these two things in place we happened to had a big number of cis males, that are 100% cis, going to change their gender just to get “inmunity” to “Womens court”. Also several cases of cis males changing their gender to get into womens quota required for some positions (for instance here there’s benefits and sometimes is required that half of the directive positions are filled by women).
So we have a conflict here. At least I see a conflict. I don’t even have the answer on what to do, as two of both things seem right to me (supporting a positive discrimination for a historically discriminated group and helping trans to be what they truly are). But cis males being able to break positive discrimination and mocking trans at the same time feels wrong to me.
And the ultimate question to this topic is “What it is to be a woman”. For what I do not have the answer, but I would love to know.
And of course, in my book we all would be genderless, and there would be no discrimination. But my personal utopia is, sadly, not the world we live on.
This may seem logical, as there are thousands of women killed by their male partners
No, it doesn’t seem logical. Men can be killed by their women partners, men can be killed by their men partners, women can be killed by their women partners.
It’s only “logical” in a heteronormative patriarchal society.
This also may seem logical. As trans are usually prosecuted and can get denied a gender change if the civil official didn’t like them.
Again, this does not seem logical. Why do you need a law to allow you to change gender?
“Womens court”.
Something else that is not necessary.
(for instance here there’s benefits and sometimes is required that half of the directive positions are filled by women).
Benefits should not be gendered, but the quota thing is the closest you have gotten to something being necessary in terms of legal definitions. But even there, all you have to say is that gender discrimination in hiring practices is illegal and it doesn’t have to apply to any specific gender.
Also, you are acting like ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are it and there is no such thing as a nonbinary gender. You are incorrect.
I literally never said anything against non binary, but ok.
I’m just explaining the legislation you asked me to explain.
Legislation on my country does not take non-binary as an option. So I didn’t talk about it. We could have talked about it if you asked about that, as I have lots to say as an non-binary person that really does not fit within my country own legislation on gender.
I feel like you are not really reading me. And I’m feeling more hostility towards my person that I want to feel. So I’m out.
Have a good day.
Legislation on my country does not take non-binary as an option.
Which is also not logical.
No one is denying that gendered laws exist. We are talking about what is necessary. I am reading you. You just are not understanding that those laws are not necessary laws the way they are written and can be easily be rewritten to apply to all genders.
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Sure, the anatomical features we use to categorise people into genders have always existed, but the categories themselves are made up and there’s a rather large amount of overlap between them. The more strictly someone attempts to enforce a given set of criteria as the basis for this categorisation, the less practical utility their definition tends to have in terms of everyday use.
What is an adult human with both sets of genitalia? They exist.
A hermaphrodite. What is any other genetic condition?
I have never seen “hermaphrodite” on any government form. What do they put down?
It’s an edge case. Does a government form determine reality? They can put down one, both, none.
You cannot put down both or none on any government form that does not consider gender to be a non-biological thing.
Laws are not supposed to be selectively applied. If they can put down whichever one they choose, you are admitting your definition of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ do not apply to how society works.
I know “the exception that proves the rule” is a fun phrase, but it’s not actually how things work.
If intersex people are an edge case, then so are trans people.
And yet…
Intersex. And there are more of them than trans people per 100k, I believe. Yet somehow they’re never brought up.
Many (maybe most?) end up getting some type of gender-affirming surgery very early on, but not always. And who knows, going forward.
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When does the answer actually matter? Maybe in situations where sexual assault is a concern, like bathrooms, etc? In that case, just get rid of gender identity and distinguish based on if the individual has a penis or not.
I talked in other comments about the legislative implications. But here I would like to give a more personal one.
For instance, I would love to have the answer for myself. Because I have asked myself plenty of times “Am I a woman?”, and that leads to de subsequent question “What it means to be a Woman?”, “What I want to be is a Woman or is anything else?”. I know that only I can answer that question. But I want to know why I have to make that question to myself. Why society considers “being a Woman” something? Because that question didn’t came out of nowhere. It came because I, as a person who lives in a society with other people, see people who calls themselves man, woman or other things. And while trying to decide what I want to be, or what I already am, need to take what other people are into consideration.
Idk, if I’m explaining myself. I’ll give a dumb example: Maybe I want to be an Astronaut, but before becoming an Astronaut I need to know what an Astronaut is. Because Astronaut is a profession in our society, and it can be defined. In this context is easy, because I would love to be an Astronaut because I would love to go to space. But, if I love to be a Woman, why is it? What is the “going to space” of being a woman?
Why base it on the existence or nonexistence of a penis? How do you enforce that? You’re in a bathroom, ideally no one is seeing your genitals.
Just get rid of gendered bathrooms in the first place. A toilet doesn’t care what shape of butthole poops into it
Is it a good question though? Even if we set aside the fact that it’s a loaded question, what are we going to do with the information?
It has a similar character to the question ‘what is a race?’. Information that people look a certain way is not particularly useful, on the other hand we feel it viscerally. If we don’t stop to think we end up making unhelpful judgements.
Race, gender, nation states, money, the past and future, these are just concepts and if we confine ourselves to the domain of concepts we run the risk of mistaking them for our actual experience, out in the world. We stop listening and start assuming that our internal narrative is infallible, because it is.
I agree to an extend.
I would love to live in a word where all of that does not matter.
But for instance, imagine if we stop taking race into account in the USA (not American but I’m soaked in American culture). How would people know and being able to prove that some race is being discriminated against if the people does not have a definition on some people being part of one or other race.
I despise racial classification. Seems wrong, it works wrong as races are all mixed. But it can work against racism.
For instance, in my country, racial classification is ilegal. There cannot exist any registry on anyones race whatsoever. So black people here does not have statistical data to prove they are being discriminated against. They have a harder time fighting against racism somehow because their race is not allow to be recorded anywhere.
So I don’t really know if, same as gender, I want to know people’s race or not. Feels wrong, but also useful to fight against discrimination.
Very interesting and I would not have expected that outcome. In some ways the actions of avowed racists is easier to deal with. If our cards are on the table we can at least have a discussion. The racism that dwells in people and institutions who never admit it is incredibly corrosive.
Reading historical texts about eras where the concept of race didn’t exist as we know it today is refreshing. I suppose they had other problems but the modern conception of race feels like a political tool and completely artificial. So too with gender, it’s encouraging to see kids abandoning those outdated notions.
Man xy, woman xx.
Biology isn’t that simple. A person can have one fewer sex chromosome, monosomy, one extra, trisomy, and many extra, polysomy. In fact it’s starting to show that a significant minority of people have trisomy 47 (the name for having one extra sex chromosome) but live perfectly normal lives because those extra genes are suppressed. You could have an extra x chromosome and never know it, does that exclude you from being a man or a woman? Which brings up the topic of gene expression and epigenetics which is even more complicated. If you’re looking at science to give you a certainty about sex and gender you’re in for a long search.
That’s the extreme minority. To keep things simple let’s just say xx one bathroom and xy the other. That encompasses 99.9% of bathroom usage. For the cases you are talking about I’m sure that person can figure out what bathroom to use for themselves and explain it to anyone that asks.
Nah. That’s just sex.
But there’s been long proved that what we call gender is not 100% defined by sex.
For instance, our traditional gendered bathrooms. The concept does not work if we just take sex into account. As the reasons we have for segregating bathrooms in genders does just not work if people have a different presentation, external sexual characteristics or behavior, that it is traditionally assumed for one sex or the other.
To put intro crude words. Women that would like to have a women exclusive bathroom would really not be happy if someone walks into that externally looks and behaves, and even have the sexual characteristics of what they perceive as a man. It would not matter if that person would have XX instead of XY.
That’s the extreme minority. To keep things simple let’s just say xx one bathroom and xy the other. That encompasses 99.9% of bathroom usage. For the cases you are talking about I’m sure that person can figure out what bathroom to use for themselves and explain it to anyone that asks.
Well, yeah. And trans/nb/etc people are part of that 0,1%
It’s interesting that this question seems to be some sort of gotcha that almost always a posted response is a snarky joke. Just makes me wonder how do those people define a woman.
The actual answer is that a woman is a person who identifies as a woman. What bugs me is that conservatives disagree vehemently, but they don’t seem to have a consistent answer themselves
Most of them appeal to “basic biology” but biology is anything but basic. Just because you learned about chromosomes in your high school biology course doesn’t mean you’re actually knowledgeable on the subject. It’s much more complex than that. The best argument against this idea, in my opinion, is to bring up intersex people, which there’s a huge variety of different conditions and always one that will contradict whatever they believe.
This is all ignoring the fact that none of this matters, so maybe it’s best to not be baited into it at all. Gender is not something that needs some precise thing to point at. It’s whatever we want it to be.
They define it in all sorts of ways where there are immediate exceptions they have to hand wave away. We have someone like that in this thread.
Pretty sure I saw Crocodile Dundee cover his beer.
That’s not a beer.
This is a beer.
I have it on good authority that Fosters is Australian for “piss”.
still tastes better than Budweiper
Czech Budweiser or American Budweiser?
still tastes better than Budweiper
What is naive realism?
A woman is a person that adheres to gender roles assigned to them by society. These gender roles are typically attributed but not limited to the female sex.
Simple.
A woman is whatever they fucking want to be.
No one decides what gender they are. That’s like the entire thing with trans people. You think a trans person getting death threats wouldn’t love to be able to identify as their AGAB?
You think a trans person getting death threats wouldn’t love to be able to identify as their AGAB?
No… That person wouldn’t be me, they’d be someone else…
No, no they’re not. Genders exist. They haven’t disappeared. They also have meaning, words haven’t lost meaning all of the sudden because of inclusivity.
It’s idiotic statements like this that continue to fuel Anti trans rhetoric because obviously you yourself can’t even define what the word means.
And even biological sex is a bimodal spectrum. People always ignore the existence of intersex people, but I believe it occurs at a higher number per 100k people than trans. I could be misremembering.
Intersex people exist in the same capacity that people that have down syndrome exist.
People don’t go around going. Oh they’re fine. They’re just intersex. It’s considered generally a birth defect that brings with it a lifetime of medical issues that otherwise would not exist.
It’s perfectly fine to accept them for who they are or even who they want to be, but has absolutely nothing to do with the idiotic question that anti-trans people pose such as “what is a woman”.
In the same sense that people don’t say, what is a human being in reference to down syndrome.
What bothers me is that even talking about this such as my original definition gets me downvoted because I don’t immediately agree or accept the prepositions in this post.
I have no obligation to blindly accept anything!
And it’s 1.7% of births in the world which is quite a high number considering.
you see that 1.7% figure a lot, but it counts conditions which do not cause sex amibiguity, including a full 1.5% of late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia which is not diagnosed at birth
