[PREV - PRONOUN_ETIQUETTE] [TOP]
GENDER_X
February 17, 2026
Or should that
be "Gender Z"?
Okay, so our conservative friends lean
toward biological explanations of human
behavior, but us liberal/left types are
more inclined toward social explantions,
correct?
They like to invoke explanations that don't explain
much, but imply a general excuse for anything that
happens to be: it's only natural, it's just human
nature.
But us liberal/left types are aways looking for
improvements to the social order, and we presume
can get there through activism and re-education
and so on.
Anyway that's the popular stereotype. And it's even
popular among us folks who aren't supposed to believe
in stereotypes.
It often seems to me that the reality is more If you buy the "Selfish
complicated than that-- Gene" theory that's a
crazy notion: a gene
We don't like the idea that, for example, gender for homosexuality would
roles might be fixed by biology, but for many be suicidal and
years we've leaned toward buying the idea that eliminate itself from
sexual preferences are genetically inherited. the gene pool
immediately.
The history of the women's movement has Even if you're willing
largely been the story of groups of to leave room for group
people trying to expand the traditional selection effects, that
gender roles. gene for homosexuality
is leaving the gate
For example, we don't presume that with a huge deficit it
women have some biological has to make up.
limitations that need to be fixed
before one can be elected President.
Instead there's been a social campaign
to eliminate arbitrary restrictions on
what men and women are allowed to do.
The male and female categories
are now supposed to have much
more overlap than they used to.
In the 1970s, some even argued for a
completely unisex world without much
in the way of gender distinctions.
This makes the current thinking about
"gender dysphoria" very interesting:
You can certainly see why some would
find social roles determined by sex
to be too restrictive, but the approach
we used to take was to try to go after
social fixes.
The currently popular approach is
to go after biological treatments,
hormone treatments and (possibly)
surgery to shift which social role
you identify with.
That's favored by modern psychological
experts in the field, and myself I have
no interest in arguing with them-- though
I note that the attitudes toward
homosexuality among psychological experts
of the last millenium have not aged well. Do we have
scientific
confirmation
of the current
This approach evidently weirds out practice?
many of our conservative friends,
but on this one at least, I'm not
inclined to suck up to the normies
to try to win them over. Sometimes I do lean
that way, though:
If the question is something
like "the new normal, or PRONOUN_ETIQUETTE
just a perverted fad?"
I don't particularly care.
Normal isn't always good
and sometimes I like
"perverted fads".
And for me at least, the
grand causes that are supposed
to be related to this seem
like minor corner-cases.
Should it be included in government
health care (if you could find any)?
What do we do about sports team
membership?
Just pick something and
move on to something that
matters.
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