Will you make transsexual Elves canon in your games ?

[Gradine]

While certainly there can be horrendously biased works hiding behind a pseudo-objective tone, I find (and psychologists agree) that we tend to move towards what we pretend to be. Pretend to be angry and you'll make yourself angry; pretend to be calm and you make yourself calm. Wear your bias on your sleeve and you'll make yourself more biased; aspire to objectivity and, even though you'll never be perfect, you will get better at it.

My biggest problem is that what most people consider "objectivity" is not actually "objective" in the sense people mean it to be at all. "Objectivity" is very specifically a bias of its own, just that in most cases it tends to be a bias towards the status quo. If those claiming "objectivity" would be more open and honest about that fact (not that I think they're being deliberately dishonest, but far more likely to be believing their own lie) I would have significantly less problem with it.

Old English did have a neuter singular pronoun. The same neuter singular pronoun that would evolve into modern English "it", and with the same non-person connotation.

Not sure who compiled that table on Wikipedia, but it's incomplete. That's the paradigm for masculine plurals you see. Wikipedia's other table shows the feminine plurals. Because of the "generic he" rule, masculine plurals were used for mixed and neuter groups, so that could be one reason for the omission of the feminine forms.

It is interesting that you should mention genderless plurals mirroring the feminine singular paradigm, though, because that's exactly what happens in German.

Thanks for the link; I was pulling my hair out because I had a feeling you knew what you were talking about but I couldn't find anything that agreed with it. The stuff I was able to find did mention multiple times that Old English pronouns was influenced some by German.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

FTFa Bare Naked Ladies reference.

Lemme put it this way: I am only just barely aware that the Bare Naked Ladies are, in fact, fully dressed men. I'm glad I got that far, at least, because otherwise I'd have been really confused.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think the biggest reason we aren't the same wavelength is that I'm trying to talk about the implications of interpersonal interactions, and why some people seem to care more about resisting change in something that is ever-changing than in treating their fellow humans with respects. Again, as much as etymology is fascinating to me, it's not really the main point of what I'm trying to get at here.



I'm not entirely sure what article you're reading, because nowhere in the article I linked to does the author discuss the formation of the English language (he, at one point very early in the article, refers to "modern English"). Secondly, subjectivity is not, by itself, any sort of red flag when it comes to academia. I happen be of the opinion, not as widely shared as I would hope I'm sure, that there is no such thing as true objectivity in humanities or social sciences. I actually prefer such works where the author's bias is clear, even when I disagree with it; I place significantly less trust in authors who pretend towards "objectivity". It should also be noted that this is a blog and not a published article (something I probably should have noted before citing it, but then this is also a web forum and not a forensics regional), which probably explains why the tone is less staid and academic, and more, well... readable.

I'm also going to ask for citations for what you have to say about Old English, because every source I've been able to find in my admittedly short jaunt through internet research land has proven completely contradictory to what you're saying. Everything I've found suggests that Old English specifically had Neuter single personal pronouns (though, granted, lined up with the masculine pronouns for "him" and "his", but not for what we would consider today as "he"), and no gender distinction in plural pronouns (which, in fact, sometimes mirrored feminine pronouns but never the masculine). Once again, I understand that etymology is subjective and contested, so I'd be happy to read from other sources that contradict these.

e: The original post came off as more hostile than I had intended.

You can't stop change but to much change that comes to fast has always created social problems doesn't matter if that change is progressive or conservative it can go either way.

Here for example there were a couple of high profile cases of trans men entering womens sports and unsurprisingly won (lifting and cycling). The liberal hippy dippy thing is "they are women let them compete" but the reality is they are men with superficial surgery and taking female hormones.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/other...nwealth-games-ban-on-transgender-weightlifter

The public restroom thing in the USA was also an issue here at schools the girls did not want transgender men in their bathrooms. Wasn't a political problem like the US more of a practical problem. NZ is probably one of the better places in the world to be trans.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation...-nz/10792980/NZ-pretty-safe-place-to-be-trans

But yeah the sporting codes here are struggling over what to do. Women can and do use male bathrooms here especially at things like rock concerts (the guys don't care) but males walking into a female bathroom can get you arrested. Technically the females in male bathrooms can as well but its not really enforced.

Most new restrooms constructed are either unisex, have a unisex option and/or have nappy changing stations. My nephews and nieces school (9-13 years old) has rainbow rooms safe rooms for the LGBT community since with 4000 students you can expec them to have 150-200 students that would identify as LBQT. At my highschool you would have got your testicles jumped on and thrown in the pool (happened in 1993/94) so times are changing and getting better. Such things usually take a generation or so to really change although the might be ahead of behind the curve when it comes to the person in the street. Being gay was legalized in the 1980's you could still get beaten up in the 90's though and such things were not exactly rare (these days it can happen but its very rare/shocking).

 

[Maxperson]

There is a biological component to most aspects of identity, gender included. But it's in the brain, not the body.

They've recently done tests--I forget precisely which tests, so I won't make a guess and risk obscuring my actual point--which show that the brains of trans individuals tend to work/behave much more like the gender with which they identify than the one they were assigned at birth.

(I apologize for using "identify." I know that term is losing favor, and for good reason, but I'm not sure how better to phrase it in this particular instance.)

So, a trans woman's brain works more like a cis woman's brain than like a man's, and vice-versa.

Yes, but things produced in the body like estrogen and testosterone can alter the brain chemistry and affect thinking. The article below talks about female to male transitions, but I was once listening to a woman on the radio who went male to female and talked about a similar effect in the opposite direction.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sc...women-hormone-treatment-men-brain-traits.html

 

[Mouseferatu]

Oh, it's all connected, absolutely. And hormones play a big part of it. My point, however, was that it's not all societal/cultural, or upbringing, or chromosomal, and certainly not all based on genitalia. That there are real, proven, scientific reasons for gender dysphoria and other potential* aspects of trans identity.

*(I say "potential" because dysphoria, while exceedingly common, is not universal in the trans community.)

 

[Eltab]

There can be no sensible reason to continue to resist singular "they" other than a defense of either the patriarchy or the gender binary, depending on one's favored "neutral" singular pronoun.

I wonder if this statement can be used as irrefutable proof of malice?

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Hamlet

 

[Eltab]

What convinces me the most, though, is that you can't "pray the gay(or gender) away." Attempts to do so almost universally fail or cause deep psychological harm to the person making the attempt. For example, the male children who feel that they are females in a male body could be "cured" if there wasn't a biological component. Instead, attempts to do so(and there are lots of attempts) cause clashes as the child feels one way and society around them pushes them to feel another. Many hurt or kill themselves. If it were only psychological or sociological, attempts to "cure" should have a much higher success rate.

I haven't followed these incidents closely, yet my first reaction was 'an unwilling patient is a recipe for failure'. The amateur status of the person / people applying the "treatment" will aggravate this. The patient would resist the treatment not respond positively to it.
Do you know of any cases where a person who wanted to change their self-identification went through one of these treatments and it succeeded (without damaging side-effects)?

 

[Eltab]

I wonder how this conversation about linguistics might be different if it was carried out in German, which has masculine and feminine pronouns attached to inanimate (and non-sexual) objects.
"The table" could be a him and "the chair" could be a her.

 

[MoonSong]

I wonder how this conversation about linguistics might be different if it was carried out in German, which has masculine and feminine pronouns attached to inanimate (and non-sexual) objects.
"The table" could be a him and "the chair" could be a her.

That's but the tip of the iceberg. Depending on the context people can be referred to using the neutral pronouns normally reserved for inanimate things. (like a teacher used to say "Children are almost people"). And using masculine and feminine forms for inanimate things is more the rule than the exception in indo-european languages. In this case I thing that English is quite unique in its strong human/non human divide and its almost vestigial -but quite strong- gender system that makes it quite easy to "invent" one's own pronouns. In German you would have to consider all of the interactions with the declination by case and in Romance languages you'd have to consider the interaction with almost every other word in the language -and there's also a limited number of vowels to work with-. And in other language families pronouns/grammatical gender doesn't really exist.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Lemme put it this way: I am only just barely aware that the Bare Naked Ladies are, in fact, fully dressed men. I'm glad I got that far, at least, because otherwise I'd have been really confused.

I remember the first time I heard of Bare Naked Ladies and that they would be performing on the Today show.

Imagine my adolescent disappointment.