It’s not uncommon for sites and organizations to actively prompt for pronouns, which are labels. It’s generally accepted that minority groups can change their labels by group consensus - Redskins, to Indians, to American Indians, to Native Americans. Labels change, and this is accepted as a good thing, because identity is important to mental health.
Where do you draw the line? At what point do you think it’s justified to deny someone the right to decide their own labels?
Personally, I think it falls broadly under the paradox is tolerance, and there’s a point where someone is clearly just being contrarian. They resent self-labeling. But if someone consistently insists they’re vegan, at some point I have to ask: what gives me the right to insist they aren’t? If you go down the rabbit hole is insisting on dictionary definitions, you quickly get into a quagmire with things most of us agree on: many laws and dictionaries are wrong about their definitions of marriage, male, and female.
I think it’s an interesting topic, although I suppose almost everybody has already made up their minds one way out the other on the topic, and are frankly tired; most people automatically see anyone debating it as pushing some agenda.
But the paradox is tolerance is something I think progressives (liberals, the Left… that’s a whole different fight, on Lemmy) are still struggling with, and I’m interested in how we collectively resolve it. So when it comes up, I’m always interested in how people are thinking about this.
Dogmatic? Morally superior? Angry that people are changing the meanings of words that clearly already have a meaning?
Where does a person’s right to choose their labels (e.g., their pronouns, their identity) stop?
The pronouns one prefers are part of the internal experience they have.
Similarly names are a label that one chooses to respond to.
Whereas other labels are related to things one does, which can be externally verified. If someone describes themselves as a doctor, but has no practice or medical certificate, it is reasonable to not apply that label to them. No matter how much they insist otherwise.
Yes, words change, and the meanings too. But since that happens for even the most mundane object, we can’t really be surprised to see it happen to more complicated concepts :p
So for me, the barrier is internal experience vs. External reality.
I like your take on it; the issue comes in that conflict where external labels don’t align with internal pronouns (or any other form of self-identity, such as identifying as a particular race despite genetic dominance). We want to respect people’s self-image, when we can, don’t we?
For me, it’s the good faith test. It can be difficult, or impossible, to determine bad faith, but sometimes it’s obvious. Trans people usually seem sincere about their identities, so I take them at face value. A meat eater insisting they be called ‘vegan’ is just mocking self-identification and kicking back at the whole pronouns thing, for whatever reason. That’s not good faith; that’s being contrarian.
That’s my line, until someone convinces me of a better one.
Who told you that?
Some labels are self applied, sure, but others reflect your actions.
It’s not uncommon for sites and organizations to actively prompt for pronouns, which are labels. It’s generally accepted that minority groups can change their labels by group consensus - Redskins, to Indians, to American Indians, to Native Americans. Labels change, and this is accepted as a good thing, because identity is important to mental health.
Where do you draw the line? At what point do you think it’s justified to deny someone the right to decide their own labels?
Personally, I think it falls broadly under the paradox is tolerance, and there’s a point where someone is clearly just being contrarian. They resent self-labeling. But if someone consistently insists they’re vegan, at some point I have to ask: what gives me the right to insist they aren’t? If you go down the rabbit hole is insisting on dictionary definitions, you quickly get into a quagmire with things most of us agree on: many laws and dictionaries are wrong about their definitions of marriage, male, and female.
I think it’s an interesting topic, although I suppose almost everybody has already made up their minds one way out the other on the topic, and are frankly tired; most people automatically see anyone debating it as pushing some agenda.
But the paradox is tolerance is something I think progressives (liberals, the Left… that’s a whole different fight, on Lemmy) are still struggling with, and I’m interested in how we collectively resolve it. So when it comes up, I’m always interested in how people are thinking about this.
Dogmatic? Morally superior? Angry that people are changing the meanings of words that clearly already have a meaning?
Where does a person’s right to choose their labels (e.g., their pronouns, their identity) stop?
The barrier is internal vs external.
The pronouns one prefers are part of the internal experience they have.
Similarly names are a label that one chooses to respond to.
Whereas other labels are related to things one does, which can be externally verified. If someone describes themselves as a doctor, but has no practice or medical certificate, it is reasonable to not apply that label to them. No matter how much they insist otherwise.
Yes, words change, and the meanings too. But since that happens for even the most mundane object, we can’t really be surprised to see it happen to more complicated concepts :p
So for me, the barrier is internal experience vs. External reality.
Where do you draw the line?
I like your take on it; the issue comes in that conflict where external labels don’t align with internal pronouns (or any other form of self-identity, such as identifying as a particular race despite genetic dominance). We want to respect people’s self-image, when we can, don’t we?
For me, it’s the good faith test. It can be difficult, or impossible, to determine bad faith, but sometimes it’s obvious. Trans people usually seem sincere about their identities, so I take them at face value. A meat eater insisting they be called ‘vegan’ is just mocking self-identification and kicking back at the whole pronouns thing, for whatever reason. That’s not good faith; that’s being contrarian.
That’s my line, until someone convinces me of a better one.