\o @A.B. if you want to rant at me here you can

Ah, I don't know. I just don't know what I'm allowed to say.

I seem to've got left behind on the subject of transgender things and it's making my life increasingly difficult on the Internet.

Do you know any more about it than I do?

Well, maybe? I'm... darn, I haven't said this on RPG yet, have I? I'm genderqueer myself, and I have a few friends who are likewise.

Nice

For me, personally, I pass as cis female (meaning that I present to the world as a regular girl), accept she/her pronouns at all times, but sometimes I "feel" like I'm male or "none of the above".

The RPG.SE chat rooms are as trans-friendly a space as the everyday users can make them, considering we're on a platform where any rando can wander in at any time and the site's host company has a poor track record with cracking down on abuse.

So I'd better go?

You have been fine! Asking is not a crime.

It sounds like you want to learn, and that's awesome. We know that ignorance is not the same as malice.

What’s this article about and why has it upset you?

Well, here's what I thought up to now. I'm going out on a limb here, because I'm not sure if I've ever actually said anything as straightforward as this before.

I generally just give up because I can't work out how to relate what I'm thinking to the allowable terminology.

Used to be, (a) there were males and there were females (with a few biological exceptions), and (b) there were social roles that were supposed to go with that.

Then feminism came along and we decided that (b) was unnecessary and a load of hogwash.

(And yes, I'm on the feminist side.)

@A.B. Gender roles have varied across cultures throughout recorded history.

It’s probably miopic and anachronistic to make an identification between gender and whatever social roles you’re familiar with, in a “this is right” sort of sense.

That's true. Rather more limited statement I'd made than I thought, there. I was just referring to recent Western history, and forgetting for a moment that it was different in some other times and places. Anyway, I was just referring to recent Western history.

A "this is right" sense? Nothing of the sort. I was saying I thought we'd got over that. Or at least some of us had and got as far as popularising the idea of getting over it, anyway.

Oh I see.

And now, well, I don't know what the heck.

It's almost as if people have gone back to saying that whether you're male or female is inextricably linked to personality and social role and then dealt with it by changing the male and female.

I may be missing something, or several things.

Western history also has people we'd call "trans" now, though they tend to get glossed over as, for example, people who wouldn't have acted like men except the society wouldn't let them [fight/be a doctor/etc] unless they presented as men.

I'm inclined not to try and label people as trans or cis (or gay or straight, etc) posthumously, but it's important to see what they were doing and learn from it even without slapping a modern label on them.

Well, my trouble is I'm not happy with the concept of "acting like men"!

Oh, 100%.

Here's the article, if I can find it.

It's from a couple of years back, actually.

pinknews.co.uk/2019/09/11/…

Yeah, that might help give some context for your concerns.

Well, it's not the first time. But still.

(I bumped into it while doing a Web search to find out why there was a gay crab emoji. Turns out there wasn't, I'd mistaken a custom one in Discord for a standard one.)

that's... what

Wow, you almost have to admire the effort it must take for Piers Morgan to be so consistently an absolute [censored].

So, is there a specific question/concern you'd like people to try and help you address here?

(I may have to leave this discussion without warning; I've got a lot of emotional stuff today and don't know if/when it'll tip over.)

For those not familiar: acting like an angry three-year-old on live TV is kind of Piers Morgan's thang. :-P

But I can kind of see his point here.

I suppose the confusing thing about it is that we've got "male" and "female" meaning two different things now, one of which I'm not sure they ever used to mean.

I'm not entirely sanguine with a museum using animals to "start a conversation" about something rather unique to specific human cultures. It doesn't feel like the right kind of experts to facilitate the conversation, nor the right comparison to be drawing.

Has big "Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about sociology" vibes.

It sounds to me like they got carried away after the whole "gay penguins" thing.

"They" = ?

And yeah, the English language's ability to differentiate between gender and sex in the vernacular is, let's say it's evolving.

The zoo.

While I think it's really important to be careful with our words, getting prescriptive with labels leads to problems as well. It's a very complicated, nuanced thing that makes it easy for people like Morgan to exploit in bad faith, and for well-meaning experts in unrelated fields like zoology to think they're equipped to be spokespeople for.

That worked. I don't think this did. I mean, what does it even mean? The penguins presumably have no idea they said that, and the humans don't get a vote.

"That" = ? "this" = ?

Unless they were presenting it as a joke, like to say "whether we're calling this chick gender-neutral or not doesn't matter because penguins don't know what that means". But there's no mention that they did.

Bobble - got rather left behind. If you scroll up through my comments it makes sense.

It was supposed to follow directly from "they got carried away after the whole 'gay penguins' thing".

Returning to "male" and "female" meaning two different things now, one of which I'm not sure they ever used to mean: it ends up with a weird thing where it sounds, if you don't know or don't buy the idea that there is necessarily some kind of "socially male or female" unrelated to sex, as if you're being asked to say that people are physically male or female when they're factually not.

re: male and female, man and woman. These are words that mean different things in different contexts. Sometimes "male" means something specific about gametes, but that's only true when having a conversation about the scientific topics where that definition is useful.

It would be obviously wrong to insist that an electrical plug can't be male because it doesn't have male gametes, and that same contextual logic can be applied to most other situations. People who insist on using one technical definition every time the word is used anywhere, are either confused or deliberately making trouble.

Well, in that case, I think that the other definition of "male" and "female" is outdated sexist claptrap that should die already.

We navigate this kind of linguistic multiplicity every day.

I think it's useful to be able to talk about cultural expectations for masculine and feminine roles, but without assigning either moral weight or biological essentialism to them.

You may have a point.

Biological sex is important for some things - medical stuff and sexual intercourse are the two main ones I can think of right now

Obviously it's not a be-all end-all, but it matters in certain contexts. Ideally it would be decoupled from gender and gender presentation.

And a lot of people find it helpful to think of their gender as masculine or feminine. For myself, I spent a good while considering whether I might be trans and/or nonbinary, and while my conclusion was "no," it led me to thinking carefully and deliberately about what being a cis man means to me and my role in the world: my dissatifaction with my gender wasn't because I'm not a man, but rather because of the unnecessary and toxic things that cultures were telling me it meant to be a man.

I want to be a man, I'm happy being a man, but only because I've started taking control of what that means for me in my cultures, by embracing some aspects and rejecting others, and being okay that a lot of my identity doesn't match any of my cultures' ideas of manliness because being a man isn't the ONLY thing I am.

I have myself firmly in the "Not Sure" column for gender and sexual orientation. (Reduced social interaction during COVID hasn't helped the "bobble figures herself out" project)

True. If we do have a useful purpose for keeping on referring to the two enormous social categories that have historically gone with the two sexes, I think it's a pity we can't call them something else. Then the transgender people wouldn't have to feel that any allusion to the fact that they're physically male or female is implying that they

ought to go back to the social category with the same name, and nobody would have to be confused by apparently being ordered to say that people are physically male or female when they aren't. But language does as it likes.

@bobble That's a perfectly fine place to be, so long as you're okay being there!

Yep!

"Masculine" and "feminine" are probably the closest we can get in English at the moment, and even they sound a lot like they mean "what males ought to be like" and "what females ought to be like".

I live in a place surrounded by cultures with three or four genders, which they've had since before the Westerners ever arrived in their clumsy oversized ships.

I think I remember you mentioning that before. Good for them, it's always cheering to hear about somewhere that does things entirely differently. So much for it being inevitable, kind of thing. I was tickled when I found out about the whole "two-spirit" thing.

Yeah, and two-spirit is an umbrella term for dozens of different genders from different tribes.

I'd forgotten the details but I guessed as much, it's always hard to think of anything all the American tribes agree on. Well, it's a whole continent, not surprising.

And going back both recently and long ago in Europe you'll find lots of different ways of dealing with gender and social roles.

But you'll also see a lot of evolution of terminology.

For example, there are people who argue about whether specific figures in recent queer history, like major players in the Stonewall uprising, were technically transgender. Because the term didn't really exist in the queer community at the time, they used the terms of their period and I think it's not very helpful to split hairs about what words they would have used today. It's more important to know how they lived.

Probably right there.

here is a twitter link to pages from a book about the history of queerness in Jewish communities. The pages photographed are about a Jewish man in a 19th century community who would probably be called trans today. (CW the author indulges in unnecessary speculation about the specifics of the man's physical transitioning)

I mean, transgender is itself only a thing because of external social factors, unless I'm missing something, other people's views about what "the roles of men and women" are, so what category somebody really belongs in does depend on what society they lived in.

That depends on the specific trans person. I know a trans woman for whom her gender isn't really social at all, but comes from a deep, private, internal place.

Her gender is a physical experience for her, more than a social one.

"Trans" is an umbrella term as well, and I think that gets glossed over a lot in outward-facing conversations.

Hmm, I have vaguely heard about that kind of thing, and that's one reason why I kept saying "I may be missing something" so much.

Yes, it's not even just a spectrum, it means a heck of a lot of things some of which are also spectra.

Roughly speaking, my understanding is that 'trans' can be used as an umbrella term for anyone who falls into 'not cis.' Which includes binary transition (between male and female) with any degree of social or physical change, but can also include non-conforming, nonbinary, fluid, etc.

All of which have their own galaxies of reality and expression, and all of which are arrived at from any number of paths and for any number of reasons.

I know some people who would label me gender non-conforming, but I feel like that would only be true within a narrower cultural conception of maleness than I move in.

I like "genderqueer" for that reason. "Transgender" has a medical/technical look to it which makes it look like it means something monolithic and specific, and I think some people will say it does (and some will say it doesn't and some will get offended if you ask them what definition they're using). "Genderqueer", if I've got this right, specifically just means "something complicated".

I use "genderqueer" to mean "it's complicated"

Yep!

(eg, in the culture of my ancestors, my long hair would be considered a decidedly feminine trait. But in many of the cultures that I've grown up with, long hair is an entirely gender-neutral choice.)

(Also, it's 10PM and I have school tomorrow, g'night)

Goodnight!

The expression "gender non-conforming" as a sort of medical term grinds my gears. A few decades ago, women fought for the right not to conform to their gender. Now it's a psychological symptom?

Mmm. There's... complex discussions... around the use of various terms.

Medicalizing queerness is sometimes seen as a validating tactic, "Look, medical science says we exist!" is a tempting argument to use in working for queer rights. But given the history of medicine being weaponized against queerness, and that many feel not all queerness is medical in the first place, it's often seen as a double-edged sword at best.

In the popular discourse, however, they're often the best-understood terms available and they get used to make the concepts more approachable.

(Any discussion about the vocabulary of queerness, has to at least make a nod to the fact that the last hundred years saw two generations of queer people wiped out, effectively depriving the next generations of the learning of their elders and setting back the internal discourse by decades--and that one of those exterminations was accompanied by a systematic destruction of scholarship, as well.)

@A.B. hiya, person who describes themselves as gender non conforming here. I use gender nonconforming as a way of labeling myself sometimes because my gender identity is really weird even to me — at various times in the last two years I’ve identified as cis female, nonbinary, agender, genderfluid, and “you know what? I don’t need to explain this to anyone but myself”, but all of those are kinda hard to explain to the people in my life who are less involved in LGBTQIA+ stuff

We use the words we have.

And the ability to use our words with people who aren't us is a privilege many humans don't get.

@BESW I see your point. It reminds me of autism. Not quite the same, but sometimes I say, "I don't always do this the same as other people because I have Asperger's syndrome", and I'm thinking "Actually, it's probably just because I'm contrary".

@BardicWizard Hi! Some of that sounds like me - I just don't see why I should do things the way people expect females to if I don't like those things.

It's the contrariwise position of the earlier thing I was saying, about applying jargon definitions outside of the space where that jargon makes sense to use. Sometimes the right word, or the right definition of a word, is one that the people we're talking with don't know--or maybe we don't know it ourselves yet.

So we use the word that we have which will facilitate understanding the best, and we hope it works out.

"You know what, mind your own business" sounds a good gender identity :-)

@A.B. For most of my life, my sexuality has been "If you have to ask, you don't need to know."

@A.B. it takes a long time to explain how I actually feel about the concept of gender in a lot of ways so I just stopped doing it

The problem with gender is that it’s in a weird space between personal and public so it’s extra complicated.

Oof yes

I also should go to bed, just stopping by for a visit

Good to see you!

@Someone_Evil :57671998 You seem to read "undue process" as being inherently malicious. I'm perturbed. Because you do something wrong doesn't mean that you do it with malicious intent. I have raised concerns about the process and stated that your actions come from a desire to help.

@Akixkisu Ah... I think it may have been the phrase "exerted undue influence" that mislead my reading of the answer slightly.

I can assure you the intent was not to lock in the result for all time, and at the time of posting the signpost, the last discussion had been considered locked and done for months

I suppose we could have put up a note/statement on how we treated lingering votes on that discussion (and why), but that's never been needed before and sometimes you don't realize what needed to be done until afterwards (and someone complains about something)

@Someone_Evil yes, things like that are due for the process, bound to happen.

I think there is something useful to bring up on this topic, and I appreciate that. I still think it focuses too much on the wrong events, and too much on 'moderator actions' and that that ends up distracting from the actually useful aspects to discuss. That might just be preference though

@Someone_Evil it is difficult to write, since the the format focuses on one issue. I'm certain that there is a better way to construct that post.

The unfortunate reality is that whenever it is a moderator action/proposal/etc. , the weight of that action is different from what a regular user carries (some users opinions might carry more weight due to their reputation).

So when an official diamond star moderator proposes an official faq, then that has different consequences.

That meta will be very difficult to write, I'm frankly glad that I don't have to do that.

OOh, do we get stars too now :p

But I do hear you

Tangentally there isn't nominally anything stopping us from just putting up something with the faq tag, and the proposal thing is just a suggestion for it to be so. And if we put it up just as a suggestion that's intended to be a signal that disagreement with that is valid, and we'd love to hear the constructive reason why it shouldn't be, or what needs to be fixed first

We put up the index thing in part because just staring at the backlog of proposals wasn't producing actions, and getting community eyes in on it is useful and healthy

Hmm... that ended up sounding like we can just do with it what we want which wasn't really what I was going for...

Haha, you could, but it would have consequences.

As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing wrong with the content. The issue lies within the cirumstances.

Any one could do that, I could add the faq tag to something.

Someone would probably revert it quickly.

Pretty sure all the red meta tags require a diamond to put on

Maybe, so I might be wrong.

I know that I can remove it.

We don't really have a well defined proccess for adding things to the faq.

Historically, it seems like that if the ratio is less than 25% downvotes, then it will end up as an entry eventually.

@Akixkisu You're not supposed to be able to remove them. Does the edit actually go through if you try?

let us test, It is the tag line edit.

Nope, so nvm.

I'm not sure we'd be able to, nor really need as well defined (formal) process. The needs are gonna be shifting and the volume of actions fairly low

Only you can do that.

I can save the draft without it, so it gave me the wrong impression.

@Someone_Evil I agree.

Huh, does the question review thingy shout at you for it?

@Someone_Evil only when I propose the edit.

Which is good enough, I guess.

Complicated things get more complicated when there is no formal process due to the stakes involved therein. But not having a well-defined process is probably better in most cases.

Since we are still vaguely talking about the events, to which one are you referring regarding the second time that long-term votes changed the outcome of the Dgts?

The "5e" specific one, in that case we went with a revisit to address it, but that seemed to rapid/not the right thing to do with the main one as it were

@Someone_Evil rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11281/… this one was pretty clean, I'm confused what lingering votes you mean.

The linger votes where on the question it revisited

Ah, true.

I wonder if lingering votes primarily come from less vocal people.

In any case, I don't think that they are less valuable, they tend to indicate change according to concurrent events.

This is desirable unless one wants to preserve a particular snapshot in time - it is an ongoing discussion after all.

They may, but anyone who disagree with the status quo is gonna be more incentivised to vote on it, and that includes drivebys who aren't part of the community doing the moderation and curation which it related to. So then it becomes hard to trust the votes as representative of the community

The community at large is bigger than the 20 people that actively curate at a given time.

And often, that in-group differs from that community at large.

The note from the mods locking in the decision is sorta supposed to do that, locking in the resultant decision, though that hasn't needed to stand up to a change in votes before (AFAIK, if there's some event way back none has told me about it yet)

@Someone_Evil yup, I'm not sure that this approach, which does not represent our less vocal parts of our community, is helpful. I think it is better to look at magnitudes, so whenever a stance is voted on by a significant margin, regardless of when that margin occures.

It is good to give things a little time initially to settle.

But regarding significant change when it happens later down the line is something that we should respect.

I'm not sure that's a meaningful change. I'm not sure who decides on significant, nor when. I'm not trying to ignore the lingering votes, I'm giving one of the reasons it can't automatically change the outcome

In the first case, doing a revisit was an easy fix (which also went startlingly well), but to borrow Korvin's words I'm hesitant we pick more at the scab

Not that I'm sure that's a good analogy

It is difficult when there is no clear consensus on the topic.

We are currently sitting at a 7 score gap, in lots of questions that would be a significant margin, but I don't think it is one in this particular case.

Huh, both the top answers are sitting on 58 upvotes, currently only differing in the number of downvotes.

@Akixkisu Also just new users in general

@Medix2 yes, new voices are also an important factor.

@Someone_Evil yup, remarkable. That score gap is only a difference in downvotes.

It would be neat to know the distribution but that would probably be a bad idea. Things like "how many of the upvotes to one are accompanied by a downvote to the other by the same user"

We can't have that data, but I still get to endlessly wonder about if people vote on both the same way XD