Arete

Well said. The deeper in the weeds you get, the greyer the categories get. As an example, you would generally think alive and not alive were fairly good binary categories. But then you have obligate endosymbionts, retroviruses, virophages, facultative lysogeny, transposable elements, etc which all blur the line between organelle and self replicating life form. Obviously in an XY mating system, most individuals fall in to either XX (female) or XY (male). But one in 58 individuals is born with an intersex condition, and can be XXY, X0, XXX, or a myriad of other conditions that result in an intermediate phenotype. Further, twin studies and hormone studies have confirmed a genetic basis for transgenderism even in non-intersex, trans identifying individuals. It is a biological reality that there are human individuals that exist in a grey area between male and female. I have a friend who has Klinefelter's syndrome and identifies a non-binary, using they/them pronouns. Coincidentally, they are not a bored, agenda driven university student in a safe space.

This doesn't even make sense. We' re in not even wrong territory now.

Well, err, if you assume all of that solely from someone's gender identity... then yeah. To quote my own evolutionary medicine lecture "Nature doesn't give a fuck about your pigeonholes." Virtually any attempt to neatly categorize biological entities - into species, ecological niches, metabolic groups, functional units, gene ontology, etc etc. is fraught with exceptions, contradictions and vagaries. Gender/sex is simply no different.

No.

And yet, to quote: It's a CIVIL LAW. The only way you could go to jail is if you refused to comply with a court decision, in which case you'd go to jail for contempt of court, not discrimination.

You're wrong and your biological definitions are flawed. This position is fragile, deluded and ignorant. Individuals with Swyer syndrome have XY chromosomes and a uterus. 5% of the XX female population are infertile due to genetic conditions. 1.7% of people are born with an intersex condition. Only 0.7% of the global population identify as transgender. No one is going to jail because that's not how discrimination laws work. That's a strawman argument. You still have no explanation as to why this doesn't apply to other categories that are legally protected from discrimination. The "Oh no, someone's going to change their pronouns every hour and throw me in jail if I get them wrong!" argument has all the veracity of the "If we let the trangenders use the women's bathroom, rapists will dress in drag and sneak in to rape women!" (i.e. none).

Except: Here you state your position is that you would refuse to acknowledge an individual's gender identity if, in your opinion, their physical appearance did not meet your personal expectations of that gender identity - but you would accept a person's gender identity if it did match your preconceived notions of gender. Which is by definition, discrimination based on gender identity. So either you've changed your stance since page 15, or you're just persisting with the emotional outbursts because you don't like being called on your position being flawed. If you consistently choose to acknowledge one individual's preferred gender identity, but not another person's, you're discriminating. I'm yet to see a valid argument why gender identity is distinct from other protected classes, or why its inclusion would suddenly impinge on the freedoms of others in a manner that existing anti-discrimination legislation doesn't already.

Your argument boils down to "It's my right to discriminate against others based on how they identify", which you justified with a suite of logically fallacious reasoning, such as slippery slope, argumentum ad martyrdom and emotive outbursts. To me, personally, you did not present any objectively strong or valid arguments, rather one that contradicts the biological fact that gender is not fixed nor binary, and wreaks of your own fragility and ignorance. There's certainly political ideologies that embrace the same line of thinking as you and Peterson with many adherents, just not ones I personally have any respect for.

Citing low probability as a dismissal of evolution is a form of the irreducible complexity fallacy. An experiment I do in my classes is to get every member of the class to roll a dice. Their result is written on the board to produce a sequence. The probability of the sequence is determined as 1/6 to the power of the number of students in the class. This is inevitably a very, very small number. I then state "It took X minutes to produce an event with Y probability of happening. What's the probability of each possible combination? (answer: Y). What's the probability of getting a result (Answer: 1)." Most students get the point and we can move beyond the fallacious argument.

Even if one of them does happen to be right, by definition - most religions are made up, delusional, subjective versions of reality. Yet, in most Western democracies you are legally protected from discrimination based on religious affiliation. Your argument could be applied to that as well - an individual could abuse that law - change religion every second day, making up ridiculous and continuously variable exemptions and accommodations, demanding you apply them. Yet religious affiliation remains protected from discrimination by law. As a counter: 1) The minimal risk of the rules being abused is acceptable if they effectively prevent the genuine discrimination and harassment of a marginalized group. 2) One of the reasons a discrimination case needs to be prosecuted in a court is to determine if the behaviors alleged meet the criteria of discrimination. If the requested accommodations do not meet the criteria of being reasonable, the case would generally be dismissed. The law does not protect unreasonable requests for accommodation. 3) The extreme hypothetical examples tend not to play out in reality. I've never met a person who routinely changed their gender identity, religious affiliation, racial identity or sexual orientation.

This has been my point all along - no one is dictating what Peterson or anyone else is allowed to think or say, but proposing that he not be allowed to discriminate against others because of those beliefs. If your version of "free speech" includes the supposed right to discriminate against others based on their race, sex, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity - call me an anti freedom fascist if you like, but I don't believe it is your right. In most cases the laws of western countries agree with my position.

Say a hypothetical person is a white supremacist, and their opinion is that non-white people are subhuman. Now say that person works in a multicultural workplace, where they are a manager. Should we just rely on their sense of common courtesy to treat their non-white staff decently?

It's a gender neutral pronoun. Like "he" is a male pronoun and "she" is a female pronoun. It's really not harder than that, and I'm not sure how it supposedly invalidates the analogy. Plenty of names for people have no meaning. As to how a person arrived at the preference of using a gender neutral pronoun - I can imagine a number of conditions - Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), Androgen insensitivity syndrome(AIS), Gonadal Dysgenesis, 5-Alpha Reductase Deficiency, etc might result in someone deciding to identify as neither male nor female. But ultimately does it matter? Say I have a student whose name on the roll says "Sarah" and they tell me they prefer "Kasey". Do I need to know why in order to comply with the request? Again we are going in circles, but we're talking about discrimination law. Peterson and you can espouse all you like that pronouns are stupid, transgerderism is a mental disease, sex is binary, etc, etc. You just can't discriminate against someone because of their gender identity - which means you can't single them out and treat them differently.

I disagree - that's the EXACT point of Peterson's argument. He doesn't believe in transgenderism (despite the extensive scientific basis of it), and is claiming that being asked to use a student's preferred pronouns is a violation of his free speech rights. His subtle, intentional discrimination is that he would be happy to use the preferred pronouns of cis-gender appearing students, but not those whose physical appearance does not conform to his assumptions of gender presentation, because of his personal (and IMO fundamentally wrong) opinion that their identity is not valid. We're going in circles, but he's arguing that it is his right to discriminate against people who do not conform to gender norms. I'm pointing out that it's not for other protected classes, and asking why transgender people shouldn't be afforded the same protections as religion, race, sexual orientation, etc.

So, imagine I'm a professor teaching a class. I refer to students by their preferred first names. Plenty of people go by things different from what's on their birth certificates. Some are kind of odd, but generally I do my best to pronounce people's names the way they ask, and not mix up people's names. I make the odd mistake, but generally that's how it goes. Except for the African American kid. I call him "boy" because that's what we call black folks where I'm from. He repeatedly tells me his name is Paul, but I insist on calling him "boy" whilst using everyone else in the classes preferred name. Paul complains to the University office for the Prevention of Discrimination and Harrassment, who determine that I have violated both institutional policy and federal employment laws by discriminating based on race. I have to face a disciplinary hearing and might get fired. Now replace "name" with "pronoun" and "African American" with "transgender". Explain why it wouldn't be discrimination based on gender identity.

Such an erudite and eloquent argument. Did you learn that from the Harvard College Debating Union? Color me completely convinced of the veracity of your point of view. To summarize: 1) You have the right to be a small minded bigot. 2) You don't have the right to hurt other people because of your small minded bigotry. If that makes you feel oppressed, then as per my first post in the thread 6 pages back, I'll play you a melody on my tiny violin. I think we're probably done here.

And this is why we can't have nice things. Despite the fact it has clearly been outlined, explained and evidenced ad nauseum that this is an issue in the trans community - to the point where trans people whose pronouns are respected are half as likely to kill themselves than those whose aren't, the response is to mock and trivialize the issue. Thus aptly demonstrating why we can't rely on common courtesy and goodwill towards others to prevent discrimination, and need laws.

Because that's a strawman? Trundling all the way back to page 8 to quote my first post in the thread: "No one is forcing him to believe in gender dysphoria, or accept the biological fact that gender is not fixed at birth. They are compelling him not to discriminate against those who do. As such, his right to question the validity of gender fluidity remains protected. The only thing being taken away is his "right" to discriminate against specific individuals based on their identity. Which brings the argument down to "You are denying my "right" to treat people differently based on their gender identity" which, yes - is the intent of the law. Watch me play this tiny violin. "

You literally quoted me saying genetically intersex individuals, then cited statistics pertaining to gender dysphoria in the same post.

Intersex and gender dysphoria are not the same thing and confounding them shows a considerable lack of understanding.

The generally accepted proportion of the population who have intersex genetic conditions is 1.7%, so no, you can't.

How do you distinguish between a genetically intersex person asking you to use their preferred pronoun, and a "moron"? Can you sequence genomes with your mind?

Sure so long as we stick with an elementary school understanding of biology and ignore the inconvenient bits, like the existence of genetically intersexed humans, and XX individuals who are infertile.

As per my first post in the thread: 1) A significant proportion of humans are born either intersexed or phenotypically gender fluid. Gender dysphoria has physiological basis. Gender/sex is not binary - that's a biological reality. 2) You have no way to determine if an individual is "biologically capable of bearing children" based on physical appearance. 3) You're demanding everyone else conforms to your delusional misunderstanding of biology, even at the expense of real harm to others. I therefore have no sympathy for your, or Peterson's asinine position.

"Peterson said that if a student asked him to be referred to by a non-binary pronoun, he would not recognize their request: “I don’t recognize another person’s right to determine what pronouns I use to address them. I won’t do it.” He also argues against the existence of non-binary gender identities, or those that are not exclusively masculine or feminine‍, saying “I don’t think there’s any evidence for it.” In his own words, he insists it his "right" to only use pronouns of his choice, regardless of a person's wishes. I didn't twist his views at all - I simply chose an example (it/its/that) that I was reasonably sure would cause you offense.