| ▲ | remarkEon 4 days ago |
| This is not actually a struggle whatsoever, it only is if you pretend it is thus. Humans have 2 legs and 2 arms. It I was born without legs, am I still a human? |
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| ▲ | ben_w 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| I was born as a baby, but I sure 'aint one now. Here's another one for you, given how many people care about XX/XY as a distinction of gender: Humans have 46 chromosomes, but by this definition, about 0.6–1.0% of live births from human mothers are of individuals who aren't human. Language is a tool we use to create categories, don't let language use you. Insisting that everything in reality must conform to the categories that language already has, is mistaking the map for the territory. |
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| ▲ | remarkEon 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Language is more than a tool, though. It's how we understand reality. My native language is English, I speak a little Spanish, more than a little German, and used to speak some other stuff (the use it or lose it kind). And in every effort to learn those language you, well, learn things about how to structure your thought and understanding of things. I think you're mistaking my point for something else. | | |
| ▲ | ben_w 3 days ago | parent [-] | | In learning German as an adult, one thing I keep noticing is how a single word in one language is several in the other. English: Times, German: Mal or Zeiten. "Every time" is "jedes Mal", but "good times" is "gute Zeiten". "Three times four" uses "mal". And every time a new thing gets invented, found, or imported, neologisms pop up, or words get borrowed from other cultures. In English, robins are said to have "red breasts", because the colour orange had not yet been coined when the bird needed a name, because the fruit after which the colour is named had not yet arrived. People also argue about if "vegetarian hamburgers" is a sensible term, as if the "ham" implies meat, even though (1) the meat varieties usually use beef, and (2) it's named after the place Hamburg. Before the development of hormonal and surgical solutions, the only thing trans people could do was change their clothes. At some point, the medical options are so capable that any given previous definition of gender becomes malleable. A womb implant is one such option. | | |
| ▲ | remarkEon 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Sure, but Mal and Zeit intentionally elicit different contextual meanings. The literal word is the same in English but it's quite obvious that the context is different, and in German the context calls for a different word. English, while being within the Germanic language family, isn't as particular in many ways as German can be or is. If you can speak multiple languages surely you understand what I am getting at. Vegetarian "hamburgers" is a poor example because, well, the point of calling something a "vegetarian hamburger" is that it resembles a _real_ hamburger, which would contain meat. Thus, you now understand my point about changing language in this regard. | | |
| ▲ | ben_w 3 days ago | parent [-] | | > Thus, you now understand my point about changing language in this regard. I really don't. As I say in such discussions, "you're only allowed to call them 'hamburgers' if they're from the Hamburg region, otherwise it's just a sparkling fried patty". See also: https://xkcd.com/3075/ |
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| ▲ | BriggyDwiggs42 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If you’re writing laws, your choice of language matters quite a lot. “Humans have 2 legs and 2 arms” alongside “humans are entitled to unalienable rights” could lead to foreseeable problems, so specifying in your writing that “humans typically have two legs and two arms” would be a smarter bet. It’s not important in a hacker news comment, but is important in law. |
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| ▲ | contravariant 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| That's a gross oversimplification. Virilisation is a complex process with many factors. If you're still human if you're born without legs then clearly neither genetic or developmental traits determine someone's humanity. So at what point do we call someone a woman born without a uterus? When a 'normal' pregnancy would have resulted in them having a uterus? When different genetics would have resulted in them having a uterus? Or when she herself complains that she lacks a uterus? |
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| ▲ | remarkEon 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm applying the same logic, I'm not simplifying anything. You are using the word "humanity" to mean something different from what the rest of the thread is talking about. To address what I think your point is, many wish to expand the malleability of basic biological concepts based on edge cases. Edge cases for which we already have definitions and categories. You are doing so now, by attempting to entrench ambiguity on the entire concept of "woman" by observing that the woman in TFA was born with a specific, heritable, abnormality that prevented the nominal development of a uterus. |
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