What is wrong with Political Correctness in some cases?

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To clarify my position and to expand on what cube said earlier--” Gender” in the sense we’re using it is a subjective term. It always has been. If you look at the more old-fashioned masculine/feminine way of identifying gender, you still have the issues of what exactly defines it. That puts gender on a continuum or spectrum. I have a thick beard and a handlebar mustache, so I’d say I’m fairly masculine. But people say I walk funny. I have man-boobs. I have pretty hands. I have a difficult time building muscle mass--I plateau early. But my wife says I’m all man in the sack. I play the piano, the clarinet, and the flute. So what am I exactly? A little bit of everything, maybe? But I think if we’re being honest, all guys are a little bit feminine and all girls are a little bit masculine. As to EXACTLY being one gender or another, it’s not practical to say that any one of those objectively exists in any meaningful way.

Sex, though, is entirely biological. It's entirely genetic. XX or XY under ordinary situations, with variances that occasionally happen outside the norm. And since this something we can know from nature, it's not a simple matter of opinion. It exists apart from the mind, therefore it is an objective reality.

I don't have as high a regard for subjectivity. I do understand that people subjectively feel differently than their biological sex and perhaps we need psychological strategies for addressing that or any issues that arise from it. But it shouldn't be offensive to anyone if gender as understood isn't objectively real. It just means we don't understand our world in strictly objective terms.

^^^

---

For me at Least, and in my Opinion,
The More We Integrate Our Human Potentials,
Including The Masculine and Feminine Potentials

We May Have As Stereotyped in the Past; the More
Whole Human Beings We Become, Better Able to Cooperate

With Other Folks as Whole too; From my Experience online,
About 9 Out of 10 Folks Who Write Poetry Are Women; And

There Surely Aren't Many Dudes, Doing a Graceful Ballet-Like
Dance Where i Live in Public; Yet if They Understand How Closely Related
Ballet is to Martial Arts, Like Bruce Lee and Claude Van Damme Did And Do too,

They May Come to Better See Graceful Balance Brings More Peace, Less Fear, And More Strength...

And in my Opinion, The Term 'Chi' That is Thrown Around is This Laser Focus in Graceful Flow This Way That
Provides A Greater Opportunity for Explosive Strength; Not Unlike a Lion Totally Motionless Before They Strike.

When The Elite Military Dudes See me Warming Up Gracefully Like that Gradually Filling The Leg Press Machine
With Up to 1520 Pounds in 45 Pound Plates; And Yes i Leg Press it Multiple Reps With My Arms Raised
To The Sky in Balance; Hehe, At Least it is a Hint That there is Utility in my Graceful Warm-up; i Haven't

Got Any
'Challenges' on
it, When it is
Accompanied
With 3 Quarters of a Ton;

It Surely isn't 'Politically Correct'
in A Military Gym That Trains Warriors;

Yet in Places Where it is Understood, it is Well Received;
Like Most Everything Else in Life, When Folks Understand it,

They Are better
able to accept it;

And Even Practice
New Ways of Being
That Bring Greater
Human Potentials to Fruition...

Of Course, i'm Still the Only one
That Warms Up This Way at the Local Military Gym;
And The Only one i've Seen even Budge That Much Weight...

An Issue of Course is Dudes Worried About What The Other Dudes
Might Think of them,
if they dare to Move
Outside Parameters

of Before;

Oh, to Be
Free of
that
'Nonsense';

Such Freedom indeed;

Yet of Course, When it comes
to Being Promoted And the Such
in Work Life, only if You meet the
Grade of Group Think; A Necessity
it May Be For Basic Survival As Well;

Go Figure, Part of 'the Poison' of 'Tradition';
And In this Case of Course "Being Politically Correct;"

It's A
Complex
Issue All
The Way Around...

And An Art For Either
Moving or Staying in
The Caves oF 'Old Days'..

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Now you're talking That's the clearest explanation of the matter I've seen yet, and so far I think I'd largely agree with it. I suppose these two terms "gender" and "sex" are what I know as "genotype" and "phenotype," the first being presumably an objective test that can only come out in one of two possible ways (boy or girl).

The second term (phenotype, or gender if you like) is about the observable characteristics. And those are a mixed bag, some that correlate fairly well with the genotype (such as the possession of a penis), others not so well (such as an aversion to wearing pink, or disliking flowers). So it would be a rare male who checked every conceivable box of the male phenotype, and it's also rare for a male to check none of the boxes. Some of these "gender" things are less under the individual's control than others. Some of them have been put there by the insistence of one culture or another, others are beyond a culture's power to do much about. So I rather suspect the eggheads have goofed somewhere, and are applying a single label to a collection of things that require at least two groups to describe them better.

I don't think the non-acceptance of the value of the term "gender-as-opposed-to-sex" in the way it's currently being taught is a threat in itself to anybody. I think the only real threat would come from an insistence that everybody must be simply boy or girl (as supposedly ordained and set in stone at birth) and the willingness to ostracise those who don't comply with that.

The fear is being ostracized BECAUSE of compliance. It’s more difficult to get people to accept something when there’s not an objective reason to do so.

I mean, isn’t it just plain and obvious that boys are boys and girls are girls? Why don’t you just say down is up and up is down? 2+2=5.

I mean, if it’s all subjective anyway, why is there such a need to coerce people into accepting something that seems so self-evidently false? It’s not simply a matter of wanting people to stop bullying others. It’s a matter of whether people are allowed to believe as they wish and rely on objective reality as the basis for reason and action.

I would say you can prefer certain pronouns all day long, but if gender is fluid and subjective, you cannot reasonably expect someone to think of you or behave towards you as anything else besides who or what you objectively are. Objectively speaking, how you regard yourself is your own business. You cannot force others to respect you howeve you want, but you can reasonably expect people to leave you alone if you don’t like what they have to say. Just remember who’s house you’re in.

I am talking in terms of "culture" that Australia and USA are part of the "Anglosphere" and firmly in what is classified as "Western European" in both terms of heritage. sport, government, politics, language, religion etc...

Apartheid in South Africa was an attempt to maintain a seperate "western European" island in the middle of Africa....the little experiment did not work but South Africa is still culturally dominated by a minority culture/;language

Argentina was created out of the genocide of native and slave populations whom dominate other South American countries. Peron (and many of his predecessors) attempted to create a Spanish speaking European nation

Both the population of Argentina and South Africa (like the US) were heavily brainwashed to believe in hatred of non-European populations.

All of that political axe grinding is a seperate topic, and beside the point.

The point is that you make yourself look ignorant if you label countries on continents that are not Europe "European".
In another post you talked about Brazil as being "a European country" as if you had dropped out of school in the fifth grade and never took middle school geography and thought that Brazil was part of Europe.

Maybe thats the norm in your country- maybe you Australians call your country "European".

We White Americans are aware that our ancestors came from Europe, but we never refer to the US as a "European country". So if you refer to us that way to us it sounds dumb.

If what you mean is "a country outside of Europe, but populated by the descendants of European colonist" then you need some other way to say it than "European".

I'm sorry but this is not biologically accurate.

Sex is not entirely genetic, it's much more complicated than that. It isn't objective, either, there are judgement calls to be made. And moreover, it's rather silly to pretend that our assessment of other people's sex is based on whether they have a Y chromosome (or more accurately, whether they have a functioning copy of SRY). Unless you're literally working in a genetics laboratory, you use sexual characteristics to try to judge someone's sex. You can, in some circumstances, use primary characteristics (if you can see their genitals, or if they are clearly pregnant), but it will be much more common to use secondary characteristics. And if you're using secondary characteristics, well, those aren't necessarily genetically determined. And suddenly we have a version of sex which does not exist independently of the human mind.

I wonder how the Founding Fathers would have taken being called "Europeans."

I wonder how the immigrants of the Great Wave of Immigration circa 1900 would have taken being called "Europeans."

All these folks were seeking a new life in the Americas. Away from the hackneyed and stymied Europe. Unfortunately, their success was at the expense of the Native Americans.

I like many European people, it just so happens. But to call a Yankee a European is absurd.

When you respect others feelings and dignity the commies win.

It is accurate and it is objective.

I don’t deny that subjective definitions of sex can be invented through wishful thinking, but I prefer an outlook that’s less distorted by emotion.

Ahem... sex is about ability to make babies. In humans, some can produce sperm and some can get pregnant. Sometimes neither, very rarely both. That's biology. Sexual reproduction.
What you are talking about (guessing weather someone you meet on a street is male or female to use the right pronouns etc.) is gender.

Actually gender and sex are synonymous in research articles.

Not in gender studies, I'm pretty sure.

Anyway, not differentiating between biological and social layers is exactly what makes us unable to understand each other in this discussion.

Gender studies focus more on cultural gender where sex can be construed in the context of intimacy. It just so happens that intersex, bisexual people all like intimacy too.

I get your point, but that wasn't my intention. For simplicity the US and Australia are both culturally "western European" so draw their cultures respectively from Great Britain which is part of western Europe.