Personal pronouns, gender, equality, etc.

Johnstaf I'm all for equal opportunities,

Yes. But it doesn't work if you have expectations that are plain stupid. Several months ago i've read an article about a transgender woman which broke several records on the womens division simply because she is still biologically a male. The other contesters felt cheated and tried to get her disqualified because a (real) female athlete couldn't reach these records. I mean, what did they expected will happen? Equal opportunities doesn't mean everyone is equal.

Here in Germany, there are plenty of examples of how "everyone is equal" doesn't work. In 9 out of 10 cases of divorce, the father does not get custody of his children. It doesn't matter how good he is at his job, how much time he has or how badly the mother treats her children.

95% of the kindergarten teachers here are women. This is mainly because men are suspected of being potential pedophiles. Of course there are examples where this is the case, but you can't generalize.

The feminists here denounce the inequality between men and women in working life, but all they ever do is complain that top positions in big companies are mostly held by men. There is no complaint about too few women construction workers, or garbage collectors, sewer workers, or any other job that is physically demanding and does not pay excessively.

Here, this is called a "double standard."

This is one of many facets we are confronted with since the internet is in every pocket. Thanks to smartphones and social media, it has become very easy to enter filter bubbles and develop the most absurd thoughts. You only need enough people who think the same and out comes, for example, the nonsense with the social genders.

That would not have been possible without the Internet.

MacMacMac not correct.

The United States Merriam Webster dictionary makes this very clear:

'used to refer to a single person whose gender is not revealed'

and

'used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is nonbinary'

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/they

Or do you happen to know the gender of every random person you meet?!

If someone introduces themselves as Alex, Sam, Taylor, or Vivian - you can't make any assumptions based off those names.

So unless you've seen everyone naked - or they have all explicitly told you their gender, then using he/she/his/her is prejudicial the same as making assumptions based on skin colour.

I said in an earlier post that the internet gives everyone a worldwide, far-reaching voice.
And all too many of those voices are just noise.

But there's no noise filter. There's only the off switch. So my social media switch is set to off. Permanently.
I stick with face-to-face or phone-to-phone conversation.

There remains the open question: Is Piano Clack yet another social medium?

Tyr

My 1000 words on this:

Tyr This is one of many facets we are confronted with since the internet is in every pocket. Thanks to smartphones and social media, it has become very easy to enter filter bubbles and develop the most absurd thoughts. You only need enough people who think the same and out comes, for example, the nonsense with the social genders.

That would not have been possible without the Internet.

I've found myself often wondering exactly the same

MacMacMac But there's no noise filter. There's only the off switch. So my social media switch is set to off. Permanently.

Likewise.

MacMacMac There remains the open question: Is Piano Clack yet another social medium?

Ops, I guess it starts looking like one. Hmmm…

That contradicts the previous statement. 🤔

MacMacMac

MacMacMac Is Piano Clack yet another social medium?

In the early going, it may fit the fuzzy mold of a hybrid.

Women retiring earlier is not discrimination, as they get the same pension as men. It is a compensation for work time lost raising their children, and only mother's benefit from this, at least here in Greece.

If you ask me, women still are not treated fairly, but this is another matter altogether.

burkey another perfect example is when you talk with someone random on the telephone (calldesk etc) or via a live support chat online.

In those instances you can never be 100% certain of their gender or sex from their name or the sound of their voice alone.

So if someone asks 'What did they tell you?'

Your only option is to say 'They …'

E.g:

They told me they'd cancel our credit card if we don't pay the bill. I wasn't very happy about their condescending tone, and I will be reporting them!

They told me I won a Bechstein piano 🙂 Their excitement was palpable. I can't wait to meet them!

They, Their, and Them are 100% valid to use to refer to a single person. And they has been valid for centuries.

When a reference is made to someone and not relevant, use he. That's how it's been taught for centuries.
The use of "they" in such situations has been incorrect for centuries. 🙂

MacMacMac what!

Are you saying that referring to God as She is somehow illegal?!

Looks like I am going to fry in hell for blasphemy after all! :-p

In all seriousness though, as I mentioned above this 'woke' malarkey has gone too far. If that somehow makes me conservative, then I'm happy to be conservative.

They crossed the line when they banned 'breast feeding' and replaced it with chest feeding!

burkey

Now that God is on the table here, albeit apparently in jest …. during time on an alt health forum years ago, i (seriously) voiced the observation that the new standards of our time as i saw them had sunk to the point where, if somebody says anything critical of people who identify as Jew/Semite, he’s branded as an anti-semite; if he does not embrace homosexuality, he’s a homophobe; if he in any way has reason to place men above women, he’s a sexist …… and he’s a racist …… and he’s a hater and on and on increasingly. The old texts & scriptures give witness to God Almighty speaking critically in like fashion and therefore he must be branded accordingly.

Johnstaf If a woman wants to be a miner she should have that choice.

Of course. But there is difference between equal opportunity and equal outcome.

If a woman is strong enough, so that she can dig coal as much as an average male, then she can become a miner, why not? That's equal opportunity and I am OK if there are regulations that can prevent employers from disallowing women to apply for a job.

However if a woman is tiny and small, she shouldn't expect to be hired at a mine when there are hundreds of strong man looking to get the job, right? Women shouldn't expect that there are 50/50 quotas in the mines, or in other words an equal outcome.

And to put things into perspective, this is not just some dry theory. In our company and many other IT companies nowadays, especially American ones, there's this initiative to bring more women in the IT and for instance they would pay a higher hiring bonus for women or require that you have interviewed an equal number of man and women. This is where it approaches socialism. I don't know other countries but I've been interviewing applicants for the last 15 years for different companies and I've never seen even the slightest hint at discrimination against women applicants. We have open positions, we accept all CV-s and we invite all people. It's just that we get much more male applicants. Many explanations can be given to that but ultimately I believe more men are interested in studying and working in the IT than women. If you then enforce a recruitment process that interviews the same number of women as men, when you don't have that equality in the applications, you are enforcing equal outcome which is wrong.

I am late with this comment, but I am probably the only Spaniard here right now (that should change as forum grows)

Well, here the politicians (and only from one side of the politics spectrum, you can guess) are forcing people to talk using artificial gender-free words or adding always both genres. Or adding new ones.

Some example:

Todos (all, which used to cover both feminine and masculine)

Todas (which is only feminine)

Todes (linguistic aberration to include also LGTB+++)

So one of those people could begin a discourse addressing people as: "Buenos días a todos, todas y todes" (Good morning to…). And everything should be talked that unnatural way.

It is a so ridiculous and unnecessary way of destroying a wonderful language and making talking extremely slow and dense… but the majority voted them, so enjoy your choice!

CyberGene We have open positions, we accept all CV-s and we invite all people. It's just that we get much more male applicants. Many explanations can be given to that but ultimately I believe more men are interested in studying and working in the IT than women.

Same here. I'm working as a project manager in a software company, have over 20 years of experience in development and have had exactly three female software developers in all that time. There are about 45 people working in my current company. Two of them are chief executives, ten are working as supports and the rest are developers.

We don't have a single male employee in the hotline and one single female employee as a developer who is transsexual (male to female, so basically (and biological) male). We simply get no female applicants for software development and vice versa.

I'm sorry for posting a link to a German video on YouTube, but it is a ridiculous over-the-top example of using woke language. It's a German politician making a speech in the German parliament, or actually he really only gets to greet the other members of that house, but invokes every conceivable version of greeting to avoid leaving anyone out. He is most assuredly doing so for satirical purposes.

QuasiUnaFantasia

At this point, however, it must not be concealed which political party this politician belongs to. -> "AFD" The actual background for this "satirical" greeting is completely different.

You mean I should add that the politician is from the party that all the other parties have ganged up on? But at any rate, the speech itself is specifically an illustration of wokeness taken to a ridiculous extreme for satirical purposes. I dont know what the topic for the debate, in which this speech was given, actually was. But that does not seem relevant here either.

QuasiUnaFantasia You mean I should add that the politician is from the party that all the other parties have ganged up on?

No, it wasn't my intention that you should mention this. Incidentally, this party is definitely not the one that everyone else has joined.

I only wanted to clarify for those who are not familiar with the German political landscape by whom this "satire" was pronounced.

Wiki.org about AFD:

…Alternative for Germany (German: Alternative für Deutschland; AfD, German pronunciation: [aːʔɛfˈdeː] (listen)) is a German nationalist and right-wing populist political party,[9] ^known for its opposition to the European Union[28] ^{and immigration}.[29] ^It is on the radical right or far right of the political spectrum.[22]^

The concepts of "right wing", and "radical right" are not truly meaningful, since they do no connect to the historical concept of "right wing politics", nor do they say anything specific about political views. So how about just calling things by their most obvious names: The AfD is essentially defined by being anti-EU and anti-immigration, and since recently anti-government COVID policy. Wouldn't you agree that this captures fairly accurately what the AfD is?

And just another thing: why would it matter at all who created that satirical stunt? From my perspective the satire itself is the only thing of importance. Think about the music of Richard Wagner: by most historical accounts Wagner was, on the personal and social level, a really nasty piece of work. But his music is still wonderful, and loved the world over. Should people stop loving his music, because he was an unpleasant person?