Amazon workers quit over sale of book framing transgender identity as mental illness

[nobspeople]

[Sherlock Holmes]

This is fascinating, so if one is not "black" then they are privileged?

If one is the dominant race, the one with power, in this case white, it's impossible to grow up unaffected by that power. I grew up poor. I went to mostly black elementary and middle schools. I was beaten up every day by black kids. At one point, they broke my leg and weren't punished. I still have pain in it, because it wasn't a clean break. I have privilege, they do not. Privilege is not cancelled out by any number of unfortunate things happening.

It's tough to wrap your head around, but (this is unlikely to the point of impossibility, but to illustrate) even if the sum total result of the system is that you are poorer and have less than every single black person, you still have privilege and they do not, because only one of the parts of that sum total was an injustice, and it went in your favour.

Complaining that you have less than a particular black person and saying that invalidates privilege or that you don't have any privilege is like being a thief and saying there is no injustice because you don't have the thing you stole anymore. It's not exactly like being a thief because this is not yet considered a crime, but it ought to be.

This is actually a more extreme view than mere intersectionality because I absolutely would take from poor whites to give to rich blacks, but I believe it's more consistent. Which instances of unfairness are simply life, and which are injustice? You address the ones that are injustice, and those alone.

Have you ever read Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier?

I don't see how skin color alone can be used to characterize privilege, it is just one of many traits that distinguish people from one another.

Nor is dominance to be demarcated by race universally, power and abuse, exploitation of others is not confined to white people abusing black people, this is overly simplistic.

Well just as you speak of "white privilege" there are those who speak of "male privilege", so does your argument not apply in that case too?

Despite the fact that I feel male privilege is a minuscule issue compared to white privilege, there should be more scrutiny about whether people are really trans or whether they're just trying to get something out of it. Handing out transitions to people who aren't actually trans has consequences, both to that person, and to society as a whole.

But how do you define "miniscule"? there are more white women in the US (using that country as an example) than the entire black population of the US. Some 15% of the US population is black whereas some 42% of the US population are white women.

The gender pay gap is persistent, women on average earn 85% of what men earn for the same work and hours.

A term I hear a lot when this subject is discussed is "identify as", not really sure I understand what that means if it does even have a meaning.

A simple way to explain it is that it is possible to have a mind-body mismatch so severe that it feels one is born in the wrong body, exactly the same as you or I would feel if suddenly someone extracted our brains and put them in the bodies of females.

If I said "I feel like a woman" how do I reach that conclusion? how do I know what a woman feels like? how does one know that what their "feeling" is the same as a real woman feels? why is such a claim not regarded with the same ridicule as "I feel like a cat" or "I feel like a bat"?

The very term "mind body mismatch" is baseless, to claim that all women share some "feeling" and that if you to have that feeling (how you even begin to compare these is beyond me) then you are in fact a woman, is an absurdity.

I don't think I'd care so much and I'd eventually just adapt, I might even like it if my new body was beautiful enough, but I also understand that some people would completely reject the new reality, and some people are born into that wrong reality, and if treating them as the gender they are rather than the gender of the body they happened to get, will help them, then I should.

I also think there's a difference between feeling that you're black when you're not, and feeling that you're female when you were born in the body of a male. I don't think it can cause the same kind of rejection of reality to be the wrong race. I'm not even sure it would cause the same rejection to be born as the wrong species. If I was a bird, I would be a bird, and that would be my reality.

Dolezal is a black woman born in a white body, why is that no more feasible, possible than a white woman being born into a white male body?

The fact is they are both absurdities, one is what one is, people are not born "into" a body, we are bodies, we do not "have" a body like we have cars or houses, this entire abstract concept is an invention.

[Purple Knight]

Have you ever read Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier?

I don't see how skin color alone can be used to characterize privilege, it is just one of many traits that distinguish people from one another.

Nor is dominance to be demarcated by race universally, power and abuse, exploitation of others is not confined to white people abusing black people, this is overly simplistic.

I'm not saying white people don't suffer or that their suffering is something I like (well, actually...), but it's not injustice, and yes, they still have privilege, because at some point, no matter how horribly they are treated, no matter how abysmal their working conditions, no matter if they were maimed in an explosion and thrown down a ditch to die, at some point, some other white person who had power interacted with them favourably because they were white and they are part of the system of white power and privilege. It's not a generalisation. It happens to every single white person and it is an injustice.

Understand that I hold a view that is more extreme than The 1619 Project, more extreme than Robin DiAngelo, the authour of White Fragility, and you're probably just not going to agree with me on this.

Put simply, life is a series of dice rolls that sometimes end in your favour. And sometimes you get screwed. I feel all of those rolls are legitimate and none of them are injustice except when a white person comes out ahead (even just on one roll, doesn't have to be overall) because they were favoured by another white person, which is bound to happen at least once in every white person's life because every person has thousands of rolls involving thousands of people going on every day.

Of those millions of people and billions of rolls, every day, white people are helping white people and I think that's flat immoral and unacceptable if they hold the larger share of power in a society. Frankly, even if they don't, because history has proven the depths of racism white people will sink to, and even if they were a powerless minority I would tend to think they'd lost the right to band together. In other words: Black power is love; white power is hate.

So I would absolutely take one of those Irish coal miners, no matter what horrors had been done to him, no matter that every last die he rolled came up snake eyes, except that one time he rolled a two and a three because another Irishman nudged it, and that other Irishman doing so for no other reason than that they were fellow Irishmen, and I would have him punished for that, and I would take that benefit away and give it to a POC, no matter if that POC's other rolls all came up double sixes, because the one time his die got nudged by a white person, it was nudged down. When it mattered, and when the die should have been left alone, it wasn't. I don't care about the other rolls or who messed with them or why. There is only one instance of adjusting other peoples' rolls I consider injustice.

I would prefer a plain meritocracy where everyone just rolls what they roll and no one adjusts anybody else's rolls to help or harm, but the fact that we don't live in that world isn't an injustice. People have a right to do as they like with their own things, and the business owner has a right to pass over an ugly person for a pretty one, no matter who the best candidate is. He has a right to veto redheads. I even maintain that he has a right to veto religions, even though the law disagrees. When it becomes an injustice is when it becomes racial, and creates a power gap between races.

But how do you define "miniscule"? there are more white women in the US (using that country as an example) than the entire black population of the US. Some 15% of the US population is black whereas some 42% of the US population are white women.

The gender pay gap is persistent, women on average earn 85% of what men earn for the same work and hours.

Most of that is accounted for by things women choose to do and men do not. Or can't do. Such as taking maternity leave. There's still a gap but it's not as bad as all that. In contrast, blacks get harsher sentences for committing the same crimes while women are clearly barely incarcerated at all for theirs.

To be honest I see some discrimination as permissible (discrimination against the ugly, or against redheads) and I really only see racial discrimination as absolutely incurably an injustice. Again I'd like to live in a pure meritocracy but what I honestly believe is that the gender pay gap not accounted for by differences in behaviour is simply a matter of men being more equipped to bargain for better wages, which is regrettable and totally energy-wasting but it's just the facts of life in a competitive society.

If I said "I feel like a woman" how do I reach that conclusion? how do I know what a woman feels like? how does one know that what their "feeling" is the same as a real woman feels? why is such a claim not regarded with the same ridicule as "I feel like a cat" or "I feel like a bat"?

I would venture to guess that it's because the way it is to be male, and the way it is to be female, have to be both fully inside each of us, and it's relatively easy for something to turn on or off that's, evolutionarily speaking, supposed to be the other way round. Whereas the mind of a bat would have little to no use to be inside a human, turned on or turned off. So people are more incredulous that the desire to be seen as a bat comes from something else and not a genuine mind-body mismatch. But I don't care. People have made the argument that acknowledging these people is "silly" and therefore cheapens the cause, and that it's demeaning to real trans people, but I really don't care. You don't get anything out of being a bat, so if you want to be a bat, be a bat. If a trans person thinks you're making fun of them, maybe don't be a bat.

The very term "mind body mismatch" is baseless, to claim that all women share some "feeling" and that if you to have that feeling (how you even begin to compare these is beyond me) then you are in fact a woman, is an absurdity.

I simply think it's possible to feel the mismatch. I imagine what it would feel like if my mind were put in a female body and I imagine it would feel wrong. So I have a kind of empathy for people who say they feel that, regardless of whether what they actually feel is exactly the same as what someone would feel if they'd been swapped.

Dolezal is a black woman born in a white body, why is that no more feasible, possible than a white woman being born into a white male body?

Because males and females have to be wired to act slightly differently, so it's at least possible to have the wrong wiring switched on. I don't think people would ever feel black if they'd never seen a black person. It's thousands of genes and there's not a good reason for people to have an innate, hardwired race they're programmed to be and would be sad if they didn't receive the same way it's logical for people to be hardwired to be and act female or male.

Even so let her be black. I just don't think she should be allowed to benefit from Affirmative Action, change her skin tone, have cosmetic surgery, or culturally appropriate around people who would see her appearance and take harm, assuming a white person was appropriating.

The fact is they are both absurdities, one is what one is, people are not born "into" a body, we are bodies, we do not "have" a body like we have cars or houses, this entire abstract concept is an invention.

It may be an invention but if the invention helps us generate empathy then it's a good one.