If somebody who is by all hitherto accepted standards a male tells us he is actually female, we are faced essentially with only two options: we either accept in our hearts and minds that he really is a female trapped in a male body or we assume he's deluded.

Likewise, if somebody who is by all hitherto accepted standards Bert Higginbottom, a 42-year-old bus driver from Huddersfield, tells us that he is actually Napoleon Bonaparte, we are faced essentially with the same two options: we either accept in our hearts and minds that he really is Napoleon trapped in Bert's body or we assume he's deluded.

Personally, I welcome the world's increasing acceptance that people are in fact what they believe themselves to be.

I could go on and say that if someone believes himself to be a giraffe we should treat him in every way as if he is a giraffe and you might reply "Oh, you're just getting sillier and sillier now!"

But am I? Have a think about it.

Is there any real difference between any of the three situations above?

It gets even more complicated when a circle announces that it's a triangle but we are dealing with exactly the same thing as in all the other examples.

Perhaps it would help to reduce the whole problem to mathematics?

If A is not equal to B yet claims to be equal to B, we have two options: we either deny their equivalence or we alter our definitions of one or the other (or both) in order to allow their equivalence.

In every case given above, it's not a matter of what something "really" is or what something "really" isn't: it's a matter of how we choose to define that something.

Reality is a funny thing, folks - mainly because it doesn't exist!

Quote: Rood Eye @ 25th June 2019, 9:49 AM

If somebody who is by all hitherto accepted standards a male tells us he is actually female, we are faced essentially with only two options: we either accept in our hearts and minds that he really is a female trapped in a male body or we assume he's deluded.

Likewise, if somebody who is by all hitherto accepted standards Bert Higginbottom, a 42-year-old bus driver from Huddersfield, tells us that he is actually Napoleon Bonaparte, we are faced essentially with the same two options: we either accept in our hearts and minds that he really is Napoleon trapped in Bert's body or we assume he's deluded.

Personally, I welcome the world's increasing acceptance that people are in fact what they believe themselves to be.

I could go on and say that if someone believes himself to be a giraffe we should treat him in every way as if he is a giraffe and you might reply "Oh, you're just getting sillier and sillier now!"

But am I? Have a think about it.

Is there any real difference between any of the three situations above?

It gets even more complicated when a circle announces that it's a triangle but we are dealing with exactly the same thing as in all the other examples.

Perhaps it would help to reduce the whole problem to mathematics?

If A is not equal to B yet claims to be equal to B, we have two options: we either deny their equivalence or we alter our definitions of one or the other (or both) in order to allow their equivalence.

In every case given above, it's not a matter of what something "really" is or what something "really" isn't: it's a matter of how we choose to define that something.

Reality is a funny thing, folks - mainly because it doesn't exist!

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You've got far too much time on your hands.

Quote: chipolata @ 25th June 2019, 11:51 AM

You've got far too much time on your hands.

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Never a truer word, Chip.

Never a truer word.

Rood if some poor kid finds comfort in acceptance why would it bother you? I don't get it?

Quote: Teddy Paddalack @ 25th June 2019, 11:59 AM

Rood if some poor kid finds comfort in acceptance why would it bother you? I don't get it?

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Thus Spoke Zaroodthustra

The leading light on all matters on this forum..........................(or he likes to think he is)

From his profile :-

"Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Quote: Teddy Paddalack @ 25th June 2019, 11:59 AM

Rood if some poor kid finds comfort in acceptance why would it bother you? I don't get it?

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Relax, Teddy. Your question is based upon a false premise, i.e. to wit and viz that it would bother me if some poor kid finds comfort in acceptance.

When a child or indeed an adult is tormented by society's disapproval or rejection of what they "are", it is in every case a tragedy and an indictment of society's intolerance and bigotry.

Please don't imagine for a single moment that I lack sympathy for anyone who suffers simply for being "different" from society's accepted norms.

Believe me, I've known many people who are different from those norms in one way or another so I'm not altogether unacquainted with the pain some of those people have suffered and, even worse, been made to suffer.

Some poor kid who believes he or she has been born into the wrong body is not somebody I would ever seek to mock and their problem with non-acceptance is not something I would ever seek to ridicule.

As I say, nobody "is" or "isn't" a particular gender (or indeed anything else) in any absolute and immutable sense. The criteria by which we define things are subject to continual (if sometimes ponderous) change. If society understood that, the world might be a much better place.

Thanks for clearing that up Rood as there is enough hate and polarisation going on at the mo. I always work off the adage that I don't care what people get up to as long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.

TO get back to the boy ... Was it not the case that his main misdeneanor was to start videoing everything and making it public ( I haven't actually read all the stuff about this)? Also, so often in these cases you don't get all the facts. It could be he is a nasty bullying little turd but the school doesn't feel free to reveal that. Only a suggestion. When an organisation is publicly criticised (often health services) the organisation has its hands tied by confidentiality, but the accuser can bleat away to the media and get sympathy.

And by the way, I get pissed off with people's obsession about these things. Better if we jyst take people as we find them, as human beings.

Quote: Briosaid @ 25th June 2019, 2:48 PM

Was it not the case that his main misdemeanour was to start videoing everything and making it public . . . ?

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In the eyes of the school, he is guilty of two offences: firstly saying that conventional science acknowledges only two sexes and secondly filming and publishing the ensuing argument with his teacher.

It is undisputed that he was thrown out of the class for the first offence and an "education source" has claimed that his three-week suspension was imposed as a punishment for the second.

To anybody with even the remotest sense of irony, it must surely appear remarkable that an establishment that prides itself on being an "inclusive" school with "inclusive" policies should punish a pupil by excluding him - either from an individual class or from the school itself.

Quote: Rood Eye @ 25th June 2019, 3:01 PM

- either from an individual class or from the school itself.

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................................................

Quote: Teddy Paddalack @ 25th June 2019, 11:59 AM

Rood if some poor kid finds comfort in acceptance why would it bother you? I don't get it?

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What bothers me is that people are no longer allowed to have views contrary to conventional wisdom, nor even to debate or discuss those views. An ultimately very dangerous state of affairs. It just so happens that the story in question was concerning gender. It could have been about anything - Brexit, climate change, immigration, burkas, Me Too, anything.

Quote: Briosaid @ 25th June 2019, 2:48 PM

TO get back to the boy ... Was it not the case that his main misdeneanor was to start videoing everything and making it public ( I haven't actually read all the stuff about this)? Also, so often in these cases you don't get all the facts. It could be he is a nasty bullying little turd but the school doesn't feel free to reveal that. Only a suggestion. When an organisation is publicly criticised (often health services) the organisation has its hands tied by confidentiality, but the accuser can bleat away to the media and get sympathy.

And by the way, I get pissed off with people's obsession about these things. Better if we jyst take people as we find them, as human beings.

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The title of this thread is "I read the news today..." (not "I read the news today but let's make up our own story because it doesn't suit my agenda"). And that was what I read.

Quote: Billy Bunter @ 25th June 2019, 4:36 PM

What bothers me is that people are no longer allowed to have views contrary to conventional wisdom, nor even to debate or discuss those views. An ultimately very dangerous state of affairs. It just so happens that the story in question was concerning gender. It could have been about anything - Brexit, climate change, immigration, burkas, Me Too, anything.

The title of this thread is "I read the news today..." (not "I read the news today but let's make up our own story because it doesn't suit my agenda"). And that was what I read.

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Maybe you should reread and cut the bits that YOU invented.

Quote: Briosaid @ 25th June 2019, 6:48 PM

Maybe you should reread and cut the bits that YOU invented.

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I merely reported the news that I had read that day (oh boy); I invented nothing.

When I was at school I wasn't very good at the whole debate thing but some mates were and teachers were happy to take lessons off course to argue a point with them and allow a give and take discussion on views. As long as it was kept civil and light hearted it was welcome and the rest of the class would engage so it opened things up instead of the regimented teacher speaks and pupils listen for an hour. Debate should be encouraged but these days teachers are on egg shells wondering if they are going to come under fire for the slightest thing that catches the eye of social media.

For filming it covertly and allowing it to get online is reason enough to suspend him. The teacher is entitled to their privacy at work.

Quote: Definitely Tarby @ 25th June 2019, 11:39 PM

For filming it covertly and allowing it to get online is reason enough to suspend him. The teacher is entitled to their privacy at work.

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I agree with that but the reason the argument got into the newspapers was that the boy was thrown out of class for saying gender is binary, according to scientists.

If they'd been arguing about football and the boy had filmed it and published it online, he might still have been suspended but the story would in all probability never have been given anything approaching the media prominence it enjoyed.