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by alex-g 4518 days ago
Which definition is being blurred, exactly? Definitions may be being changed, but that's in order to make our words more accurate and more practically useful.

It's actually quite hard to determine who is the intended target of a word like "he", since experience presents us with all kinds of difficult cases; appeal to appearance or behaviour or even chromosomes doesn't work universally. At some point, we either have to let people decide for themselves what they want, or impose our own arbitrary classification on them. Someone is making a judgement and I'd rather it be "I feel I am male" than "I feel you look male".

Sure, it might be nice if there were a simple flowchart, based on only objectively observable data, that we could follow to end up with either "he" or "she" in the end. But no such flowchart exists. I propose to drop the "objective" criterion and just ask the person what they prefer - especially given that the only reasons for having a he/she pronoun system are historical and social. If you want to talk about what's going on biologically, in great detail, then feel free, but the pronoun system doesn't have to correspond to that.

1 comments

Here is just one sample of such a line. "fallon fox" he is an mma fighter who now fights in womans division. We could get into great detail of the biology, height and so on that a man keeps even after surgery. Hopefully you see some of the real unalterable issues that arise from such things, can't wait till shaq has gender reassignment and fights women.

I shall be called emperor of all, sadly simply saying it doesn't make it true. Facts are stubborn like that.