Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Could we PLEASE...

Actually, trying to suppress 'hate facts' does much more to empower actual bigots (and I need to specify 'actual', due to the very common usage of *phobe to mean disagreement with ideology).
Biological sex is essentially binary (strongly bimodal). Having people who don't fit exactly into either sex doesn't mean there are additional sexes, nor does it justify any discrimination based on that.



They are not part of the team if they are perfect, can do no wrong, and if you don't like them, or the media in question, it can only be because you are a bigot. I think that was kind of the point of asking for overt politics not to be inserted into the game.



There is media which arguably does suck, though, specifically because of an agenda being pushed into the story. If there is pandering to the 'woke' crowd, the characters tend not to have any faults, so do not grow/evolve, etc. Bat Girl gets captured and tied up, exactly like Batman? That's misogyny. Spider Woman in a classic Spiderman pose? Sexual exploitation. Because it is hard to write perfect characters, the characters around them are generally just written worse. Apparently in Game of Thrones, the last season or two, without the books to go off of, having strong intelligent female characters meant the men became useless idiots and blacksmiths needed to be told how to make armour and that (X seasons later) winter was coming.



For someone arguing against discrimination, that seems like a less than charitable interpretation of an opposing position (unless you figure no change can be bad, or the consequences ever be worse than issues an existing situation may have).

Guys, this discussion right above is useless because each one thinks they are talking about the same thing, but each one is actually talking about something else. Not going into details, but basically that's two brain mindsets (modes): one for external, objetive reality and other for language/feelings/internal "reality". You CANNOT agree and will never do.

About 86% of political tendencies is epigenetic and cannot be changed by reasoning, facts or arguments.

>Biological sex is essentially binary (strongly bimodal)

I strongly suggest reading up on: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/stop-using-phony-science-to-justify-transphobia/ You are basically reiterating same points that have been said int this thread.

>Actually, trying to suppress 'hate facts' does much more to empower actual bigots (and I need to specify 'actual', due to the very common usage of *phobe to mean disagreement with ideology).

1) Is it even true? Do you have data on this? Is not allowing drawing ASCII penis on the site is empowering teenagers who want to draw ASCII penis here?
2) It's not suppression, no more than "earth is round" is suppressing "earth is flat".
3) Cool, it would be relevant if I called someone who disagreed with me *phobe

>They are not part of the team if they are perfect, can do no wrong, and if you don't like them, or the media in question, it can only be because you are a bigot.

I am not sure who are you arguing with, but you sure showed that strawman!

>For someone arguing against discrimination, that seems like a less than charitable interpretation of an opposing position (unless you figure no change can be bad, or the consequences ever be worse than issues an existing situation may have).

I am arguing against discrimination against groups of people based on their identity. There are really shitty ideas/ideologies that need to be opposed. People can and do change ideas all the time.

>member gamergate
yes.
Gaymers stronk! Gamers won!

uaaaaaahhh!!!! Bannerlord got released!
wheres your respectfull nods now?


UUUUAAAAAH!

That link does nothing to refute the fact that the vast majority of people are male or female, and differences in hormones / development / personality is not relevant to biological sex in this context (already accounted for by saying 'essentially' binary, and strongly bimodal).



There have been several countries where 'diversity is our strength' types in authority have ignored or covered up crimes from certain minorities (sometimes for years/decades) and gone after criticism of minorities or the government harshly. Does that not obviously create resentment, and empower bigotry?
Unconscious bias training doesn't reduce bias (and 2 of the 3 originators have come out and said their research isn't fit for the use it is being put to), and there is some evidence to suggest it causes bias (with explicit diversity hiring, any new minority hires can not be assumed to be hired because they were the best person for the job, in addition to specifically dividing the workplace into the 'good/minority' group and the 'bad/majority' group); I've heard this from several people in interviews (the scary intellectual dark web types your link refers to).
If you were fired or deplatformed, etc, for something you believed and there was evidence for it (valid or not), would you suddenly stop believing that thing, or assume the reason those taking actions against you were doing so because they could not address the evidence, and resent their unfair treatment of you?



That makes no sense whatsoever.
You said 'stating a politically incorrect fact empowers phobes', to which I responded that not being able to state such facts is worse in that regard.



If saying there are only 2 genders is "ammunition for homophoboes, transphobes etc", that is at least implying one should not claim there are only 2 genders (specifically, biological gender, ie sex). If not arguing against saying that, you are at least making a moral judgement of it, neither of which are compatible to countering a conspiracy theory.
It is illegal in Canada to missgender someone (slight hyperbole, though technically correct; clarification in a reply below), police in several other countries respond to 'hate incidents' on social media ('incident' being a non-crime), Twitter has made using the wrong pronouns and deadnaming banable offences, Youtube channels get demonetised for talking about the wrong subjects, etc, so don't try to claim there is no suppression of politically incorrect facts.



It is relevant because you referred to homophoboes and transphobes, when those terms have become almost meaningless, for the reason I stated. I wished to be more specific when replying.



I don't think you know what a strawman argument is. I gave an example of a character written like that, and there have been movies mentioned earlier in this topic with such writing, where any criticism was claimed to be only because of bigotry.
Media exists as I described. Minorities in such media are not 'part of the team'. That was my point. I was not arguing with anyone.



Yes, but I doubt it happens much due to the use of inaccurate and insulting stereotypes.

wew, i didnt know it was that bad in canada.

I only know it in the form of social consequences. but yeah, thats pretty tyrannical given that this ltieraly does nothing.

Well, it falls under the Human Rights Act, so missgenderring would have to be argued to be part of discrimination based on 'gender identity or expression' to be handled through a human rights tribunal, which is generally limited to financial penalties (though refusing to pay could result in criminal court involvement). The good news is that the human rights tribunals no longer have a 100% conviction rate (too much publicity over certain cases in the early 2000s), and overreaches (like ordering an accused person's home seized and sold to pay the complainant) can get overturned by actual courts.

>That link does nothing to refute the fact that the vast majority of people are male or female, and differences in hormones / development / personality is not relevant to biological sex in this context (already accounted for by saying 'essentially' binary, and strongly bimodal).

Vast majority people fitting into 2 categories is not the same as binary. That's the problem I am adressing. Vast majority of people have brown/blue eyes. It doesn't make eye color binary. Bimodal distribution is not the same as binary, it's spectrum by definition. The problem with looking at sexes as bimodal is that some trait can be one side of spectrum, another - on opposite. Some people don't fit that well on the scale. As almost everything in life - it's complicated.

Development and personality are absolutely relevant in discussing sex differences and again they are not binary. Development doesn't magically stop once you leave the womb. It's not as explicit or obvious as reproductive organs, but brain is absolutely crucial in sex determination. That's why you get trans people. MRI imaging reveals that some parts of their brain are closer to the sex they identify as, not as their genitals. There is some research being done in estrogen receptor pathways: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200205084203.htm

>There have been several countries where 'diversity is our strength'..

I shouldn't have asked and shoudln't have tried to be mildly amusing. It's red herring to the topic we were discussing. You don't offer hard data and I could counter with anecdotes too, but it's not relevant. I have no strong opinions on unconscious bias training. In terms of platforming I believe in responsible platforming - if you decide to platform harmful ideas, you should also present strong opposition (in terms of arguments) to them.

>If saying there are only 2 genders is "ammunition for homophoboes, transphobes etc", that is at least implying one should not claim there are only 2 genders (specifically, biological gender, ie sex).

I am claiming that sex being binary is demonstrabily false and is used by bad faith actors to spew anti lgbtq propaganda.

>suppression of politically incorrect facts.

Could you tell me fact you are referring to? So far I have seen that some canada/some platfroms have decided that being dick to trans people is violation of their rights. For youtube - it has generally trended towards more adverstisment friendly content, all kinds of speech is being demonatised on both sides of political spectrum. Also on canada:

"But experts say just using an incorrect pronoun isn't enough to qualify as criminal hate speech. "Absolutely not a chance," says University of Toronto law professor Brenda Cossman. "There is no criminalization of the misuse of pronouns."

Richard Moon, a University of Windsor professor who studies freedom of speech issues, says only speech that is "extreme in character" would qualify as criminal. He says the person uttering the words must be found to have "willfully promoted hatred."

>I don't think you know what a strawman argument is.

You quoted me and then said: "They are not part of the team if they are perfect, can do no wrong, and if you don't like them, or the media in question, it can only be because you are a bigot. I think that was kind of the point of asking for overt politics not to be inserted into the game." I have never claimed anything like that. By wiki definition: "A straw man (or strawman) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent". I think it fits.

I'm not really seeing why not misgendering someone is considered a problem, though; I mean it's the same sort of thing as using e.g. racist language to address someone. I think the problem comes down to seeing it as being a black-or-white issue, no pun intended, where it really has to be based on all sorts of things including terminology, intent, circumstance, context and so on. While I agree it "should" be the case that it says much more about somebody who chooses to be crass and unpleasant the reality is that it can and does cause actual harm, at least eventually. Making a gamble about when is the cut-off point for "eventually"... I guess it's easier to just be considerate in the first place.

Could you PM me with links to your theses?

I am intrigued. How do you explain the results of this study (http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2010to2014/2013-transsexuality.html) whose abstract states "Combining data from the present survey with those from past-published reports, 20% of all male and female monozygotic twin pairs were found concordant for transsexual identity." Monozygotic twins inherit the exact same DNA so why isn't the concordance rate 100% for all pairs? In other words, gender dysphoria is shown not to be congenital but caused by environmental factors.

I wouldn't know. Gene expression is very complicated and enviroment dependent. I've read that monozygotic twins sharing same umbilical cord won't have same environment depending on which one gets the cord "first". There are many many subtle diffences (for example inhereted mitochondria might not be evenly distributed, mitochondrial mutations can be inherreted much more by one twin than another). Monozygotic twins won't always have same genome by the time they are born: https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/134603/why-identical-twins-dont-always-look-the-same There are also problems of false positives etc. But yeah, frankly, I don't know.

That article links to this one: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/...twins-different-skin-colour-born-UK.html
The chances of that occurring are slim but regardless of mutations monozygotic twins are still our best bet when trying to ascertain environmental and genetic influence on a particular person's traits. The concordance rate should be much higher all the same. Also, those babies... some couples are truly dysgenic.

Just shows that I know fuck all about genetics. Considering concordance I am not sure if it's true (again, can't comment as I just don't know). From wiki problems with concordance studies:

There are several problems with this assumption:

A given genetic pattern may not have 100% penetrance, in which case it may have different phenotypic consequences in genetically identical individuals;
Developmental and environmental conditions may be different for genetically identical individuals. If developmental and environmental conditions contribute to the development of the disease or other characteristic, there can be differences in the outcome of genetically identical individuals;
The logic is further complicated if the characteristic is polygenic, i.e., caused by differences in more than one gene.
Epigenetic effects can alter the genetic expressions in twins through varied factors. The expression of the epigenetic effect is typically weakest when the twins are young and increases as the identical twins grow older.[2]
Where in the absence of one or more environmental factors a condition will not develop in an individual, even with high concordance rates, the proximate cause is environmental, with strong genetic influence: thus "a substantial role of genetic factors does not preclude the possibility that the development of the disease can be modified by environmental intervention." So "genetic factors are assumed to contribute to the development of that disease", but cannot be assumed alone to be causal.[3]\

Edit: Another article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/identical-twins-genes-are-not-identical/
Edit: Another study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22146048/

Science isn't perfect so you should always be on guard whenever there's a new study that supposedly proves decades-old assumptions to be wrong, which isn't to say that what it claims isn't true. It simply requires further trials and studies so there's a large enough sample for meta-analysis. Otherwise we yield to scientific nihilism in that nothing can be verified with 100% accuracy and that there is no objective reality. When it comes to gender dysphoria we will probably have a clearer picture of what underlies it as more time goes by and as charlatans posing as scientists are filtered out. I'd be wary of ideology attempting to dictate reality in any case.

I didn't say it was, and repeatedly used the term bimodal.



About 15% of people do not have brown or blue eyes.
What percentage of people can not be classified biologically as male or female?



The discussion was the number of sexes, not the fact that there are differences between people of the same sex. There are many such differences, but not enough to create a separate biological sex or invalidate the concept of biological sex (those factors spread out the distribution, possibly quite significantly, but it remains bimodal for sexual characteristics).



I never said you did. That was what I thought was a very clear reference to the original post of this topic. Even if you missed that, I was in no way phrasing it as if it was your position.




The objection is generally about compelled speech rather than the need to deliberately misgender anyone, though some people have religious or other objections.
Accidental misgendering is easy if you do not know someone very well, or have known them for some time before they came out as trans.
There are also an infinite number of tumbler pronouns, and one advocate for Bill C-16 in Canada recommended using a phone app for keeping tack of the preferred pronouns of all your friends, co-workers, acquaintances, etc.
Generally if trans people are at all putting some effort into transitioning (even just socially), I think most people will make an effort to use their preferred pronouns.

People have put 'Your Magisty', etc, as their preferred pronoun when schools, etc, have made arbitrary pronouns an option.
Trolls on twitter have added they/them pronouns to their bios, and used that to get people banned when 'misgendered'.
Political activists are likely to use this to make political points, as has been done with the human rights tribunals before (going out of their way to create situations that can be used to punish ideological opponents).
Rules/laws intended to be inclusive are not used exclusively to protect trans people.

Which I agree with to an extent. The trouble is the people with extreme positions: doesn't matter what the position is, it's that a few will push it to absurdity and go via several other unwelcome places on the way there. In this case, those who want everyone's speech to be controlled and those who want to say whatever they want with no consequences. "This is why we can't have nice things", etc.

>What percentage of people can not be classified biologically as male or female?

About 1.7% are intersex https://www.intersexequality.com/how-common-is-intersex-in-humans/

Edit: also any definition of "male" or "female" will always depend on averages, on statistical norms, or on arbitrary cut-off points.

Most people who use science to defend that there are more than two sexes make two mistakes:

1) they conflate sex (biology) with gender (affective identity).

2) they ignore the role that statistics play in science.

No one is going to deny the existence of non-binary individuals. XY, XX, XXY, YxY, etc ... are all real genomes that exist.

However ... non-binary sexes are a statistical outlier, not even a minority ... they are an outlier.

To force societal behaviour to conform to an outlying minority is folly. It is better to create legislation that protects them and provides avenues for them to find peace and self expression.

Transgenderism is a societal problem wherein individuals are not being given space to express non-binary GENDERS (not sexes) ... and after how ever many thousands of years of cultural evolution, right now Transgenderism is based on sex precisely because of the conflation between the two words and the unwillingness of legislators to touch the issue.