Misgendering? Sam Smith is now they or them, not he or him?!

[V F]

I hope you ticked them all for added confusion

I remember one being two-spirit.

 

[Angilion]

The word "race" is just another way of saying "subspecies".
Animals appear to have subspecies, while humans appear to have races.

I think the distinctions are too small and too inconsistent to warrant classifying people by them. Appearance isn't enough to classify animals by, whatever their species. Even classifying by species gets a bit uncertain in many cases. If you're going to classifying humans into subspecies, what basis do you use and why?

 

[vanillaface]

I think the distinctions are too small and too inconsistent to warrant classifying people by them. Appearance isn't enough to classify animals by, whatever their species. Even classifying by species gets a bit uncertain in many cases. If you're going to classifying humans into subspecies, what basis do you use and why?

It isn't just down to looks. There are thousands of differences between races. For instance, why do you think that the government makes regular appeals for blood and organ donors from non-Europeans?
If you do a little googling of subspecies in animals and birds for instance, then you'll also see that humans should be classified in the same way. Why should we be different?

For instance, in humans, you'll see that Europeans contain Neanderthal DNA and Asians contain Denisovan DNA, but Africans contain neither.

Some nutters come out with the "there is only one race: the human race" crap, but really, there is only one human species but several subspecies within.
Nothing wrong with it, of course.

 

[ttaskmaster]

NVM

 

[ttaskmaster]

NVM

 

[Angilion]

It isn't just down to looks.

You said "appear to have races". Appearances can be deceptive.

There are thousands of differences between races. For instance, why do you think that the government makes regular appeals for blood and organ donors from non-Europeans?

Statistics, essentially. There's a higher chance of compatible blood groups and suchlike. But if you're treating blood groups as races, you have an unusual definition of "race". Also a pointless one, since we already have classifications of blood groups.

If you do a little googling of subspecies in animals and birds for instance, then you'll also see that humans should be classified in the same way. Why should we be different?

That's a good point, which I think ties in with the end of your post so I'll reply there.

For instance, in humans, you'll see that Europeans contain Neanderthal DNA and Asians contain Denisovan DNA, but Africans contain neither.

It's not that simple, but even if it was then you should be defining "race" by what DNA probably came from what other hominin and also by how much. So a person with 2% Neanderthal DNA should be classed as a different race than a person with 1% Neanderthal DNA, if Neanderthal DNA is what defines "race".

But what if those two people had the same blood group? Are they the same race or different races? Why?

Some nutters come out with the "there is only one race: the human race" crap, but really, there is only one human species but several subspecies within.
Nothing wrong with it, of course.

I have two questions regarding that:

1) If you're going to classifying humans into subspecies, what basis do you use and why?
2) How do you make those classifications match what are currently called "races" and why?

Subspecies...maybe, as a category used by biologists and consistent with its usage for other species. Races...no, the term is too contaminated and doesn't describe reality. To get back to the first line of your post that I'm referring to, "race" is just down to looks.

Subspecies isn't a nice word, though, as it implies one is 'beneath' the rest...

Not necessarily. In the same way, "species" is below "genus" but would you say that isn't nice because it implies that humans and all the extinct homo species are in some way inferior to homo? If you were going to go with the subspecies idea, you could have "human" as the species and every human in one of the subspecies you created. It doesn't imply that one subspecies is inferior to other subspecies of the same species.

 

[Angilion]

[..]
Then why would you disagree with me about it? [..]

Because I don't think the only two options are "what I would do" and "a crime". I'm startled that anyone could be egotistical and authoritarian enough to want to classify everything other than what they would do as a criminal act. Surely that can't really be true. Would you, for example, make it a crime to have curtains of a colour you wouldn't choose for yourself?

 

[ttaskmaster]

NVM

 

[Angilion]

Morrissey is about the most famous example I can think of where the term was used, in this case against the Chinese, as an insult... and as I recall it sparked off a massive backlash of cries over racism and so on. The fact that Morrissey already has a bad rep for such things probably didn't help. There are other sites debating whether the term is 'socially appropriate', despite its scientifically valid context, in the same way that words like gay have come to mean something different from its original definition.

So yeah, you may be technically correct, but a whole bunch of angry people would probably smash your face in with a dictionary if you called any of them a subspecies!

Fair point. Personally, I wouldn't subdivide humans at all, but doing so as subspecies is better than doing so as races. At least subspecies have some connection to reality. We'd all be subspecies, as I said, but of course some people would ignore that or pretend to do so in order to gain power and do harm.

But if someone is offended by gendered language enough to get it changed, then I'm sure it will eventually become a crime to then gender innanimate objects too... particularly if you chose to gender (engender sounds better, but that's already taken) it something that either they disagreed with or they felt embodied negative gender stereotypes... All about being offended, you see.

Probably so, but you were referring specifically to me, personally. I wouldn't make it a crime to attach a gender to an inanimate object and I wouldn't do it myself.

So was I, until I started reading some of the threads in GD... Now I'm just more aware of the offenses I might cause people as I go about my day, telling them to **** off.

You've seen threads by Stockhausen and Dowie on all those triggered-offended people - Surely you know what sort of things turn out to be true?

People gonna people, I suppose. Maybe I'm a superior subspecies

Not as a general rule, but I'm sure I could find a couple of colours that most people would want outlawed!

My mind has wandered off on a tangent...a group experimenting with an AI (well, they're not really intelligent, but you know what I mean) had it come up with names for colours. When you're selling many shades of paint, you need names to market them with. Midnight blue, alpine clover, whatever. The experiment was a bit less than succesful, with the most memorable name chosen by the program being "turdly". Possibly accurate (it was a suitable shade of brown), but not exactly what they were looking for

 

[Thecaferacer]

Race isn't a subspecies. Homo sapien sapien, which we all are, is the sub species of homo sapien idaltu "herto man" we haven't had a subspecies from us.

Race is just anthropological categorisation based on physical and biological differences between groupings. It's been widened to include general ethnicity for societal reasons but it's roots was in scientific study.

Angilion is right to an extent that it is all made up since race is primarily based on appearance. However even if you scrap the term race completely you would still be left with 5 groups of homosapiens that have clear biological and physical differences. It's important as there is medical issues that are over represented in certain racial groups, but that's about it.

It's inneviatable that there is going to be some term used to differentiate, that's highlighted by the quickness of people to create new groups, mixed race etc.

 

[vanillaface]

I have two questions regarding that:

1) If you're going to classifying humans into subspecies, what basis do you use and why?
2) How do you make those classifications match what are currently called "races" and why?

I would like the same criteria used to apply the label of "subspecies" to animals, to be applied to humans also.
I would like politicisation to be taken out of it entirely.

If people want to use the word "race", then fine.
If people want to use the word "subspecies", then fine.

 

[vanillaface]

Race isn't a subspecies. Homo sapien sapien, which we all are, is the sub species of homo sapien idaltu "herto man" we haven't had a subspecies from us.

Race is just anthropological categorisation based on physical and biological differences between groupings. It's been widened to include general ethnicity for societal reasons but it's roots was in scientific study.

Angilion is right to an extent that it is all made up since race is primarily based on appearance. However even if you scrap the term race completely you would still be left with 5 groups of homosapiens that have clear biological and physical differences. It's important as there is medical issues that are over represented in certain racial groups, but that's about it.

It's inneviatable that there is going to be some term used to differentiate, that's highlighted by the quickness of people to create new groups, mixed race etc.

Race is based upon outward appearance, because the outward appearance is representative of all the differences between the races.

Racism tends to confuse people because most people just think it is about skin colour. It is not.

 

[ttaskmaster]

NVM

 

[d_brennen]

I say it's fine. "progressive" is a subjective word, though. The current "progressive" movement is a combo of authoritarianism, irrational prejudice and a level of deceit that Minitru would be proud of. I regard it as regressive, not progressive.

I am in favour of desegregation. Few of the "progressives" would be, since their entire ideology revolves around a belief in biological group identity and the resulting segregation and discrimination.

I walked away from this thread because of my statement, I assumed that it'd be jumped upon as being blindly bigoted, going by recent similar threads I've commented on.

@Angilion

I'm interested, are you a parent? Before you say it, no, I don't think your opinion is invalid if you're not

 

[Somnambulist]

 

[V F]

So they're turning on each other now?

 

[BowdonUK]

The word "race" is just another way of saying "subspecies".

Where do you get this idea from? If you think race is a replacement of subspicies then you'd have to believe some races are better than others?

I see the misgendering aspect with people wanting to be called something else is more about them not being able or happy to be comfortable in how they were born. In my opinion I think most of it is based on insecurity. It's like when people say "be themselves" and then immediately put tons of make-up on etc.

Interestingly the first registered non-binary person in the US as come out and said its all a sham. Look up Jamie Shupe.

 

[Somnambulist]

So they're turning on each other now?

Oh all the time, if you're not part of the groupthink then you're out of the tribe, e.g.

Peter Thiel might sleep with men, but because he supports Trump, he can't be gay

 

[Angilion]

So they're turning on each other now?

That often happens in politics and especially in group identity politics. Anything based on "us against them" is prone to splitting into different ideas of "us" and anything based on a hierarchy of group identities is prone to conflict over different positions in the hierarchy. An ideology that's both is almost certain to have some of it going on. It's generally a good thing for society because it weakens the power of harmful ideologies, but sometimes it's a bad thing because it results in the worst people gaining complete dominance over the ideology.

 

[BowdonUK]

Oh all the time, if you're not part of the groupthink then you're out of the tribe, e.g.

Peter Thiel might sleep with men, but because he supports Trump, he can't be gay

It amazes me how stereotyping and generalisation, once called lazy thinking at best, as been re-designed to be called Identity politics and now used by most people in conversation.