Misc. comments 27

[redbird]

More comments from elsewhere:

catamorphism polled about whether we're more likely to "treat a person as" their desired gender based on whether they behave in ways we associate with that gender, and sorted the question into MtF and FtM transgendered people, and female and male cisgendered people:

Giving people the pronouns they want, that I think I do reliably, at least with people I know. (If I see a stranger and comment on something about them--that they've got a cool coat, or a silly-looking dog, or just ran a red light, or such--I may guess a pronoun, and that goes by appearance, and I'm sure I get it wrong occasionally. But the person being referred to probably won't know it, so it seems a minor problem, if a problem at all.)

Other than that, I'm not sure what "treat as a (wo)man" would mean, since I try not to treat people differently based on their genders. (I'm sure I don't always succeed--I was raised in a culture whose first question about a newborn child is gender, after all--but I don't think I'm more likely to fail if I know or believe the person to be transgendered than if I know or believe them to be cisgendered. (How many of your friends, acquaintances, and coworkers can you be sure are cisgendered, after all?)

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A discussion of the (in)appropriateness of someone posting an ad for their CafePress card store on polyamory led to this:

I mean, what do you want to find in your mailbox?

Looking at cards from loved ones (my partners, and one other chosen family member) that I've kept and put on my monitor, what I see are a woman swinging from vines and surrounded by flowers; a large cat follwed by a smaller one; pop-up irises; purple hydrangeas; a dark blue outer space illustration with some small hearts pasted to it; and some abstract burds in flight with a candle in one corner.

The total pre-printed text on all these cards is the words "Haapy birthday" printed several times behind the irises.

What I find, and want to find, is words from people who care about me.

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hawkida was talking about charity gifts, and how they can feel not like real gifts at all, and I got to rambling a bit about gifts:

I got an Oxfam goat recently, because I'd told someone how cool the idea was when he mentioned buying a goat for a relative of his. As you said, it's cool if the person wants it and has let the giver know. I'm in a situation where most of what I want, either I already have; I don't have because I can't find it and suspect it doesn't exist this year (decent winter-weight trousers in my size with proper pockets, for example); or is in a price range such that nobody is plausibly going to be getting it for me (houses are not birthday gifts). That basically leaves consumables--dark chocolate, for example--which I might also get myself, but where extras are fine; deliberately not buying something I'd like, like a new book by an author I enjoy, so someone can get it for my birthday; and the occasional "I saw this and thought of you," which you can't count on having happen at convenient intervals. So I don't do many gift exchanges.

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To curiousangel, who is angry that Germany paroled a Hezbollah member who was serving a sentence for kidnapping, and wanted by the United States:

The article notes that German law does not allow extraditing people for crimes they have already been convicted and punished for under German law. That's called double jeopardy, and applies in the U.S. and Britain as well. There's a reasonable complaint if they did in fact release him in a deal for a German hostage--but if I read this right Germany could not legally have extradited him to the United States.

Two wrongs don't make a right. Hammadi's release does not somehow "balance out" the imprisonment of an innocent professor who was fingered as a terrorist by someone he'd given a poor grade to. It doesn't justify torture, even of people who have committed crimes. Torture will not gain useful information. The only sense in which it can be said to "work" is that it scares people. That is, it is not a tool of law enforcement, it is a tool of terror. Yes, Hammadi might have confessed to those hijackings if he'd been tortured. So might you, I, or a person who hadn't even been born when they happened--torture makes people say whatever they think will stop the torture.

I am an American citizen. I am not (I think) a German citizen. I have both slightly more influence on the American government, and a sense of responsibility for what the United States does that I do not have for the actions of Germany, or for that matter Saudi Arabia.

N.B. curiousangel has posted a follow-up post, explaining that the comparison he had in mind isn't the one that I and several other people thought he was making.

Comments

[treadpath.livejournal.com]

What is "cisgendered"? Please educate me! :)

[redbird]

It's the converse of transgendered--a cisgendered person is someone (like me) who is comfortable in/identifies with their original gender. (The prefix is borrowed from chemistry.)

[treadpath.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I knew I should have studied more chemistry! :)