I agree with these criticisms, I don’t understand what Eliezer was doing with his conclusion. (How did the word “simplest” get in there?)
I just wanted to mention that regarding this quote:
a lot of cis people use ‘learning someone’s pronoun’ as a copout from doing the important internal work of actually reconsidering their impression of the person’s gender
As a cis person who has interacted occasionally with trans people for the past ten years, it literally never occurred to me until last year that what trans people were asking me to do was actually reconsider my impression of their gender! I sincerely thought they were just asking me to memorize a different word to call them. I will at least try out a “reconsidering” process the next time I regularly interact with a trans person IRL and see whether it works. (I have also never read about what kind of “reconsidering” processes work for people, but I have some guesses for how I could approach it.)
It seems bad that the huge focus on pronouns completely obscured the actual request! I wonder if a lot of other people also don’t know this.
As a cis person who has interacted occasionally with trans people for the past ten years, it literally never occurred to me until last year that what trans people were asking me to do was actually reconsider my impression of their gender! I sincerely thought they were just asking me to memorize a different word to call them. I will at least try out a “reconsidering” process the next time I regularly interact with a trans person IRL and see whether it works. (I have also never read about what kind of “reconsidering” processes work for people, but I have some guesses for how I could approach it.
Can you elaborate on this? I am extremely surprised by this attitude and want to learn how to prevent similar miscommunications in the future.
Not OP, but for what it’s worth, I consider it unreasonable to request that other people think of you in a certain way (be it gender, or having personal traits or skills or anything), or at least for there to be any sense of expectation or obligation that they will fulfill such a request. That would be actual thought-policing, and abhorrent to me. It’s reasonable to want people to think of you a certain way, to hope that they will, to take actions that will hopefully increase the likelihood of it, and possibly to only be close friends with people who do think of you that way (although I think it’s usually wise to try not to care too much about what others think about you). But I feel strongly that people have a right to think whatever thoughts they want, and that anything that seems to be punishing people for thoughts (as opposed to actions or speech) should raise major alarm bells.
Therefore, to the extent that people are told “You should accommodate the desires of trans people, and will be told you’re a bad person and possibly face social consequences if you don’t”, expected accommodations of the form “Think of them as female even if your brain naturally classifies them as male” are unreasonable. “Avoid speech or other visible actions that rub in their face the fact that you think of them as male” is polite, and may be reasonable to expect; “Use these pronouns when referring to this person in front of them” is an obvious example of that.
So that is the strong-request/demand that it’s reasonable for people to get from “society”. (If people in power were unambiguously saying “In order to be polite and not be called bad, you must think of these people in a certain way”, then I think there would be revolts.) If someone hasn’t become emotionally close friends with any trans people, I’d say it’s not too surprising if they haven’t picked up on something subtler than “socially enforced rules”.
I’m not even going to pretend to address the first half of your comment. You’re making extreme jumps of logic that are in no way justified by the conversation.
So that is the strong-request/demand that it’s reasonable for people to get from “society”. (If people in power were unambiguously saying “In order to be polite and not be called bad, you must think of these people in a certain way”, then I think there would be revolts.) If someone hasn’t become emotionally close friends with any trans people, I’d say it’s not too surprising if they haven’t picked up on something subtler than “socially enforced rules”.
The content of the sentence “I am a transgender man” is more or less “contrary to popular opinion, I am in fact a man and not a woman.” This has nothing to do with socially enforced rules and everything to do with the basic meaning of language. I did not realize that it was common for people to not know what the word “transgender” means.
You’re talking as though there is some background you don’t share with me, so I shall establish that background.
I tried googling “fired for not using pronouns”, and the results page had news articles pointing to several different cases of that—usually teachers—as well as this page, seemingly written by lawyers, titled “What Can Employers Do About Employees Who Refuse To Refer To Transgendered Employees By Their Preferred Names Or Pronouns?”.
The page basically recommends firing them; it says “Even if the employee has “for cause” protection through an employment contract, there’s a pretty good chance that intentionally misgendering their coworker is sufficient cause to terminate”; it further says that “allowing them to call transgendered employees by something other than their preferred name or pronoun [...] amounts to allowing one employee to discriminate against their transgendered coworkers” and cites a court decision saying that something like that would create an “increased risk of liability” for the company.
There are plenty of U.S. companies (especially tech companies) and academic and other institutions that loudly proclaim their support for trans people, and, although I’m not sure if it’s usually spelled out in their public policies, I think that if an employee or teacher said (as calmly and politely as possible) “No, I don’t believe that you’re a man, and I will continue to call you ‘she’” and stuck to it, then I’d expect the majority of observers would say there’s at least a 50% chance of that person getting fired for it. If the above lawyers’ page is correct, then presumably most U.S. companies who listen to their lawyers (which is most U.S. companies of nontrivial size) will tend to behave like that.
Social groups have much less in the way of top-down enforcement, and I expect lots of variation there. Still, I think there are plenty of social groups—especially involving those who’ve recently attended school—where deliberately not using someone’s requested pronouns is considered rude at best and carries nontrivial risk of ostracization.
Is any of the above new and surprising to you? If so, congratulations on somehow avoiding it—are you in the U.S.?
Anyway, with that background, I think it’s clear that, when someone says something like “I’m a trans man”/”I’d like you to use male pronouns for me”, socially enforced rules have a lot to do with it. (“Threat of being fired” is arguably not “social” enforcement, but it’s certainly enforcement.) It is possible that, to the trans-person in question, all they’re doing is sharing information about their personal feelings, and they may be not thinking about the enforcement aspect—some of them probably oppose it (and a few are probably unaware of it), and it’s not their fault that the enforcement mechanism exists. Nevertheless, it does exist, and that is relevant for the other person.
The sociology of this is interesting. I suspect that only a small minority of trans people would say “Yes, I think other people should be fired if they don’t use my requested pronouns”, yet here we are. I think there are several mechanisms involved that tend to boost some signals over others; also, once some legal precedent is in place, fear of legal liability creates an institutional response (the fear could be exaggerated; I wonder if company lawyers have an incentive to exaggerate legal fears to make their services seem more vital), and the institutions’ social environments evolve in that direction.
What does the word “man” mean in the sentence “contrary to popular opinion, I am in fact a man and not a woman”? Given that popular opinion is, in fact, wrong about this, we should be able to describe some observation or experimental test where the man makes better predictions than the populace, right? What is it, specifically? (I think there are real answers to this, but I’m interested in what you think.)
I’m not even going to pretend to address the first half of your comment. You’re making extreme jumps of logic that are in no way justified by the conversation.
What are the extreme jumps of logic? I confess that I can see none, in the post you’re responding to. If you think otherwise, I should like to see you defend that claim.
I didn’t know anyone trans or think about it at all.
I moved to California and hung out with some rationalists and met some trans people IRL and online. I understood that it was polite to try to use whatever pronouns they preferred, decoupled from their physical appearance, so I did my best to do so, and other than that I continued to not think about it at all.
After observing that it’s hard to reliably remember to use pronouns that conflict with people’s surface appearance to me, I adopted a “default to ‘they’, especially in case of ambiguous appearance” strategy that seemed to typically be doable by me, and satisfactory to most people I met.
Somehow last year I was talking to another cis person about whether different strategies for remembering to use the right pronouns were easier or harder, and this idea of “actually reconsider their gender” came up.
To be clear, you now understand that the content of the sentence “I am a transgender man” is more or less “contrary to popular opinion, I am in fact a man and not a woman”? And that pronouns only even come up because they are one of the many ways people convey assessments of gender?
n=1: A trans person I once knew told me that it was important to her that other people think of her as her chosen gender, beyond just pronoun usage. (I have zero other evidence about how widespread this is.)
I agree with these criticisms, I don’t understand what Eliezer was doing with his conclusion. (How did the word “simplest” get in there?)
I just wanted to mention that regarding this quote:
As a cis person who has interacted occasionally with trans people for the past ten years, it literally never occurred to me until last year that what trans people were asking me to do was actually reconsider my impression of their gender! I sincerely thought they were just asking me to memorize a different word to call them. I will at least try out a “reconsidering” process the next time I regularly interact with a trans person IRL and see whether it works. (I have also never read about what kind of “reconsidering” processes work for people, but I have some guesses for how I could approach it.)
It seems bad that the huge focus on pronouns completely obscured the actual request! I wonder if a lot of other people also don’t know this.
Can you elaborate on this? I am extremely surprised by this attitude and want to learn how to prevent similar miscommunications in the future.
Not OP, but for what it’s worth, I consider it unreasonable to request that other people think of you in a certain way (be it gender, or having personal traits or skills or anything), or at least for there to be any sense of expectation or obligation that they will fulfill such a request. That would be actual thought-policing, and abhorrent to me. It’s reasonable to want people to think of you a certain way, to hope that they will, to take actions that will hopefully increase the likelihood of it, and possibly to only be close friends with people who do think of you that way (although I think it’s usually wise to try not to care too much about what others think about you). But I feel strongly that people have a right to think whatever thoughts they want, and that anything that seems to be punishing people for thoughts (as opposed to actions or speech) should raise major alarm bells.
Therefore, to the extent that people are told “You should accommodate the desires of trans people, and will be told you’re a bad person and possibly face social consequences if you don’t”, expected accommodations of the form “Think of them as female even if your brain naturally classifies them as male” are unreasonable. “Avoid speech or other visible actions that rub in their face the fact that you think of them as male” is polite, and may be reasonable to expect; “Use these pronouns when referring to this person in front of them” is an obvious example of that.
So that is the strong-request/demand that it’s reasonable for people to get from “society”. (If people in power were unambiguously saying “In order to be polite and not be called bad, you must think of these people in a certain way”, then I think there would be revolts.) If someone hasn’t become emotionally close friends with any trans people, I’d say it’s not too surprising if they haven’t picked up on something subtler than “socially enforced rules”.
I’m not even going to pretend to address the first half of your comment. You’re making extreme jumps of logic that are in no way justified by the conversation.
The content of the sentence “I am a transgender man” is more or less “contrary to popular opinion, I am in fact a man and not a woman.” This has nothing to do with socially enforced rules and everything to do with the basic meaning of language. I did not realize that it was common for people to not know what the word “transgender” means.
You’re talking as though there is some background you don’t share with me, so I shall establish that background.
I tried googling “fired for not using pronouns”, and the results page had news articles pointing to several different cases of that—usually teachers—as well as this page, seemingly written by lawyers, titled “What Can Employers Do About Employees Who Refuse To Refer To Transgendered Employees By Their Preferred Names Or Pronouns?”.
The page basically recommends firing them; it says “Even if the employee has “for cause” protection through an employment contract, there’s a pretty good chance that intentionally misgendering their coworker is sufficient cause to terminate”; it further says that “allowing them to call transgendered employees by something other than their preferred name or pronoun [...] amounts to allowing one employee to discriminate against their transgendered coworkers” and cites a court decision saying that something like that would create an “increased risk of liability” for the company.
There are plenty of U.S. companies (especially tech companies) and academic and other institutions that loudly proclaim their support for trans people, and, although I’m not sure if it’s usually spelled out in their public policies, I think that if an employee or teacher said (as calmly and politely as possible) “No, I don’t believe that you’re a man, and I will continue to call you ‘she’” and stuck to it, then I’d expect the majority of observers would say there’s at least a 50% chance of that person getting fired for it. If the above lawyers’ page is correct, then presumably most U.S. companies who listen to their lawyers (which is most U.S. companies of nontrivial size) will tend to behave like that.
Social groups have much less in the way of top-down enforcement, and I expect lots of variation there. Still, I think there are plenty of social groups—especially involving those who’ve recently attended school—where deliberately not using someone’s requested pronouns is considered rude at best and carries nontrivial risk of ostracization.
Is any of the above new and surprising to you? If so, congratulations on somehow avoiding it—are you in the U.S.?
Anyway, with that background, I think it’s clear that, when someone says something like “I’m a trans man”/”I’d like you to use male pronouns for me”, socially enforced rules have a lot to do with it. (“Threat of being fired” is arguably not “social” enforcement, but it’s certainly enforcement.) It is possible that, to the trans-person in question, all they’re doing is sharing information about their personal feelings, and they may be not thinking about the enforcement aspect—some of them probably oppose it (and a few are probably unaware of it), and it’s not their fault that the enforcement mechanism exists. Nevertheless, it does exist, and that is relevant for the other person.
The sociology of this is interesting. I suspect that only a small minority of trans people would say “Yes, I think other people should be fired if they don’t use my requested pronouns”, yet here we are. I think there are several mechanisms involved that tend to boost some signals over others; also, once some legal precedent is in place, fear of legal liability creates an institutional response (the fear could be exaggerated; I wonder if company lawyers have an incentive to exaggerate legal fears to make their services seem more vital), and the institutions’ social environments evolve in that direction.
What does the word “man” mean in the sentence “contrary to popular opinion, I am in fact a man and not a woman”? Given that popular opinion is, in fact, wrong about this, we should be able to describe some observation or experimental test where the man makes better predictions than the populace, right? What is it, specifically? (I think there are real answers to this, but I’m interested in what you think.)
What are the extreme jumps of logic? I confess that I can see none, in the post you’re responding to. If you think otherwise, I should like to see you defend that claim.
Basically, my experience went like this:
I didn’t know anyone trans or think about it at all.
I moved to California and hung out with some rationalists and met some trans people IRL and online. I understood that it was polite to try to use whatever pronouns they preferred, decoupled from their physical appearance, so I did my best to do so, and other than that I continued to not think about it at all.
After observing that it’s hard to reliably remember to use pronouns that conflict with people’s surface appearance to me, I adopted a “default to ‘they’, especially in case of ambiguous appearance” strategy that seemed to typically be doable by me, and satisfactory to most people I met.
Somehow last year I was talking to another cis person about whether different strategies for remembering to use the right pronouns were easier or harder, and this idea of “actually reconsider their gender” came up.
Interesting. Thank you.
To be clear, you now understand that the content of the sentence “I am a transgender man” is more or less “contrary to popular opinion, I am in fact a man and not a woman”? And that pronouns only even come up because they are one of the many ways people convey assessments of gender?
n=1: A trans person I once knew told me that it was important to her that other people think of her as her chosen gender, beyond just pronoun usage. (I have zero other evidence about how widespread this is.)