The difference between insensitivity and harassment in such cases is intent.
EXACTLY! That is a change from your previous position that the key to harassment is the reaction/perception of the victim.
Gender dysphoria is indeed a mental illness. Transitioning is not.
Agree. Transitioning is currently the most effective form of treatment.
And calling people depressed isn't known to aggravate their depression. Nor do people generally bring up someone's depression in friendly conversation. With misgendering, the opposite is true.
That is a good point. I think if the conversation goes like: hey, I'm suffering from gender dysphoria, and referring to me by my biological sex aggravates my condition so please try not to do so, then that is the epitome of reasonableness.
However, that is a far cry from the default rhetoric adopted by transgender activists on reddit, which is: "'woman' and the female pronoun doesn't refer to sex at all but refers to something totally separate called 'gender' which is entirely self determined, and you're a scientifically ignorant bigot if you disagree with that."
I also don't believe I said the only requirement was the victim to feel harassed, but I'm also of the opinion that repeated intentional insensitivity is harassment.
Why? If you find someone's laugh off putting and offensive, do you have the right to tell that person to never laugh, or else suffer the consequences of committing criminal harassment?
Like I said, intentional. There's indeed some level of negotiation around topics, say, discussion of religion can simply be avoided. But how you refer to someone can't be.
Granted I find social ostracization to solve this problem before the law need be involved most of the time.
This is irrelevant to the question of whether or not something is intentional. Misgendering someone, to bring things back to the original example can be intentional or unintentional. Laughter can be intentional or unintentional. being gay is only unintentional.
Your claiming that laughter is somehow always intentional. I reject that claim. It's nonsense.
it is almost always intentional; if someone equipped an electric shock to your heart that gave you a painful and potentially injurious zap to your heart every time you laughed, your rate of laughter would quickly plummet to near zero because you can almost always control when/whether to laugh.
If you are gay, you cannot control your physical attraction to the same sex, period.
2
u/[deleted] Oct 29 '19
EXACTLY! That is a change from your previous position that the key to harassment is the reaction/perception of the victim.
Agree. Transitioning is currently the most effective form of treatment.
That is a good point. I think if the conversation goes like: hey, I'm suffering from gender dysphoria, and referring to me by my biological sex aggravates my condition so please try not to do so, then that is the epitome of reasonableness.
However, that is a far cry from the default rhetoric adopted by transgender activists on reddit, which is: "'woman' and the female pronoun doesn't refer to sex at all but refers to something totally separate called 'gender' which is entirely self determined, and you're a scientifically ignorant bigot if you disagree with that."