IBM Apologizes For Firing Computer Pioneer For Being Transgender... 52 Years Later (forbes.com) 164
On August 29, 1968, IBM's CEO fired computer scientist and transgender pioneer Lynn Conway to avoid the public embarrassment of employing a transwoman. Nearly 52 years later, in an act that defines its present-day culture, IBM is apologizing and seeking forgiveness. Jeremy Alicandri writes via Forbes reports: On January 2, 1938, Lynn Conway's life began in Mount Vernon, NY. With a reported IQ of 155, Conway was an exceptional and inquisitive child who loved math and science during her teens. She went on to study physics at MIT and earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering at Columbia University's Engineering School. In 1964, Conway joined IBM Research, where she made major innovations in computer design, ensuring a promising career in the international conglomerate (IBM was the 7th largest corporation in the world at the time). Recently married and with two young daughters, she lived a seemingly perfect life. But Conway faced a profound existential challenge: she had been born as a boy.
[...]
[W]hile IBM knew of its key role in the Conway saga, the company remained silent. That all changed in August 2020. When writing an article on LGBTQ diversity in the automotive industry, I included Conway's story as an example of the costly consequences to employers that fail to promote an inclusive culture. I then reached out to IBM to learn if its stance had changed after 52 years. To my surprise, IBM admitted regrets and responsibility for Conway's firing, stating, "We deeply regret the hardship Lynn encountered." The company also explained that it was in communication with Conway for a formal resolution, which came two months later. Arvind Krishna, IBM's CEO, and other senior executives had determined that Conway should be recognized and awarded "for her lifetime body of technical achievements, both during her time at IBM and throughout her career."
Dario Gil, Director of IBM Research, who revealed the award during the online event, says, "Lynn was recently awarded the rare IBM Lifetime Achievement Award, given to individuals who have changed the world through technology inventions. Lynn's extraordinary technical achievements helped define the modern computing industry. She paved the way for how we design and make computing chips today -- and forever changed microelectronics, devices, and people's lives." The company also acknowledged that after Conway's departure in 1968, her research aided its own success. "In 1965 Lynn created the architectural level Advanced Computing System-1 simulator and invented a method that led to the development of a superscalar computer. This dynamic instruction scheduling invention was later used in computer chips, greatly improving their performance," a spokesperson stated.
[...]
[W]hile IBM knew of its key role in the Conway saga, the company remained silent. That all changed in August 2020. When writing an article on LGBTQ diversity in the automotive industry, I included Conway's story as an example of the costly consequences to employers that fail to promote an inclusive culture. I then reached out to IBM to learn if its stance had changed after 52 years. To my surprise, IBM admitted regrets and responsibility for Conway's firing, stating, "We deeply regret the hardship Lynn encountered." The company also explained that it was in communication with Conway for a formal resolution, which came two months later. Arvind Krishna, IBM's CEO, and other senior executives had determined that Conway should be recognized and awarded "for her lifetime body of technical achievements, both during her time at IBM and throughout her career."
Dario Gil, Director of IBM Research, who revealed the award during the online event, says, "Lynn was recently awarded the rare IBM Lifetime Achievement Award, given to individuals who have changed the world through technology inventions. Lynn's extraordinary technical achievements helped define the modern computing industry. She paved the way for how we design and make computing chips today -- and forever changed microelectronics, devices, and people's lives." The company also acknowledged that after Conway's departure in 1968, her research aided its own success. "In 1965 Lynn created the architectural level Advanced Computing System-1 simulator and invented a method that led to the development of a superscalar computer. This dynamic instruction scheduling invention was later used in computer chips, greatly improving their performance," a spokesperson stated.
Record mea culpa span (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes wisdom and humility just takes a while to kick in. [newscientist.com]
Defining "present day culture"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now they just have to sort out not sacking the old (sorry - expensive) people [silicon.co.uk]...
IBM (Score:5, Funny)
The same company that gave us the Boy George [wikipedia.org] connector.
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I know several trans people (Score:5)
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As someone who has several friends who happen to be trans, It is rather nice of IBM to do, but what took so damn long?
Perhaps you should be asking the same question of England who took 55 years to apologize [theguardian.com] for the barbarism it did to Alan Turing.
Re:I know several trans people (Score:4)
Perhaps you should be asking the same question of England who took 55 years to apologize [theguardian.com] for the barbarism it did to Alan Turing.
I did ask that question at the time that happened.
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but what took so damn long?
You mean admitting that the CEO at the time might have been an asshole? Around seventy million people in the US think that Trump makes a great president; you think it's going to be any easier for the nation in question to condemn other prominent sociopaths?
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We have done nothing to convince people not to be assholes. Sadly war might be the end result, and nobody will win that. At least neither of the warring factions..
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We have done nothing to convince people not to be assholes. Sadly war might be the end result, and nobody will win that. At least neither of the warring factions..
You say that, but if it weren't for a black trans woman hitting a cop in the head kicking off the Stonewall Riots, I'd probably be in jail for being bisexual instead of married to my husband.
Re: I know several trans people (Score:2)
Was he an asshole, or did he not want to deal with the potential business impact of it? Today's cancel culture operates on the exact same principle, so I don't see the difference.
I can almost guarantee you that nobody at IBM actually feels genuinely remorseful about what happened 52 years ago, but they're damn sure going to at least make it seem like they do for the exact same reasons that they did the firing to begin with.
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You are very right.
People seem to forget that corporations do not have souls, and that having a conscience is contrary to the profit motive.
I'm glad the environment and culture immersing IBM has changed enough to enable the new behaviour to replace the old, however. IBM may not have made any progress, but at least society has.
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Was he an asshole, or did he not want to deal with the potential business impact of it?
You asked if he was an asshole twice.
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Apologies given by people who had no involvement in the wrongdoing they are apologizing for are hollow and meaningless. You cannot apologize for someone else's actions. Virtue signalling at best, and at worst, tantamount to fraud.
Government twats are notorious for committing this sham.
Companies, like governments, outlive people (Score:2)
Shocking news at 11. So IBM can just as easily apologize for firing this person, in the same way that the Dutch can apologize for the slavery and genocide of the Congo, [wikipedia.org] even though all responsible have been dead for a very long time.
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Re: I know several trans peoplegh (Score:2)
' My problem is assholes like you. Now don't get all pissy - I'm just doing to you what you did to me, you fucking moron.
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You are the gender you are born with, chromosomes decide that
Oh no. not this again..
1 in 300 men don't have 46.XY chromosomes. Some women do. Sometimes, rarely, so do the daughters they give birth to.
See J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2008 Jan;93(1):182-9
A 46,XY mother who developed as a normal woman underwent spontaneous puberty, reached menarche, menstruated regularly, experienced two unassisted pregnancies, and gave birth to a 46,XY daughter with complete gonadal dysgenesis.
Fortunately this is Slashdot, where people who know stuff don't mind sharing basic biological inf
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Such instances are anomalies, which happens in nature. But you still remain with whatever genetic traits you were born with, surgery doesn't change that even if it can alter some of the side effects.
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Exactly, surgery does not change your gender.
Societal expectations that are commonly associated with gender are different. Just because you are male, doesn't mean you have to behave in ways typically associated with being male.
As for surgical modifications, its your body do what you like with it, and it may change your appearance or ability to have sexual activity but it will never actually change your gender.
Re:I know several trans people (Score:5, Informative)
You are the gender you are born with, chromosomes decide that, YOU DO NOT. They entire concept is nuts.
Male female is genetics, transgender is a mental disorder, damaging to society as it forces governed society to define gender roles, SO THEY CAN BE CHANGED, crazy as fuck. .
Maybe this will help explain:
Sexual Hormones and the Brain: An Essential Alliance for Sexual Identity and Sexual Orientation [nih.gov] Garcia-Falgueras A, Swaab DF Endocr Dev. 2010;17:22-35
The fetal brain develops during the intrauterine period in the male direction through a direct action of testosterone on the developing nerve cells, or in the female direction through the absence of this hormone surge. In this way, our gender identity (the conviction of belonging to the male or female gender) and sexual orientation are programmed or organized into our brain structures when we are still in the womb. However, since sexual differentiation of the genitals takes place in the first two months of pregnancy and sexual differentiation of the brain starts in the second half of pregnancy, these two processes can be influenced independently, which may result in extreme cases in trans-sexuality. This also means that in the event of ambiguous sex at birth, the degree of masculinization of the genitals may not reflect the degree of masculinization of the brain. There is no indication that social environment after birth has an effect on gender identity or sexual orientation,
TLDR; Trans people have the neurology of the gender they say they are.
This is objectively observable on MRI and PET scans, so to say this is a "mental disorder" or commies trying to pollute our precious bodily fluids is, you know, Reality Chellenged. Trumpian.
See also Male–to–female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus. Kruiver et al J Clin Endocrinol Metab (2000) 85:2034–2041 and a couple of hundred other papers on the subject.
The present findings of somatostatin neuronal sex differences in the BSTc and its sex reversal in the transsexual brain clearly support the paradigm that in transsexuals sexual differentiation of the brain and genitals may go into opposite directions...
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Unfortunately, many activists insist that gender identity is entirely a political construct to demean and enslave women. Pointing to genuine physical, neurological and psychology details can get you sanctioned in the modern workplace, as happened to James Damore.
Unfortunately, many transsexuals are not as clear about their gender identity as we or they might wish. One example is the guevedoces, the South American children born with female genitalia who naturally transform to male when they reach puberty. We
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And oh, if you're going to cite the papers, the Wikipedia article provides this quote from this paper:
> Morphological increments observed in the brains of trans men might be due to the anabolic effects of testosterone
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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And oh, if you're going to cite the papers, the Wikipedia article provides this quote from this paper:
> Morphological increments observed in the brains of trans men might be due to the anabolic effects of testosterone
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Apparently it isn't though,
White matter microstructure in female to male transsexuals before cross-sex hormonal treatment. A diffusion tensor imaging study. - Rametti et al, J Psychiatr Res. 2010 Jun 8.
CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that the white matter microstructure pattern in untreated FtM transsexuals is closer to the pattern of subjects who share their gender identity (males) than those who share their biological sex (females). Our results provide evidence for an inherent d
Re: I know several trans people (Score:2)
"As for gender segregated zones, accept reality, it is not protecting women from men, it is protecting smaller weaker people from larger stronger people."
So we should label spaces "Up to 55kg/165cm" and "Over 55kg or 165cm" then?
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Culture matters - and extremes are damaging (Score:2, Insightful)
> I included Conway's story as an example of the costly consequences to employers that fail to promote an inclusive culture.
I've heard stories of Silicon Valley companies with some kind of "bro" culture that is damaging. People saying some really stupid shit. Certainly that should be avoided. I don't live and work in silicon valley, so I haven't experienced that.
Over my career, only one company I've worked with has ever had a problem. Only in that company did I hear racist and sexist crap. That company
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Perhaps at other places your fellow employees did not believe they could speak freely about what they were experiencing.
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> People are the same wherever you go. Racists and gay bashers etc always exist everywhere, from the most liberal to the most rustic.
I'm curious where you live.
The only way I can rectify some of the stories I hear with my actual experience is to think things are different in different places. That the problems people complain about *do* exist where they say those problems exist.
If people in Silicon Valley are like people in Texas, there are a bunch of people blowing the "bro culture" thing WAY, WAY, WAY
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I think it's large company versus small company or startup. In a professional corporate environment such behavior would not be tolerated as the rules tend to be written down and adhered to. Also there are state and federal laws about this sort of stuff, so most HR departments aren't going to overlook this. But many small companies tend to run a looser ship, and a startup may not even have an HR person yet.
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Oh, my. Have you ever worked in a large company? Many of them condone or support abusive behavior at their highest levels. Bill Clinton, as commander in chief of the USA, had armed guards keeping people out of his office as he sexually harassed an intern. Jeffrey Epstein had a private island where his sexual abuses were segregated from the general population and his under-age sex workers could serve the "private needs" of his powerful guests. The private mercenary company CACI provided "interrogation staff"
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If people in Silicon Valley are like people in Texas, there are a bunch of people blowing the "bro culture" thing WAY, WAY, WAY out of proportion. Because it simply isn't like that where I'm from. The kind of racist, sexist, crap I hear is said "all the time", you'd never ever hear in a Texas workplace.
You see "bro culture" a lot in game companies. Other than that, you'll see it more often in the sales team rather than the tech team. If people actually cared about fixing sexism they would start with the sales teams.
Among programmers, a lot of times people who join expect the social structure to be like it was in high school or college. It's not at all, and if that is your expectation, you will be very confused, and might end up blaming sexism.
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> Among programmers, a lot of times people who join expect the social structure to be like it was in high school or college.
They expect to be ostracized and have to sit at the nerd table? :)
You did say programmers.
A funny thing happens between high school and work for programmers. From last to be picked for the tram to be actively recruited.
Re: Culture matters - and extremes are damaging (Score:2)
Same with racism.
The "bro culture " isn't limited to tech - but it's pretty well ingrained in tech.
This sounds more like an "apology because it's politically correct and we're being called out on it" than any genuine appreciation of the damage they're done. A decade ago they would have done zil
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Right or wrong, a lot of people who've had to live with it have come to the conclusion that hated of trans women is simply hatred of women.
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There are a lot more male->female than female->male trans, or at least they are more visible and/or prominent. It's quite rare to hear of or encounter a female->male and i've personally never encountered any that i'm aware of.
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From observation: the trans-men aren't nearly as political and loud about being transgender. Transgender men have also entered a world where physical domination is part of the social language, and they tend to be noticeably smaller and lighter than their cis-male colleagues, even after physical training and hormones. The size and remaining physical strength of trans-women is an ongoing problem athletically and socially: One of the most classic examples of the difficulty include the assault on Ben Shapiro by
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The "bro culture " isn't limited to tech - but it's pretty well ingrained in tech.
It's not even limited to tech. I wasn't out of the closet as bi until I moved to Oklahoma, but the harassment I got for being suspected of being gay when I was at the Portland Police Bureau in the early 2000s, along with the response the city generally gave to crimes against the LGBTQ, Latine, indian and black communities specifically, is enough for me to wonder if people equate "doing literally the barest of bare minimum on transportation issues" is the same as progressivism in people's minds.
Sure, Oklaho
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Sometimes there are startups that are composed of mostly friends. Which has several bad consequences, mainly that it bypasses the interview process and it's difficult to fire a friend of an executive, so incompetence sticks around. But also it leads to a buddy culture. The same jokes the buddies make in the gym locker room get made on the company's floors as well. I have seen something like this, though I've never been at the early days of a startup, and wondered how such a person who added so little va
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Latinx is a slur.
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Basically, it's an "Offended on your behalf" thing cooked up by white people. Spanish is a language where gendered nouns are extremely common, this includes Latino and Latina. When referring to a group of people from Latin America, you use Latino if it's a mix of men and women. The overwhelming majority of Spanish speakers have not heard of it or do not use it, and many are quick to say "Stop that latinx bullshit" and "Latinx is a slur" whenever someone drops it. Here's a recent example on Twitter, you'll h
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When they hire a token *because* they need to meet a diversity quota that's no good for anyone.
The existing employees feel insulted because they worked hard to earn their positions, and yet here comes along a token who was hired purely for their race or gender.
In situations where someone of a minority race or gender does get hired, they will feel that they were a diversity hire and not deserving of the position.
Damaging to everyone involved.
Slashdot: progressive stories, ignorant comments (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot: progressive stories, ignorant comment (Score:5, Insightful)
When is the older, whiter, more conservative slashdot audience going to come around, in a way that companies like even IBM have?
Probably never. They see any mention of someone out of the norm which makes their conscience and privilege a bit uncomfortable as reverse discrimination and will continue to scream about it to high heaven until their dying day. On the other hand, there are many of us who understand that anyone too far outside the norm is often assailed by the dominant social context and the people who benefit from it. What can one say? Social change comes slowly and usually only with the passing of generations. Sad, but true.
As far as this old, white, straight male can tell, Lynn Conway was the person who wrote a bang up book and put together design tools in the late 1970's that made VLSI design accessible to engineers to whom it never was before. That makes her aces in my book.
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It's kind of an odd attitude on slashdot, because nerds are also far outside of the norm already.
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Not so odd, as "nerditude" is not necessarily visible (as is, for instance, actually being on the spectrum) and is actually privileged by relatively high salaries. Plus, many nerds, rather than feeling sympathetic towards others who suffer, instead have an attitude of "I had to put up with it, so should they." It's sort of like the idiots that perpetuate thirty-six hour shifts for medical residents.
Re:Slashdot: progressive stories, ignorant comment (Score:5, Insightful)
When is the older, whiter, more conservative slashdot audience...
Careful - your racism is on display. Do you honestly believe non-whites are more accepting of LGBT+ culture than whites? Because except for a very few exceptions like Thailand, it's not even close
When my country voted to allow same sex marriage a few years back, the only electorates that recorded a majority vote against it where the ones that were majority non-white.
If you ever manage to travel internationally, I'll think you'll find that non-white countries are predominantly far more conservative when it comes to these issues than you are assuming.
Holy Extrapolation Batman (Score:2)
Careful - you're distorting what the parent actually said and attacking a straw man. Why are you going on out non-white homo/transphobic attitudes out there in the real world when the parent was clearly and explicitly talking about Slashdot posters?
A bit rich to accuse me of extrapolation (Score:2)
If you can prove to me that is older white slashdotters who have been making all these transphobic comments, then I'll apologise (pro tip: you can't).
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Absolutely... It is western nations who promote tolerance, western nations that enact laws to punish intolerance and racism. The reason you hear about case of *ism in western countries is precisely because it's illegal and frowned upon by most. In other countries it's just normal every day life.
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I'm European ethnic from one of the axis powers and old enough to remember what it felt like to be under attack post-WW2.
Now the narrative has flipped so that I'm considered old and white (I'm not Anglo-Saxon, just European). I'm still under attack, this time for being white. There was maybe a decade between the 80s-90s when I wasn't under attack from self-styled "progressives".
I know how it felt like before, and I know how it feels now. It's the same mindless
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How specifically are you being attacked?
Re:Slashdot: progressive stories, ignorant comment (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm pretty sure it's a change in the userbase. You didn't used to see so much idiocy even at -1, and these days you're even liable to see it modded up to 2 or 3 on occasion. The increasing lack of technical content in the last 10 years has driven the old guard away. Slobbing on Musk's knob a bit is what passes for "tech-oriented" here today. If you can recall the details of each annual Apple Keynote, this place is for you. If you complain about identity politics and still fall for it the instant it's your i
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Socially progressive and fiscally conservative is pretty much libertarian, going by the libertarian "Nolan chart". I think the chart is too simplistic but it's better than the normal one-dimensional categorization.
fiscally conservative == socially conservative (Score:2)
Yeah, it's so great if you don't hate gay people or minorities. You're still a social conservative if you don't want to raise the minimum wage, pass free health care, etc.
Re:Slashdot: progressive stories, ignorant comment (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing I tell kids in my children's generation who are furious at J.K. Rowling is that this eventually happens to most of us. The world keeps changing, and one day you find you can't get used to it anymore. It doesn't make you a bad person, it just makes you an old fart. This will happen to these kids too: some day they'll find themselves in a world that feels alien.
I will admit that I don't really understand the transgender thing, and I'm not really fully comfortable with it. But what's very clear from the people I've met is that the decision to consider themselves a different gender from their assigned one does more than make them happy: it makes them feel at peace with themselves, despite all the problems it causes for them. So I don't need some all-explaining theory of gender to accept that that's what's good for them, no matter how it makes me feel.
So I'll predict that most of the old farts here will never be 100% comfortable with transgender people. The question is whether they can make a distinction between feeling uncomfortable about something and being harmed by it.
Re:Slashdot: progressive stories, ignorant comment (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps this will help.
It's not actually a decision. Every trans person has a different life story, but it's really common to hear of them struggling hard not to acknowledge what's in the ROM in their brain. One pattern that happens over and over is that a trans woman will go into some ultra-macho field like special forces hoping that either the femininity will go away or that she'll get killed, which would also solve the problem.
There's hard autopsy evidence for what I just analogized as "the ROM in their brain". Short bibliography: https://aebrain.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
If it were a decision, then mind-changing would work. What actually happened when the medical profession still thought it was a delusion is that everything up to and including electric shock aversion therapy did not change anyone's internal gender identity.
I talked to one trans woman who was furious about getting asked "When did you know?", because it reminded her of all of the pain of all of the years trying not to know.
It turns out that during fetal development, brain organization and genital differentiation happen at completely different times. Right now it's a theory, not a hypothesis, that a trans person's brain went one way and their swimsuit zone went the other way.
If you want a deep dive, I suggest Dr. Julia Serano's book and web site.
And of course comments are ignorant. We are all born ignorant. We're nerds -- we can learn counterintuitive things.
Nah, Rowling was always an asshole (Score:2)
She writes all these books about inclusiveness, but the most imaginative name she can come up with for an Asian character is "Cho Chang"? The one character who objects to chattel slavery is portrayed as an oddball and a kook?
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Get off my lawn! :P
Re: Slashdot: progressive stories, ignorant commen (Score:2)
Your last sentence nails it. It's easier for trans people to change their bodies and presentation to be happy than to try to change their brains to be happy with their existing bodies and presentation. In fact, all attempts to realign trans people's brains have failed miserably with tragic consequences.
Empirical evidence shows that transitioning works and is an effective treatment. So I don't understand why people have a problem. What's it to you if someone else transitions?
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Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance marking over 350 trans people that have been killed worldwide in the past year, and the comments here are about looking like an old guy in drag and tranny retards. I have moderator points right now but would rather say something. When is the older, whiter, more conservative slashdot audience going to come around, in a way that companies like even IBM have?
Is that really a day "Transgender Day of Remembrance"? Jesus, what is the world coming to?
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I've noticed slashdot tends to have progressive stories such as this but then the comment section is mostly full of ignorant trolling posts.
Maybe we feel we have always been in favour of personal freedom and tolerance of those who differ. But this political correctness is leading to compelled speech, and twisting of reality. We are supposed to pretend that biological sex is irrelevant, even in professional sport, and that Sue has always been female. The obsession with language over actual behaviour or reality is crazy. So much wasted energy, and pointless divisiveness!
It could be so much more productively directed to more important iss
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No connection between those dots. If you don't want to be trans, have you....considered...not being trans? In the same way that if you didn't want to be gay, you didn't have to have sex with a person of the same gender.
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Coming around to what exactly?
A person who willingly cuts off a body part, such as a finger, genitals, etc. is fucking insane.
A man mutilating his penis does NOT make him a smart "woman" -- it makes him a dumb-ass man for not respecting his body he was born with. Trying to "Fix" an external physical symptom instead of treating an internal mental problem doesn't "magically" make the "problem" go away. It should come as no surprise that the suicide rate is almost 40% among the transgender. :-( Those who who
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Your transphobia is noted. And no different from rantings on how unnatural it is for men to lay with men, women to cavort with women, "lifestyle choices". It's all the same BS.
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Indeed. The difference though is only the foreskin is cut off, no one is chopping off the entire thing and they aren't pretending to be women.
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Yes. Had it done to me too, Dad was a highly respected cancer surgeon who was brought up by orthodox parents but absolutely hated it and did not believe in religion whatsoever. The type to say relgion has killed more than all wars, etc. He even made us memorize as kids, "What is religion?" and we would shout back, "The opiate of the masses!" ;) I am not sure why it came up in conversation, but when circumcision was mentioned he said the key point is that if you get circumcised, you don't get penis cancer. S
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Too bad your dad was a fucking idiot on that excuse. MGM is extremely rare in Europe, yet penile cancer isn't a leading cause of death for men. It would make just as much sense to perform a double-mastectomy o
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I think many other places you have ignorant trolling posts, it seems there's a huge uptick in negative comments. A recent Periscope Film youtube channel with a film 1966 film about the Gemini program, comment section is bombarded by moon landing hoaxers. Damn where do these people have time to do this. Then there's other places where comments are moderated but I've noticed far more downvotes in places where I rarely saw them before.
This story is just begging for trollers. Actually I've noticed other /. ar
they're still butthurt over Brendan Eich (Score:2)
So, probably never:
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
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Never. If I have to pick between accepting femenists or transsexuals - as many from both categories demand - I'll go with the ones that don't promote irreversible, mutilating surgeries.
Re: Slashdot: progressive stories, ignorant commen (Score:3)
+1. I've been on /. for a long time (5-digit uid) and the quality of discourse in the comments has declined much as political discourse in the US has.
Society (American society, at least) is becoming nastier, angrier and dumber. :(
Seems unnecessary? (Score:2)
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OK, what about (Score:2, Funny)
An apology is good and all, but what about back-pay to 1968?
And the Jews? (Score:4, Insightful)
LGB is incompatible with T (Score:2, Insightful)
I remember seeing a YouTube video with some kind of panel discussing LGBT issues. One member of this panel was a lesbian that pointed out how the idea of transgender people is incompatible with the idea of lesbian people. For a woman to be a lesbian means that there is such a thing as male and female, that it's "healthy" or "normal" to be attracted to someone of the same sex, and socially acceptable for a woman to exhibit traditionally masculine behaviors.
If a parent sees their little girl exhibit behavio
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I remember seeing a YouTube video with some kind of panel discussing LGBT issues. One member of this panel was a lesbian that pointed out how the idea of transgender people is incompatible with the idea of lesbian people.
No the person didn't "point it out", they stated their opinion on the matter. That is quite different from pointing out a fact.
For a woman to be a lesbian means that there is such a thing as male and female, that it's "healthy" or "normal" to be attracted to someone of the same sex, and soc
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Nah, that's bullshit. I know a bunch of trans people and not one of them "pretended" to be trans to hide homosexuality.
Your theory makes even less sense today, when the stigma against being gay is negligible in a lot of places, but there are still trans people in those same places.
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So can nose-jobs. Do you want to ban nose-jobs? If such is riskier than nose-jobs, please provide evidence. This is slashdot, not Fox News.
Evidence? Eunuchs live longer than men. [go.com]
So what? (Score:2)
All of the people who made the decisions in 1968 are retired by now if not dead.
So what? (Score:2)
Companies can't apologise; they're just bits of paper. Some people who didn't do the thing apologised. Why Conway would care is beyond me. I certainly don't.
Find the people who did it and make them apologise.
Re:fired, or simply rejected like a bad organ matc (Score:4, Insightful)
She looks fine to me. Once you realize one use to be male, you start to pick apart differences, but many "natural" women have multiple male-ish features also if you bother to focus. Knowing often taints one's perspective.
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I got no picture just a "fuck off with your ad blocker" pop up.
So I feel excluded and marginalized.
Will IBM apologize for firing almost everyone else as well?
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>let's come up with a plural for "you".
'yous' is in common use in the UK.
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Such is usually only a problem in social situations when English forces you to attach a gender and you are either not sure, or not sure what somebody wants to be called genderwise. English needs rework in that area.
English is fine as it is so long as people stop overthinking things. Words like "he" and "man" have been accepted words for neuter and masculine genders for a very long time. It's only fairly recently in the development of the English language that people made up reasons to be upset over it all.
I'm fine with some of the recent changes in the English language over this gendered nonsense. One example is "firefighter" versus "fireman". A firefighter is a person that puts out fires. A fireman could be some
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English is fine as it is so long as people stop overthinking things. Words like "he" and "man" have been accepted words for neuter and masculine genders for a very long time.
Actually, there's a longer history for they/them as gender-nonbinary/nonspecific pronouns in addition to being the collective pronouns, dating back to, at a minimum, the 13th century. Germanic languages aren't gendered and tend to default on gender-nonspecificity.
The idea of using masculine pronouns for people when gender specificity is unimportant or unnecessary is a 18th century invention when English grammar prescriptivists started wondering why English couldn't be more gendered like the romance languag
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Then there's "Latinx". I guess this is supposed to be pronounced like "La-Tinks". I'm tempted to pronounce that as "the proper word is Latino you supercilious git" but it doesn't quite roll off the tongue.
I honestly can't help but to think this is just an English speaker trying to come up with a genderless equivalent for a gendered noun in Spanish. Yeah, I get it, Spanish is gendered. But language, particularly spoken, doesn't really lend itself to completely arbitrary consonant substitutions where everyone's expecting a vowel. Though with Spanish speakers who are are looking for a explicitly gender-nonspecific noun I encounter either go with "latino" but then explain a qualifier, or go with "latine" whic
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Re: fired, or simply rejected like a bad organ mat (Score:2)
English needs rework in that area. And while at it, let's come up with a plural for "you".
No, it really doesn't need a rework, it already does what it's supposed to do. It's not a fault of the language when somebody dislikes the way it's used, especially when what's considered improper or offensive always changes from one year to the next. Otherwise, you may as well erase the words shit and fuck from the language.
Your bringing up the lack of a second person plural pronoun is a great example, because as others have mentioned, we already y'all for example. The reason few people use y'all is becaus
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How could someone currently verify that? Only a few apes and arguably a few dolphins have found a way to communicate thoughts in enough detail to approach that issue, and it would probably require a much larger sample size.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's not as if there's not enough humans around. Even if 90% of males changed into females, the 10% are more than happy to provid
Re: Yes I Am (Score:2)
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They should let you, Captain MadeUpRules steer?
Even if they were mentally ill, that's not a reason to fire them, if it doesn't affect their job. I don't even think Jesus, as characterized in the New Testament, would fire them.