A Sense of Doubt blog post #3174 - WRONGTHINK: There are only two genders? CHANGE MY MIND Steven Crowder

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3174 - WRONGTHINK: There are only two genders? CHANGE MY MIND Steven Crowder

A few years ago one of my students told me about this Steven Crowder guy, a You Tube personality he goes around to college campuses and invites debate on various topics, such as Women in Combat, Patriotism, Abortion, etc. He bills himself as the "NUMBER ONE" Conservative Daily Comedy Show."

Not that it's a big surprise how he identifies ideologically.

I watched the first one, but now I find he has additional editions of his hateful rhetoric.

A problem with these videos is that Crowder is prepared. He has identified the arguments and counter arguments and has assembled "evidence," much of which is misleading, erroneous, or unreasonably biased. 

The people who debate him are not prepared. They just happen to be walking by where he has set up on their campus, and so he comes off looking smart, reasonable, with evidence in his side, and they all end up looking foolish. They "lose." After all, let's remember, he wants to mock and make fun as his self-promotion attests: "NUMBER ONE" Conservative Daily Comedy Show."

I would love to see someone truly prepared to debate him take him on. I would like to see him provide his "evidence" in advance so that it could be refuted. I would like to see him "lose," though without the mocking of him. No need to sink to his level.

He makes a point with his third edition below: "In this latest edition of Change My Mind, Crowder & a partially-deaf lady Gabriella, have a civil discussion about an extremely polarizing topic in gender ideology. This was a warm-hearted conversation where two people who vastly disagree came together to discuss a complex topic without yelling, screaming, or calling each other names. Enjoy!"

Several problems here.

Does Gabriella identify as she/her? If so, would "she" wish to be referred to as a "lady" and not a woman?

He also wants to make a point about her being "partially deaf" as if to imply that he is a sensitive soul, willing to engage with someone who has a handicap. How is her (I use her because I do not know otherwise) hearing impairment relevant to their debate on gender?

He starts right out by labeling her as a "classic liberal" as if gender is a liberal argument and a political issue and not a fact.

This is the crux of one of the greatest problems with the culture wars: denial of reality.

The majority of the scientific and social scientific community believes that gender and biological sex are not the same thing. Most argue against the heteronormative idea that the biological sex assigned at birth determines gender and thus identity and wish to discard usage of terms like cis-gender for those who believe that their gender conforms to the biological sex with which they were assigned at birth.

I write "believe" because gender is a belief. It is performative. It may relate to and be influenced to some extent  by biology, but it may not be. My main argument for this view is the way in which people often have to hide their true gender and thus "perform" the gender expected of them. Also, some people have so repressed their true gender that they "over-perform" their idea of the gender that they think they should be in such a way that is almost comical (which seems to remind me of the behavior of this Crowder guy, but I am not mocking...).

Gender is often seen as a social and cultural construct and that's why idea about gender vary with the culture and the time period. Even the colors associated with "cis-gender" -- blue for boys and pink for girls -- was a reversal for marketing purposes in the 1950s from the original red/pink for men and blue for women. Blue was demure and quiet; red was active, aggressive, and the color of sex. See Cordelia Fine's book Delusions of Gender for more on that issue.

Even Wikipedia emphasizes broader ideas of gender than the binary system based on biology. That's due to the fact that the majority of the United States and most of Europe believe in more than two genders because that's reality, and it has been reality forever. Those who want to frame gender ideology as a new thing or  a fad have little grasp of history and the long tradition of people who fall outside the binary gender system. Many native tribes called some of these people "two-spirit," and they were powerful shaman and medicine workers.

Often it is argued that gender is a social construct, such as Simone de Beauvoir who claimed that "one is not born a woman; one becomes a woman."

Though Judith Butler railed against the "fixed" idea of biological sex and claimed that perhaps biology is as socially constructed as gender.

For example, gender studies writer Judith Butler states that "perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all."^[94]

Regardless, progressives cannot just shout expletives at people like Crowder, which may be why he made such a point of why it was meaningful to him that his discussion with Gabriella was "civil" even though they "vastly disagree."

My issue with the assumption of that statement is that Crowder needs to accept reality and stop denying the existence of other people that do not conform to his two-gender system that stands in opposition to the beliefs of the majority of people in our country.

I do not think that "gender" is an opinion on which people need to disagree, one that should be "highly polarizing." It's just reality.

What I would ask Crowder is how he would feel as a self-proclaimed conservative if I told him that I disagreed that conservatives exist. That there's simply two kinds of progressives, and conservatives are some aberration of nature, a mental illness, a passing phase of misguided youth, or however he explains away non-binary genders.

Furthermore, what if I said that conservatives couldn't marry legally. They could not get health insurance unless they pretended to be progressive. They might be beaten by their parents or kicked out of the house as a minor because of trying to live a conservative life. And so, they would need to hide who they really are, hide their conservative ways, hide any relationships with other conservatives. How would he feel if our "opinions" about conservatives created such a world?

Surely, he would have a dismissive retort about how we do not live in that world, it's not the same thing, or some sketchy evidence he has on hand to prove his point or shift the argument to an arena where he can argue and away from a line of thinking that would cause him to "lose."

I present his odious videos here not to promote him but as a way to know the enemy. Also, to save them for future reference. His first video was recommended to me so many years ago that it took me a lot of digging to find it again. I set up this blog originally in 2019.

Sure, Crowder makes me livid with anger. But that's what he wants. He can easily come off looking reasonable and "right" against overly-emotionally charged reactions, but he may crumble against a prepared counter offensive.

I would say enjoy, but I do not enjoy these.

Thanks for tuning in.


There are only two genders? CHANGE MY MIND Steven Crowder

There Are Only 2 Genders (3rd Edition) | Change My Mind

There are Only 2 Genders (2nd Edition) | Change My Mind

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2310.27 - 10:10

- Days ago = 3038 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.