"saying humans are born with either a penis or vagina isn't a hateful statement against people."
It absolutely is hateful to hermaphrodites, clearly saying they aren't human. Use the qualifier "usually" or "almost always".

"As for gender being something different than sex, if you define it that way"
No, you said that. I'm saying all the physical attributes of gender are changeable besides the brain, and many humans with male gonads have female brains, and vice versa. Today, gonads can be surgically changed, so where is gender? I argue it's in the brain, which today can't be changed.
Gender is different from sexuality, clearly, no?
Edit: I guess I do think gender is different from "sex", if sex is determined solely by your gonads.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction
....as to who cares about gender....the bigoted bakers do. ;-)

We're talking perceived race, gender, sexuality, ethnic group, as identified by the discriminating individuals. They don't DNA scan or brain scan customers before serving (or denying) them, they react based on perception.

Skin color, that's totally changeable. Never heard of spray tans or bleach? Try watching Eddie Murphy's 'White like me'.

Odd you might argue against perception being the measure, since you seemed to argue that gays could be perceived as acceptably heterosexual by not acting on their uncontrollable urges and desires, bypassing the bigoted discrimination, essentially by lying.

Again it's about perceived ethnicity, not actual genetic heritage. Like you say, your actual heritage is unidentifiable by strangers, so less important to this discussion of public business discrimination.
If I want my wedding cake for me and Chris, and I wear my pink paisley silk shirt, leather chaps, choker, and heavy makeup to buy it that doesn't make me gay but the bigot baker would still deny me because he would assume I was.

@newtboy:
Gender, nope, you can totally choose that now.

If we must play semantics, sex then. Human beings are born with either a penis or vagina. Same as humans are born with 5 fingers and toes. In extremely rare circumstances humans sometimes have more or less fingers and toes than that, but we aren't being hateful towards those individuals by generally observing that humans have five fingers and toes. Similarly, hermaphroditus happens too, but saying humans are born with either a penis or vagina isn't a hateful statement against people.

As for gender being something different than sex, if you define it that way, than gender is nothing but a set of social expectations. Who cares what social norms and expectations people are or aren't drawn to and abide by?

Race, many people change their racial identity. My DNA and my skin colour don't change no matter how loudly I protest and how many like minded people I get to affirm me.

Ethnicity, people pass as ethnic groups they weren't born into Not looking like your ancestors enough to pass as someone else still doesn't change your parentage. Nobody passing me on the street is liable to be able to identify my Mennonite heritage, but neither can I cease having been born into that cultural heritage.

But it does prioritize freedom of choice...the customers. Freedom to discriminate against others based on race, sex, sexuality, age, or religion in public business is a freedom most people don't want to foster.

I do agree, there are exceptions, like the one you mentioned. Forcing a women only spa area (or any other business where group nakedness is part of the service) to allow people with a penis to enter is touchy (pun intended)....far more than allowing them in a rest room....and above my pay grade, so I won't be opening a women only spa, at least until that's well settled.

Edit: no one is forced to participate in a lifestyle, period. First, creating an object used by someone who's 'lifestyle' differs from yours is not participating in it, second, you are not forced to remain in business. If you CHOOSE to have a public business you are required to operate it according to the law and not discriminate against customers based on race, age, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, .... with very few specific exemptions.
Bigots got over having to make cakes for interracial couples, they'll get over this bigotry too.

Most places have a no vulgarity, no hate speech, no sex rule applied across the board, which is fine....

I look at it differently. In a business, especially any creative business, the decision to pursue or participate in a particular transaction/venture should heavily prioritise individual freedom of choice. On the whole, I'm on board for requiring that business not decline service to people based upon attributes they are born to. Even there however, gender segregated spas are something that I still think should be allowed. That's not an arbitrary choice, up here in Canada a spa is under fire for declining access to a spa based on someone having a penis.

More succinctly, I think everyone should have as much right to think, do or act however they like. Equally though, people should have the right to not participate in other people's lifestyles as well.

Maybe you should actually read the article before commenting on this?

Warning: it's a terribly written article that spends a lot of time on completely irrelevant details, also very NSFW, but to summarise (quoting from article):

When Ansari told her he was going to grab a condom within minutes of their first kiss, Grace voiced her hesitation explicitly. “I said something like, ‘Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill.’”
...
She says Ansari began making a move on her that he repeated during their encounter. “The move he kept doing was taking his two fingers in a V-shape and putting them in my mouth, in my throat to wet his fingers, because the moment he’d stick his fingers in my throat he’d go straight for my vagina and try to finger me.” Grace called the move “the claw.”

Ansari also physically pulled her hand towards his penis multiple times throughout the night, from the time he first kissed her on the countertop onward. “He probably moved my hand to his dick five to seven times,” she said. “He really kept doing it after I moved it away.”

But the main thing was that he wouldn’t let her move away from him. She compared the path they cut across his apartment to a football play. “It was 30 minutes of me getting up and moving and him following and sticking his fingers down my throat again. It was really repetitive. It felt like a fucking game.”

Ansari wanted to have sex. She said she remembers him asking again and again, “Where do you want me to fuck you?” while she was still seated on the countertop. She says she found the question tough to answer because she says she didn’t want to fuck him at all.

End quoting.

I find it difficult to believe Ansari is "inexperienced". He's 34, famous, good-looking and funny. Hell, he wrote a damn book on the subject.

Now, even though I've lost count of the number of times I've said this, to be perfectly clear: I DO NOT THINK ANSARI IS GUILTY OF A CRIME.

But I also don't think that behaviour is acceptable. He acted like a total asshole.

But since we're talking about degrees of harm, you can still be an asshole and do actual harm without committing a crime.

Should his accuser have just left? Probably. Does that excuse his behaviour? Nope.

I totally agree with you, but I think you touched a problem that causes confusion....rape is rape, defined as unwanted penetration of the victim.
That's why men only counted for +-15% of victims outside of prison, and women a small percentage of perpetrators of "rape", they don't penetrate the men in most cases...This leads to the perception that this is mostly men attacking women, and for pure penetrating the victim rape it is....but if you add unwanted insertion (putting their penis in mouth/vagina/rectum against their wishes, etc) that male victim number skyrockets. If you count any sexual assault, unwanted sexual touching, it's near 50/50....with the same going for perpetrators. I was flabbergasted by that statistic.

If people don't want to make distinctions, do it across the board, which means going after the so far ignored women abusers with the same zeal....I've yet to hear a single one called out in the #me too movement, it's appearing to be pure male bashing, sadly.

I don't wanna grow up, I'm a toys R us kid.

I've gotta say, people have vastly varied ideas what 'growing up' means.

Adopting responsibility can happen in childhood....some of us are raised that way.

Women are at least as good at being irresponsible children as men, perhaps they are infantile about it less often. I think he needs better data.

Women at my wife's job are paid less than men. Women with 10+ years experience and seniority are paid the same as entry level men with zero experience, but entry level women are not paid the same. There is no other factor, these new men haven't shown their skills or personality at all when they get hired at the same pay rate as their established, competent boss.

My experience differs from his gender conclusions at every turn, and I found his estimations of women horrendously dismissive and wrong.

Physical conflict is off limits to women? Somebody better tell Rousey.

The market doesn't define positions, the boss does. If a position has certain responsibilities, it's the same job no matter who's doing it. It doesn't become a lesser job because the employee has no penis.

There's actually plenty of evidence that treating workers with respect and empathy is beneficial to both retention and work quality. He's flat wrong on that.

She's totally wrong to imply a right to not be uncomfortable for anyone. No one has that right. She's also a fairly bad interviewer.

After being told for thousands of years that your Penis is irresistible and women are yours for the taking, I think we can take that hit.
Necessary evil for the greater good. Necessary body-shaming for a dick-pic-free world.

I get what you're saying, it's just....

you know, men's precious egos taking a hit is worth having less sexually harassed women. The idea that all these women secretly want some douchebag's penis is way too popular among douchebags to let it stay alive. It's needs to be killed. With fire.
Take one for Team Humanity, dude.

"The 'no penis' thing....yeah, that's kinda nuts"
giggle

"I also see that the right has moved so far right that what one might consider 'centrist' today would be extremist right 25 years ago"

Which reminds me that in the entire conversation I've been pretty much writing off the Reps and the right. I'd really like to see them do all the same things just flipping left for right and all.

I would argue that the right hasn't gone so much further from the 'center' than the left has. Of course, the 'center' is always subjective, but my barometer is basically the only mantra from the libertarians I can agree on, your rights end were mine begin. Maximizing that mantra as much as the practicalities of real world allow is what I would consider an ideally centrist goal line.

Oh....that's....really? And here I thought Canadians were reasonable people.

The 'no penis' thing....yeah, that's kinda nuts, but couldn't they get around it by becoming a private club with membership dues rather than spa fees? At least here, private clubs make their own rules the members agree to when they join.....so far.

Public businesses that use public services to operate and serve the public, they have different obligations to society, imo.

I absolutely agree, the dems need to get their head out of their ass, denounce the extremists in their midst, understand that Clinton was a HUGE mistake, and move back to the center some, but I also see that the right has moved so far right that what one might consider 'centrist' today would be extremist right 25 years ago, so they need to be careful to not move past center and go right, or they'll lose for being republican light.

I would like to think "punch a nazi" isn't especially extreme though, certainly not extremely leftist. You can certainly pickup a large number of right leaning people who are on board for punching nazis.

It's other things from the left that I fear are needlessly driving away right leaning folks.

Calls for halting parts of the economy to save the world from catastrophic climate change, be that banning coal or oil or to a lesser extent carbon taxes. Instead taking the positive approach of promoting non-fossil fuels on the power grid and electric vehicles accomplishes more and doesn't directly attack the industry and livelihood of a large part of middle America.

Anything that amounts to calling it immoral to define a man as a human with a penis and a woman as a human with a vagina. How many voters do you really need to alienate over semantics?

Anything that amounts to demanding everybody accept and encourage your life choices, sexual or otherwise. The notion of judging one another based on our decisions and behaviours is a big deal to right leaning people, telling them that certain behaviours or choices are not only unquestionable but must be approved of is again pointless and needlessly drives away voters. There is common ground in love and let live, pushing beyond that to get back at the old guard is driving away potential allies at a time that can't be afforded.

Labelling any criticism of Islam as Islamaphobia. For that matter, use of pretty much all the morality-a-phobias should be done away with. Go back to demanding people live and let live without the requirement everyone embrace or endorse other people's decisions without being shouted down as immoral.

BLM

Refusing to allow rational discussion of statistically factual trends or differences between populations because it's racist or sexist. Those differences are a part of our reality and just demanding everyone put their heads in the sand drives many people unwilling to do so away. It also is damaging because many problems in society that we need to fix are informed by that data.

Your taste buds adjust within about a week, and things actually begin to taste better, because you can taste the flavours of the actual ingredients instead of just salt.

If you gradually ease off the salt, you never even notice (until you eat something that isn't salt reduced, and it will taste way too salty).


It's a lot easier than using a penis pump or popping viagra's later in life ;-)