Some may find the list of people who can nominate someone for the Nobel peace prize interesting. From their website:
Members of national assemblies and governments of states; Members of international courts; University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes; Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; Board members of organizations that have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; Former advisers to the Norwegian Nobel Committee
Most of those are fairly small groups; but "Members of national assemblies and governments of states" is a pretty big chunk of people, and "professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology" is a simply enormous group of people.
As a result, nominations are very meaningless; any third rate history or sociology prof at some podunk community college can nominate someone if they have a mind to, and all sorts of people get nominated, often as a lark or to prove a point. I believe Bush was nominated repeatedly, for example. (Well...nominations are secret, but I know of people who have the ability to nominate, and claimed to have done so, and I don't see why they'd bother to lie, so...)
So yes, Snowden was nominated (well, unless these politicians are lying). Honestly, he was probably nominated dozens of times. This isn't news. Also, a couple of left-wing Norwegian politicians like Snowden. Also not news. :) The only real news here is if he wins...
Hitler was TIME magazine man of year, and for a decent while in America Fascism was mildly popular (circa 1930's). Its strange looking back on a that time (Post Holocaust and WW2). American Newspapers applauded the works of fascists claiming, "They got the trains to run on time."
Being Man of the Year isn't necessarily an honor. From Wikipedia:
Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year) is an annual
issue of the United States newsmagazine Time that features
and profiles a person, group, idea or object that "for
better or for worse...has done the most to influence the
events of the year."
"Though we spent hours debating the pros and cons of naming Osama bin Laden, it ultimately became easy to dismiss him," said managing editor Jim Kelly. "He is not a larger-than-life figure with broad historical sweep ... he is smaller than life, a garden-variety terrorist whose evil plan succeeded beyond his highest hopes."
"Smaller than life?" What does that mean? For worse, those attacks have had lasting implications everywhere. Sounds like they realised they'd be slammed really hard if they stuck to accuracy so they backed down with some handy-wavy nonsense about being brave.
If their bravery had caused a proper response, similar to how Norway responded to that mass-shooting, then it'd be worthwhile to note. But despite their bravery, that "garden-variety terrorist" has succeeded in scaring people into allowing their government to expand powers.
And the dismissal that it doesn't matter because he didn't think it'd work out - that's just idiotic. Do we disqualify scientists from the other Nobel prizes because "they really didn't think this experiment would discover anything"?
It means they were writing for their U.S. audience at the time, who wanted to see Bin Laden put down and diminished.
Hitler was Time's Man of the Year in 1938, based on his foreign policy maneuvering at that time. Despite the much greater enormity and historical impact of the Holocaust, he wasn't put there in 1945 or any time since.
Time editors are not going to expose themselves to that level of social anger. No matter how many times they say "Man of the Year" is not a reward, it still has that connotation in a lot of people's minds.
I don't think it's an "injustice" and I don't think "robbed" is the right word either. I'm unaware of anyone I know that really cares what some magazine writes.
I'm just pointing out their terrible use of rhetoric and lack of logic.
OBL's impact wasn't that big in year one. It was huge over the next decade though. How many million man years have we spent in airport security lines because of him?
> for a decent while in America Fascism was mildly popular
Where now politics standing in staunch opposition to liberals, communists and socialists with an emphasis on a ultra nationalism and military power, is thankfully a thing of the distant past.
Oh.
;-)
(I am joking, I'm aware that there are significant differences, particularly regarding the role of the state).
According to site you're citing, the nomination was actually an attempt at satire by a Swedish MP:
"Apparently though, Brandt never intended the nomination to be taken seriously. Brandt was to all intents and purposes a dedicated antifascist, and had intended this nomination more as a satiric criticism of the current political debate in Sweden."
No need for complex explanations when a simple one is given.
Kinda, but I think it was really obvious that he'd be nominated. There's hundreds of nominations every year; Manning has been nominated repeatedly times, Assange has been nominated. Now Snowden's in the news; what were the odds some politician somewhere wouldn't take the opportunity to get some easy headlines by nominating Snowden? I can't imagine him not getting a few nominations. :)
> "professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology" is a simply enormous group of people.
It used to be that professor status was very regulated. In Sweden prior to 1993, a professor title was granted by the government, and in practice one could only become a professor if such role was currently unfilled.
Was the Noble price nomination rules created before 1993?
It's a bit unclear in English nowadays, because in Scandinavian-written academic English, 'professor' sometimes refers only to the formal title Professor, which corresponds to what Americans sometimes call "Full Professor", but in other usages it includes a broader set of faculty. For example the three academic titles in Danish are Professor, Lektor, and Adjunkt, but in recent years their official English translations are Full Professor, Associate Professor, and Assistant Professor, which better reflects how the roles have evolved in practice. So are the latter two included under the term "professors" when a Danish institution writes something in English? Sometimes yes, sometimes no...
While I'm fond of any form of flipping the NSA-backing US administration the bird, the Nobel Peace prize has not enough reputation to matter in this context.
Al Gore got it for raising awareness of climate change. Obama got that for not being Bush. Even if Snowden gets it, it doesn't really matter.
Yasser Arafat & Yitzhak Rabin were awarded it, its not clear if they intended to create a peace, but they did not. Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded it. Henry Kissinger meanwhile embarked on a major bombing campaign and Le Duc Tho declined the honour.
They've made premature or outright bad calls before.
I don't think that the Peace Prize is only meant for people who have made tangible changes in the amount of violence in the world. It's also a carrot that you can dangle in front of people to reward them for taking risks in the interest of reducing violence.
Rabin and Arafat (and Peres) tried, with the Oslo accords, to move toward a settlement of a long-standing, violent dispute. They didn't completely succeed. And indeed, you could argue (as many do) that the Oslo accords were a mistake. But they were willing to take risks in order to perhaps make things more peaceful for their people, and that's the sort of thing that the Nobel Committee wanted to reward.
Of course, now that I've described things in this way, maybe Snowden is an appropriate recipient...
That sounds like the kindergarten definition of "Prize" - which is given to incentivize the person to do something as opposed to after he has actually achieved something of worth.
..assuming they were acting in good faith, which they have always accused eachother of doing. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were certainly not acting in good faith. In any case, the official criteria is:
"done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.*
IMO it should be like the other Nobel Prizes, awarded later when the things have settled. The Science prizes were changed to include a lag allowing for discoveries to face scientific rigor for a while. I think they should adopt the same policy. Wait until a war ends before handing out a prize to those who end it.
People on both sides of the Israel vs Palestine discourse tend to accuse the other side of acting in bad faith. And the various "Peace Processes" have generally been a result of pressure from outside the region.
I think plenty Israelis want the Palestinians gone from Palestine and I think plenty Palestinians want Isreal erased from the map. When that is the goal of both parties, no I don't see them wanting peace.
Of course, we're making a huge generalization here, plenty of people on both sides don't have this as their goal and certainly want peace, which can only be achieved through coexistence. But when coexistence is not your goal, when the ideal terms for both parties is the dissolution of the other, then no; there can really be no peace.
Edit: btw I'm not really talking about the specifics of Yasser Arafat & Yitzhak Rabin listed by the OP, just your statement, which implied something more general then just those two.
Of course they do, but clearly the Oslo Accords (for which Arafat and Rabin won their Nobel) were a product of US intervention. Concessions to the enemy are rarely a vote winner.
Or being the guy who 'legitimized' the drone war and killing of American citizens without a trial. Institutionalizing the president's power to decide who dies under the "disposition matrix" (kill list).
Note: Not saying Anwar al-Awlaki was a good guy, or blameless, or anything of the sort. But it is still killing an American citizen from afar without so much as a thought of a trial.
I'm with you, right up to the point of "an American citizen". As I see it, the right to a speedy jury trial, etc., don't come from being a citizen. These things came from the natural rights philosophy that Madison and others viewed the world through when creating our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Hence, the right to a trial comes simply from the fact of being a person. No citizenship or residency required.
(I grant that reconciling this with acts of war makes it much more murky)
They should have waited 3-4 years to see if he would actually accomplish something beyond getting elected. I'm not saying he didn't accomplish anything, but traditionally a great honor is bestowed for achievements past, not potential achievements.
That's pretty ridiculous. You are really misrepresenting what happened. Sure, you can say it was little more than for a promissory note of peace, which is what people were saying at the time but this is just too much.
> Everyone has already forgotten Pfc. Manning rotting away for 35 years.
Please represent the facts accurately. Manning is eligible for release in 7-8 years. I'm willing to make a long bet (http://longbets.org) for $300.00 that Manning does not serve 35 years, or "rot away for 35 years" as you put it. Are you up for it?
I hate that this nitpicking has become the standard response whenever someone is facing a prison sentence. It utterly belittles the hardship that people like Pfc. Manning actually face, even if it is for 7-8 years in the end.
Additionally, the parole or probation that she faces even after release are still punishment. It's not as though the troubles are suddenly over.
Treating the issue in this way makes it sound like the judge announced the 35 year sentence, slammed a gavel, then looked over to Manning with a wink and a whimsical smile. That's not what happened. 35 years was the sentence, and that is what you should expect to hear in relation to the case, even if it can be reduced with work on the part of the defendant.
Eligible for parole means nothing too. They won't ever let manning out early because they must 'set an example' to deter future whistleblowers, and don't want manning on the talkshow circuit talking about war crimes
What they get out in, is just as relevant as what they were sentenced to. Otherwise, why do we get so mad when a murderer is sentenced to 20 years and out in 2?
I agree that it is a fairly large difference in number, but I still think that trumpeting on about it distracts from the primary discussion.
At best, this is all speculation. 7-8 years is the time before Chelsea Manning becomes eligible for parole. Whether or not she is actually released will depend on a number of factors, including the political climate at the time. We'll only really find out around 2021.
Finally, and this is something I touched on in my first comment, even 7 years in a federal prison is nothing to sneeze at. A non-trivial amount of time spent on federal probation after release isn't exactly going to be a cakewalk, either. And this is all on top of the time already spent in the military justice system, including almost a year of solitary confinement. Basically, I'm just asking that we don't downplay what must be an awful experience simply because our justice system has wiggle room.
After the aggressiveness of the current administration, you think there is a chance the next administration might come along and say "nope, they need to serve the full 35 years".
The sentence is 35 years. They could legally be forced to serve the full 35 for any reason. As far as I am concerned that is the weight being hung around their neck, not the imaginary eight.
And eight years in prison is an insanely long time, don't forget the terrible health care and dangers from other inmates. You can lose all your teeth and die from infections very easily if someone decides to just let you rot.
First I have heard about that. I had to look it up on wikipedia. I have a resentment of gendered pronouns but I don't think there is any realistic hope for change.
I'd bet on released at first parole hearing as long as Manning is willing to be "quiet" and just goes on to enjoy life. Which would probably be a desirable outcome, given age. It's pretty easy to make an argument for leniency based on age, irresponsibility-when-committed, and complete life changes (I mean, sex change, the Snowden revelations, by then no troops in Iraq/Afghanistan (hopefully!), stepping down from perpetual war (if for no other reason than economics), and at least one change of President.
I'd take the bet if you'd be willing to take the position that he'll be released in 7 years. Betting hat he'll be paroled somewhere between 7 and 35 years is silly.
I'm not sure if either of them deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, but I believe Manning's sentence is reasonable. I'd like to shake his hand, buy him a beer, thank him personally, but it's a decision he made that has severe consequences for a reason. And while I don't like Snowden at all, I think his actions are much more justifiable from an ethical point of view. It's not like terrorists were unaware the NSA was spying before they had proof—the only people being blindfolded were citizens. Manning's actions were more complex and the ramifications were less straightforwardly positive.
So by your standard, Martin Luther King Jr. should be getting out of prison just about now?
Manning was a whistlerblower, just like Snowden, with less power and ability for flight to defend themselves.
There was no personal gain ever intended or achieved, yet great personal loss even in the best outcome. They saw something very wrong happening and had little to no way to say "hey there are some incredibly powerful forces in this country doing some very evil things".
The problem is we only treat whistleblowers like traitors legally and Manning's "trial" was a complete scam, zero media coverage allowed on purpose by the government so they could be railroaded.
I don't purport to be an expert on either of these cases, but my impression as a casual observer was that Mannings leak was just a massive dump of classified documents without any attempt to be selective about which information needed to come to light.
Any sizable dump of classified documents is likely to have some damning pieces in there but that doesn't necessarily justify blindly leaking massive amounts of documents. I think Manning would have gotten a more favorable response by more people if he had been just a bit selective in what he leaked.
Again, I don't have deep knowledge on either of these cases compared to some around here so I'll concede that maybe I'm wrong on some of my facts...?
It's not even clear Manning is a whistleblower—what the hell did he blow a whistle on? It's not like any widespread scandal, corruption, or conspiracy was revealed.
Yeah, I was under the impression that he leaked information on the slaughter of civilians in the Middle East by soldiers/mercenaries. My familiarity is clearly cursory.
Along with a ton of other stuff that wasn't germane to that incident. Manning's big issue was that they released a bunch of classified material without much regard for what it said. It was very broad in scope. Had it been a narrow subset of the data, Manning would have had a better chance of being considered a whistleblower.
"I'd like to shake his [sic] hand, buy him [sic] a beer, thank him [sic] personally", "but I believe Manning's sentence [of 35 years in prison] is reasonable".
My jaw dropped to the floor. Assuming that you want to thank her for doing that thing that landed her in prison, there is nothing you can say that can reconcile those two statements for me.
You miss the point. Pfc. Manning now identifies as Chelsea Manning. She is transgendered, and since her military career is toast she has come out of the closet on the subject.
I'm going to be generous and assume that duaneb poster was not closely following the story and is unaware of the above.
Transpersons are always the subject of massive flamewars online, so some folks get really strong kneejerk reactions to misgendering.
I think efbee was responding to "I think what they did was right but also they deserve a 35 year sentence" as the two irreconcilable statements. Misgendering is an important point as well, but it's not what makes the statements contradictory.
I was not aware of Manning's being transgendered, and I don't mean any disrespect—consider it an editorial he given my assumption of gender from sex (I can't edit).
I doubt it was malicious. I read about it right when she made her choice public, and I still forget regularly. I'm just not used to people changing gender, so my mental constructs treat it as kind of a read-only value...
So you're saying you like Manning personally, but not for her 'criminal' actions? What about her makes you want to 'shake [her] hand' and 'buy [her] a beer' then?
You approve of an action that happens to be illegal, and think people who take that action deserve prison time? I don't follow. If a person's actions are noble in my estimation, I wouldn't wish punishment upon them for their actions.
There are thousands of people in government and the military who broke the law and defended their actions because they believed them to be morally justifiable. Surely those people should have a similar sentence to Manning?
A lot of the civil unrest that happened in the world in the years following the State Department cable releases is suspected to have been loosely caused by revelations in the cables themselves that often had candid descriptions of corruption and other misdeeds by governments.
This is clearly something that we as a society are going to have to wrestle with.
It seems reasonable to me that this person, having XY chromosomes and all the hardware that go with them, may be correctly referred to using masculine pronouns.
There's something to be said for respecting the wishes of the individual in how they'd like to be addressed. But there's definitely a point at which that drifts off into absurdity. Just because I can claim descent from Henry VIII doesn't mean that I can reasonably expect people to address me as "lord".
So I'm interested in respecting people, but think we need to let this percolate through society first, and determine where to draw reasonable lines, before you accuse someone of disrespect for failing to honor someone's alternate world view.
There's a time and a place to be pedantic, and this really isn't it.
Transgendered people go through a heap of terrible, terrible crap and the least we can all do is give them the dignity of using their identified pronoun. If anybody has earned that respect, it's ms. Manning.
I mean really, how the heck does it hurt anybody to say "She" instead of "He" after you've been informed that's not how she identifies? Does it really matter that much? Obviously the extreme SJW flamewar reaction you usually see on misgendering is excessive, but after being politely informed that's not how she identifies, how are you harmed by going along with it?
Will the ghost of Plato arise and smite you down for failing to properly class something?
My personal value system (and perhaps milord grandparent's) rates the accurate use of words (aka, truth-telling) rather high on the scale of values. Clear thought is impossible without it.
When we, as a society, take words such as "war" and "gender" that previously referred to physical realities and make them highly metaphorical or even completely arbitrary, we dilute our vocabulary. We make it harder to think and communicate clearly.
I find it especially objectionable when the only argument in favor of blurring the definition of a word is "because someone wants me to" or "someone would be offended if I didn't". Our mere preferences don't change reality; why should they change words, which are meant to convey an accurate representation of reality?
Look, we're all coders here, I get the instinct to be precise with our words. But what about the cost/benefit trade-off? Is a small matter of personal policy related to definitions really worth hurting somebody who's already a member of easily the most downtrodden and crapped-upon group in modern society? Is preventing a tiny incremental shift in vocabulary really worth kicking somebody while they're down? I mean, I'm as grumpy as the next geek about the literally/not-literally thing, but this?
Also, think of it like an interface - the idea is that you should treat the transgendered person as their identified gender. So if you're planning on treating this person as a woman in every way in respect for her situation, wouldn't the pronoun/terminology actually make the matter clearer?
Obviously I don't condone any mistreatment of or discrimination against transgendered people and think they should have full legal protections. On a personal level, they should be treated ethically and equitably, just like any other person.
But regarding the use of language, and forgive me for invoking the slippery slope argument, where does it end? The two propositions, "Person X is a Y" and "Person X feels they are or wishes they were a Y", are not the same. In fact, they aren't even close. As a society it would be ridiculous and ruinous if we were to conflate the two.
I believe it is possible to respect people and linguistic accuracy ("truth", if you like) at the same time. Also, I don't think respecting someone necessarily means doing (or saying) everything they want.
How far do we take this? This is a conversation about the actions of these people. It is not coder pedantry to refer to Manning with male gendered pronouns. Are we now required to know how everyone feels about their gender before we use any pronouns describing them in every context? In fact, we have to keep with everyone's opinions about their genders throughout their whole lives. This is impractical.
I think here, we just have delusion of persecution.
The word "sex" refers to physical realities; "gender" refers to social constructions. By conflating the two words, you are the one diluting our vocabulary.
Now, it wouldn't be totally unreasonable for you to assert that pronouns should be tied to sex, not gender; but that's not what you're saying here.
I'm well aware of the current usage of "gender" in educated circles. That's why I chose it as an example.
"Gender" previously was essentially a synonym for "sex" (except in the field of linguistics). But now that it has been repurposed in some circles, half the American population thinks it refers to a state of mind and the other half thinks it refers to biology. The result: confusion and miscommunication.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be a word to refer to what is now called someone's "gender identity". I'm saying the repurposing of an existing word which meant something similar, but distinct, has caused confusion. (I do expect the current sex/gender distinction to continue to be the accepted usage, though).
The same confusion is now happening with pronouns. And, yes, I would prefer if something as fundamental to the language as a pronoun referred to a physical reality rather than a mutable state of mind. That is a debate worth having, but all too often it isn't framed as a debate, it's framed as "you're insensitive and politically incorrect if you don't agree to our new terminology".
There is no debate, because this isn't about correctness. It's about respect. Let me throw out some hypotheticals here:
My given name is Jonathan. I think this sounds childish, so I tell you that I go by Jack instead. But you've seen my birth certificate, so you keep calling me Jonathan.
I got married and changed my last name to my husband's. You think it's confusing to change names, so you continue to write me using my maiden name.
Although I'm married, I don't want to be defined by my marriage, so I go by Ms. You think that inaccurately reflects my relationship status, and introduce me as Mrs. instead.
I have told you that the use of the male-gendered pronoun "he" makes me severely uncomfortable, and ask you to call me "she" instead. You flip up my skirt, take a good survey, and decide it would be dishonest to represent me as if I didn't have a penis.
The issue in all of these scenarios is a moral one: Do I have the right to define my own linguistic identity, or am I stuck with the one I was assigned at birth? Are you going to be an agent of my liberation, or my oppression?
You can make a good case that each of these blatantly disrespectful behaviors is, by some robotic standard, "correct". To paraphrase a great man, maybe you aren't wrong, but you're still an asshole. You can say this is something you would like to debate, but you don't respect me and I don't like to spend time around you, so go ahead and debate by yourself, thanks.
I'm sorry, but I'm not quite the asshole you think I am.
If someone asked me to call them by a certain pronoun or salutation (names are different as they are completely arbitrary), I would do it, out of respect for them. But let's be clear about what's being asked: I am being asked to lie -- to misrepresent reality -- to that person, and possibly to other people for that person. That's a (small) favor being asked, and it is somewhat irritating to be asked a favor with the sort of sense of moral entitlement found in your last paragraph (especially when the favor being asked is a violation of my own morals).
Also, unfortunately, we don't have the right to define our own linguistic identities. I know it isn't fair, but this extends far beyond gender. I don't become "rich", "President", "Filipino", "Doctor", or "intelligent" just by willing it or even by asking other people to call me those adjectives. They are fuzzy categories, some people don't clearly fall inside or outside of them, but they do have non-arbitrary (i.e., outside your mind) meanings.
You know what? I'd also be pretty pissed off if I worked hard to be considered an American and you insisted on calling me Filipino because you happen to know where my parents are from. I would be pretty sore if you acted like not doing that was a special favor you were doing me, by "lying" to people about my ethnicity, and not just being a decent human being.
It would sound like you value my expressed wishes for how I am represented less than you value showing off to strangers some secret you think you know about what's between my legs or in my blood that frankly is none of your business, let alone theirs.
I'm not really sorry if that feels like an imposition on your morals, because if it does then your morals kind of blow.
I get a little annoyed when people say that I'm German. I mean, despite my ancestry, I was born in America, and I've never even been to Europe. And I'm a little annoyed other times when people refer to "native Americans" as if I'm not one of those.
Those are little annoyances. I don't believe that the speaker is trying to disrespect me -- certainly not intentionally -- and I take it with a grain of salt.
In other words: this seems like making much to-do over very little.
If you are an American citizen then you are American. A more apt example is someone living in Philippines wanting to be called American even though they are not a citizen.
Someone living in Philippines who has no citizenship to America says "i am American", you would look at them and say "no you are not". No matter how much they wanted it to be true the facts do not support it.
I don't want to be too flippant here but you seem to be making case that we would not want to refer to you specifically in any context ever because you are determined to make it frighteningly complicated to avoid persecuting you.
You're just wrong here. Whether "gender" is pure a social construction is a matter of debate. Your fallacy is in assuming a position you personally hold is a priori. You're just espousing one particular position.
Which definition is being blurred, exactly? Definitions may be being changed, but that's in order to make our words more accurate and more practically useful.
It's actually quite hard to determine who is the intended target of a word like "he", since experience presents us with all kinds of difficult cases; appeal to appearance or behaviour or even chromosomes doesn't work universally. At some point, we either have to let people decide for themselves what they want, or impose our own arbitrary classification on them. Someone is making a judgement and I'd rather it be "I feel I am male" than "I feel you look male".
Sure, it might be nice if there were a simple flowchart, based on only objectively observable data, that we could follow to end up with either "he" or "she" in the end. But no such flowchart exists. I propose to drop the "objective" criterion and just ask the person what they prefer - especially given that the only reasons for having a he/she pronoun system are historical and social. If you want to talk about what's going on biologically, in great detail, then feel free, but the pronoun system doesn't have to correspond to that.
Here is just one sample of such a line. "fallon fox" he is an mma fighter who now fights in womans division. We could get into great detail of the biology, height and so on that a man keeps even after surgery. Hopefully you see some of the real unalterable issues that arise from such things, can't wait till shaq has gender reassignment and fights women.
I shall be called emperor of all, sadly simply saying it doesn't make it true. Facts are stubborn like that.
> Transgendered people go through a heap of terrible, terrible crap and the least we can all do is give them the dignity of using their identified pronoun.
I think we'd do better to make sure they don't go through a heap of terrible crap (no bullying/abuse for personal choices) and leave people some personal freedom to have different views on pronouns.
> Will the ghost of Plato arise and smite you down for failing to properly class something?
It seems totally unreasonable to me to intentionally misgender anyone against their wishes even after such intention was communicated. What possible purposes such action can serve?
I think it's more comparable to calling someone by their old name even after someone went through a trouble of changing one's official name because they hated the name given by their parents. You'd agree that's a bad manner.
> It seems reasonable to me that this person, having XY chromosomes and all the hardware that go with them, may be correctly referred to using masculine pronouns.
Gender != your chromosomes and gender != your "hardware" or any other body part for that matter. Gender is about social identity and structure.
> There's something to be said for respecting the wishes of the individual in how they'd like to be addressed. But there's definitely a point at which that drifts off into absurdity. Just because I can claim descent from Henry VIII doesn't mean that I can reasonably expect people to address me as "lord".
Laying claim to a royal lineage is not the same as having a gender. Also, lord is a title and we are talking about pronouns, things used when talking about anyone.
> So I'm interested in respecting people, but think we need to let this percolate through society first, and determine where to draw reasonable lines, before you accuse someone of disrespect for failing to honor someone's alternate world view.
We already know where to draw reasonable lines: Manning has already publicly stated her gender. You have disrespected this person by misgendering them. Manning's world view is not an "alternate" world view and you are being incredibly transphobic.
While I really do tend to lean in the direction you suggest, I don't think it's quite a cut-and-dry as you claim. Here are a few things to consider.
First, we're only talking about language. We get those gendered pronouns not because of a need to distinguish between how a person views his gender (or how the world views it), but because of stupid linguistic convention going back to English's Indo-European roots. You'll see that in many languages in the same family, nouns all have gender, even absurd ones like "airplane" or "shoe". These genders have absolutely nothing to do with sexual identity, they're essentially randomly assigned, conferring no additional meaning (but providing a parity check in communication, helping ensure clear transmission). Coming from this history, we shouldn't be too concerned with the way pronouns correspond to individual humans.
Second, I don't think it's hard to imagine socially-undesirable consequences of honoring anyone's own claimed gender. I'm thinking of a biological-male claiming to self-identify as female, so that he can use the women's locker room at the gym. So under what circumstances do we want to honor their self-image (or, for that matter, to believe their claimed self-image)?
Third, with identity politics still having legal bearing in our system, it seems that self-identification of gender may derail efforts to ensure gender equality. Given that there are legal structures in place to protect females, may I (as a biological male) claim to self-identify as female, and achieve those same protections? May I at least self-identify on official forms (thereby making enforcement of workplace protections unenforceable)?
Not that these things are insoluble, but I think that we need to give thought to the repercussions should we choose to take any person's claims of gender at face value.
You appear to be something of a newcomer to this issue. I can tell you that everything you raise as a concern has been very extensively discussed - certainly in those places which afford legal recognition to gender transition, discrimination protection for trans people, and so on. Systems exist, and, to an extent, they work.
Still, calling somebody by their preferred name and pronouns does not grant them admission to the women's locker room, or anything else like that. It is a matter of courtesy.
The other thing is that often, in order to have a gender change legally recognized, or to access surgery and so on, one has to prove that one has already been living as a member of the appropriate gender. What this means is highly contested, but stuff like "people know me as Alice, not Bob" is part of it. It's difficult enough without people setting themselves up as linguistic gatekeepers, and deciding that they know better than Alice.
> These genders have absolutely nothing to do with sexual identity, they're essentially randomly assigned, conferring no additional meaning (but providing a parity check in communication, helping ensure clear transmission).
Sexual identity != gender identity. Gendered pronouns do have a long and interesting history in languages that have them, but that is besides the point. We are talking about an individual who has clearly expressed their gender in a public and visible way, to disregard that to use other pronouns is disrespectful.
> Coming from this history, we shouldn't be too concerned with the way pronouns correspond to individual humans.
Actually we very well should be concerned with pronouns and gender. Individual people have their to define their own identity, including their gender, and to be referred to with the pronouns they identify with. That gendered pronouns have their own history is besides the point, that history is not immutable nor is it the same for different languages and cultures. Indeed, there have been cultures and languages with built in support for many different kinds of gender and gender expression throughout history.
> Second, I don't think it's hard to imagine socially-undesirable consequences of honoring anyone's own claimed gender. I'm thinking of a biological-male claiming to self-identify as female, so that he can use the women's locker room at the gym.
This is a tired argument. Gender identity is a big deal for trans* people, it isn't something that someone just up and decides to do so they can perv out in a locker room.
> So under what circumstances do we want to honor their self-image (or, for that matter, to believe their claimed self-image)?
As a society we generally honor people's personal decisions about their identity. We do so for religious change, name change, adoption, interracial marriage and dating, and so on. Gender is no different, people should be free to express their gender as they see fit.
> Third, with identity politics still having legal bearing in our system, it seems that self-identification of gender may derail efforts to ensure gender equality. Given that there are legal structures in place to protect females, may I (as a biological male) claim to self-identify as female, and achieve those same protections? May I at least self-identify on official forms (thereby making enforcement of workplace protections unenforceable)?
It is really clear you have no background knowledge on the kinds of difficulties trans* people face. Trans* people face discrimination, violence, and employment difficult at high rates. You are trying to make it sound like trans* women aren't women, when they in fact are. Official gender identity on forms is a long standing problem for the trans* community at large. There are many places where you cannot change your officially recognized gender at an institution without jumping through a variety of hoops. There are many places where even attempting to do so will get you verbally abused by a clerk. In many places even existing as visibly trans* invites violence.
> Not that these things are insoluble, but I think that we need to give thought to the repercussions should we choose to take any person's claims of gender at face value.
Gender identity has been written about for decades and there is a huge amount written on the social and legal structure of our society as it relates to gender and gender expression. That you aren't familiar with it is not an excuse to make a bunch off the cuff remarks that, whether you realize it or not, are transphobic. So please, don't try to justify your disrespect of someone who clearly identifies as a woman as Manning does.
So please, don't try to justify your disrespect of someone who clearly identifies as a woman as Manning does.
Now wait just a moment. Surely if Manning's own identity can only be understood from his/her own perspective, then my own meaning -- whether I am being disrespectful -- can only be seen from my perspective. How dare you project disrespect into what I am communicating.
You are trying to make it sound like trans women aren't women, when they in fact are.*
I never said anything of the kind. What I said was that someone who is not transgendered might claim that they are in order to get some sexual kicks, or to subvert legal protections afforded to women. I'm not trying to take away from the genuinely transgendered, I'm saying that the claim of being transgendered can be misused.
That you aren't familiar with it is not an excuse to make a bunch off the cuff remarks that, whether you realize it or not, are transphobic.
I believe that I made clear in my post that I was largely in agreement, but was playing devil's advocate in order to draw out some deeper understanding -- just vanilla Socratic method stuff. Your reply seems to indicate that someone who is not fully up to speed ought to just shut up, and accept what his betters are telling him.
that history is not immutable
Ummm. How is history mutable?
As a society we generally honor people's personal decisions about their identity. We do so for religious change, name change, adoption, interracial marriage and dating, and so on.
Something I don't get here. I'm married to someone of a different race. I don't see what that has to do with my identity. The fact that my wife and I are married and of differing races, has nothing to do with who I am or who I expect people to see me as. She's my wife, I'm her husband, and that's all there is to it. I fail to see how this is expecting someone to change, or even have, any view of my personal identity.
> Now wait just a moment. Surely if Manning's own identity can only be understood from his/her own perspective, then my own meaning -- whether I am being disrespectful -- can only be seen from my perspective. How dare you project disrespect into what I am communicating.
It is clear that Chelsea Manning is a woman and should be referred to as such. She had a very public message about this. Continuing to refer to Manning with him/his pronouns is being disrespectful. It doesn't matter if you don't understand or believe in trans* as an identity or that people can actually switch their gender, you are intentionally ignoring what someone publicly asked others to do in a way that is most certainly disrespectful.
> What I said was that someone who is not transgendered might claim that they are in order to get some sexual kicks, or to subvert legal protections afforded to women. I'm not trying to take away from the genuinely transgendered, I'm saying that the claim of being transgendered can be misused.
The reality is that nobody does this. The kind of discrimination and violence trans* people face makes it unlikely that someone would pretend to be trans* for a period of time. Without actual evidence of this happening in a way that systemically abuses legal protections or considerations (of which trans* people get less than the rest of us), this is a false argument.
> I believe that I made clear in my post that I was largely in agreement, but was playing devil's advocate in order to draw out some deeper understanding -- just vanilla Socratic method stuff. Your reply seems to indicate that someone who is not fully up to speed ought to just shut up, and accept what his betters are telling him.
Nobody needs to play devil's advocate for transphobic viewpoints, those ideas and actions happen all the time in society today. There is very real data and anecdote about all the things we've talked about. There is no deeper understanding being drawn out here, the arguments you made are common transphobic arguments that don't hold up (confusing gender with sexual identity, confusing gender with biology, unalike comparison with a gender pronoun and a title, appeal to society at large to define trans* identity, gender pronouns as unimportant, straw man arguments about people pretending to be trans, separation of trans women from other women as an identity, etc.).
> Something I don't get here. I'm married to someone of a different race. I don't see what that has to do with my identity. The fact that my wife and I are married and of differing races, has nothing to do with who I am or who I expect people to see me as. She's my wife, I'm her husband, and that's all there is to it. I fail to see how this is expecting someone to change, or even have, any view of my personal identity.
That is fine if you don't consider such a relationship to be a part of your identity in that way. That is for you to define. For some people, their relationship with others does form a part of their identity in a way they consider meaningful. The point is that we don't automatically disqualify that part of said person's identity. When we do disqualify those things, those attitudes are tied to things like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and so on.
Chelsea Manning is a woman and asked everyone to refer to her as such. That is all there is to it. There is no need to try and justify misgendering this person for any reason.
My difficulty with referring to Manning now as female is that most of the actions which I care about were from when it was PFC Bradley Manning. It's like anyone who changes name partway through a major news story. Chelsea Manning is in prison now, but saying "As an intelligence analysis, Chelsea Manning had access to classified files and got into disputes with her chain of command over both work-product issues and personal conduct." seems incorrect.
If this had been known before the news story, no problem at all. It's just hard to use "Chelsea Manning" or even "Private Manning" to refer to actions undertaken far prior to this.
Ironically I think this was one of the things bradass87 brought up in chats with Adrian.
PFC vs. Private is just as complex. I think there's a military way to deal with that (because ranks usually do increase); e.g. in some contexts is it "Captain (now Major) Snuffy..."
It is still the same person. Ultimately something like Manning or private/PFC Manning is the most generic way to describe things if you want to cover that era, but something like "Chelsea Manning, then Bradley Manning,..." is also fine. Ultimately if we are talking about Manning in the present, there is no confusion over the gender pronoun to use (the original thing I was responding to).
It seems pretty simple to me. If you ask me to describe my best friend, I might say he's smart, studied this or that in school, speaks such-and-such languages, likes such-and-such music, and so on. His height and weight would be pretty far down the list of things I find important.
Similarly, we think of our mind as being our "self" in a much more fundamental way than our toes.
If a person is female in their mind but has a male body, it seems very clear that we should consider the former to be their "real" gender. Why should the body matter more or be more fundamental?
I would say the the catch phrase in your argument is "best friend". If the person you were describing wasn't your best friend, you might automatically focus more on the physical aspects, since you wouldn't know the intimate details of their mind.
That said, I am not advocating deliberate misuse of pronouns; I am just saying the topic may not be as simple as it seems.
In polite society we respect the ways that others wish to be addressed, as long as the request isn't unreasonable (I want you to call me 'Doctor wavefunction' yet I lack the credentials).
It is not absurd to refer to someone by the gender they prefer.
This posts reeks of cisgender privilege [0]. Gender is a social construct, not a biological inevitability, and it is disrespectful to refer to someone as a gender that they have explicitly stated they do not identify with.
I'll let you fill in the comparisons to widespread sexism, racism, and homophobia for yourself. Go back to the leaders of the American civil rights movement and tell them to let things "percolate through society" so they can know "where to draw reasonable lines".
> Go back to the leaders of the American civil rights movement and tell them to let things "percolate through society" so they can know "where to draw reasonable lines".
Better, read the Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which deals sharply and directly with exactly those sort of suggestions from white people. It's quite wonderful.
> We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never."
I have no problem if someone wants to identity with a different gender but it can get confusing for others as some people don't limit their pronoun choices to "he" or "she" to identify themselves.
How about this for an idea... Pvt. Manning? Easy and no disrespect.
Shooting people? Yeah. I didn't know the helicopter crew felt so bad about it though. I thought they had better psychological support, but they sounded traumatized.
Obama's prize was more of a credit for good deeds in the future. Jagland himself (Nobel committee chairman) partly confirmed that. Sadly, it didn't work out. Rather backfired.
Fortunately its not about who deserves it more than whom, (theoretically) its about who deserves it the most (although, imho, that's hardly ever the case).
At the time he got it he and Putin deserved it. Had he not gotten it then, he would def. not deserve it now after all the horrible decisions he's made since.
Let's have a look at how the Norwegian Nobel Committee works, that is, the people in charge of selecting the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Currently, the committee is made up of five members, who have to represent the political parties of the Norwegian Parliament. Here is the list of these members :
Jagland has been a member of the Nobel Committee since 2009. The same year, he was elected Secretary General of the Council of Europe. Note that Norway is part of the Council of Europe, but not of the European Union. Jagland is in favor of the EU, although Norwegian people have voted against joining the EU two times.
All of the other members are politicians from national parties. According to Wikipedia, Mrs Kullmann Five is also member of the Board of Directors of Statoil, an oil company which is the largest company in Norway. Mrs Reiss-Andersen is a lawyer, and she has written two novels. Mr Stalsett is the Protestant bishop in Oslo.
As we can see, the committee is not a group of international law experts, famous scientists or peace activists. The truth is, it seems the five members of the committee do not have the right profile to be responsible for one of the most important international awards in the world.
In fact, an additional person helps the committee to make decisions. Geir Lundestad is the director of the Nobel Institute and has been the "secretary" of the Norwegian Nobel Committee since 1990. He was a researcher in charge of international relations at Harvard for three years, and a researcher at the Woodrow Wilson Center, which is the eleventh biggest think tank in the world (according to the Go-To think tank ranking) with famous members like Hillary Clinton and Arne Duncan. Then, in 1990, Geir Lundestad came back to Norway and became the new secretary of the Nobel Committee, and went on for 23 years.
The bottom line is that Geir Lundestad is the real decision-maker. This guy calls the shots, and he will of course not choose Edward Snowden as the next Nobel Peace Prize.
First of all, a huge number of people are nominated each year for the Nobel Peace Prize. So the fact that Snowden was nominated doesn't really surprise me; I'm guessing that many activists from around the world are nominated.
The list of who can nominate is somewhat restricted -- but given that any member of any parliament, or any social-science professor at any university, can nominate someone, that doesn't strike me as a very high barrier to entry.
The bigger question, in my mind, is whether Snowden contributed to world peace. Yes, he clearly unveiled all sorts of schemes that the NSA had. It's a good thing for democracy that he did such things; it's clear that the US government was doing things that it claimed not to be doing, and that US and foreign citizens alike were rather upset to hear.
So yes, I'm personally glad to hear that these things were unveiled.
However, did this really contribute to world peace? Is the world a less violent place as a result? You could make the argument that it actually is more dangerous in the world, because the US is less able to spy on people. I'm not sure if that's the case, but it's not a totally crazy argument.
Well, I guess since even Barack Obama, a president who spreads hatred by not abolishing torture, not ending wars, supporting assassinations, etc. won the Nobel Peace Prize a lot of things are counted.
Since the US obviously fights many secret wars and considers everyone but UK; Canada and Australia their enemy unveiling the fact that there are secret wars fought way more intensely than we knew before it is the only possible first step to end it.
It at least makes more sense to me than destroying a part of (mostly broken or expired) nuclear weapons. I don't think that the presence or absence of nuclear weapon will ever be a reason for war, maybe a pretense, but that's all.
I actually think that Obama's generally an OK president. (Not that I agree with many of his policies, including those having to do with Guantanamo and drones, mind you.)
But I still think it was kind of weird for him to get the Nobel Peace Prize. At the very least, it strikes me as way premature.
Wow. The ability of people to only see what they want to see is amazing.
So Obama deserved a Nobel Peace prize for running a successful electoral campaign, but Edward Snowden doesn't deserve one for making one of the largest exposés of compromises of individual freedom in the history of the world.
Well theoretically all this global spying and bombing targets from remote controlled airplanes piloted half a world away should be making a safer more peaceful world right?
The Norwegian Nobel Committee is composed of five members appointed by the Storting (Norwegian Parliament). The Committee's composition reflects the relative strengths of the political parties in the Storting, and is assisted by specially appointed expert advisers.
Well it certainly would say something about the value of the NPP if one winner was forced into refugee status in one of the worst human rights violating countries because he couldnt get a fair trial from another NPP winner.
Hear, hear. I would love to see him get the Nobel. I think history will look kindly at Mr. Snowden, while the NSA's activities will be vilified -- assuming we are allowed to learn about those activities and those of us speaking out (or just texting each other about it) aren't fired, denied tenure, or otherwise removed from public view in the Brave New World of total surveillance.
I think the comment was intending to highlight the fact that multiple international organisations are trying to arrest Snowden and his appearance at the awards would put him in jeopardy, not that travel logistics might be an issue.
I was disappointed he didn't win in 2013. If I remember my reading of the rules correctly the members of the Nobel Committee could still have nominated at the point when it was clear what he was revealing and how. Seems like the obvious choice by far for last year.
As a relatively minor side benefit, Snowden winning the Peace Prize would be an elegant rebuke to the rulers in the Sixth Eye of Five Eyes - Nobel's birth country of Sweden. I'd like to see that.
There are many people that would be eminently eligible to share a Nobel Peace Prize with this sort of motivation though. Only two slots left for the sharing... Bill Binney and Tom Drake? John Kiriakou? Who are the other strong contenders?
How interesting. If he wins, he will be obtaining the same award as Obama. That just seems so ironic. You win the same award as the guy who has lied about what the NSA is doing, and what he is willing to do about it.
Here, Here! In the end, more knowledge will lead to more peace. It sounds hokey, but clandestine infinite historical data storage can only end in disaster.
I assume it must have been before it lost the status when they gave it to a guy who had yet to do anything, other than give some captivating speeches... so... several minutes sometime?
Members of national assemblies and governments of states; Members of international courts; University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes; Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; Board members of organizations that have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; Former advisers to the Norwegian Nobel Committee
Most of those are fairly small groups; but "Members of national assemblies and governments of states" is a pretty big chunk of people, and "professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology" is a simply enormous group of people.
As a result, nominations are very meaningless; any third rate history or sociology prof at some podunk community college can nominate someone if they have a mind to, and all sorts of people get nominated, often as a lark or to prove a point. I believe Bush was nominated repeatedly, for example. (Well...nominations are secret, but I know of people who have the ability to nominate, and claimed to have done so, and I don't see why they'd bother to lie, so...)
So yes, Snowden was nominated (well, unless these politicians are lying). Honestly, he was probably nominated dozens of times. This isn't news. Also, a couple of left-wing Norwegian politicians like Snowden. Also not news. :) The only real news here is if he wins...