When talking about climate, the ice age is mentioned a lot. Sometimes it is said that "the last ice age" ended roughly 10,000 years ago, and sometimes we are still said to be living in an ice age. So which one is correct? Technically both are correct. This is due to a complexity in terminology.

The broader climate state of Earth is divided into two categories: Icehouse Earth and Greenhouse Earth (Maslin, 2014). The state when there are continental glaciers (those that cover continents, separate from glaciers seen on mountains) at any point on Earth is called the Icehouse Earth, and the state when they do not exist is called the Greenhouse Earth. Approximately 80% of the last 500 million years has been spent as a Greenhouse Earth (Spicer and Corfield, 1992). During the icehouse state of the Earth, there are glacial and interglacial periods. The glacial period occurs when the glaciers at the poles move towards the lower latitudes of Earth, that is, towards the equator. The interglacial period is the time when glaciers remain at the poles.

Both the Icehouse Earth state and the glacial period are called Ice Age, but this is misleading. The last so-called “ice age” occurred 11,700 years ago (Clark et al., 2016). This event refers to the glacial period seen on Earth. However, the Earth is still in an "ice age" because it is still in the Icehouse Earth state. Even though it is currently in the interglacial warming period, this warming is approximately 15 times faster due to climate change (Clark et al., 2016). As the anthropogenic global warming gets stronger, the rate of warming will also increase.

The glacial periods seen in the last 500,000 years can be seen in this picture. Source for the picture is here.

The cycle of glacial and interglacial periods is clearly visible. One of the main factors that caused the emergence of Icehouse Earth states and glacial periods is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It ended and started the ages by greatly changing the conditions on Earth (Maslin, 2014).

In conclusion, we are currently living in an ice age and also not. The reason for this is that the word ice age refers to two different phenomena. Therefore, it would be more useful to use the terms Icehouse Earth and glacial period instead of ice age. However, how this will be translated into everyday language remains a challenge.

Sources

• Clark, P., Shakun, J., Marcott, S. et al. (2016). Consequences of twenty-first-century policy for multi-millennial climate and sea-level change. Nature Clim Change 6, 360–369.
• Maslin, M. (2014). Climate change: a very short introduction. OUP Oxford.
• Spicer, R. A. & Corfield, R. M. (1992). A review of terrestrial and marine climates in the Cretaceous with implications for modelling the ‘Greenhouse Earth’. Geological Magazine, 129(2), 169-180 pp.

Today's political climate has all sorts of terms being thrown around with varying meanings and history behind them. There are Liberals (political ideology for FREEDUM), and Liberals (foreign policy), and Liberals (economic policy), and Liberals ("conservatives"), and Liberals ("centrist, anti-absolute monarchists"), and Liberals ("democrats"), and Liberals (some other field that annoys the shit out of me). There are Progressives, and Conservatives, Nationalists, Socialists, Social Democrats, unreconstructed Monarchists, Reconstructed Monarchists, Anarchists, and I'm sure some other political identity that I've missed.

So, given the rather long list of ways to identify politically, and the just about as long history for those ways to identify politically, I thought we should have a discussion focused exclusively on the political history of the terms we used.

So, the questions:

1. What terms do you commonly use to describe yourself and others in your political environment? 
2. What is the relevant history that informs the way you use common political terms to describe yourself and others?
3. Got any links, movies, books, etc., that delve into that history?

This has the potential to get hairy because of how broad it is, so I'm going to try to remind people of some best practices that I use when engaging in meaningful discussion:

• Understand before criticizing. - Be able to frame someone's view in a way that they can agree with themselves before critiquing their view. Questions are your friend, but make sure the questions are focused on better understanding someone's view, not on biasing reactions to a view.
• Assume good faith. - Calling people "trolls" makes me very angry. Don't do it. For any reason. To anyone. If your case is so bulletproof that you'd be willing to call someone out for it here, take it to @Deimos instead. I don't want to read it here.
• I Could Be Wrong - There is nothing wrong with having confidence in your view, but there should be some part of you that recognizes you can be wrong about whatever claim you make. Nothing is 100%. Absolutely Only Sith Deal In Absolutes, etc.

So I've been wrestling with this idea for a long time.

I get that the idea behind being transgendered* is that you don't feel like you were born into a body of the correct sex. You were born male but feel like a woman, or you were born female but feel like a man, and all that. That part I get. I obviously don't "get it" at the level that someone who has that issue would get it, but I know how wonky the mind can be and it doesn't strike me as too hard to believe that this is a thing that happens.

Simultaneously, I see that people of a more progressive mindset are enthusiastic about eliminating gender norms and stereotypes. Women aren't constrained to the kitchen, and men are perfectly fine being stay-at-home dads. All of this I vehemently agree with.

However, I notice a very foundational contradiction when I read or hear about how transgendered people came to realize that they identify as the opposite gender. Pretty much all of the time, I hear them say things like, "I was born a male, but I always enjoyed playing with dolls and wearing dresses," or, "I was born a female, but I always enjoyed rough-housing and trucks," or whatever. Granted, I don't frequently seek these stories out, but whenever I come across them, they follow that general format.

What I don't understand is how you can believe that gender norms are completely arbitrary while simultaneously using those norms as evidence that you were born into the wrong sex. It seems to me that believing in the superficiality of gender norms should automatically render the concept of being transgendered redundant. After all, if being a man or woman isn't determined by the things society socializes us to believe, how would you possibly have any indication that your body has the wrong sex? What would having the "wrong sex" even mean if gender norms are disregarded? If being a man or woman isn't determined by your actions or preferences in life, what left is there to define the genders except your biological sex?

Surely there must be a concept or aspect to this whole thing that I'm missing, because it's hard to believe that such a widespread and vocal social movement has been made out of such a paradox. If anyone has some clarifying information, I'd appreciate it.

*I know "transgendered" isn't the preferred term, but it's clear in meaning and the preferred term is just going to change again soon anyway. So no offense meant by using it.

EDIT: It has since been made known to me that "transgender" itself suffices as an adjective, so my terminology was off on a grammatical basis. For posterity, though, I'll leave the submission as-is.