#but also people will nitpick and criticize vocabulary before they do so to behavior

[guardsbian]

the discussion isn't relevant to any current events or anything but like. ok

A lot of people want to boil down things to semantics. It's easier to grasp and use to avoid accountability. So if we take things like the ableism discussion regarding Tundras a while back, there was this sort of barrier, I'd say, where people wanted to distill the issue into something easy to grasp and easy to avoid. People read the argument as "don't call Tundras/anything 'dumb'" and that was that. I got called a hypocrite as a result of that. Because it's easier to think "this word is bad" than actually try to deal with a trend and your learned biases. The real problem was that intelligence should not be linked to an individual's worth, and intelligence or disabilities (again, separate things, but the concept of intelligence itself is linked to so many types of bigotry) should not make a person a "burden" to be around or care for. But reduce it down to semantics, or the way a specific character was drawn, and you get to avoid the conversation altogether.

It's a common discussion you'll see when it comes to body positivity/fat acceptance, too. People would rather reduce the issue down to whether fat people can be attractive. The actual issue is that weight should not have any effect on a person's worth or the respect they get, both from their peers and when it comes to systems or industries where fatphobia is rampant, such as healthcare. But it's easier for people to instead reduce body positivity down to whether they think fat people are attractive, and it's those same individuals who would probably just as quickly not say "fat" because they think it's offensive- that describing someone's weight would make it seem like they're worth less, or be disrespectful to them. But reducing it to semantics means avoiding that issue.

And maybe it's easier to see with trans and nonbinary individuals- when one set of pronouns will get respected, but not another. Because "they/them=nonbinary" helps people compartmentalize gender into trinary of male, female, and other- when, in reality, gender distinctions, roles, and expected presentation are arbitrary. That truly acknowledging nonbinary people would not only mean "between male and female," but outside of them, beside them, both of them, regardless of them, moving between them. But reducing it to semantics, of a rigid "third gender" or "60-something genders" lets people carry on treating nonbinary individuals as part of the binary.

And that's not to say words or correcting one's vocabulary isn't important. Words can be hurtful, and carry long histories- to say someone should "get over it" is ignorant, but so too is correcting your vocabulary without correcting your behavior or examining your biases. To respect people means to respect their plight and to respect them as a whole person, and realize that omitting part of oneself in a discussion- their disability, their weight, their gender or lack thereof, their sexuality, their race, their nationality, their class, their struggles, their identity- is not being open-minded or accepting. And there are ways to do it harmlessly, to discuss sensitive topics without being disrespectful. But reducing things like bigotry down to the choices of an individual- yourself, in this scenario- is ignorant. Words are tools, and they can be a sign of respect, but rarely are they change.

[mbti-notes]

Okay, so I'm making a case for Joel as an INFJ, please tell me what you think. He begins the movie stressed out, perhaps as a consequence of the memory erasure process. There are many signs of inferior Se: he skipped work and traveled to Montauk (and says he doesn’t know why, he’s usually not an impulsive person), he decides to forget about Clem after he finds out that she decided to do so and makes a drama out of it, the movie is an illustration of Joel’s thinking process with its nonlinear...

You’ve made some good points and I see where you’re coming from. I don’t remember the movie well enough to respond to the details you’ve provided in kind, so I can only address your reasoning process.

He begins the movie stressed out, perhaps as a consequence of the memory erasure process. There are many signs of inferior Se: he skipped work and traveled to Montauk (and says he doesn’t know why, he’s usually not an impulsive person),

The tendency to be impulsive can be attributable to Se or Ne issues, and everyone has one of the two, so this is not definitive proof of Se let alone inferior Se. There are extraneous neurological factors that might be causing the impulsivity, therefore, it is not certain that it is caused solely by his personality problems. Brain damage produces impulsive behavior when executive function is compromised. “Not usually impulsive” can be true of many types, even Se/Ne doms who have learned good impulse control. This is a clue about his past behavior or at least about how he perceives himself, but it is not a very useful clue on its own.

he decides to forget about Clem after he finds out that she decided to do so and makes a drama out of it

Fs in general tend to be overdramatic about relationship problems and blow them out of proportion. Fi-Te tends to be more vindictive than Fe-Ti.

the movie is an illustration of Joel’s thinking process with its nonlinear structure (Ni’s tendency to overthink and have convoluted ideas, memories and thoughts) and blurred shots (Ni’s detachment from the external world).

Ns in general tend to have convoluted ideas and have difficulty sorting and organizing their thoughts, Ne more so than Ni because it is divergent rather than convergent. I don’t agree that the nonlinear structure means what you say; I think it is simply a way of illustrating how the memory procedure screws with your mind, because one of the themes of the film is exploring the implications/dangers of such technology on human psychology.

He enjoys writing and reading books (and can be critical and pretentious, as seen by how he talks about Clem’s limited vocabulary), which is common for Ni-doms.

Ns of all stripes can be pretentious when they believe that their own thoughts are more “complex” or “sophisticated” than others’. NJs can be pretentious because Ni believes it sees the so-called “hidden truth” that others are too whatever to see. NPs can be pretentious because Si believes it “knows better” and proceeds to nitpick every little detail for no good reason. INFJs, INFPs, and ENFPs tend to enjoy reading and writing. You’re looking for supportive evidence, which is good, but you’re not doing enough to systematically eliminate the possibilities.

He’s socially awkward (“I have the problem of not being able to make eye contact with women”), a common issue for INFJs…   

Also common for shy introverts.

He naturally tries to be nice (Fe) and “falls in love with every woman who gives [him] a bit of attention”, implying Ni-Fe’s focus on what one’s relationships could flourish into.

More true of INFPs as they tend to romanticize anyone who validates them (Te), relates to them on a personal level (Fi), and/or randomly intrigues them (Ne). Ne romanticizing imagines the many possibilities of what relationships could flourish into; Ni romanticizing tends to skip far ahead to fill in the blanks of what one imagines as the perfect relationship.

He has the tendency of creating subjective perspectives in his mind (“Valentine’s Day was invented to make us feel like crap”, “Sand is overrated”) and having déjà vus (attention to patterns), consistent with Ni-dom.

“Subjective” means introverted, which leaves open 8 types. INFPs often complain about how “the system” is designed to work against them (inferior Te) as well as how everything mainstream is “overrated”, as snobbily compared to their own “unique” interests/hobbies (Fi-Si). It is very likely that his experiences of deja vu are a direct result of the memory procedure and the subsequent neurological abnormalities, so I would not take deja vu as sufficient evidence of Ni in this case. Ns in general attend to patterns.

He’s naturally analytical (“Constantly talking isn’t necessarily communicating”) (Ni-Ti).

Doesn’t sound like a particularly “analytical” thought process (T) but seems more like a judgmental thought process (high F low T). And the example you cite is a criticism that introverts commonly have about extraverts.

He feels uncomfortable about what other people could think of him and Clem (“Are we those poor couples you feel sorry for in restaurants? I can’t stand the idea of people thinking that about us”).

It is common for many types to care what others think, but different types care for different reasons and in different ways. His worry here is a projection of his own past negative judgments of others (inferior Te issues), and it is focused on the idea of “pity”, which tends to provoke Fi types much more than Fe types. He is not so much bothered by the idea of being socially unacceptable as he is by the idea that he might be a “pitiful person”, as in contrary to how he sees himself (in his snobbiness), and this is more indicative of an Fi-Si thought process that was broken because of suddenly stopping to evaluate oneself objectively from the outside, something he doesn’t normally seem to do -> inferior Te. However, it could also just be a general sign of low ego development and how egocentric he is in making everything about himself, which means that this is insufficient evidence for/against Fi or Fe.

During the memory erasure process, he starts to recover from his grip experience after seeing both the bad and the good (“I could die right now, I never felt this before”) and changing his perspective (Ni-Se balance) - he describes his past with Clem as “his identity” when he sees Patrick exploiting it to be with her, a long way from describing it as a nightmare in the beginning of the process. He’s unable to maintain his memories despite his best efforts, but, by the end, he’s willing to be open-minded about the future (Ni) and accept Clem as she is (Fe). 

If he is an unhealthy personality, which he seems to be, he would need to develop the auxiliary function to balance himself and return his dominant function to a more normal state -> reconnecting with his emotional vulnerability and Fi self-acceptance that then allows for acceptance and empathy for others (via more appropriate use of inferior Te). If what he should develop is “the willingness to be open-minded about the future” -> that is Ne. This whole paragraph signals to me that Ne was his problem all along because his past was his identity -> Fi-Si loop, so he needed to find a way to put that past into proper perspective and move forward, to somehow reinvent himself and his life. It sounds like Si loop that was broken by Ne growth, which also logically explains why he would be unconsciously attracted to an Ne dom of all people. From reading your description, it seems that the plot serves as a giant metaphor for how to escape Si loop (i.e. quite literally erasing the past). It is usually low Si that gets irrationally obsessed with past memories and it is Fi-Si loop that develops a love/hate relationship to the past. I would argue that the main theme of the film is played out directly through the character’s function dynamics.