The Republican War on Transgender People, Drag Queens, and Queerness in General

[padraig (u.s.)]

There's no need to falsify claims about gender. Gender is a non-scientific cultural category. If that alone suffices for you to eliminate gender, then you accept no alternative to science, thus you submit to scientism. And scientism is a non-starter for me, and most people who believe in gender.

Why would it ever matter that no one can prove me wrong when I identify as male? If I identify as heterosexual, would you try to prove that I don't actually like women? Even a virgin can still claim he likes women and no one can dispute that he has that preference. We don't need to be right about someone's gender, we need to trust that person and their self-identifications. Anything less amounts to disrespect.

Gender is intersubjective, not objective or subjective. A person counts as a member of their gender only if other people accept that they exhibit behaviors definitive of their gender. It makes no sense to say someone is wrong about their gender identifications. The most you can say is that you don't accept their identity. And when everyone else accepts a person as say, a transgender woman, but you reject them as such, we have reason to believe you're just disrespecting that person and distrusting them to further your political ends. Gender is a social construct, and thus, a matter of persons, not facts. If you refuse to accept who a person is when they show you, authentically who they are, you're just disrespectful.

credit where it's due, I don't disagree with any of that

 

[mixed_biscuits]

There's no need to falsify claims about gender. Gender is a non-scientific cultural category. If that alone suffices for you to eliminate gender, then you accept no alternative to science, thus you submit to scientism. And scientism is a non-starter for me, and most people who believe in gender.

AFAICT, until at least very recently, people who wanted to transition in some substantial way had to convince the professionals involved that this desire was properly grounded. In this sense there is objectivity involved. You're pushing an informal increasingly prevalent angle that is unrepresentative and unhelpful not least as, if it's all a social construct, then presumably the problems could be fixed by social engineering.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

don't they say it's 90% autistics? or have i been unwittingly exposed to some right wing talking point? they do look autistic most of the new ones i see bopping about. walk on their toes and that.

Yes, I've noticed something of this ilk. The trans women on dating sites have a definite STEM bias, being software developers, programmers etc. It's not as if they're transitioning because they are more in touch with their essential intuitive self but because they are less in touch with it, and these things seem more possible in the abstract to people who think abstractly. They are also more lightly rooted in the social world, less sensitive to cues and convention, and probably have a more positive experience of transitioning because they are less sensitive to negative social feedback. But that's purely my folk theory.

 

[Mr. Tea]

AFAICT, until at least very recently, people who wanted to transition in some substantial way had to convince the professionals involved that this desire was properly grounded. In this sense there is objectivity involved. You're pushing an informal increasingly prevalent angle that is unrepresentative and unhelpful not least as, if it's all a social construct, then presumably the problems could be fixed by social engineering.

Why should they have to convince anyone, though? Undergoing transition surgery is a momentous undertaking. Nobody wakes up one day and decides to chop their dick off or turn their cunt inside out on a whim. Your lot are forever concern-trolling about alleged 'ruined lives', but the regret rate is tiny, and far more people end up miserable because they've been denied surgery or have been pressured out of it than as a result of having it.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Why should they have to convince anyone, though?

Your sophistical manipulations are so blatant and tiring: obv I was referring to the process leading up to being given the okay for surgery. You tell me why the process is as it is; you'll learn something researching it.

 

[wild greens]

I've been married for years so apologies for the ignorance here- transitioning women show up on dating apps if you're a straight man searching for women?

Or do you have to opt in to being up for running about with a trans woman

How does that work?

Yes, I've noticed something of this ilk. The trans women on dating sites have a definite STEM bias, being software developers, programmers etc.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I've been married for years so apologies for the ignorance here- transitioning women show up on dating apps if you're a straight man searching for women?

Or do you have to opt in to being up for running about with a trans woman

How does that work?

As far as I'm seeing, yes - but then so do straight men who filled in the form incorrectly haha

 

[wild greens]

 

[Mr. Tea]

Your sophistical manipulations are so blatant and tiring: obv I was referring to the process leading up to being given the okay for surgery. You tell me why the process is as it is; you'll learn something researching it.

And you're disingenuously raising the spectre of people wanting to transition for reasons that are improperly grounded - on a whim, because they think it's cool, because they're just "nuts", or whatever.

Obviously you just don't want it to happen at all because you think it's wrong and weird and gross.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Don't have time for long posts rn, just want to note that a terrorist stabbed a professor and two students in a gender studies class in Canada yesterday

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/06/29/americas/canada-waterloo-university-stabbing/index.html

Easily predictable outcome of all the incendiary rhetoric about grooming etc, and this blood is directly on hands those who use, accept, or ally with those who use such rhetoric. Directly analogous to attempted Pizzagate shooting. Also obvious echoes of the misogynist proto-incel 1989 Polytechnique massacre.

 

[Leo]

Luckily, some of these state bills aren't passing Constitutional muster.

Judges Block Transgender Care Bans for Minors in Kentucky and Tennessee

The rulings extend a winning streak in court for transgender-rights advocates, who are trying to block new state laws that ban gender-transition care.

www.nytimes.com

 

[mixed_biscuits]

And you're disingenuously raising the spectre of people wanting to transition for reasons that are improperly grounded - on a whim, because they think it's cool, because they're just "nuts", or whatever.

Obviously you just don't want it to happen at all because you think it's wrong and weird and gross.

Not really bothered about adults transitioning. Children is where the problem is.

If a doctor told you that your son had told him 'I want to be a girl' what would you want to happen after that?

Lol at you using a straw man again.

I got involved when people were laying into Benny B over childhood surgery. The fact that none of you will offer your personal opinion on what you think is a reasonable lower age limit makes your position seem rather unconsidered and your invective unreasonable. You don't even have a position on that score!

 

[Mr. Tea]

Not really bothered about adults transitioning.

Apart from some states in the USA, where there are moves afoot to ban all forms of gender therapy for people under 26.

Children is where the problem is. If a doctor told you that your son had told him 'I want to be a girl' what would you want to happen after that?

Lol at you using a straw man again.

Dear me...

FactCheck Q&A: How many children are going to gender identity clinics in the UK?

50 children a week are being referred to the UK's main gender identity clinic, yet only around 25 per cent of young children with gender dysphoria go on to be trans adults. FactCheck looks at the figures.

www.channel4.com

The minimum age for gender reassignment surgery is 18 years old.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Has it occurred to you for even a second that maybe transgender people might be the people best placed to consider what's good, and what's bad, for transgender people?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

In the case of children presumably it's the doctors and the parents who will determine what happens.

re surgery, are you saying that 18 is your lower limit? Fine.

You didn't answer my question by the way: 'if a doctor told you that your son had told him 'I want to be a girl' what would you want to happen after that?'

 

[entertainment]

Why should they have to convince anyone, though? Undergoing transition surgery is a momentous undertaking. Nobody wakes up one day and decides to chop their dick off or turn their cunt inside out on a whim. Your lot are forever concern-trolling about alleged 'ruined lives', but the regret rate is tiny, and far more people end up miserable because they've been denied surgery or have been pressured out of it than as a result of having it.

i'm not disagreeing with you here but surely there's no way to guage any meaningful rate of regret for the current wave of transitioners, which is the thing i suppose people are worried about, before 10-15 years in the future.

 

[entertainment]

Has it occurred to you for even a second that maybe transgender people might be the people best placed to consider what's good, and what's bad, for transgender people?

again not necessarily disagreeing with you here -- i think essentially you should be free to choose yrself -- but to the people you're presenting this argument it is obviously nonsense. they would regard it in the same way as if you said that people with eating disorders are the best suited to consider whether they ought to eat or not.

 

[Mr. Tea]

again not necessarily disagreeing with you here -- i think essentially you should be free to choose yrself -- but to the people you're presenting this argument it is obviously nonsense. they would regard it in the same way as if you said that people with eating disorders are the best suited to consider whether they ought to eat or not.

I daresay you're right. It's just a rehash of the old idea that homosexuality is a mental illness, so that gay people would be better off if they could be cured of being gay, and would presumably be thankful for their 'cure' once they were sane/straight.

Thankfully this isn't a widespread opinion outside of a religious far right that doesn't really exist in this country, but it's the same mentality.

 

[Leo]

they would regard it in the same way as if you said that people with eating disorders are the best suited to consider whether they ought to eat or not.

Yes, because many of them think transitioning is a disorder.

 

[entertainment]

I daresay you're right. It's just a rehash of the old idea that homosexuality is a mental illness, so that gay people would be better off if they could be cured of being gay, and would presumably be thankful for their 'cure' once they were sane/straight.

Thankfully this isn't a widespread opinion outside of a religious far right that doesn't really exist in this country, but it's the same mentality.

well gender dysmorphia was literally considered a mental disorder by the scientific community up until 2013 so it's not quite the same but I get what you're saying