Does anyone else feel like the recent focus on gender identity/pronouns/trans is being totally driven by the extreme 5% on both sides (left and right)?
Meanwhile the remaining 90% of us are under the attitude of "equal rights for all, do and/or call yourself whatever you want as long as it brings no personal harm to others".
Personally, for every gender non-binary person I've encountered (there have been multiple), when I incorrectly use the wrong pronoun, I get gently/nicely corrected and the conversation moves on without anyone caring further.
In the article the author laments "At the time, I was exhausting so much mental energy memorizing my coworkers' pronouns and all of the new progressive dogmas out of fear that I would be fiercely condemned if I slipped up"
My question is, does this really happen as described? Or only at the extreme end? And I'm being totally non-facetious here.
Again, I've called non-binary people "her" before and you know what happened? They said "Hey actually, I prefer 'they' just FYI", I responded with "ah, sorry, got it!", and we moved on. That was it.
We could all mostly ignore it if there wasn't a bunch of idiots in government passing laws every chance they get to ensure it continues being a very real human rights issue. The right initiates all this non-sense, they do some oppressing and the left has no choice but to react, because you can't just let that stuff slide, so both sides end up completely consumed by an issues most people aren't effected by.
It's unambiguously safer and easier to be trans in America now than at any time in history. I haven't been anywhere I felt unwelcome; I can drop into places like Dallas or rural PA and interact with strangers just fine.
The only ongoing drama I can see being credibly interpreted as a human rights issue is the stuff with very young children.
I came out ten years ago, and I didn't get to learn about transness until that process started. If you came up in the nineties you'd see The Crying Game in your early teens and not know the difference between a trans woman and a "hermaphrodite" (intersex person) until your twenties. Nowadays, kids develop alternative lives on the internet much earlier than my cohort did, and they learn not just that trans people exist, but what it means to transition and what leads people to transition, before they get to middle school in many cases.
The pushback on that, post-bathroom-hysteria, has largely been to try to reclaim some of parents' ability to know what's going on and to control their child's level of exposure to information—much like with sex and drugs in the teen years, it's import for younger children to explore their identities in a way that allows their parents to mentor them and help them interpret what they're feeling. I don't think this is a human rights issue—I think we've misplaced our wariness of abusive parenting and allowed it develop into a skepticism of nuclear-family parenting in general.
Much of the nonsense is initiated by the right, yes—bathrooms and ID laws and whatever else—but what everyone's talking about _right now_ has to do with a change in our understanding of The Family, initiated by the left, that I expect will play out in increasingly interesting ways over the next 20-30 years.
>it's import for younger children to explore their identities in a way that allows their parents to mentor them and help them interpret what they're feeling.
thing is though: Texas, Florida, Idaho, couple others, have declared that child abuse.
as i understand it, those states have seen pushes to leave it up to parents to educate and nurture their kids in early development, carving out a space where the state cannot take over for parents, which was not a controversial thing to want for families until recently
The Florida Department of Health recently released new guidelines stating "Social gender transition should not be a treatment option for children or adolescents." [0]
For those unaware, "social gender transition", in addition to changing their pronouns and name, would be things like a trans girl switching to wearing dresses or growing out her hair, or a trans boy cutting his hair or wearing boy's clothes, or engaging in gender-stereotyped interests like dolls, or any other sort of action the kid finds gender-affirming. It does not include any medical procedures. There is no conceivable benefit to the child of preventing this, and it could prevent them from doing many actions that in cisgender children would be seen as ordinary nonconformance to gender stereotypes.
That it is included alongside a ban on puberty blockers and hormones and a ban on gender reassignment surgery, and an exception to that for intersex people (which intersex advocates oppose, because some doctors will perform unnecessary and risky surgeries on intersex babies to "correct" their genitals before they can consent), shows that all of these have the same goal: enforcing gender conformity.
i think it's fair for the department of health to not allow adolescent therapists and psychiatrists to prescribe social transition—there are implications for a parent blocking access to something legally considered a medical treatment. from what i read it seems like parents still have some leeway to respond to their childrens' needs independently, at least on the social side.
to be fair i don't think i've seen any policy regime, in effect or proposed, that feels quite right to me. in florida's case i would change the language to allow that sort of prescription subject to parental consent whether it's social or hormonal.
on the blockers though, it's not the end of the world that i grow hair on my face and have a little more muscle mass than most women. dysphoria peaks when you first acknowledge it, then slowly subsides over a few years once you're Living Your Truth. i am more than my annoying body
> and an exception to that for intersex people
this has been an intersex rights issue for much longer than what's in the spotlight right now, and should be considered separately imo. one thing i learned from the intersex people in my life is they don't like intersex concerns being lumped in with trans concerns, even if many do grow up to be, or present as, trans.
if we have to consider both at the same time, i would say "leave bodies as they were born until the person inhabiting them is old enough to know what's best for themself"
> enforcing gender conformity.
elsewhere in this thread i voiced my opinion that contemporary queer ideology has eroded the usefulness of identity markers. to build on that, i also think most liberals (i.e. people who believe "progress" is both real and virtuous) have a pretty narrow idea of how gender nonconformity can present itself
It doesn't say therapists and psychiatrists can't prescribe social transition, it says it should not be a treatment option, which means that prohibition applies to peers and family.
While simultaneously saying they should provided social support by peers and family and seek counseling from a licensed provider, which kinda means support and counseling have can't take the form of allowing social transition.
More generally you keep saying things like "from what I've read"... what have you been reading? The actual texts have all clearly usurped parental rights. Fucking Idaho made it a crime to leave the state to get your kid affirmative care. Who has been splitting what hairs to make any of these seem like they're securing parents' rights?
> It doesn't say therapists and psychiatrists can't prescribe social transition, it says it should not be a treatment option, which means that prohibition applies to peers and family.
that's a very expansive reading of "treatment". a health department doesn't have the sort of authority you suggest. and if they think they do, best of luck to their legal teams in defining the threshold between treatment and ordinary child-rearing. like i said earlier, this should get pretty wacky over the next 20-30 years
> "from what I've read"... what have you been reading?
the link that shovel sent me to read.
> Fucking Idaho made it a crime to leave the state to get your kid affirmative care. Who has been splitting what hairs to make any of these seem like they're securing parents' rights?
settle down, i can tell you're provoked without the profanity. idk if you're trans too, but i've outright stated i've been out as a trans woman for a decade, and on top of that i want kids and have friends with kids, so i'd ask that you at least approach what i'm saying in good faith—i've been around, at least wrt this.
remember i said "The pushback on that, post-bathroom-hysteria, has largely been to try to reclaim some of parents' ability to know what's going on and to control their child's level of exposure to information", and you projected that i was talking about legislation/regulation when i was really referring to social movements. for what it's worth, i voiced some criticism of the florida memo when shovel linked me to it.
the comment box is a pretty depersonalized medium, it encourages misunderstanding and hostility, maybe you need a break.
a district court judge issued a temporary injunction
but even aside from that distinction, we've seen this same shit with abortion for the last 50 years, do some obvious bullshit, 10 wait for a court opinion, do some new bullshit carefully written to avoid the precise court opinion, GOTO 10.
hopefully this doesn't become the next political football after abortion. it seems pretty clear to me that both sides want to keep that issue on the table indefinitely—abortion tends to come up whenever something more important is about to come to a head.
Yes, the screeching radical left is completely innocent in derailing the political debate to an extent incomprehensible to anyone with a braincell left. Not that the right wing gonzos are not to blame for it too, but to offload all of the guilt onto a single side of the horseshoe is very much just as undifferentiated as you are calling your political enemy.
You know damn well it's not the same. They don't directly target marginalized people every chance they get, and if some non-sense does come up, they don't move in lockstep, at the expense of all personal integrity, like the right does.
> My question is, does this really happen as described? Or only at the extreme end? And I'm being totally non-facetious here.
You won't get an answer to this question. These op-eds usually exhibit a glaring lack of humane, sharply observed, or life-like storytelling. Everyone seems to be a prop standing in for a different coalition's ideology... if there are any specific humans at all in the story.
They're a yawn no matter what side they come from.
I’d like to believe that most people are like you and are just doing their best to make everyone productive and comfortable. I was a bit surprised to see how most people I interact with over the age of 40 or so (my parents incl.) are pretty stubborn about referring to people based on what they consider right, like it’s some act of bravery to disregard how someone else would like to be treated.
I agree with you that this hyper-focus and polarization on the topic is driven by some extremely opinionated media personas, and unfortunately when looking at my parents’ usual YouTube feed it’s apparent that the influence of this niche is far-reaching. I just wish people would get along.
> I was a bit surprised to see how most people I interact with over the age of 40 or so (my parents incl.) are pretty stubborn about referring to people based on what they consider right, like it’s some act of bravery to disregard how someone else would like to be treated.
Crikey. Anecdote, for sure, but I’m 47 and can’t think of a single person I interact with in my age group (and that’s the majority of my colleagues and friends) who acts or opines as you describe.
I’m sure there’s an aspect of that. That said, I include in my claim a raft of friends I’ve had since my teens, or others met through football (UK definition; I’m a Brit in southern England) - many of whom live pretty different lives to mine. And we have plenty of disagreements about other stuff - just not “treat folk how they wish to be treated”!
To be fair, I'm also just drawing from limited personal experience and social media exposure; it never really happened until the past year or so when this topic became so polarizing. My parents have a more nuanced take of "I will try to be nice until the gays push their agenda on my children", which I guess they have.
"I was a bit surprised to see how most people I interact with over the age of 40 or so (my parents incl.) are pretty stubborn about referring to people based on what they consider right"
Well, I'm 51. I don't think a man who takes hormones and gets operated on is actually a woman, and I'd rather not be forced to be complicit in a lie by referring to him as "she". By normalizing transgenderism society is encouraging a lot of young people to irreversibly damage themselves.
What do you do when you meet an androgynous person whose gender isn't immediately obvious? If they introduce themselves as female, do you take their word for it, or do you first need to inspect their genitals to make sure you're not being complicit in a lie?
It's red meat for the conservative base, so they run with it. Mix in a little "grooming" and you end up with repackaged LBGTAnything-phobia from the '80s and '90s.
The far left has tried to take possession of the conversation to show sensitivity and contrast. Which is unfortunate. It shouldn't be political.
Still, we use gender in plenty of places where it doesn't really matter, and I'm good with eliminating it or broadening the classifications. It's a no-brainer. Beyond that, why not just call people what they want to be called? It's just respectful.
In my experience, most people in general are certainly chill if they're in a sexual or gender minority. I won't get pissed if you assume I have/want a girlfriend or wife. It's really not an issue if no insult is intended.
The problem is that small group of the right is pushing for laws that harm everyone. The "95%" of people on the right that supposedly don't follow that opinion are doing nothing to stop it.
What you're describing is basically how it works in the real world, for the most part. People have far more important things to do, and are profoundly uninterested in making an issue out of other individuals' personal identities.
But:
Does anyone else feel like the recent focus on gender identity/pronouns/trans is being totally driven by the extreme 5% on both sides (left and right)?
I don't really feel this way, to be honest. I think this is a cliché culture war issue that is driven primarily by one "side", and that's the conservative one. I don't doubt for a second that there are terrible people who'll describe themselves as "progressive" trying to insert themselves into this discussion – these people are indeed the dumb extremes. But they're also not the group driving the conversation or enacting the laws, and ascribing a kind of "both sides" responsibility is not correct in my view.
The thing is, I remember personally experiencing exactly the same shit as a gay man growing up in the 90s, and it's alarmingly familiar. This was a result of the UK moving to repeal "Section 28" – a law similar in intent to Florida's "Don't Say Gay" legislation.
I remember exactly the same tactics being used – the talking heads and the campaigns and the billboards and the newspaper articles talking about the danger of predatory gay men who were pushing a "pervert's agenda", hoping to worm their way into schools so they could find children to abuse. Scare stories about paedophiles waiting in the wings, getting ready to groom children into homosexuality – and the same tactic of spotlighting extremist views at the fringes of that movement and claiming them as mainstream.
It was a shitty tactic then and it's shitty now. The thing that angers me most is to see so many people fall for exactly the same playbook this time around.
Absolutely. It's been repeatedly noted that every transphobic attack is a recycled homophobic attack. Even before I was told that, I found it obvious that the surge in transphobic rhetoric was a response to the gains and eventual success of the fight for gay marriage, and it was being done by the same people for the same reasons.
Using the pronoun that someone demands rather than the correct pronoun for the person’s sex can contribute to material harm for others. You’re trying to be nice, but, as often happens, you are contributing to injustice in doing so.
Lia Thomas’ acceptance by the officials in charge as a woman swimmer has harmed an entire generation of actual female swimmers. Calling him “she” contributes to the pretense that he’s a woman, and helps to legitimize the injustice against these athletes.
“Them/their” was a gender-neutral way to talk about a person when you didn’t know their gender. But expecting that people you interact with, keep calling you *in plural* because you can’t decide you are he or she, or maybe want to feel like the queen of England, is insane.
The underlying issue is the identifying by gender/sexuality. All of these reductions are vulnerable to being out-prioritized by the next brand of victimhood I mean self-identity.
People are too complex to be reduced like this, or by race, or age, or whatever disability they have.
This is a key point of difference between the contemporary discourse and what preceded it. These labels were never seen as meant to capture a whole person, until around the post-2014 trans acceptance boom
It's hard to talk about this for myself as a trans woman, and especially for cis gays, as liberal queer ideology has taken over the discourse, but it's worth having more queer people speak up about it so we can develop a language for it that leaves things open to good-faith debate.
I'm not against blockers to delay puberty until someone is old enough to develop an informed understanding of themselves, but it's definitely the case that kids are overexposed to a monolithic queer culture that puts frivolous acts of expression on the same level as life-altering changes to your social and physical self. A decade ago things were pretty different—you'd seek out an online community and read a lot of Q&A, stories, and _advice on psychoanalyzing yourself responsibly_, which I don't see much of anymore in trans spaces.
It's not just cis gays, but many trans folks as well, who are seen as regressive for having opinions divergent from what you see on progressive new media, Twitter, etc. Talking about something like this, or defending pronouns as something defined by others that can't be "wrong", or even something as milquetoast as signaling my disinterest in being invited to orgies, will get me at least a confused look from your typical urbanite queer, and possibly get me called a transmisogynist. For a gay man's perspective, Tim Dillon has spoken about this a lot, and folks like him are much more common than you might think.
One thing I definitely disagree with the author on is the idea that the current wave is about abolishing gender, in contrast to previous waves focused on sexual liberation—for one I don't get a "sexual liberation" vibe from the era of gay marriage legalization, and for another I see the present movements more as sexual-accelerationist, i.e. exploring sex and gender with such fervor that they're eroding its social utility and finding new ways to preclude healthy development of relationships and communities. Younger trans folks I've been with are so sexually liberated that it turns into narcissistic hedonism and you can't even be sure they're in the room with you when you're having sex.
Sex used to(?) mean something. People were exposed to each other, vulnerable, sharing themselves. It was even intensely powerful, in the sense that new life might actually spring out of it.
But this is basically treating another unique, unrepeatable human person as a toy, and not even an exceptional one.
I can't help but think we've lost something important and are that much the poorer for it.
Is the liberation to live one's life in pursuit of the next orgasm really worth it if we have to lose what sex was to get there?
You can expand this to pleasure-seeking in general. Narcissism is central not just in the proliferation of identity markers but of micro-celebrities, micro-genres, fandom communities, DTC + targeted advertising, a whole bunch of things that make it hard to thrive unless you treat yourself as the main character. There's that self-care meme with the text that goes something like "Sorry but I don't have the capacity to help you with your breakdown, can you reach out to someone who's emotionally available?". Advertising, the revolt against organized labor, and the financialization of the economy have all come together, knocked down a ton of load-bearing dominoes in our society, and interacted with the media landscape in a way that's eroded any tangible sense of community and made people incredibly self-interested, fearful, reactive, and unable to form an inner life that gives one the strength to give and accept real love and criticism
i think we're just talking about western culture, more specifically american culture, which was founded on and has spent most of its history confronting anglican and protestant values
It's not just "some" cultures, either. Long-term affectionate bonds, along the lines of marriage for people of different genders, or other forms of quasi-affinal kinship (e.g. sworn brotherhood, compadrazgo etc.) for same-gender pairings are effectively a human universal. Sexual orientation doesn't even enter into this all that much, the ubiquity goes beyond that.
Oh boy. One of these articles. From the title I was expecting "the new homophobia" to refer to the striking parallels between 20th-century homophobic propaganda and modern-day transphobic "concerns", but no, I was not to be so lucky. Anyways, here's a rundown of some of the worst parts of it.
> Activists who favor medical intervention often ask these parents a morbid question: "Would you rather have a trans daughter or a dead son?" But the real question should be, "Would you rather have a trans daughter or an effeminate gay son?"
This is a question we know the answer to, though, based on how many trans people have stories of how their parents asked them "why couldn't you just be gay?" Plus, the point of the original question is that parents don't get to choose whether they have a trans kid or not, they only have the choice between supporting their child and neglecting them.
> Speaking recently about these issues with a LGBT mental health specialist—one among many who have serious concerns about the hastiness of medical transition for youth in the U.S.
There are lots of people with "concerns" about medical transition being given out hastily without proper assessment, but never any evidence that such a thing is happening. I see lots of complaints about how difficult and time-consuming it is to get hormone therapy, including drugs that can be gotten in one appointment for non-gender-related purposes. As for wait times for appointments, I found this nice little tidbit on the UK's Gender Identity Clinic website: "We are currently offering first appointment to people who were referred in: December 2017" [ https://gic.nhs.uk/appointments/waiting-times/ ]
> activists who push a regressive, anti-liberal agenda that reifies gender stereotypes
This is just a lie. A blatant, obvious lie. Any statement like this immediately discredits the one making it. The transgender community is inherently accepting of all gender expressions and experiences. I'm kind of having trouble expressing how wrong this is. There was a post a little while back that went through some LGBT-accepting spaces about a man who started growing out his hair, taking hormones, growing breasts, eventually looking to any stranger like a fully gender-conforming woman, who still confidently saw himself as a man. The comments were nothing but respect and acceptance (and awe at his "chad energy"). That's what the community is like.
>There are lots of people with "concerns" about medical transition being given out hastily without proper assessment, but never any evidence that such a thing is happening.
My understanding was that attempting to get hormones or other medications to help with transitioning in the US was so damn difficult the accepted solution was to buy them from sketchy Russian sources!
It's just the same scare tactics as "But there's women using abortion as birth control!". Like, maybe there's some women so horrible that they are willing to endure the misery, often-shame, cost, and physical pain required for an abortion for the occasional times they get pregnant, but that sounds to me like they are already being punished.
There is an “it’s always sunny in Philadelphia “ episode that captures this exactly . Actually it’s the last season when they go to Ireland ; When Mac decides he is gay and how he needs to explain to the gang his identity , and how the gang doesn’t actually care either way what he is , gay, straight , Irish , Dutch .
There's no end to how many ways to categorize someone. It's even worse when you realize people change. What's the point of coming up with new ways of creating divisions among the populace, and then trying to use them as if it meant something? It will only ever cause harm.
We are all one, we are all life.
There must always be freedom for thought.
There must always be freedom for speech.
There must always be freedom for life.
But there most not be freedom for abuse.
Do something against life, then forfeit yours.
Do something against speech, then forfeit yours.
Do something against thought, then forfeit yours.
Trans people are included in the push for equal rights for gay people because they make up too small of a percent of the population to get consideration on their own. Also, insisting that trans people are considered separately from gay people is itself a form of division; it's essentially saying that we should be considerate of only X, Y and Z people instead of being considerate simply to all people. Such efforts to divide the LGBT community is an old tactic from the bigotry playbook. If we can talk about 'spouses' instead of husbands and wives then we can be considerate of trans people and their prefered pronouns.
Article summary: "I care about gay rights because I'm gay, but I don't care about trans rights because I'm not trans."
The author would probably take issue with people assuming that his spouse is female. He wouldn't entertain for a second that it creates a burdon on other people to not assume he is straight as if such a thing is upending society's established paradigms of gender and sexuality. So why do we accuse trans people of being such a burden on us when they simply want to be considered by their self-identified gender?
I think the issue is most people can understand what gay means, because it's a clearly defined thing. You don't even have to accept it "morally" to know that a man who likes men is gay.
Gender identity is intentionally murky & vague. For instance, how many genders are there? How does one transition to/from genders that aren't male/female? I can't even find a coherent and consistent definition of genders. So at this point, it sounds like the new definition of gender is just...personality? So for most people there is nothing else to do than recognize it as such, and dismiss it as mostly nonsense.
Gender expression is naturally fuzzy and murky, there's nothing strange about that. The problems start when people create an overlapping notion of "gender identity" aiming to try and put some bright lines on the inherent fuzziness of gender expression, only to confuse the matter even further. Now we're left with completely redundant descriptions like "genderfluid gender identity" which is both confusing and practically indistinguishable from what we used to more sensibly think of as expression.
Exactly. I understand some meanings of the word gender: the grammatical meaning, and the concept of “gender role”, which is a set of expectations of society. But there are people now speaking of gender as some kind of innate quality, such that a person can be born in the wrong body, or something. Sometimes the only way to begin to make sense of their descriptions is to suppose they’re talking about an immaterial soul with its own sex. It seems to be all gibberish. But there also seems to be a political movement that behaves as though this gibberish contains meaning.
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[ 8.2 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadMeanwhile the remaining 90% of us are under the attitude of "equal rights for all, do and/or call yourself whatever you want as long as it brings no personal harm to others".
Personally, for every gender non-binary person I've encountered (there have been multiple), when I incorrectly use the wrong pronoun, I get gently/nicely corrected and the conversation moves on without anyone caring further.
In the article the author laments "At the time, I was exhausting so much mental energy memorizing my coworkers' pronouns and all of the new progressive dogmas out of fear that I would be fiercely condemned if I slipped up"
My question is, does this really happen as described? Or only at the extreme end? And I'm being totally non-facetious here.
Again, I've called non-binary people "her" before and you know what happened? They said "Hey actually, I prefer 'they' just FYI", I responded with "ah, sorry, got it!", and we moved on. That was it.
The only ongoing drama I can see being credibly interpreted as a human rights issue is the stuff with very young children.
I came out ten years ago, and I didn't get to learn about transness until that process started. If you came up in the nineties you'd see The Crying Game in your early teens and not know the difference between a trans woman and a "hermaphrodite" (intersex person) until your twenties. Nowadays, kids develop alternative lives on the internet much earlier than my cohort did, and they learn not just that trans people exist, but what it means to transition and what leads people to transition, before they get to middle school in many cases.
The pushback on that, post-bathroom-hysteria, has largely been to try to reclaim some of parents' ability to know what's going on and to control their child's level of exposure to information—much like with sex and drugs in the teen years, it's import for younger children to explore their identities in a way that allows their parents to mentor them and help them interpret what they're feeling. I don't think this is a human rights issue—I think we've misplaced our wariness of abusive parenting and allowed it develop into a skepticism of nuclear-family parenting in general.
Much of the nonsense is initiated by the right, yes—bathrooms and ID laws and whatever else—but what everyone's talking about _right now_ has to do with a change in our understanding of The Family, initiated by the left, that I expect will play out in increasingly interesting ways over the next 20-30 years.
thing is though: Texas, Florida, Idaho, couple others, have declared that child abuse.
For those unaware, "social gender transition", in addition to changing their pronouns and name, would be things like a trans girl switching to wearing dresses or growing out her hair, or a trans boy cutting his hair or wearing boy's clothes, or engaging in gender-stereotyped interests like dolls, or any other sort of action the kid finds gender-affirming. It does not include any medical procedures. There is no conceivable benefit to the child of preventing this, and it could prevent them from doing many actions that in cisgender children would be seen as ordinary nonconformance to gender stereotypes.
That it is included alongside a ban on puberty blockers and hormones and a ban on gender reassignment surgery, and an exception to that for intersex people (which intersex advocates oppose, because some doctors will perform unnecessary and risky surgeries on intersex babies to "correct" their genitals before they can consent), shows that all of these have the same goal: enforcing gender conformity.
[0] https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1516773653391806464
to be fair i don't think i've seen any policy regime, in effect or proposed, that feels quite right to me. in florida's case i would change the language to allow that sort of prescription subject to parental consent whether it's social or hormonal.
on the blockers though, it's not the end of the world that i grow hair on my face and have a little more muscle mass than most women. dysphoria peaks when you first acknowledge it, then slowly subsides over a few years once you're Living Your Truth. i am more than my annoying body
> and an exception to that for intersex people
this has been an intersex rights issue for much longer than what's in the spotlight right now, and should be considered separately imo. one thing i learned from the intersex people in my life is they don't like intersex concerns being lumped in with trans concerns, even if many do grow up to be, or present as, trans.
if we have to consider both at the same time, i would say "leave bodies as they were born until the person inhabiting them is old enough to know what's best for themself"
> enforcing gender conformity.
elsewhere in this thread i voiced my opinion that contemporary queer ideology has eroded the usefulness of identity markers. to build on that, i also think most liberals (i.e. people who believe "progress" is both real and virtuous) have a pretty narrow idea of how gender nonconformity can present itself
While simultaneously saying they should provided social support by peers and family and seek counseling from a licensed provider, which kinda means support and counseling have can't take the form of allowing social transition.
More generally you keep saying things like "from what I've read"... what have you been reading? The actual texts have all clearly usurped parental rights. Fucking Idaho made it a crime to leave the state to get your kid affirmative care. Who has been splitting what hairs to make any of these seem like they're securing parents' rights?
that's a very expansive reading of "treatment". a health department doesn't have the sort of authority you suggest. and if they think they do, best of luck to their legal teams in defining the threshold between treatment and ordinary child-rearing. like i said earlier, this should get pretty wacky over the next 20-30 years
> "from what I've read"... what have you been reading?
the link that shovel sent me to read.
> Fucking Idaho made it a crime to leave the state to get your kid affirmative care. Who has been splitting what hairs to make any of these seem like they're securing parents' rights?
settle down, i can tell you're provoked without the profanity. idk if you're trans too, but i've outright stated i've been out as a trans woman for a decade, and on top of that i want kids and have friends with kids, so i'd ask that you at least approach what i'm saying in good faith—i've been around, at least wrt this.
remember i said "The pushback on that, post-bathroom-hysteria, has largely been to try to reclaim some of parents' ability to know what's going on and to control their child's level of exposure to information", and you projected that i was talking about legislation/regulation when i was really referring to social movements. for what it's worth, i voiced some criticism of the florida memo when shovel linked me to it.
the comment box is a pretty depersonalized medium, it encourages misunderstanding and hostility, maybe you need a break.
but even aside from that distinction, we've seen this same shit with abortion for the last 50 years, do some obvious bullshit, 10 wait for a court opinion, do some new bullshit carefully written to avoid the precise court opinion, GOTO 10.
You won't get an answer to this question. These op-eds usually exhibit a glaring lack of humane, sharply observed, or life-like storytelling. Everyone seems to be a prop standing in for a different coalition's ideology... if there are any specific humans at all in the story.
They're a yawn no matter what side they come from.
I agree with you that this hyper-focus and polarization on the topic is driven by some extremely opinionated media personas, and unfortunately when looking at my parents’ usual YouTube feed it’s apparent that the influence of this niche is far-reaching. I just wish people would get along.
Crikey. Anecdote, for sure, but I’m 47 and can’t think of a single person I interact with in my age group (and that’s the majority of my colleagues and friends) who acts or opines as you describe.
Well, I'm 51. I don't think a man who takes hormones and gets operated on is actually a woman, and I'd rather not be forced to be complicit in a lie by referring to him as "she". By normalizing transgenderism society is encouraging a lot of young people to irreversibly damage themselves.
The far left has tried to take possession of the conversation to show sensitivity and contrast. Which is unfortunate. It shouldn't be political.
Still, we use gender in plenty of places where it doesn't really matter, and I'm good with eliminating it or broadening the classifications. It's a no-brainer. Beyond that, why not just call people what they want to be called? It's just respectful.
In my experience, most people in general are certainly chill if they're in a sexual or gender minority. I won't get pissed if you assume I have/want a girlfriend or wife. It's really not an issue if no insult is intended.
But:
Does anyone else feel like the recent focus on gender identity/pronouns/trans is being totally driven by the extreme 5% on both sides (left and right)?
I don't really feel this way, to be honest. I think this is a cliché culture war issue that is driven primarily by one "side", and that's the conservative one. I don't doubt for a second that there are terrible people who'll describe themselves as "progressive" trying to insert themselves into this discussion – these people are indeed the dumb extremes. But they're also not the group driving the conversation or enacting the laws, and ascribing a kind of "both sides" responsibility is not correct in my view.
The thing is, I remember personally experiencing exactly the same shit as a gay man growing up in the 90s, and it's alarmingly familiar. This was a result of the UK moving to repeal "Section 28" – a law similar in intent to Florida's "Don't Say Gay" legislation.
I remember exactly the same tactics being used – the talking heads and the campaigns and the billboards and the newspaper articles talking about the danger of predatory gay men who were pushing a "pervert's agenda", hoping to worm their way into schools so they could find children to abuse. Scare stories about paedophiles waiting in the wings, getting ready to groom children into homosexuality – and the same tactic of spotlighting extremist views at the fringes of that movement and claiming them as mainstream.
It was a shitty tactic then and it's shitty now. The thing that angers me most is to see so many people fall for exactly the same playbook this time around.
Lia Thomas’ acceptance by the officials in charge as a woman swimmer has harmed an entire generation of actual female swimmers. Calling him “she” contributes to the pretense that he’s a woman, and helps to legitimize the injustice against these athletes.
People are too complex to be reduced like this, or by race, or age, or whatever disability they have.
It's hard to talk about this for myself as a trans woman, and especially for cis gays, as liberal queer ideology has taken over the discourse, but it's worth having more queer people speak up about it so we can develop a language for it that leaves things open to good-faith debate.
I'm not against blockers to delay puberty until someone is old enough to develop an informed understanding of themselves, but it's definitely the case that kids are overexposed to a monolithic queer culture that puts frivolous acts of expression on the same level as life-altering changes to your social and physical self. A decade ago things were pretty different—you'd seek out an online community and read a lot of Q&A, stories, and _advice on psychoanalyzing yourself responsibly_, which I don't see much of anymore in trans spaces.
It's not just cis gays, but many trans folks as well, who are seen as regressive for having opinions divergent from what you see on progressive new media, Twitter, etc. Talking about something like this, or defending pronouns as something defined by others that can't be "wrong", or even something as milquetoast as signaling my disinterest in being invited to orgies, will get me at least a confused look from your typical urbanite queer, and possibly get me called a transmisogynist. For a gay man's perspective, Tim Dillon has spoken about this a lot, and folks like him are much more common than you might think.
One thing I definitely disagree with the author on is the idea that the current wave is about abolishing gender, in contrast to previous waves focused on sexual liberation—for one I don't get a "sexual liberation" vibe from the era of gay marriage legalization, and for another I see the present movements more as sexual-accelerationist, i.e. exploring sex and gender with such fervor that they're eroding its social utility and finding new ways to preclude healthy development of relationships and communities. Younger trans folks I've been with are so sexually liberated that it turns into narcissistic hedonism and you can't even be sure they're in the room with you when you're having sex.
Sex used to(?) mean something. People were exposed to each other, vulnerable, sharing themselves. It was even intensely powerful, in the sense that new life might actually spring out of it.
But this is basically treating another unique, unrepeatable human person as a toy, and not even an exceptional one.
I can't help but think we've lost something important and are that much the poorer for it.
Is the liberation to live one's life in pursuit of the next orgasm really worth it if we have to lose what sex was to get there?
> Activists who favor medical intervention often ask these parents a morbid question: "Would you rather have a trans daughter or a dead son?" But the real question should be, "Would you rather have a trans daughter or an effeminate gay son?"
This is a question we know the answer to, though, based on how many trans people have stories of how their parents asked them "why couldn't you just be gay?" Plus, the point of the original question is that parents don't get to choose whether they have a trans kid or not, they only have the choice between supporting their child and neglecting them.
> Speaking recently about these issues with a LGBT mental health specialist—one among many who have serious concerns about the hastiness of medical transition for youth in the U.S.
There are lots of people with "concerns" about medical transition being given out hastily without proper assessment, but never any evidence that such a thing is happening. I see lots of complaints about how difficult and time-consuming it is to get hormone therapy, including drugs that can be gotten in one appointment for non-gender-related purposes. As for wait times for appointments, I found this nice little tidbit on the UK's Gender Identity Clinic website: "We are currently offering first appointment to people who were referred in: December 2017" [ https://gic.nhs.uk/appointments/waiting-times/ ]
> activists who push a regressive, anti-liberal agenda that reifies gender stereotypes
This is just a lie. A blatant, obvious lie. Any statement like this immediately discredits the one making it. The transgender community is inherently accepting of all gender expressions and experiences. I'm kind of having trouble expressing how wrong this is. There was a post a little while back that went through some LGBT-accepting spaces about a man who started growing out his hair, taking hormones, growing breasts, eventually looking to any stranger like a fully gender-conforming woman, who still confidently saw himself as a man. The comments were nothing but respect and acceptance (and awe at his "chad energy"). That's what the community is like.
My understanding was that attempting to get hormones or other medications to help with transitioning in the US was so damn difficult the accepted solution was to buy them from sketchy Russian sources!
It's just the same scare tactics as "But there's women using abortion as birth control!". Like, maybe there's some women so horrible that they are willing to endure the misery, often-shame, cost, and physical pain required for an abortion for the occasional times they get pregnant, but that sounds to me like they are already being punished.
We are all one, we are all life.
There must always be freedom for thought. There must always be freedom for speech. There must always be freedom for life. But there most not be freedom for abuse. Do something against life, then forfeit yours. Do something against speech, then forfeit yours. Do something against thought, then forfeit yours.
The author would probably take issue with people assuming that his spouse is female. He wouldn't entertain for a second that it creates a burdon on other people to not assume he is straight as if such a thing is upending society's established paradigms of gender and sexuality. So why do we accuse trans people of being such a burden on us when they simply want to be considered by their self-identified gender?
Gender identity is intentionally murky & vague. For instance, how many genders are there? How does one transition to/from genders that aren't male/female? I can't even find a coherent and consistent definition of genders. So at this point, it sounds like the new definition of gender is just...personality? So for most people there is nothing else to do than recognize it as such, and dismiss it as mostly nonsense.