You guys are so elite eh?
2024 US Election
I don't understand. A man in a woman's body.
Like, that's the point where it ceases to make sense to simple minded folks like me.
flobaba In a few years time people are gonna look back at this and be like what the actual fuck was going on. Especially with the mutilation of kids, that is worst of all this. When someone is an adult they can do whatever makes them happy but leave the kids out of this.
Burnwinter I don't know anyone and I don't think it is relevant nor would I change my views. I do know of a man who transitioned into a woman. I'm happy for your friends and wish them all their best. But they are trans women are not women. They are trans women and there is nothing with that.
Mutilation of which kids?
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Cass review in the UK found the evidence for puberty blockers and hormone therapy to be remarkably weak yet in some countries we have kids being operated on. Irreversible surgeries being done on kids without strong evidence, that is experimental surgery and mutilation in my eyes. Breast binders being sent out in discreet packaging to under-aged kids in this country without parental consent. Irreversible and we already have high profile cases like Chloe Cole coming out talking about their regrets.
Once they are an adult, whatever path they go down they should be supported.
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@JazzG @flobaba Look mates, there's nothing elite or rarefied about my life experiences. I've been moving through a pretty normal Australian sphere. I'm not a private school kid, a trust fund kid, an academic at an elite university, etc.
But I do know quite a few trans people and as far as my humdrum acquaintance goes, the stuff that is said by conservatives is factually way, way off the mark. It is false and damaging.
I'd say I'm the simple soul who doesn't maintain a lot of complex ideas based on nothing about this.
The debate over whether trans women are women, or trans lives are human lives is over in Australia from a civic and social perspective. Trans women live legally as women after transition and lots of paperwork, go to work as women, etc. Nobody stopped that train here. I reckon that's because real trans people are leading unexceptional lives that don't look like anyone's lurid headlines.
There are substantial social and political issues associated with trans identity here, but none is caused by any pattern of trans people being socially malevolent or dangerous that anyone can point to. Just imagine how much we'd hear about it if they could!
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The debate may be settled in Australia, but it's obviously not settled in many other places in the world. Gender fluidity is not as accepted a proposition as you might believe. Interesting that you've met and got close to so many considering their rarity. I've met one. He was cool. Wifey's friend and work colleague. Had a fiancee and everything. But he is a woman. Surgery, hormones. Still a woman. He did not grow up having a boy/man's experiences, and he is not biologically male. These are facts, right? I can't just wake up one morning and say I think I'm a woman, can I? And then project my thinking and beliefs into other people's realities. It's just you know, silly.
Oh, and what if I'm trans woman today. Can I decide in like 3 years that eh, been there done that, and go back to being a man? What would I be then? A trans untrans? Retrans? Food for thought.
flobaba Still a woman. He did not grow up having a boy/man's experiences, and he is not biologically male. These are facts, right? I can't just wake up one morning and say I think I'm a woman, can I?
I mean, why not?
People who transition do feel they've been assigned the wrong gender, that is why they do it. Of course it's not an easy process, especially not for kids, and there are a lot of guardrails on it.
Yes, it's a fact that a trans man who's "assigned female at birth" and transitions as an adult hasn't "had a boyhood" like you or me. Someone "living as a man who didn't have [all of] a boyhood" is a decent working definition of trans male identity, that's the point of it.
flobaba Oh, and what if I'm trans woman today. Can I decide in like 3 years that eh, been there done that, and go back to being a man? What would I be then? A trans untrans? Retrans?
Sure. Those people exist. The number of people who choose what might be called "medical detrans" here in Australia would be able to fit in one room. My guess is the number will be way more in the future due to much easier access to hormones, but it's still a very small number, a very small fraction of a very small fraction.
1 in 10,000 people or something like that is a lot fewer than the number of persistent violent offenders in my communities. Most of whom are cis men but perhaps I shouldn't say that or someone will get very upset!
That's why I mentioned meth addiction. Within a couple of kilometres of where I was living for the past two months there are a few dozen long term meth addicts, many of them suffering from psychotic symptoms, sleeping rough. They're in a dire state.
Meth addiction is a concrete social problem. Back up in Darwin, the policing of the so-called "long grass" is a concrete social problem. But in my communities, trans identity is not a problem, let alone detransition.
Burnwinter if I feel like I'm a rat, can I do a surgery add some fur and whiskers, high pitch my voice and burrow into some rats nest and expect rats there to be like what's up bro? After all I feel I've been assigned the wrong species? Nope, they'll all run away cos they'd know I'm not a rat despite my hopefully excellent disguise. Personally, I think the trans thing is some sort of mental health issue and needs to be cared for and addressed as such.
It is a mental health issue. Clinical term is gender dysphoria. I'm no expert but the evidence seems to be that the majority of cases are effectively treated by a combination of social-lifestyle changes combined with a variety of surgical and medical (ie hormonal) interventions, that is, "transitioning."
So the question is not whether it's a real thing, but at what point can a reliable diagnosis be made that justifies medical intervention (eg puberty blockers) in minors. That's not a simple question (at least in my mind), but you have to admit it's a real thing in order to address it.
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flobaba if I feel like I'm a rat, can I do a surgery add some fur and whiskers, high pitch my voice and burrow into some rats nest and expect rats there to be like what's up bro?
Well ... I hate to be the bearer of more news from this sick, sad, world ... but there are people who identify with animals. Quite a few. I gather it's usually, but not always a fetish sex thing.
These people live among us unobtrusively. They have large amounts of their own media including a lot of terrible pornography. They have large online communities and organise in person events, too.
My understanding is that because satisfactory medical procedures aren't yet available, if one should always have (for example) fantasised about being a cheetah, the related practices are mostly limited to orthorexia, talking in weird voices, wearing elaborate costumes and custom contact lenses, and so on.
I mean, you could worry about them a lot if you really pushed it, but ... perhaps jacked up gym junkies on steroids would be a better target? I hear they often suffer from anger management issues. Perhaps the fearful could have a moral panic about those guys instead, as a treat? There are just so many options for the new enemy who's destroying everything you hold dear!
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Burnwinter but there are people who identify with animals.
I liked your gym bro gambit at the end, but this is where I do think the wokey-wokesters get things a bit twisted.
Identifying is a very strange concept that isn't well conceived. My trouble is that is suggests preference, a sort of flippant notion of choice grounded in impulsive desire or convenience that is akin to deciding whether or not you want pickles on your cheeseburger.
Trans, in my understanding, is not a fetish or a sexual preference, although a trans person retains both as does anyone else. Rather, it is a response to dysphoria, the literal carrying of pain, which combinations of genetic and epigenetic factors cause a person to be subject. The pain, including its specific causes and its reduction, manifests according to possibility and circumstance. For some it may be a social release valve, for others it may be hormone therapy, but what seems to be consistent across trans experience is dissociation as a technique for survival, especially in environments that restrict other options.
Pain is good at bringing people together. Communities form around people experiencing dysphoria and all the adjacent challenges that brings in an unsympathetic world. Just because there is some perceived silliness or absurdity expressed within these communities does not mean that what brought them together was silly. We see such activity in more traditional fraternal and sororal orders as well, religious or otherwise.
I personally believe it is possible to over-identify, but sometimes it's better to go too far and find your sweet spot than to never go far enough and carry unnecessary pain.
We know that genes are expressive and the properties they confer are emergent. We know that epigenetics are real. We know that we have latent qualities or properties that make up part of who we might be, but may never become manifest. In this frame, identifying as anything, including as cis, is no more or less ridiculous than identifying as anything else. But when you are carrying pain, identification is one of a myriad of strategies that may reduce that pain, even if it might become counterproductive after a point (like any therapeutic).
Muñoz posited disidentification as an alternative, to which I am more sympathetic than the identity politic of fighting fire with fire. It reminds me of the Palestinain sumud or even satyagraha. Rather than assimilate into bigoted binaries or set out explicitly to counter them, work to transform cultural logics from within, valuing the importance of local struggles of resistance over grand gestures of structural change.
Burnwinter again, I'm absolutely fine with anyone thinking they are anything they want to think. But don't warp my own reality and the reality of the vast majority into yours. That's all I'm saying.
Also, this is very much a first world/rich folks problems. People who don't know where their next meal is coming from, people without resources, they aren't spending their time thinking about switching genders.
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they want to force a constitutional crisis and use the chaos to divert more power to the executive branch. this is known as unitary executive theory, which is one of the core tenets of project 2025. turns out it wasn't fear-mongering. they've been following the P25 gameplan pretty damn closely so far.
flobaba People who don't know where their next meal is coming from, people without resources, they aren't spending their time thinking about switching genders.
No, for your noble poor it's even worse. Those who find themselves without food and without community are the most abject of our species. They carry more pain, not less. They have fewer means to therapy, and starvation is certainly not one of them. Trans people of higher class have those means and use them. They can afford some level of visibility in addressing their needs. Those of lower classes are rendered invisible, often by necessity, because otherwise they are annihilated by the multifactorial violences of capitalism and intolerance. Indeed, their plight is often death, which you would relegate them to with your inverse logic. People aren't trans because they're rich, they are seen because they have means to be.
You want the world to be simple because you are not brave enough to face its complexity. That you want it to be simple doesn't make it so. The willfull ignorance of bigotry always makes a specious claim to realism, common sense, and, yes, simplicity. It is an alluring worldview because you get to be right without doing the work of thinking and make brash claims based on false axioms. You get to have power without responsibility and unearned rights over others. It is a corrosive perspective that erodes the social fabrics of obligation, mutual interest, and intersubjectivity - and it is a solipsim that eats away at the soul of whoever cultivates it within themselves.
flobaba But don't warp my own reality and the reality of the vast majority into yours.
What's warping your reality is the media coverage and social media panic telling you trans people are morons, criminals and perverts ruining your way of life.
Brought to you by more or less the same people who brought you reds under the bed, the Lavender Scare, the boogaloo, the Southern strategy, the welfare queen, the AIDS panic, the superpredator, the Tampa crisis, the seven country travel ban ... curing COVID-19 with bleach ...