Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
That might be upsetting in terms of how you view the court, but it could also be encouraging in terms of what impact it'll have. If they had to make up a case it prolly won't be difficult to find a web designer, even for gay couples. I'm guessing today, this is a case where being publicly known for refusing to provide services for gay weddings will cost you more than you gain.
Not saying it's not problematic but I'm pretty confident gay acceptance isn't contingent on legislation. I can also accept the argument that a website is more related to free speech than other services are (even if this is disingenuous from the people making that claim), and thus I dunno if this creates a precedent for other services. Maybe it does but I dunno.
This post is super emblematic of why I don't post on this site anymore. You and many others have no fucking clue how bad this ruling is for queer people and how bad things are for us or y'all simply don't care and I've come to realize that there is no amount of evidence or experience I can show that will make y'all or other people change their minds. People are jumping at the opportunity to attack queer people throughout the US. Nazis are actively assaulting queer people and being celebrated for it by the conservative base. The Civil Rights Act is dead and the Democrats and Biden will not do anything to fix the SC, they'll just send out links to ActBlue. The US is a decaying police state with no revolutionary potential and will not get better, and I've given up hope in general for most everywhere else, so fuck it, I'll just post this and leave for good: [img]https://images2.imgbox.com/54/51/uegyih58_o.jpg[/im]
I think the last time you posted here you were saying that trans kids were being removed from homes with loving parents to be put into foster homes. When I asked you for a single example you couldn’t provide one and told me that’s what people on Twitter who you trusted were telling you. A few months ago it was front page news everywherewhen a woman at the cheesecake factory that probably had one too many Skinnylicious margaritas said some nasty things to an LGBT person. The idea that there’s some epidemic of nazis beating up queer people while the conservatives cheer them on sounds a little far fetched. Why is it not all over the news? If saying nasty things is front page news worthy than these assaults should be even more newsworthy and if they are as prevalent as you make it seem we should hear about it. Are they just not getting captured on some of the 300 million smartphones?
You’ve been posting for years now constantly invoking genocide and nazism and hitler. It’s absurd. The LGBTQ population is exploding. 20% of gen Z identifies as LGBTQ. That’s 1 in 5. That’s double the rate of millennials and millennials are double the rate of Gen X and Gen X is double the rate of baby boomers. Either your posts have no basis in reality or this is the worst attempt at genocide in history.
This kind of language seems to have become quite common. I saw a manifestation against restrictions on sex altering surgery where many of the protesters called it "genocide" and here is a male transgender cyclist calling restrictions on her participation in tournaments "genocide".
I'm not denying that there are many legitimate problems to discuss, but throwing around words like that seems to have become a trend.
Regarding MTF athletes, for every person who calls their exclusion "genocide" you have a number of (not right-wing) people arguing over the nuances of inclusion vs fairness vs science. Yes, they're having a debate. For people who are politically neutral or left-leaning, they're unsure of what to do and they're having a conversation. For people who are politically right-wing, there is no debate. All of them are completely certain of what to do: strict exclusion of all MTF athletes. The whole of the right-wing is ideologically driven, but only the fringe left is ideologically driven, while the overwhelming majority of remaining people between these two groups is thinking about the dilemma fairly rationally. The distinction is clear: left-wingers are not generally being radical about MTF athlete inclusion. They're debating the issue. They're not just winging it and blindly following the personal interests of a small fraction of the population. We certainly can't say the same thing about many right-wingers. They're just blocking the path and they're never going to budge. It's like arguing with a wall.
And this is regarding a tiny issue in the vastness of the transgender landscape. MTF athletes are a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of the population.
"Would transgender women 'take over' women's sport?
Harper: Trans women are never going to take over women's sport. First of all, trans people make up roughly 1% of the population.
The best example of a population study to look at comes from America. If you look at NCAA sports, there are more than 200,000 women competing every year in NCAA sports. Trans women make up 0.5-1% of the population so we should be seeing 1,000-2,000 trans women every year.
The NCAA 11 years ago allowed trans women to compete, based on hormone therapy. We should be seeing 1,000-2,000. We see a handful every year."
Somehow an issue that affects very few people in the world is front and center for conservatives regarding their issues with transgender people. How? Why? Is this really such a big deal that it has to result in anti-LGBTQ legislation? The answer is obviously no. The sports associations can figure this out for themselves, they don't need laws interfering with the process. Mistakes will be made on the way to a better solution, but these are not going to "ruin women's sports" in any meaningful capacity.
So yet again conservatives (pretend to) care more about a much smaller fraction of the population than about a much larger fraction. This is called a "red herring fallacy".
I don't really see how your response has anything to do with my post. BJ pointed to comments like this, from this thread:
People are jumping at the opportunity to attack queer people throughout the US. Nazis are actively assaulting queer people and being celebrated for it by the conservative base.
and talk about "genocide" on trans people in the US. And said that it is wildly exaggerated and that you should be able to back such claims up with evidence. I only gave other examples of the same kind of exaggerations (such as calling a ban on trans women in women's sport genocide).
No one in this thread said that transgender people are experiencing genocide, BJ made that up. Ironic, isn't it? "Backing claims up with evidence" and all that, right?
In one month, I will move from Texas to Belgium, and I will most likely never return to the United States.
On 12 December 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States terminated a recount of Florida's votes for president. In a 5-4 decision on party lines, the court gave the presidency to George W. Bush, and less than a year later, we were at war and the post-WWII party that had defined American capitalism and excess came to an abrupt and permanent end. On 16 June 2015, Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy for president, and the forces of decades of conservative lobbying, Christian fundamentalism, and fascist recruiting killed off any mirage of America being a country based on freedom, justice, and equality. On 24 June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and many Americans suddenly realized that the war had come home.
When you cross a black hole's event horizon, time ceases to exist. Your body gets torn limb from limb, cell from cell, atom from atom, until several infinites later, your body ha been reunited with the cosmic dust it was formed out of. While some physical manifestation of you still exists, your past, present, and futures collapse onto one another into one perpetual scream. You see infinitely many lifetimes born from every decision you could've made or not made and are forced to reckon with seeing the life of your dreams fade away and be replaced with a nightmare, ad infinitum, tormenting you until you've gone insane. But just as suddenly as your hell began, it ends, and all that's left of you is your soul, the pure essence of you as a human being, and then you enter it.
When I entered a black hole, I was greeted with the void. No sound, no light, nothing. I was, for the first time in my life, truly alone, despite my many feelings of loneliness before. Or so I thought. The voice of Death spoke my name and it echoed around me and inside me. I turned fearful, then sighed in resignation, accepting that I was dead. Or so I thought, once again. Death started to take a physical form in front of me and told me that I was in fact, not dead. When I heard Their voice, it was not one of malice, or evil, or temptation. It was gentle, soft, and tranquil. I told Death how terrified I was of Them, and They told me that I had a fundamental misunderstanding of Them. They are not some malevolent spectre, haunting and stalking people, trying to lure them into recklessness and death. They just simply are. No more, no less, and then I understood Them. Death told me to remember what I had seen during my infinite lifetimes and I promised Them that I would make the most out of the rest of my life, until I was finally reunited with Them.
But I should not be alive right now, despite my new lease on life. On Valentine's Day 2022, I had an unintentional drug overdose in a nondescript hotel room in Orange County, California, resulting in me developing severe serotonin syndrome. I rapidly lost consciousness, had a seizure that jolted me awake, then nearly choked on my own vomit a few seconds later. Whether by G-d's mercy, or kismet, or the pure chaos of the universe, that seizure woke me up just before I choked to death, and I survived while so many others haven't. A true undeserved miracle.
The most consequential day of my political radicalization was on 17 July 2014, when Eric Garner was murdered by NYPD. I watched the video of him saying "I Can't Breathe" over and over while the life was choked out of him for the "crime" of selling loose cigarettes, and his dying words have never left my mind since then. Over the next month, I confronted the nature of my upbringing in small-town Texas where it was deeply ingrained in me to always respect police and that they were just doing what they had to do, and that if they murdered someone, regardless of the circumstances, it was justified. I started reading a bunch of writings and speeches that Black activists on Twitter were recommending, my first being the autobiography of Malcolm X, arguably still one of the biggest influences on me politically. From there was a deep dive into the life of one of the greatest figures of the 20th century, Fred Hampton, who I believe would've completely changed the face of America if he wasn't assassinated by the FBI. The works of Angela Davis and Assata Shakur helped to open my eyes to Black feminist perspectives that I greatly support and advocate for to this day.
For the several years that followed, I rarely discussed my political beliefs in any serious capacity online because I never could get people to see the warning signs that came from the response to the 2008 recession and realize that we were heading into a late-capitalist hell. I watched as far-right forces coalesced in the GOP and the Democrats utterly failed the country in so many ways, but no one wanted to see what was going to happen. As I steadily became more militant in my beliefs, many millennials and Gen Zers around my age were experiencing firsthand the absolute nightmare American society had become with student loans, wage stagnation, healthcare, and so much more, but instead of fighting, they gave into nihilism, despair, misanthropy, and apathy, all combining into doomerism. Our generation was going to go silently, never achieving a better world. The Black Lives Matter movement probably was one of my only glimmers of hope during the 2010s, but the GOP and Dems swiftly came down to stop any meaningful change to policing occurring. It truly drove the point home that the liberals will always side with the far-right over the progressives because ultimately, the liberals with all the power and money benefit from a far-right government because they get to push for fundraising while knowing that their massive wealth compared to the average American will never be touched.
When the anti-transgender legislation and societal forces started spreading in 2019, none of us knew what to do. As things got worse and worse over the next three years, we were completely alone. The Dems never did anything noteworthy to help us while the GOP dehumanized us and stripped us of rights across the country. The only queer organizations and advocacy groups that cared about us were trans-focused ones. It wasn't until Florida's Don't Say Gay bill was being pushed that the queer orgs actually started fighting back. To them, we were expendable. They cared more about cis gay men not being able to donate blood than trans people not being allowed to exist. We kept sounding the alarm bells about the broader implications of what attacking us could mean, and no one listened. For decades, trans people had existed in a dark forest, intentionally not being seen or heard, because the moment we would be spotted, we would be labelled an existential threat and target for elimination by overwhelming forces that we had no chance of defeating.
When Roe v Wade was overturned, it completely changed the mood of nearly everyone I know, myself included. At this point, all of my friends and close associates knew I was extremely far-left and I had countless furious people reaching out to me to ask things like how to make Molotov cocktails, how to force change when no politicians want it to happen, and the nature and morals of political violence. My go-to quote for them was by the legendary Kwame Ture: "In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none." No group of oppressed people in the United States were ever handed their rights without violence, and it seemed many people finally realized that simple truth.
If you have a million people ready to die for your cause, you are going to fail. You can send unit after unit of people to fight and die, but it will not make a difference to the neo-Nazis and fascists in power. If you want to win, you have to be willing to kill quickly and kill repeatedly. To them, we are not human. To them, we are merely vermin to be squashed, and I am going to treat them in kind. They have long lost the capability to be shown the error of their ways, and I am not going to go the way my ancestors did, killed by the Nazi scum. If I can secure a better future for trans people in America and the world, even if it meant sacrificing my freedom or my life, I will do it. After all, I shouldn't even be alive. I am not going to let trans joy be eradicated by these monsters. If they say we're not human, then I'm going to show them how not human I can get.
That was my thought process on the weekend of 24 June 2022. The week since then has been sobering. I came to realize while talking with cis people that nearly all don't have the conviction to die or kill, and that is not something I would ever ask of someone. The trans community can band together and arm ourselves, but very few people will fight with us. If I decide to actually get violent with the fascists, it's going to cause the rapid destruction of trans people across America. As it stands, I don't see a way forward for me as a trans person in America, and I don't want to die for nothing.
I don't know what the future has in store for transgender people in the United States, but it looks horrifying.
I fully expect a genocide to occur against us here and that it's already started. + Show Spoiler +
I live every moment of my life thinking that I'm going to lose the people here I love to horrific violence and society at large will encourage it or simply not care. And I get to flee. I get to leave the United States, move to Belgium, and have a job there. I do not deserve this. There is no special quality I have that makes me more worthy of being safe than any other trans person. It's pure luck. I am going to leave in a cowardly way, and I will be a worse person for it. I have effectively abandoned my community to die at the hands of overwhelming forces we cannot hope to win against while I save my own skin. I have benefitted from life without doing anything to earn it.
At the end of the day, I just hope we survive, and I hope all trans people can endure. I decided to join a political party for the first time in my life: PTB-PVDA, the Workers' Party of Belgium, which is a Marxist party that I think I can do a lot of good campaigning and advocating for. Maybe by working with them, I can ensure a better future in some way, but right now, things are bleak. I'm going to try to make the most of the extension of life I was given, but it is hollow, and the guilt I have will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Nothing ironic about that, because it's quite obvious that Plasmid was talking about what the future might look like and where things are heading in her opinion, not that there are trans people being queued up for gas chambers right here and now. Also, who cares? It's one post from one person a year ago, but I guess that invalidates literally anything anyone could say on the topic now because LiBeRaL CrYbAbIeS aLwAyS ExAgGeRaTe EvErYtHiNg MeAnWhIlE SaN FrAnCiScO iS LiTeRaLLy BuRnInG RiGhT NoW.
What do you mean who cares? MP said I made something up so I posted something to the contrary. Are you throwing a tantrum because I didn’t just concede that I was making it up?
You're right, you didn't make it up.
You just vastly misrepresented the thing you were referring to/quoting, as is your usual MO.
On July 03 2023 03:26 Elroi wrote: [quote] I don't really see how your response has anything to do with my post. BJ pointed to comments like this, from this thread: [quote] and talk about "genocide" on trans people in the US. And said that it is wildly exaggerated and that you should be able to back such claims up with evidence. I only gave other examples of the same kind of exaggerations (such as calling a ban on trans women in women's sport genocide).
No one in this thread said that transgender people are experiencing genocide, BJ made that up. Ironic, isn't it? "Backing claims up with evidence" and all that, right?
In one month, I will move from Texas to Belgium, and I will most likely never return to the United States.
On 12 December 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States terminated a recount of Florida's votes for president. In a 5-4 decision on party lines, the court gave the presidency to George W. Bush, and less than a year later, we were at war and the post-WWII party that had defined American capitalism and excess came to an abrupt and permanent end. On 16 June 2015, Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy for president, and the forces of decades of conservative lobbying, Christian fundamentalism, and fascist recruiting killed off any mirage of America being a country based on freedom, justice, and equality. On 24 June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and many Americans suddenly realized that the war had come home.
When you cross a black hole's event horizon, time ceases to exist. Your body gets torn limb from limb, cell from cell, atom from atom, until several infinites later, your body ha been reunited with the cosmic dust it was formed out of. While some physical manifestation of you still exists, your past, present, and futures collapse onto one another into one perpetual scream. You see infinitely many lifetimes born from every decision you could've made or not made and are forced to reckon with seeing the life of your dreams fade away and be replaced with a nightmare, ad infinitum, tormenting you until you've gone insane. But just as suddenly as your hell began, it ends, and all that's left of you is your soul, the pure essence of you as a human being, and then you enter it.
When I entered a black hole, I was greeted with the void. No sound, no light, nothing. I was, for the first time in my life, truly alone, despite my many feelings of loneliness before. Or so I thought. The voice of Death spoke my name and it echoed around me and inside me. I turned fearful, then sighed in resignation, accepting that I was dead. Or so I thought, once again. Death started to take a physical form in front of me and told me that I was in fact, not dead. When I heard Their voice, it was not one of malice, or evil, or temptation. It was gentle, soft, and tranquil. I told Death how terrified I was of Them, and They told me that I had a fundamental misunderstanding of Them. They are not some malevolent spectre, haunting and stalking people, trying to lure them into recklessness and death. They just simply are. No more, no less, and then I understood Them. Death told me to remember what I had seen during my infinite lifetimes and I promised Them that I would make the most out of the rest of my life, until I was finally reunited with Them.
But I should not be alive right now, despite my new lease on life. On Valentine's Day 2022, I had an unintentional drug overdose in a nondescript hotel room in Orange County, California, resulting in me developing severe serotonin syndrome. I rapidly lost consciousness, had a seizure that jolted me awake, then nearly choked on my own vomit a few seconds later. Whether by G-d's mercy, or kismet, or the pure chaos of the universe, that seizure woke me up just before I choked to death, and I survived while so many others haven't. A true undeserved miracle.
The most consequential day of my political radicalization was on 17 July 2014, when Eric Garner was murdered by NYPD. I watched the video of him saying "I Can't Breathe" over and over while the life was choked out of him for the "crime" of selling loose cigarettes, and his dying words have never left my mind since then. Over the next month, I confronted the nature of my upbringing in small-town Texas where it was deeply ingrained in me to always respect police and that they were just doing what they had to do, and that if they murdered someone, regardless of the circumstances, it was justified. I started reading a bunch of writings and speeches that Black activists on Twitter were recommending, my first being the autobiography of Malcolm X, arguably still one of the biggest influences on me politically. From there was a deep dive into the life of one of the greatest figures of the 20th century, Fred Hampton, who I believe would've completely changed the face of America if he wasn't assassinated by the FBI. The works of Angela Davis and Assata Shakur helped to open my eyes to Black feminist perspectives that I greatly support and advocate for to this day.
For the several years that followed, I rarely discussed my political beliefs in any serious capacity online because I never could get people to see the warning signs that came from the response to the 2008 recession and realize that we were heading into a late-capitalist hell. I watched as far-right forces coalesced in the GOP and the Democrats utterly failed the country in so many ways, but no one wanted to see what was going to happen. As I steadily became more militant in my beliefs, many millennials and Gen Zers around my age were experiencing firsthand the absolute nightmare American society had become with student loans, wage stagnation, healthcare, and so much more, but instead of fighting, they gave into nihilism, despair, misanthropy, and apathy, all combining into doomerism. Our generation was going to go silently, never achieving a better world. The Black Lives Matter movement probably was one of my only glimmers of hope during the 2010s, but the GOP and Dems swiftly came down to stop any meaningful change to policing occurring. It truly drove the point home that the liberals will always side with the far-right over the progressives because ultimately, the liberals with all the power and money benefit from a far-right government because they get to push for fundraising while knowing that their massive wealth compared to the average American will never be touched.
When the anti-transgender legislation and societal forces started spreading in 2019, none of us knew what to do. As things got worse and worse over the next three years, we were completely alone. The Dems never did anything noteworthy to help us while the GOP dehumanized us and stripped us of rights across the country. The only queer organizations and advocacy groups that cared about us were trans-focused ones. It wasn't until Florida's Don't Say Gay bill was being pushed that the queer orgs actually started fighting back. To them, we were expendable. They cared more about cis gay men not being able to donate blood than trans people not being allowed to exist. We kept sounding the alarm bells about the broader implications of what attacking us could mean, and no one listened. For decades, trans people had existed in a dark forest, intentionally not being seen or heard, because the moment we would be spotted, we would be labelled an existential threat and target for elimination by overwhelming forces that we had no chance of defeating.
When Roe v Wade was overturned, it completely changed the mood of nearly everyone I know, myself included. At this point, all of my friends and close associates knew I was extremely far-left and I had countless furious people reaching out to me to ask things like how to make Molotov cocktails, how to force change when no politicians want it to happen, and the nature and morals of political violence. My go-to quote for them was by the legendary Kwame Ture: "In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none." No group of oppressed people in the United States were ever handed their rights without violence, and it seemed many people finally realized that simple truth.
If you have a million people ready to die for your cause, you are going to fail. You can send unit after unit of people to fight and die, but it will not make a difference to the neo-Nazis and fascists in power. If you want to win, you have to be willing to kill quickly and kill repeatedly. To them, we are not human. To them, we are merely vermin to be squashed, and I am going to treat them in kind. They have long lost the capability to be shown the error of their ways, and I am not going to go the way my ancestors did, killed by the Nazi scum. If I can secure a better future for trans people in America and the world, even if it meant sacrificing my freedom or my life, I will do it. After all, I shouldn't even be alive. I am not going to let trans joy be eradicated by these monsters. If they say we're not human, then I'm going to show them how not human I can get.
That was my thought process on the weekend of 24 June 2022. The week since then has been sobering. I came to realize while talking with cis people that nearly all don't have the conviction to die or kill, and that is not something I would ever ask of someone. The trans community can band together and arm ourselves, but very few people will fight with us. If I decide to actually get violent with the fascists, it's going to cause the rapid destruction of trans people across America. As it stands, I don't see a way forward for me as a trans person in America, and I don't want to die for nothing.
I don't know what the future has in store for transgender people in the United States, but it looks horrifying.
I fully expect a genocide to occur against us here and that it's already started. + Show Spoiler +
I live every moment of my life thinking that I'm going to lose the people here I love to horrific violence and society at large will encourage it or simply not care. And I get to flee. I get to leave the United States, move to Belgium, and have a job there. I do not deserve this. There is no special quality I have that makes me more worthy of being safe than any other trans person. It's pure luck. I am going to leave in a cowardly way, and I will be a worse person for it. I have effectively abandoned my community to die at the hands of overwhelming forces we cannot hope to win against while I save my own skin. I have benefitted from life without doing anything to earn it.
At the end of the day, I just hope we survive, and I hope all trans people can endure. I decided to join a political party for the first time in my life: PTB-PVDA, the Workers' Party of Belgium, which is a Marxist party that I think I can do a lot of good campaigning and advocating for. Maybe by working with them, I can ensure a better future in some way, but right now, things are bleak. I'm going to try to make the most of the extension of life I was given, but it is hollow, and the guilt I have will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Nothing ironic about that, because it's quite obvious that Plasmid was talking about what the future might look like and where things are heading in her opinion, not that there are trans people being queued up for gas chambers right here and now. Also, who cares? It's one post from one person a year ago, but I guess that invalidates literally anything anyone could say on the topic now because LiBeRaL CrYbAbIeS aLwAyS ExAgGeRaTe EvErYtHiNg MeAnWhIlE SaN FrAnCiScO iS LiTeRaLLy BuRnInG RiGhT NoW.
What do you mean who cares? MP said I made something up so I posted something to the contrary. Are you throwing a tantrum because I didn’t just concede that I was making it up?
I mean that quite literally. Who cares? People exaggerate shit, people use imprecise wording, people get emotional when discussing topics that are important to them. It happens, and it's alright, spending dozens of posts bickering whether something falls under this specific definition or not -- when you full well understand what the person is saying regardless of whether the words or expressions they used were 'right' or not -- is tedious and serves no purpose whatsoever.
It's not a non-issue how you talk about these things. How are you ever going to have a constructive discussion about the situation of trans people if you let any absurd exaggerations pass? And then when someone exposes the lies and exaggerations YOU bicker for ten pages about it. If anyone of you actually wanted a conversation in good faith, your response would be something like: "Sure, BJ, there are no kidnappings of trans children, we are not in the beginning of a genocidal campaign, but I think X Y Z are real problems that need to be addressed."
More to this point, and in an interest of moving away from holocaust discussion, here’s a video of a senate hearing a couple weeks ago on the rights of LGBTQ people.
The Human Rights Campaign President gives super vague answers on what gender even means, saying at some point something like “young people are exploring all kids of ideas about gender and it’s our job to create a safe space for them to do so” (paraphrasing from memory). Ok… the idea that we’re taking direction from young peoples rapidly evolving thoughts on gender seems a bit anti-science… then she goes on to basically evade the simple biological truth that males have advantage over female in sports by giving non answers like Serena Williams could beat a geriatric man in Tennis.”
Really throws some sand in MP’s opinion that people on the left want to have a reasonable conversation about MTF athletes in sports and people on the right just want to shut it down. How is having a reasonable conversation refusing to even acknowledge that men have an advantage over women in sports? I’m going to go out a limb by saying people will defend this by suggesting Anthony Kennedy was trying to get her with a “gotcha” question, he’s arguing in bad faith, etc. all the usual suspects. What I would say is that if acknowledging a simple scientific fact is considered a “gotcha” then the entire foundation of your argument is flawed.
I don't really care about discussing a YouTube video, nor about MP's opinion. I think at this point if you want to genuinely discuss issues relating to trans people, it's best if you just give a more detailed description of what you yourself think, rather than what is problematic about what other people think. Like, we can agree that there's been a growing number of people experiencing gender incongruity over the past decade. How do we best address that?
Full disclosure it's not really a topic I myself care about, as I think it's mostly an issue of a) let medical professionals handle it and b) I'm just gonna be respectful and treat people how they want to be treated. I honestly think you are on board with b), but I have the impression from earlier posts that you might, at least in the US, think that the American medical community is not entirely trustworthy on the issue / that desire for profit might in your view trump what is best for the patient in question?
Thanks for asking. I guess I’ll add my thoughts on a few “trans issues”
Gender-affirming care
Obviously no sane person would oppose gender affirming care for adults so this is going to be about minors. While I don’t think the medical establishment is infallible (can cite many examples) I think they are still the best ones to make decisions on gender affirming care than politicians. Ultimately you need 3 parties consent here for any intervention, child, parent, and doctor. I don’t think parental rights are limitless but I generally yield to them vs the opinions of politicians. Whether a child ends up with regret may be tragic, sometimes that’s just life
Of course that simply means the medical establishment should call the shots, it doesn’t say what shots I think should be called. For example the medical establishment in America recommends gender affirming care for minors and the medical establishment in Finland/Sweden recommend against it. I don’t think the medical establishment in Finland/Sweden is full of bigots and transphobes and I obviously share some of their concerns e.g the unexplained rise in prevalence of gender dysphoria in female adolescents and rigorous evidence that shows the benefits outweighs the risks. I’ve posted before in this thread about social contagion. I think most people here believe that trans people are “born that way.” I tend to believe most things are a combination of nature vs nurture and it’s only for controversial topics that people will adopt this “it’s entirely genetic” or “it’s entirely environmental” dogma that hasn’t been proven.
In general I think gender affirming care is not something that should be immediately adopted. I’m also not familiar enough to know if it is or not. I don’t think a boy goes to a therapist for the first time and says “I’m a girl and my name is Susan” and the doctor says “Hi Susan.” I would hope there would be some “interesting… well why do you feel that way” beforehand. But ultimately it may be the judgement of the doctor and the parent that it’s not a phase they will grow out of and gender affirming care may be necessary. So I would say generally I think there should be a line drawn between reversible and irreversible interventions. E.g. role playing and puberty blockers as reversible. There’s some evidence that puberty blockers transitioned into hormone therapy in teenagers causes infertility, and I don’t really think anyone should be having top/bottom surgery before 18.
Transgender women in supports
This is anecdotal but most transgender women I meet are not athletes. They are definitely not elite athletes. I also think there’s a gap between men and women in sports, and not a small one. Often high school level boys can compete with professional women at the top levels. I also think Rayzda is right that without protections over time most world records would belong to MTF athletes. I also think most reasonable people agree this is unfair. I think most people think there should be some protections in place. For example to be a transgendered woman there are no requirements other than proclaiming yourself to be a transgender woman. I think if a male athlete just proclaimed themselves to be a transgender woman and wanted to race the next day against women most people would opposed this.
In short, a blanket ban on all MTF athletes doesn’t make sense because for the vast majority of the less talented athletes it accomplishes nothing in protect women’s sports and only excludes transgender athletes needlessly. Obviously there’s a small percent of cases where there is an obvious advantage that allows them to dominate and become champions and they are the few that should be excluded.
Bathroom bans
Just political theater in my opinion. People don’t go into the wrong bathrooms not because it’s the law but because that’s what societal norms dictate. I’m not aware of this being a problem and if it becomes a problem then you can worry about legislating it.
I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on these issues, and I think I agree with more of what you’ve written than the amount I disagree.
Question for you: Let's assume that a pediatrician actually does their due diligence (conversation with a minor, etc.) and supports an introduction to gender-affirming care for a child (respecting pronouns, advocating dressing differently / whatever is comfortable for the kid, not anything as drastic as hormone treatment or surgery). Let's say the MtF child is 12 years old, just to pick an age. So the kid wants it and the doctor condones it, but assume the parents are very much against validating their trans kid. In other words, it's basically the trans kid + doctor vs. the parents. I know there's no perfect solution to this scenario, but what do you think should happen / what would you hope happens?
Thanks for elaborating. There's nothing in there I really disagree with, maybe the degree to which the social cntagion theory is valid and I guess I don't really like the phrase, but I understand what you mean by it and I do think its possible that some subset of people with reported gender dysphoria, perhaps chiefly teenagers who first experience it during puberty and where they experience say, a less significant change than expected, might end up thinking they are in the 'wrong body' rather than 'a kinda effeminate guy/masculine woman'. In some of these cases I can see societal influence one way or the other make the feeling of gender dysphoria be more or less prevalent.
On July 03 2023 03:26 Elroi wrote: [quote] I don't really see how your response has anything to do with my post. BJ pointed to comments like this, from this thread: [quote] and talk about "genocide" on trans people in the US. And said that it is wildly exaggerated and that you should be able to back such claims up with evidence. I only gave other examples of the same kind of exaggerations (such as calling a ban on trans women in women's sport genocide).
No one in this thread said that transgender people are experiencing genocide, BJ made that up. Ironic, isn't it? "Backing claims up with evidence" and all that, right?
In one month, I will move from Texas to Belgium, and I will most likely never return to the United States.
On 12 December 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States terminated a recount of Florida's votes for president. In a 5-4 decision on party lines, the court gave the presidency to George W. Bush, and less than a year later, we were at war and the post-WWII party that had defined American capitalism and excess came to an abrupt and permanent end. On 16 June 2015, Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy for president, and the forces of decades of conservative lobbying, Christian fundamentalism, and fascist recruiting killed off any mirage of America being a country based on freedom, justice, and equality. On 24 June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and many Americans suddenly realized that the war had come home.
When you cross a black hole's event horizon, time ceases to exist. Your body gets torn limb from limb, cell from cell, atom from atom, until several infinites later, your body ha been reunited with the cosmic dust it was formed out of. While some physical manifestation of you still exists, your past, present, and futures collapse onto one another into one perpetual scream. You see infinitely many lifetimes born from every decision you could've made or not made and are forced to reckon with seeing the life of your dreams fade away and be replaced with a nightmare, ad infinitum, tormenting you until you've gone insane. But just as suddenly as your hell began, it ends, and all that's left of you is your soul, the pure essence of you as a human being, and then you enter it.
When I entered a black hole, I was greeted with the void. No sound, no light, nothing. I was, for the first time in my life, truly alone, despite my many feelings of loneliness before. Or so I thought. The voice of Death spoke my name and it echoed around me and inside me. I turned fearful, then sighed in resignation, accepting that I was dead. Or so I thought, once again. Death started to take a physical form in front of me and told me that I was in fact, not dead. When I heard Their voice, it was not one of malice, or evil, or temptation. It was gentle, soft, and tranquil. I told Death how terrified I was of Them, and They told me that I had a fundamental misunderstanding of Them. They are not some malevolent spectre, haunting and stalking people, trying to lure them into recklessness and death. They just simply are. No more, no less, and then I understood Them. Death told me to remember what I had seen during my infinite lifetimes and I promised Them that I would make the most out of the rest of my life, until I was finally reunited with Them.
But I should not be alive right now, despite my new lease on life. On Valentine's Day 2022, I had an unintentional drug overdose in a nondescript hotel room in Orange County, California, resulting in me developing severe serotonin syndrome. I rapidly lost consciousness, had a seizure that jolted me awake, then nearly choked on my own vomit a few seconds later. Whether by G-d's mercy, or kismet, or the pure chaos of the universe, that seizure woke me up just before I choked to death, and I survived while so many others haven't. A true undeserved miracle.
The most consequential day of my political radicalization was on 17 July 2014, when Eric Garner was murdered by NYPD. I watched the video of him saying "I Can't Breathe" over and over while the life was choked out of him for the "crime" of selling loose cigarettes, and his dying words have never left my mind since then. Over the next month, I confronted the nature of my upbringing in small-town Texas where it was deeply ingrained in me to always respect police and that they were just doing what they had to do, and that if they murdered someone, regardless of the circumstances, it was justified. I started reading a bunch of writings and speeches that Black activists on Twitter were recommending, my first being the autobiography of Malcolm X, arguably still one of the biggest influences on me politically. From there was a deep dive into the life of one of the greatest figures of the 20th century, Fred Hampton, who I believe would've completely changed the face of America if he wasn't assassinated by the FBI. The works of Angela Davis and Assata Shakur helped to open my eyes to Black feminist perspectives that I greatly support and advocate for to this day.
For the several years that followed, I rarely discussed my political beliefs in any serious capacity online because I never could get people to see the warning signs that came from the response to the 2008 recession and realize that we were heading into a late-capitalist hell. I watched as far-right forces coalesced in the GOP and the Democrats utterly failed the country in so many ways, but no one wanted to see what was going to happen. As I steadily became more militant in my beliefs, many millennials and Gen Zers around my age were experiencing firsthand the absolute nightmare American society had become with student loans, wage stagnation, healthcare, and so much more, but instead of fighting, they gave into nihilism, despair, misanthropy, and apathy, all combining into doomerism. Our generation was going to go silently, never achieving a better world. The Black Lives Matter movement probably was one of my only glimmers of hope during the 2010s, but the GOP and Dems swiftly came down to stop any meaningful change to policing occurring. It truly drove the point home that the liberals will always side with the far-right over the progressives because ultimately, the liberals with all the power and money benefit from a far-right government because they get to push for fundraising while knowing that their massive wealth compared to the average American will never be touched.
When the anti-transgender legislation and societal forces started spreading in 2019, none of us knew what to do. As things got worse and worse over the next three years, we were completely alone. The Dems never did anything noteworthy to help us while the GOP dehumanized us and stripped us of rights across the country. The only queer organizations and advocacy groups that cared about us were trans-focused ones. It wasn't until Florida's Don't Say Gay bill was being pushed that the queer orgs actually started fighting back. To them, we were expendable. They cared more about cis gay men not being able to donate blood than trans people not being allowed to exist. We kept sounding the alarm bells about the broader implications of what attacking us could mean, and no one listened. For decades, trans people had existed in a dark forest, intentionally not being seen or heard, because the moment we would be spotted, we would be labelled an existential threat and target for elimination by overwhelming forces that we had no chance of defeating.
When Roe v Wade was overturned, it completely changed the mood of nearly everyone I know, myself included. At this point, all of my friends and close associates knew I was extremely far-left and I had countless furious people reaching out to me to ask things like how to make Molotov cocktails, how to force change when no politicians want it to happen, and the nature and morals of political violence. My go-to quote for them was by the legendary Kwame Ture: "In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none." No group of oppressed people in the United States were ever handed their rights without violence, and it seemed many people finally realized that simple truth.
If you have a million people ready to die for your cause, you are going to fail. You can send unit after unit of people to fight and die, but it will not make a difference to the neo-Nazis and fascists in power. If you want to win, you have to be willing to kill quickly and kill repeatedly. To them, we are not human. To them, we are merely vermin to be squashed, and I am going to treat them in kind. They have long lost the capability to be shown the error of their ways, and I am not going to go the way my ancestors did, killed by the Nazi scum. If I can secure a better future for trans people in America and the world, even if it meant sacrificing my freedom or my life, I will do it. After all, I shouldn't even be alive. I am not going to let trans joy be eradicated by these monsters. If they say we're not human, then I'm going to show them how not human I can get.
That was my thought process on the weekend of 24 June 2022. The week since then has been sobering. I came to realize while talking with cis people that nearly all don't have the conviction to die or kill, and that is not something I would ever ask of someone. The trans community can band together and arm ourselves, but very few people will fight with us. If I decide to actually get violent with the fascists, it's going to cause the rapid destruction of trans people across America. As it stands, I don't see a way forward for me as a trans person in America, and I don't want to die for nothing.
I don't know what the future has in store for transgender people in the United States, but it looks horrifying.
I fully expect a genocide to occur against us here and that it's already started. + Show Spoiler +
I live every moment of my life thinking that I'm going to lose the people here I love to horrific violence and society at large will encourage it or simply not care. And I get to flee. I get to leave the United States, move to Belgium, and have a job there. I do not deserve this. There is no special quality I have that makes me more worthy of being safe than any other trans person. It's pure luck. I am going to leave in a cowardly way, and I will be a worse person for it. I have effectively abandoned my community to die at the hands of overwhelming forces we cannot hope to win against while I save my own skin. I have benefitted from life without doing anything to earn it.
At the end of the day, I just hope we survive, and I hope all trans people can endure. I decided to join a political party for the first time in my life: PTB-PVDA, the Workers' Party of Belgium, which is a Marxist party that I think I can do a lot of good campaigning and advocating for. Maybe by working with them, I can ensure a better future in some way, but right now, things are bleak. I'm going to try to make the most of the extension of life I was given, but it is hollow, and the guilt I have will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Nothing ironic about that, because it's quite obvious that Plasmid was talking about what the future might look like and where things are heading in her opinion, not that there are trans people being queued up for gas chambers right here and now. Also, who cares? It's one post from one person a year ago, but I guess that invalidates literally anything anyone could say on the topic now because LiBeRaL CrYbAbIeS aLwAyS ExAgGeRaTe EvErYtHiNg MeAnWhIlE SaN FrAnCiScO iS LiTeRaLLy BuRnInG RiGhT NoW.
What do you mean who cares? MP said I made something up so I posted something to the contrary. Are you throwing a tantrum because I didn’t just concede that I was making it up?
I mean that quite literally. Who cares? People exaggerate shit, people use imprecise wording, people get emotional when discussing topics that are important to them. It happens, and it's alright, spending dozens of posts bickering whether something falls under this specific definition or not -- when you full well understand what the person is saying regardless of whether the words or expressions they used were 'right' or not -- is tedious and serves no purpose whatsoever.
It's not a non-issue how you talk about these things. How are you ever going to have a constructive discussion about the situation of trans people if you let any absurd exaggerations pass? And then when someone exposes the lies and exaggerations YOU bicker for ten pages about it. If anyone of you actually wanted a conversation in good faith, your response would be something like: "Sure, BJ, there are no kidnappings of trans children, we are not in the beginning of a genocidal campaign, but I think X Y Z are real problems that need to be addressed."
More to this point, and in an interest of moving away from holocaust discussion, here’s a video of a senate hearing a couple weeks ago on the rights of LGBTQ people.
The Human Rights Campaign President gives super vague answers on what gender even means, saying at some point something like “young people are exploring all kids of ideas about gender and it’s our job to create a safe space for them to do so” (paraphrasing from memory). Ok… the idea that we’re taking direction from young peoples rapidly evolving thoughts on gender seems a bit anti-science… then she goes on to basically evade the simple biological truth that males have advantage over female in sports by giving non answers like Serena Williams could beat a geriatric man in Tennis.”
Really throws some sand in MP’s opinion that people on the left want to have a reasonable conversation about MTF athletes in sports and people on the right just want to shut it down. How is having a reasonable conversation refusing to even acknowledge that men have an advantage over women in sports? I’m going to go out a limb by saying people will defend this by suggesting Anthony Kennedy was trying to get her with a “gotcha” question, he’s arguing in bad faith, etc. all the usual suspects. What I would say is that if acknowledging a simple scientific fact is considered a “gotcha” then the entire foundation of your argument is flawed.
I don't really care about discussing a YouTube video, nor about MP's opinion. I think at this point if you want to genuinely discuss issues relating to trans people, it's best if you just give a more detailed description of what you yourself think, rather than what is problematic about what other people think. Like, we can agree that there's been a growing number of people experiencing gender incongruity over the past decade. How do we best address that?
Full disclosure it's not really a topic I myself care about, as I think it's mostly an issue of a) let medical professionals handle it and b) I'm just gonna be respectful and treat people how they want to be treated. I honestly think you are on board with b), but I have the impression from earlier posts that you might, at least in the US, think that the American medical community is not entirely trustworthy on the issue / that desire for profit might in your view trump what is best for the patient in question?
Thanks for asking. I guess I’ll add my thoughts on a few “trans issues”
Gender-affirming care
Obviously no sane person would oppose gender affirming care for adults so this is going to be about minors. While I don’t think the medical establishment is infallible (can cite many examples) I think they are still the best ones to make decisions on gender affirming care than politicians. Ultimately you need 3 parties consent here for any intervention, child, parent, and doctor. I don’t think parental rights are limitless but I generally yield to them vs the opinions of politicians. Whether a child ends up with regret may be tragic, sometimes that’s just life
Of course that simply means the medical establishment should call the shots, it doesn’t say what shots I think should be called. For example the medical establishment in America recommends gender affirming care for minors and the medical establishment in Finland/Sweden recommend against it. I don’t think the medical establishment in Finland/Sweden is full of bigots and transphobes and I obviously share some of their concerns e.g the unexplained rise in prevalence of gender dysphoria in female adolescents and rigorous evidence that shows the benefits outweighs the risks. I’ve posted before in this thread about social contagion. I think most people here believe that trans people are “born that way.” I tend to believe most things are a combination of nature vs nurture and it’s only for controversial topics that people will adopt this “it’s entirely genetic” or “it’s entirely environmental” dogma that hasn’t been proven.
In general I think gender affirming care is not something that should be immediately adopted. I’m also not familiar enough to know if it is or not. I don’t think a boy goes to a therapist for the first time and says “I’m a girl and my name is Susan” and the doctor says “Hi Susan.” I would hope there would be some “interesting… well why do you feel that way” beforehand. But ultimately it may be the judgement of the doctor and the parent that it’s not a phase they will grow out of and gender affirming care may be necessary. So I would say generally I think there should be a line drawn between reversible and irreversible interventions. E.g. role playing and puberty blockers as reversible. There’s some evidence that puberty blockers transitioned into hormone therapy in teenagers causes infertility, and I don’t really think anyone should be having top/bottom surgery before 18.
Transgender women in supports
This is anecdotal but most transgender women I meet are not athletes. They are definitely not elite athletes. I also think there’s a gap between men and women in sports, and not a small one. Often high school level boys can compete with professional women at the top levels. I also think Rayzda is right that without protections over time most world records would belong to MTF athletes. I also think most reasonable people agree this is unfair. I think most people think there should be some protections in place. For example to be a transgendered woman there are no requirements other than proclaiming yourself to be a transgender woman. I think if a male athlete just proclaimed themselves to be a transgender woman and wanted to race the next day against women most people would opposed this.
In short, a blanket ban on all MTF athletes doesn’t make sense because for the vast majority of the less talented athletes it accomplishes nothing in protect women’s sports and only excludes transgender athletes needlessly. Obviously there’s a small percent of cases where there is an obvious advantage that allows them to dominate and become champions and they are the few that should be excluded.
Bathroom bans
Just political theater in my opinion. People don’t go into the wrong bathrooms not because it’s the law but because that’s what societal norms dictate. I’m not aware of this being a problem and if it becomes a problem then you can worry about legislating it.
Firstly, because you get a lot of negative feedback on your posting currently: I think this is a very good post. You very clearly detail your position, and describe what you think on issues instead of trying to play games. I hope you will find that this leads to much better discussions with other people!
I actually agree with most of your positions. I want to emphasize one thing, and have a few questions to some others.
"Obviously no sane person would oppose gender affirming care for adults". Very important here, but sadly has a good chance to get glossed over because it was only half a sentence. Before talking about children and teenagers, lets just make sure that we all agree on this. Let adult peoples make their own decisions. This should be the baseline we start from.
I also agree with you on transgender sports. Reasonable solutions need to be found for top-level female athletes. Afaik there are already testosteron level limitations, i think someone posted about a born-female athlete who isn't allowed to compete due to her naturally too-high testosterone levels a while back?
On bathroom bans: Just to clarify (and to help you avoid getting mischaracterized), what do you think is the right or wrong bathroom for a transgender person to go into? Putting aside legislation for a moment, do you think that a transgender woman should be going into the womans bathroom, or should she go into the mans bathroom?
I like how you mention that a lot of this is pointless political theater and really shouldn't be an issue, and i very much agree with this. I believe that a large majority of the problems involving trans people can be solved by just letting them do what they want and treating them with the same compassion one would treat any other person with, because usually what they want doesn't actually have any negative effects on anyone else.
On July 03 2023 03:26 Elroi wrote: [quote] I don't really see how your response has anything to do with my post. BJ pointed to comments like this, from this thread: [quote] and talk about "genocide" on trans people in the US. And said that it is wildly exaggerated and that you should be able to back such claims up with evidence. I only gave other examples of the same kind of exaggerations (such as calling a ban on trans women in women's sport genocide).
No one in this thread said that transgender people are experiencing genocide, BJ made that up. Ironic, isn't it? "Backing claims up with evidence" and all that, right?
In one month, I will move from Texas to Belgium, and I will most likely never return to the United States.
On 12 December 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States terminated a recount of Florida's votes for president. In a 5-4 decision on party lines, the court gave the presidency to George W. Bush, and less than a year later, we were at war and the post-WWII party that had defined American capitalism and excess came to an abrupt and permanent end. On 16 June 2015, Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy for president, and the forces of decades of conservative lobbying, Christian fundamentalism, and fascist recruiting killed off any mirage of America being a country based on freedom, justice, and equality. On 24 June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and many Americans suddenly realized that the war had come home.
When you cross a black hole's event horizon, time ceases to exist. Your body gets torn limb from limb, cell from cell, atom from atom, until several infinites later, your body ha been reunited with the cosmic dust it was formed out of. While some physical manifestation of you still exists, your past, present, and futures collapse onto one another into one perpetual scream. You see infinitely many lifetimes born from every decision you could've made or not made and are forced to reckon with seeing the life of your dreams fade away and be replaced with a nightmare, ad infinitum, tormenting you until you've gone insane. But just as suddenly as your hell began, it ends, and all that's left of you is your soul, the pure essence of you as a human being, and then you enter it.
When I entered a black hole, I was greeted with the void. No sound, no light, nothing. I was, for the first time in my life, truly alone, despite my many feelings of loneliness before. Or so I thought. The voice of Death spoke my name and it echoed around me and inside me. I turned fearful, then sighed in resignation, accepting that I was dead. Or so I thought, once again. Death started to take a physical form in front of me and told me that I was in fact, not dead. When I heard Their voice, it was not one of malice, or evil, or temptation. It was gentle, soft, and tranquil. I told Death how terrified I was of Them, and They told me that I had a fundamental misunderstanding of Them. They are not some malevolent spectre, haunting and stalking people, trying to lure them into recklessness and death. They just simply are. No more, no less, and then I understood Them. Death told me to remember what I had seen during my infinite lifetimes and I promised Them that I would make the most out of the rest of my life, until I was finally reunited with Them.
But I should not be alive right now, despite my new lease on life. On Valentine's Day 2022, I had an unintentional drug overdose in a nondescript hotel room in Orange County, California, resulting in me developing severe serotonin syndrome. I rapidly lost consciousness, had a seizure that jolted me awake, then nearly choked on my own vomit a few seconds later. Whether by G-d's mercy, or kismet, or the pure chaos of the universe, that seizure woke me up just before I choked to death, and I survived while so many others haven't. A true undeserved miracle.
The most consequential day of my political radicalization was on 17 July 2014, when Eric Garner was murdered by NYPD. I watched the video of him saying "I Can't Breathe" over and over while the life was choked out of him for the "crime" of selling loose cigarettes, and his dying words have never left my mind since then. Over the next month, I confronted the nature of my upbringing in small-town Texas where it was deeply ingrained in me to always respect police and that they were just doing what they had to do, and that if they murdered someone, regardless of the circumstances, it was justified. I started reading a bunch of writings and speeches that Black activists on Twitter were recommending, my first being the autobiography of Malcolm X, arguably still one of the biggest influences on me politically. From there was a deep dive into the life of one of the greatest figures of the 20th century, Fred Hampton, who I believe would've completely changed the face of America if he wasn't assassinated by the FBI. The works of Angela Davis and Assata Shakur helped to open my eyes to Black feminist perspectives that I greatly support and advocate for to this day.
For the several years that followed, I rarely discussed my political beliefs in any serious capacity online because I never could get people to see the warning signs that came from the response to the 2008 recession and realize that we were heading into a late-capitalist hell. I watched as far-right forces coalesced in the GOP and the Democrats utterly failed the country in so many ways, but no one wanted to see what was going to happen. As I steadily became more militant in my beliefs, many millennials and Gen Zers around my age were experiencing firsthand the absolute nightmare American society had become with student loans, wage stagnation, healthcare, and so much more, but instead of fighting, they gave into nihilism, despair, misanthropy, and apathy, all combining into doomerism. Our generation was going to go silently, never achieving a better world. The Black Lives Matter movement probably was one of my only glimmers of hope during the 2010s, but the GOP and Dems swiftly came down to stop any meaningful change to policing occurring. It truly drove the point home that the liberals will always side with the far-right over the progressives because ultimately, the liberals with all the power and money benefit from a far-right government because they get to push for fundraising while knowing that their massive wealth compared to the average American will never be touched.
When the anti-transgender legislation and societal forces started spreading in 2019, none of us knew what to do. As things got worse and worse over the next three years, we were completely alone. The Dems never did anything noteworthy to help us while the GOP dehumanized us and stripped us of rights across the country. The only queer organizations and advocacy groups that cared about us were trans-focused ones. It wasn't until Florida's Don't Say Gay bill was being pushed that the queer orgs actually started fighting back. To them, we were expendable. They cared more about cis gay men not being able to donate blood than trans people not being allowed to exist. We kept sounding the alarm bells about the broader implications of what attacking us could mean, and no one listened. For decades, trans people had existed in a dark forest, intentionally not being seen or heard, because the moment we would be spotted, we would be labelled an existential threat and target for elimination by overwhelming forces that we had no chance of defeating.
When Roe v Wade was overturned, it completely changed the mood of nearly everyone I know, myself included. At this point, all of my friends and close associates knew I was extremely far-left and I had countless furious people reaching out to me to ask things like how to make Molotov cocktails, how to force change when no politicians want it to happen, and the nature and morals of political violence. My go-to quote for them was by the legendary Kwame Ture: "In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none." No group of oppressed people in the United States were ever handed their rights without violence, and it seemed many people finally realized that simple truth.
If you have a million people ready to die for your cause, you are going to fail. You can send unit after unit of people to fight and die, but it will not make a difference to the neo-Nazis and fascists in power. If you want to win, you have to be willing to kill quickly and kill repeatedly. To them, we are not human. To them, we are merely vermin to be squashed, and I am going to treat them in kind. They have long lost the capability to be shown the error of their ways, and I am not going to go the way my ancestors did, killed by the Nazi scum. If I can secure a better future for trans people in America and the world, even if it meant sacrificing my freedom or my life, I will do it. After all, I shouldn't even be alive. I am not going to let trans joy be eradicated by these monsters. If they say we're not human, then I'm going to show them how not human I can get.
That was my thought process on the weekend of 24 June 2022. The week since then has been sobering. I came to realize while talking with cis people that nearly all don't have the conviction to die or kill, and that is not something I would ever ask of someone. The trans community can band together and arm ourselves, but very few people will fight with us. If I decide to actually get violent with the fascists, it's going to cause the rapid destruction of trans people across America. As it stands, I don't see a way forward for me as a trans person in America, and I don't want to die for nothing.
I don't know what the future has in store for transgender people in the United States, but it looks horrifying.
I fully expect a genocide to occur against us here and that it's already started. + Show Spoiler +
I live every moment of my life thinking that I'm going to lose the people here I love to horrific violence and society at large will encourage it or simply not care. And I get to flee. I get to leave the United States, move to Belgium, and have a job there. I do not deserve this. There is no special quality I have that makes me more worthy of being safe than any other trans person. It's pure luck. I am going to leave in a cowardly way, and I will be a worse person for it. I have effectively abandoned my community to die at the hands of overwhelming forces we cannot hope to win against while I save my own skin. I have benefitted from life without doing anything to earn it.
At the end of the day, I just hope we survive, and I hope all trans people can endure. I decided to join a political party for the first time in my life: PTB-PVDA, the Workers' Party of Belgium, which is a Marxist party that I think I can do a lot of good campaigning and advocating for. Maybe by working with them, I can ensure a better future in some way, but right now, things are bleak. I'm going to try to make the most of the extension of life I was given, but it is hollow, and the guilt I have will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Nothing ironic about that, because it's quite obvious that Plasmid was talking about what the future might look like and where things are heading in her opinion, not that there are trans people being queued up for gas chambers right here and now. Also, who cares? It's one post from one person a year ago, but I guess that invalidates literally anything anyone could say on the topic now because LiBeRaL CrYbAbIeS aLwAyS ExAgGeRaTe EvErYtHiNg MeAnWhIlE SaN FrAnCiScO iS LiTeRaLLy BuRnInG RiGhT NoW.
What do you mean who cares? MP said I made something up so I posted something to the contrary. Are you throwing a tantrum because I didn’t just concede that I was making it up?
I mean that quite literally. Who cares? People exaggerate shit, people use imprecise wording, people get emotional when discussing topics that are important to them. It happens, and it's alright, spending dozens of posts bickering whether something falls under this specific definition or not -- when you full well understand what the person is saying regardless of whether the words or expressions they used were 'right' or not -- is tedious and serves no purpose whatsoever.
It's not a non-issue how you talk about these things. How are you ever going to have a constructive discussion about the situation of trans people if you let any absurd exaggerations pass? And then when someone exposes the lies and exaggerations YOU bicker for ten pages about it. If anyone of you actually wanted a conversation in good faith, your response would be something like: "Sure, BJ, there are no kidnappings of trans children, we are not in the beginning of a genocidal campaign, but I think X Y Z are real problems that need to be addressed."
More to this point, and in an interest of moving away from holocaust discussion, here’s a video of a senate hearing a couple weeks ago on the rights of LGBTQ people.
The Human Rights Campaign President gives super vague answers on what gender even means, saying at some point something like “young people are exploring all kids of ideas about gender and it’s our job to create a safe space for them to do so” (paraphrasing from memory). Ok… the idea that we’re taking direction from young peoples rapidly evolving thoughts on gender seems a bit anti-science… then she goes on to basically evade the simple biological truth that males have advantage over female in sports by giving non answers like Serena Williams could beat a geriatric man in Tennis.”
Really throws some sand in MP’s opinion that people on the left want to have a reasonable conversation about MTF athletes in sports and people on the right just want to shut it down. How is having a reasonable conversation refusing to even acknowledge that men have an advantage over women in sports? I’m going to go out a limb by saying people will defend this by suggesting Anthony Kennedy was trying to get her with a “gotcha” question, he’s arguing in bad faith, etc. all the usual suspects. What I would say is that if acknowledging a simple scientific fact is considered a “gotcha” then the entire foundation of your argument is flawed.
I don't really care about discussing a YouTube video, nor about MP's opinion. I think at this point if you want to genuinely discuss issues relating to trans people, it's best if you just give a more detailed description of what you yourself think, rather than what is problematic about what other people think. Like, we can agree that there's been a growing number of people experiencing gender incongruity over the past decade. How do we best address that?
Full disclosure it's not really a topic I myself care about, as I think it's mostly an issue of a) let medical professionals handle it and b) I'm just gonna be respectful and treat people how they want to be treated. I honestly think you are on board with b), but I have the impression from earlier posts that you might, at least in the US, think that the American medical community is not entirely trustworthy on the issue / that desire for profit might in your view trump what is best for the patient in question?
Thanks for asking. I guess I’ll add my thoughts on a few “trans issues”
Gender-affirming care
Obviously no sane person would oppose gender affirming care for adults so this is going to be about minors. While I don’t think the medical establishment is infallible (can cite many examples) I think they are still the best ones to make decisions on gender affirming care than politicians. Ultimately you need 3 parties consent here for any intervention, child, parent, and doctor. I don’t think parental rights are limitless but I generally yield to them vs the opinions of politicians. Whether a child ends up with regret may be tragic, sometimes that’s just life
Of course that simply means the medical establishment should call the shots, it doesn’t say what shots I think should be called. For example the medical establishment in America recommends gender affirming care for minors and the medical establishment in Finland/Sweden recommend against it. I don’t think the medical establishment in Finland/Sweden is full of bigots and transphobes and I obviously share some of their concerns e.g the unexplained rise in prevalence of gender dysphoria in female adolescents and rigorous evidence that shows the benefits outweighs the risks. I’ve posted before in this thread about social contagion. I think most people here believe that trans people are “born that way.” I tend to believe most things are a combination of nature vs nurture and it’s only for controversial topics that people will adopt this “it’s entirely genetic” or “it’s entirely environmental” dogma that hasn’t been proven.
In general I think gender affirming care is not something that should be immediately adopted. I’m also not familiar enough to know if it is or not. I don’t think a boy goes to a therapist for the first time and says “I’m a girl and my name is Susan” and the doctor says “Hi Susan.” I would hope there would be some “interesting… well why do you feel that way” beforehand. But ultimately it may be the judgement of the doctor and the parent that it’s not a phase they will grow out of and gender affirming care may be necessary. So I would say generally I think there should be a line drawn between reversible and irreversible interventions. E.g. role playing and puberty blockers as reversible. There’s some evidence that puberty blockers transitioned into hormone therapy in teenagers causes infertility, and I don’t really think anyone should be having top/bottom surgery before 18.
Transgender women in supports
This is anecdotal but most transgender women I meet are not athletes. They are definitely not elite athletes. I also think there’s a gap between men and women in sports, and not a small one. Often high school level boys can compete with professional women at the top levels. I also think Rayzda is right that without protections over time most world records would belong to MTF athletes. I also think most reasonable people agree this is unfair. I think most people think there should be some protections in place. For example to be a transgendered woman there are no requirements other than proclaiming yourself to be a transgender woman. I think if a male athlete just proclaimed themselves to be a transgender woman and wanted to race the next day against women most people would opposed this.
In short, a blanket ban on all MTF athletes doesn’t make sense because for the vast majority of the less talented athletes it accomplishes nothing in protect women’s sports and only excludes transgender athletes needlessly. Obviously there’s a small percent of cases where there is an obvious advantage that allows them to dominate and become champions and they are the few that should be excluded.
Bathroom bans
Just political theater in my opinion. People don’t go into the wrong bathrooms not because it’s the law but because that’s what societal norms dictate. I’m not aware of this being a problem and if it becomes a problem then you can worry about legislating it.
Let me preface by saying that I have a habit of intentially ignoring who posted a comment before I finish reading it. I do this to reduce my bias against the comment if possible. While reading your comment I got the impression that someone other than you must've written it. But I realized that it was in fact you and I was incredibly positively surprised. Most of what you said I agree with wholeheartedly, and I thank you for those words. It means a lot to me. What this tells me is that it is possible for us to find common ground if we both try harder. Moving forward I'll try to shift away from hostile arguments more often and more quickly. I really want to thank you for these words, I mean that.
On July 03 2023 07:55 Mohdoo wrote: I think it’s intellectually dishonest to pretend there are no signs of attempted genocide or working towards genocide of trans people among elected officials in the US. The writing is very clearly on the wall and all of the rumblings that are common in history for various pre-genocide stuff is clear as day.
When we see the rumblings, we are supposed to respond with a great deal of vigor and thoroughness. It is not an enlightened or even ethical behavior to grant them as much of a movement as they want right up until the moment before they are tossed in gas chambers. Pretending it is either a 1 or a 0 is intellectually dishonest and historically inaccurate.
Exactly right. People often ask why nothing was done to prevent various disasters: it's because people often ignore the warning signs. The early ones and the late ones. Whether it's out of habit, convenience or incompetence; people care more about preserving their daily way of life. It's easier that way. When the roof suddenly collapses, people claim they didn't see the cracks. But there are always cracks, and the people looked away. Roe v Wade might be a crack, or it might already be a part of the roof coming down. Do we really want to risk any further infringements? Or should we correct course before it's too late?
On July 03 2023 07:55 Mohdoo wrote: I think it’s intellectually dishonest to pretend there are no signs of attempted genocide or working towards genocide of trans people among elected officials in the US. The writing is very clearly on the wall and all of the rumblings that are common in history for various pre-genocide stuff is clear as day.
When we see the rumblings, we are supposed to respond with a great deal of vigor and thoroughness. It is not an enlightened or even ethical behavior to grant them as much of a movement as they want right up until the moment before they are tossed in gas chambers. Pretending it is either a 1 or a 0 is intellectually dishonest and historically inaccurate.
Exactly right. People often ask why nothing was done to prevent various disasters: it's because people often ignore the warning signs. The early ones and the late ones. Whether it's out of habit, convenience or incompetence; people care more about preserving their daily way of life. It's easier that way. When the roof suddenly collapses, people claim they didn't see the cracks. But there are always cracks, and the people looked away. Roe v Wade might be a crack, or it might already be a part of the roof coming down. Do we really want to risk any further infringements? Or should we correct course before it's too late?
Also important to remember that the "cracks" are often "too lates" for the people they're happening to. Every day we spend arguing over whether it is too late for the rest of us, more of us fall into the cracks.
If you have decent healthcare the lack of universal public healthcare is probably a "crack" to you, but it's a "too late" in the US for all the people that died/went bankrupt fighting/waiting for it, for example.
This leads to people that manage to not to be swallowed up by the cracks fixating on the observation that while there are obviously cracks, it's still not too late for themselves. As well as to insist that those in the cracks and on their precipice be patient with and polite to their oppressors or else risk turning their supposed allies against them.
The US has desperately needed revolution since at least the 60's to avoid far too many "too lates" since then, and it needs one today to avert countless more.
I agree that people who oppose gender-affirming care for adults are insane. Allowing people to go into their preferred bathroom is a very simple, easy example of gender-affirming care, and so I think anyone making a fuss over adults using their preferred bathrooms are insane.
I didn't follow the whole discussion (just this last page) but it peaked my interest.
Bathroom: If you want to keep the current split you can either do it by genitalia or by definition. You could open a third (forth? fifth?) bathroon category but who is allowed there? Also this is the most complicated and expensive solution from a building/ engineering pov. Or you could just do unisex, scratch the urinals and do all stalls from floor to ceiling
Sports: No idea. Basically every solution I could come up on the spot will be wrong for somebody. Curious about your opinions
On July 03 2023 20:31 Harris1st wrote: I didn't follow the whole discussion (just this last page) but it peaked my interest.
Bathroom: If you want to keep the current split you can either do it by genitalia or by definition. You could open a third (forth? fifth?) bathroon category but who is allowed there? Also this is the most complicated and expensive solution from a building/ engineering pov. Or you could just do unisex, scratch the urinals and do all stalls from floor to ceiling
Sports: No idea. Basically every solution I could come up on the spot will be wrong for somebody. Curious about your opinions
You can't split bathrooms by genitalia. You never could, it's never been done, and you never can. Why not? Because it would require everyone to show their genitalia to some authority figure to confirm that they have the "correct" genitalia, and that's considered unethical and a waste of time. For as much as some people believe that genitalia (or chromosomes) make deciding these categories easier, the reality is that you have absolutely no idea what 99.9999% of strangers' genitalia or chromosomes are.
On July 03 2023 20:31 Harris1st wrote: I didn't follow the whole discussion (just this last page) but it peaked my interest.
Bathroom: If you want to keep the current split you can either do it by genitalia or by definition. You could open a third (forth? fifth?) bathroon category but who is allowed there? Also this is the most complicated and expensive solution from a building/ engineering pov. Or you could just do unisex, scratch the urinals and do all stalls from floor to ceiling
Sports: No idea. Basically every solution I could come up on the spot will be wrong for somebody. Curious about your opinions
You can't split bathrooms by genitalia. You never could, it's never been done, and you never can. Why not? Because it would require everyone to show their genitalia to some authority figure to confirm that they have the "correct" genitalia, and that's considered unethical and a waste of time. For as much as some people believe that genitalia (or chromosomes) make deciding these categories easier, the reality is that you have absolutely no idea what 99.9999% of strangers' genitalia or chromosomes are.
I actually think it's the opposite as long as you can see the person. 99% of people are obviously male or female. The number of people where this is not obvious is a small minority.
I was about to say something similar. There are people who 100% feel and look male/female while: -have no visible genitalia -have underdeveloped/damaged genitalia -have both sets of genitalia (though I think in most countries one those is being removed at birth or very early)
Gender is not only about genitalia. Our gender related growth/differentiation (hormones etc.) affect all our bodies, including our brains.
I think 'can't know for certain' is more precise than 'have absolutely no idea', because indeed, I'm guessing if you make me guess the genitalia of 1000 randomly selected adults I'm getting 990+ correct, at least in norway. But I'd most likely only be completely certain of between 0 and 1 of them.
As an addition: the problem is difficult precisely because the problem is confined to a small minority, who are individually very different from each other so there is not even any good way of characterising them as a group.
I think when it comes to bathrooms, or locker rooms, some amount of goodwill/manners is needed and also common sense. If you come into women's safe space and see that you make them uncomfortable, it is just rude to stay there. When it comes to common sense, I would guess that most women wouldnt have issue with someone fully transitioned, going about their business. On the other hand most women would probably feel differently about someone who is 40 years old, 120kg weight, transgender lesbian, without single medical procedure, with massive erection starring and salivating for half an hour(totally made up situation for comparison purpose). They also should be able to ask someone to leave, without fearing of ending up on Tick Tock, or such, getting doxed as transphobic bigot and loosing their job. (this seems like similar situation to the one in which girl in BlackJack video apparently found herself - she talks about it in different video) Odds are they are not transphobic, just feeling vulnerable and exposed.
As for sport I am not sure if there is fair solution, the closest to fair now is probably unisex competition, which while not ideal at least would let trans people compete.
Most importantly I would say some honest and admittedly difficult discussions are to be had, but instead we have labeling people as groomer or transphobe. Instead we have what looks like some bizzare competition who will come across as bigger a....e.
On July 03 2023 20:31 Harris1st wrote: I didn't follow the whole discussion (just this last page) but it peaked my interest.
Bathroom: If you want to keep the current split you can either do it by genitalia or by definition. You could open a third (forth? fifth?) bathroon category but who is allowed there? Also this is the most complicated and expensive solution from a building/ engineering pov. Or you could just do unisex, scratch the urinals and do all stalls from floor to ceiling
Sports: No idea. Basically every solution I could come up on the spot will be wrong for somebody. Curious about your opinions
You can't split bathrooms by genitalia. You never could, it's never been done, and you never can. Why not? Because it would require everyone to show their genitalia to some authority figure to confirm that they have the "correct" genitalia, and that's considered unethical and a waste of time. For as much as some people believe that genitalia (or chromosomes) make deciding these categories easier, the reality is that you have absolutely no idea what 99.9999% of strangers' genitalia or chromosomes are.
Somewhat off topic - considering sports events, or concerts I think you just invented worst job ever
No one in this thread said that transgender people are experiencing genocide, BJ made that up. Ironic, isn't it? "Backing claims up with evidence" and all that, right?
In one month, I will move from Texas to Belgium, and I will most likely never return to the United States.
On 12 December 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States terminated a recount of Florida's votes for president. In a 5-4 decision on party lines, the court gave the presidency to George W. Bush, and less than a year later, we were at war and the post-WWII party that had defined American capitalism and excess came to an abrupt and permanent end. On 16 June 2015, Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy for president, and the forces of decades of conservative lobbying, Christian fundamentalism, and fascist recruiting killed off any mirage of America being a country based on freedom, justice, and equality. On 24 June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and many Americans suddenly realized that the war had come home.
When you cross a black hole's event horizon, time ceases to exist. Your body gets torn limb from limb, cell from cell, atom from atom, until several infinites later, your body ha been reunited with the cosmic dust it was formed out of. While some physical manifestation of you still exists, your past, present, and futures collapse onto one another into one perpetual scream. You see infinitely many lifetimes born from every decision you could've made or not made and are forced to reckon with seeing the life of your dreams fade away and be replaced with a nightmare, ad infinitum, tormenting you until you've gone insane. But just as suddenly as your hell began, it ends, and all that's left of you is your soul, the pure essence of you as a human being, and then you enter it.
When I entered a black hole, I was greeted with the void. No sound, no light, nothing. I was, for the first time in my life, truly alone, despite my many feelings of loneliness before. Or so I thought. The voice of Death spoke my name and it echoed around me and inside me. I turned fearful, then sighed in resignation, accepting that I was dead. Or so I thought, once again. Death started to take a physical form in front of me and told me that I was in fact, not dead. When I heard Their voice, it was not one of malice, or evil, or temptation. It was gentle, soft, and tranquil. I told Death how terrified I was of Them, and They told me that I had a fundamental misunderstanding of Them. They are not some malevolent spectre, haunting and stalking people, trying to lure them into recklessness and death. They just simply are. No more, no less, and then I understood Them. Death told me to remember what I had seen during my infinite lifetimes and I promised Them that I would make the most out of the rest of my life, until I was finally reunited with Them.
But I should not be alive right now, despite my new lease on life. On Valentine's Day 2022, I had an unintentional drug overdose in a nondescript hotel room in Orange County, California, resulting in me developing severe serotonin syndrome. I rapidly lost consciousness, had a seizure that jolted me awake, then nearly choked on my own vomit a few seconds later. Whether by G-d's mercy, or kismet, or the pure chaos of the universe, that seizure woke me up just before I choked to death, and I survived while so many others haven't. A true undeserved miracle.
The most consequential day of my political radicalization was on 17 July 2014, when Eric Garner was murdered by NYPD. I watched the video of him saying "I Can't Breathe" over and over while the life was choked out of him for the "crime" of selling loose cigarettes, and his dying words have never left my mind since then. Over the next month, I confronted the nature of my upbringing in small-town Texas where it was deeply ingrained in me to always respect police and that they were just doing what they had to do, and that if they murdered someone, regardless of the circumstances, it was justified. I started reading a bunch of writings and speeches that Black activists on Twitter were recommending, my first being the autobiography of Malcolm X, arguably still one of the biggest influences on me politically. From there was a deep dive into the life of one of the greatest figures of the 20th century, Fred Hampton, who I believe would've completely changed the face of America if he wasn't assassinated by the FBI. The works of Angela Davis and Assata Shakur helped to open my eyes to Black feminist perspectives that I greatly support and advocate for to this day.
For the several years that followed, I rarely discussed my political beliefs in any serious capacity online because I never could get people to see the warning signs that came from the response to the 2008 recession and realize that we were heading into a late-capitalist hell. I watched as far-right forces coalesced in the GOP and the Democrats utterly failed the country in so many ways, but no one wanted to see what was going to happen. As I steadily became more militant in my beliefs, many millennials and Gen Zers around my age were experiencing firsthand the absolute nightmare American society had become with student loans, wage stagnation, healthcare, and so much more, but instead of fighting, they gave into nihilism, despair, misanthropy, and apathy, all combining into doomerism. Our generation was going to go silently, never achieving a better world. The Black Lives Matter movement probably was one of my only glimmers of hope during the 2010s, but the GOP and Dems swiftly came down to stop any meaningful change to policing occurring. It truly drove the point home that the liberals will always side with the far-right over the progressives because ultimately, the liberals with all the power and money benefit from a far-right government because they get to push for fundraising while knowing that their massive wealth compared to the average American will never be touched.
When the anti-transgender legislation and societal forces started spreading in 2019, none of us knew what to do. As things got worse and worse over the next three years, we were completely alone. The Dems never did anything noteworthy to help us while the GOP dehumanized us and stripped us of rights across the country. The only queer organizations and advocacy groups that cared about us were trans-focused ones. It wasn't until Florida's Don't Say Gay bill was being pushed that the queer orgs actually started fighting back. To them, we were expendable. They cared more about cis gay men not being able to donate blood than trans people not being allowed to exist. We kept sounding the alarm bells about the broader implications of what attacking us could mean, and no one listened. For decades, trans people had existed in a dark forest, intentionally not being seen or heard, because the moment we would be spotted, we would be labelled an existential threat and target for elimination by overwhelming forces that we had no chance of defeating.
When Roe v Wade was overturned, it completely changed the mood of nearly everyone I know, myself included. At this point, all of my friends and close associates knew I was extremely far-left and I had countless furious people reaching out to me to ask things like how to make Molotov cocktails, how to force change when no politicians want it to happen, and the nature and morals of political violence. My go-to quote for them was by the legendary Kwame Ture: "In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none." No group of oppressed people in the United States were ever handed their rights without violence, and it seemed many people finally realized that simple truth.
If you have a million people ready to die for your cause, you are going to fail. You can send unit after unit of people to fight and die, but it will not make a difference to the neo-Nazis and fascists in power. If you want to win, you have to be willing to kill quickly and kill repeatedly. To them, we are not human. To them, we are merely vermin to be squashed, and I am going to treat them in kind. They have long lost the capability to be shown the error of their ways, and I am not going to go the way my ancestors did, killed by the Nazi scum. If I can secure a better future for trans people in America and the world, even if it meant sacrificing my freedom or my life, I will do it. After all, I shouldn't even be alive. I am not going to let trans joy be eradicated by these monsters. If they say we're not human, then I'm going to show them how not human I can get.
That was my thought process on the weekend of 24 June 2022. The week since then has been sobering. I came to realize while talking with cis people that nearly all don't have the conviction to die or kill, and that is not something I would ever ask of someone. The trans community can band together and arm ourselves, but very few people will fight with us. If I decide to actually get violent with the fascists, it's going to cause the rapid destruction of trans people across America. As it stands, I don't see a way forward for me as a trans person in America, and I don't want to die for nothing.
I don't know what the future has in store for transgender people in the United States, but it looks horrifying.
I fully expect a genocide to occur against us here and that it's already started. + Show Spoiler +
I live every moment of my life thinking that I'm going to lose the people here I love to horrific violence and society at large will encourage it or simply not care. And I get to flee. I get to leave the United States, move to Belgium, and have a job there. I do not deserve this. There is no special quality I have that makes me more worthy of being safe than any other trans person. It's pure luck. I am going to leave in a cowardly way, and I will be a worse person for it. I have effectively abandoned my community to die at the hands of overwhelming forces we cannot hope to win against while I save my own skin. I have benefitted from life without doing anything to earn it.
At the end of the day, I just hope we survive, and I hope all trans people can endure. I decided to join a political party for the first time in my life: PTB-PVDA, the Workers' Party of Belgium, which is a Marxist party that I think I can do a lot of good campaigning and advocating for. Maybe by working with them, I can ensure a better future in some way, but right now, things are bleak. I'm going to try to make the most of the extension of life I was given, but it is hollow, and the guilt I have will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Nothing ironic about that, because it's quite obvious that Plasmid was talking about what the future might look like and where things are heading in her opinion, not that there are trans people being queued up for gas chambers right here and now. Also, who cares? It's one post from one person a year ago, but I guess that invalidates literally anything anyone could say on the topic now because LiBeRaL CrYbAbIeS aLwAyS ExAgGeRaTe EvErYtHiNg MeAnWhIlE SaN FrAnCiScO iS LiTeRaLLy BuRnInG RiGhT NoW.
What do you mean who cares? MP said I made something up so I posted something to the contrary. Are you throwing a tantrum because I didn’t just concede that I was making it up?
I mean that quite literally. Who cares? People exaggerate shit, people use imprecise wording, people get emotional when discussing topics that are important to them. It happens, and it's alright, spending dozens of posts bickering whether something falls under this specific definition or not -- when you full well understand what the person is saying regardless of whether the words or expressions they used were 'right' or not -- is tedious and serves no purpose whatsoever.
It's not a non-issue how you talk about these things. How are you ever going to have a constructive discussion about the situation of trans people if you let any absurd exaggerations pass? And then when someone exposes the lies and exaggerations YOU bicker for ten pages about it. If anyone of you actually wanted a conversation in good faith, your response would be something like: "Sure, BJ, there are no kidnappings of trans children, we are not in the beginning of a genocidal campaign, but I think X Y Z are real problems that need to be addressed."
More to this point, and in an interest of moving away from holocaust discussion, here’s a video of a senate hearing a couple weeks ago on the rights of LGBTQ people.
The Human Rights Campaign President gives super vague answers on what gender even means, saying at some point something like “young people are exploring all kids of ideas about gender and it’s our job to create a safe space for them to do so” (paraphrasing from memory). Ok… the idea that we’re taking direction from young peoples rapidly evolving thoughts on gender seems a bit anti-science… then she goes on to basically evade the simple biological truth that males have advantage over female in sports by giving non answers like Serena Williams could beat a geriatric man in Tennis.”
Really throws some sand in MP’s opinion that people on the left want to have a reasonable conversation about MTF athletes in sports and people on the right just want to shut it down. How is having a reasonable conversation refusing to even acknowledge that men have an advantage over women in sports? I’m going to go out a limb by saying people will defend this by suggesting Anthony Kennedy was trying to get her with a “gotcha” question, he’s arguing in bad faith, etc. all the usual suspects. What I would say is that if acknowledging a simple scientific fact is considered a “gotcha” then the entire foundation of your argument is flawed.
I don't really care about discussing a YouTube video, nor about MP's opinion. I think at this point if you want to genuinely discuss issues relating to trans people, it's best if you just give a more detailed description of what you yourself think, rather than what is problematic about what other people think. Like, we can agree that there's been a growing number of people experiencing gender incongruity over the past decade. How do we best address that?
Full disclosure it's not really a topic I myself care about, as I think it's mostly an issue of a) let medical professionals handle it and b) I'm just gonna be respectful and treat people how they want to be treated. I honestly think you are on board with b), but I have the impression from earlier posts that you might, at least in the US, think that the American medical community is not entirely trustworthy on the issue / that desire for profit might in your view trump what is best for the patient in question?
Thanks for asking. I guess I’ll add my thoughts on a few “trans issues”
Gender-affirming care
Obviously no sane person would oppose gender affirming care for adults so this is going to be about minors. While I don’t think the medical establishment is infallible (can cite many examples) I think they are still the best ones to make decisions on gender affirming care than politicians. Ultimately you need 3 parties consent here for any intervention, child, parent, and doctor. I don’t think parental rights are limitless but I generally yield to them vs the opinions of politicians. Whether a child ends up with regret may be tragic, sometimes that’s just life
Of course that simply means the medical establishment should call the shots, it doesn’t say what shots I think should be called. For example the medical establishment in America recommends gender affirming care for minors and the medical establishment in Finland/Sweden recommend against it. I don’t think the medical establishment in Finland/Sweden is full of bigots and transphobes and I obviously share some of their concerns e.g the unexplained rise in prevalence of gender dysphoria in female adolescents and rigorous evidence that shows the benefits outweighs the risks. I’ve posted before in this thread about social contagion. I think most people here believe that trans people are “born that way.” I tend to believe most things are a combination of nature vs nurture and it’s only for controversial topics that people will adopt this “it’s entirely genetic” or “it’s entirely environmental” dogma that hasn’t been proven.
In general I think gender affirming care is not something that should be immediately adopted. I’m also not familiar enough to know if it is or not. I don’t think a boy goes to a therapist for the first time and says “I’m a girl and my name is Susan” and the doctor says “Hi Susan.” I would hope there would be some “interesting… well why do you feel that way” beforehand. But ultimately it may be the judgement of the doctor and the parent that it’s not a phase they will grow out of and gender affirming care may be necessary. So I would say generally I think there should be a line drawn between reversible and irreversible interventions. E.g. role playing and puberty blockers as reversible. There’s some evidence that puberty blockers transitioned into hormone therapy in teenagers causes infertility, and I don’t really think anyone should be having top/bottom surgery before 18.
Transgender women in supports
This is anecdotal but most transgender women I meet are not athletes. They are definitely not elite athletes. I also think there’s a gap between men and women in sports, and not a small one. Often high school level boys can compete with professional women at the top levels. I also think Rayzda is right that without protections over time most world records would belong to MTF athletes. I also think most reasonable people agree this is unfair. I think most people think there should be some protections in place. For example to be a transgendered woman there are no requirements other than proclaiming yourself to be a transgender woman. I think if a male athlete just proclaimed themselves to be a transgender woman and wanted to race the next day against women most people would opposed this.
In short, a blanket ban on all MTF athletes doesn’t make sense because for the vast majority of the less talented athletes it accomplishes nothing in protect women’s sports and only excludes transgender athletes needlessly. Obviously there’s a small percent of cases where there is an obvious advantage that allows them to dominate and become champions and they are the few that should be excluded.
Bathroom bans
Just political theater in my opinion. People don’t go into the wrong bathrooms not because it’s the law but because that’s what societal norms dictate. I’m not aware of this being a problem and if it becomes a problem then you can worry about legislating it.
I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on these issues, and I think I agree with more of what you’ve written than the amount I disagree.
Question for you: Let's assume that a pediatrician actually does their due diligence (conversation with a minor, etc.) and supports an introduction to gender-affirming care for a child (respecting pronouns, advocating dressing differently / whatever is comfortable for the kid, not anything as drastic as hormone treatment or surgery). Let's say the MtF child is 12 years old, just to pick an age. So the kid wants it and the doctor condones it, but assume the parents are very much against validating their trans kid. In other words, it's basically the trans kid + doctor vs. the parents. I know there's no perfect solution to this scenario, but what do you think should happen / what would you hope happens?
Parents trump the doctor in that scenario. There are cases where the state can intercede, e.g. a kid has appendicitis and the parents don’t believe in treatment, but I don’t think this is one of them. Wait until you’re 18 and you can do what you want.
No one in this thread said that transgender people are experiencing genocide, BJ made that up. Ironic, isn't it? "Backing claims up with evidence" and all that, right?
In one month, I will move from Texas to Belgium, and I will most likely never return to the United States.
On 12 December 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States terminated a recount of Florida's votes for president. In a 5-4 decision on party lines, the court gave the presidency to George W. Bush, and less than a year later, we were at war and the post-WWII party that had defined American capitalism and excess came to an abrupt and permanent end. On 16 June 2015, Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy for president, and the forces of decades of conservative lobbying, Christian fundamentalism, and fascist recruiting killed off any mirage of America being a country based on freedom, justice, and equality. On 24 June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and many Americans suddenly realized that the war had come home.
When you cross a black hole's event horizon, time ceases to exist. Your body gets torn limb from limb, cell from cell, atom from atom, until several infinites later, your body ha been reunited with the cosmic dust it was formed out of. While some physical manifestation of you still exists, your past, present, and futures collapse onto one another into one perpetual scream. You see infinitely many lifetimes born from every decision you could've made or not made and are forced to reckon with seeing the life of your dreams fade away and be replaced with a nightmare, ad infinitum, tormenting you until you've gone insane. But just as suddenly as your hell began, it ends, and all that's left of you is your soul, the pure essence of you as a human being, and then you enter it.
When I entered a black hole, I was greeted with the void. No sound, no light, nothing. I was, for the first time in my life, truly alone, despite my many feelings of loneliness before. Or so I thought. The voice of Death spoke my name and it echoed around me and inside me. I turned fearful, then sighed in resignation, accepting that I was dead. Or so I thought, once again. Death started to take a physical form in front of me and told me that I was in fact, not dead. When I heard Their voice, it was not one of malice, or evil, or temptation. It was gentle, soft, and tranquil. I told Death how terrified I was of Them, and They told me that I had a fundamental misunderstanding of Them. They are not some malevolent spectre, haunting and stalking people, trying to lure them into recklessness and death. They just simply are. No more, no less, and then I understood Them. Death told me to remember what I had seen during my infinite lifetimes and I promised Them that I would make the most out of the rest of my life, until I was finally reunited with Them.
But I should not be alive right now, despite my new lease on life. On Valentine's Day 2022, I had an unintentional drug overdose in a nondescript hotel room in Orange County, California, resulting in me developing severe serotonin syndrome. I rapidly lost consciousness, had a seizure that jolted me awake, then nearly choked on my own vomit a few seconds later. Whether by G-d's mercy, or kismet, or the pure chaos of the universe, that seizure woke me up just before I choked to death, and I survived while so many others haven't. A true undeserved miracle.
The most consequential day of my political radicalization was on 17 July 2014, when Eric Garner was murdered by NYPD. I watched the video of him saying "I Can't Breathe" over and over while the life was choked out of him for the "crime" of selling loose cigarettes, and his dying words have never left my mind since then. Over the next month, I confronted the nature of my upbringing in small-town Texas where it was deeply ingrained in me to always respect police and that they were just doing what they had to do, and that if they murdered someone, regardless of the circumstances, it was justified. I started reading a bunch of writings and speeches that Black activists on Twitter were recommending, my first being the autobiography of Malcolm X, arguably still one of the biggest influences on me politically. From there was a deep dive into the life of one of the greatest figures of the 20th century, Fred Hampton, who I believe would've completely changed the face of America if he wasn't assassinated by the FBI. The works of Angela Davis and Assata Shakur helped to open my eyes to Black feminist perspectives that I greatly support and advocate for to this day.
For the several years that followed, I rarely discussed my political beliefs in any serious capacity online because I never could get people to see the warning signs that came from the response to the 2008 recession and realize that we were heading into a late-capitalist hell. I watched as far-right forces coalesced in the GOP and the Democrats utterly failed the country in so many ways, but no one wanted to see what was going to happen. As I steadily became more militant in my beliefs, many millennials and Gen Zers around my age were experiencing firsthand the absolute nightmare American society had become with student loans, wage stagnation, healthcare, and so much more, but instead of fighting, they gave into nihilism, despair, misanthropy, and apathy, all combining into doomerism. Our generation was going to go silently, never achieving a better world. The Black Lives Matter movement probably was one of my only glimmers of hope during the 2010s, but the GOP and Dems swiftly came down to stop any meaningful change to policing occurring. It truly drove the point home that the liberals will always side with the far-right over the progressives because ultimately, the liberals with all the power and money benefit from a far-right government because they get to push for fundraising while knowing that their massive wealth compared to the average American will never be touched.
When the anti-transgender legislation and societal forces started spreading in 2019, none of us knew what to do. As things got worse and worse over the next three years, we were completely alone. The Dems never did anything noteworthy to help us while the GOP dehumanized us and stripped us of rights across the country. The only queer organizations and advocacy groups that cared about us were trans-focused ones. It wasn't until Florida's Don't Say Gay bill was being pushed that the queer orgs actually started fighting back. To them, we were expendable. They cared more about cis gay men not being able to donate blood than trans people not being allowed to exist. We kept sounding the alarm bells about the broader implications of what attacking us could mean, and no one listened. For decades, trans people had existed in a dark forest, intentionally not being seen or heard, because the moment we would be spotted, we would be labelled an existential threat and target for elimination by overwhelming forces that we had no chance of defeating.
When Roe v Wade was overturned, it completely changed the mood of nearly everyone I know, myself included. At this point, all of my friends and close associates knew I was extremely far-left and I had countless furious people reaching out to me to ask things like how to make Molotov cocktails, how to force change when no politicians want it to happen, and the nature and morals of political violence. My go-to quote for them was by the legendary Kwame Ture: "In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none." No group of oppressed people in the United States were ever handed their rights without violence, and it seemed many people finally realized that simple truth.
If you have a million people ready to die for your cause, you are going to fail. You can send unit after unit of people to fight and die, but it will not make a difference to the neo-Nazis and fascists in power. If you want to win, you have to be willing to kill quickly and kill repeatedly. To them, we are not human. To them, we are merely vermin to be squashed, and I am going to treat them in kind. They have long lost the capability to be shown the error of their ways, and I am not going to go the way my ancestors did, killed by the Nazi scum. If I can secure a better future for trans people in America and the world, even if it meant sacrificing my freedom or my life, I will do it. After all, I shouldn't even be alive. I am not going to let trans joy be eradicated by these monsters. If they say we're not human, then I'm going to show them how not human I can get.
That was my thought process on the weekend of 24 June 2022. The week since then has been sobering. I came to realize while talking with cis people that nearly all don't have the conviction to die or kill, and that is not something I would ever ask of someone. The trans community can band together and arm ourselves, but very few people will fight with us. If I decide to actually get violent with the fascists, it's going to cause the rapid destruction of trans people across America. As it stands, I don't see a way forward for me as a trans person in America, and I don't want to die for nothing.
I don't know what the future has in store for transgender people in the United States, but it looks horrifying.
I fully expect a genocide to occur against us here and that it's already started. + Show Spoiler +
I live every moment of my life thinking that I'm going to lose the people here I love to horrific violence and society at large will encourage it or simply not care. And I get to flee. I get to leave the United States, move to Belgium, and have a job there. I do not deserve this. There is no special quality I have that makes me more worthy of being safe than any other trans person. It's pure luck. I am going to leave in a cowardly way, and I will be a worse person for it. I have effectively abandoned my community to die at the hands of overwhelming forces we cannot hope to win against while I save my own skin. I have benefitted from life without doing anything to earn it.
At the end of the day, I just hope we survive, and I hope all trans people can endure. I decided to join a political party for the first time in my life: PTB-PVDA, the Workers' Party of Belgium, which is a Marxist party that I think I can do a lot of good campaigning and advocating for. Maybe by working with them, I can ensure a better future in some way, but right now, things are bleak. I'm going to try to make the most of the extension of life I was given, but it is hollow, and the guilt I have will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Nothing ironic about that, because it's quite obvious that Plasmid was talking about what the future might look like and where things are heading in her opinion, not that there are trans people being queued up for gas chambers right here and now. Also, who cares? It's one post from one person a year ago, but I guess that invalidates literally anything anyone could say on the topic now because LiBeRaL CrYbAbIeS aLwAyS ExAgGeRaTe EvErYtHiNg MeAnWhIlE SaN FrAnCiScO iS LiTeRaLLy BuRnInG RiGhT NoW.
What do you mean who cares? MP said I made something up so I posted something to the contrary. Are you throwing a tantrum because I didn’t just concede that I was making it up?
I mean that quite literally. Who cares? People exaggerate shit, people use imprecise wording, people get emotional when discussing topics that are important to them. It happens, and it's alright, spending dozens of posts bickering whether something falls under this specific definition or not -- when you full well understand what the person is saying regardless of whether the words or expressions they used were 'right' or not -- is tedious and serves no purpose whatsoever.
It's not a non-issue how you talk about these things. How are you ever going to have a constructive discussion about the situation of trans people if you let any absurd exaggerations pass? And then when someone exposes the lies and exaggerations YOU bicker for ten pages about it. If anyone of you actually wanted a conversation in good faith, your response would be something like: "Sure, BJ, there are no kidnappings of trans children, we are not in the beginning of a genocidal campaign, but I think X Y Z are real problems that need to be addressed."
More to this point, and in an interest of moving away from holocaust discussion, here’s a video of a senate hearing a couple weeks ago on the rights of LGBTQ people.
The Human Rights Campaign President gives super vague answers on what gender even means, saying at some point something like “young people are exploring all kids of ideas about gender and it’s our job to create a safe space for them to do so” (paraphrasing from memory). Ok… the idea that we’re taking direction from young peoples rapidly evolving thoughts on gender seems a bit anti-science… then she goes on to basically evade the simple biological truth that males have advantage over female in sports by giving non answers like Serena Williams could beat a geriatric man in Tennis.”
Really throws some sand in MP’s opinion that people on the left want to have a reasonable conversation about MTF athletes in sports and people on the right just want to shut it down. How is having a reasonable conversation refusing to even acknowledge that men have an advantage over women in sports? I’m going to go out a limb by saying people will defend this by suggesting Anthony Kennedy was trying to get her with a “gotcha” question, he’s arguing in bad faith, etc. all the usual suspects. What I would say is that if acknowledging a simple scientific fact is considered a “gotcha” then the entire foundation of your argument is flawed.
I don't really care about discussing a YouTube video, nor about MP's opinion. I think at this point if you want to genuinely discuss issues relating to trans people, it's best if you just give a more detailed description of what you yourself think, rather than what is problematic about what other people think. Like, we can agree that there's been a growing number of people experiencing gender incongruity over the past decade. How do we best address that?
Full disclosure it's not really a topic I myself care about, as I think it's mostly an issue of a) let medical professionals handle it and b) I'm just gonna be respectful and treat people how they want to be treated. I honestly think you are on board with b), but I have the impression from earlier posts that you might, at least in the US, think that the American medical community is not entirely trustworthy on the issue / that desire for profit might in your view trump what is best for the patient in question?
Thanks for asking. I guess I’ll add my thoughts on a few “trans issues”
Gender-affirming care
Obviously no sane person would oppose gender affirming care for adults so this is going to be about minors. While I don’t think the medical establishment is infallible (can cite many examples) I think they are still the best ones to make decisions on gender affirming care than politicians. Ultimately you need 3 parties consent here for any intervention, child, parent, and doctor. I don’t think parental rights are limitless but I generally yield to them vs the opinions of politicians. Whether a child ends up with regret may be tragic, sometimes that’s just life
Of course that simply means the medical establishment should call the shots, it doesn’t say what shots I think should be called. For example the medical establishment in America recommends gender affirming care for minors and the medical establishment in Finland/Sweden recommend against it. I don’t think the medical establishment in Finland/Sweden is full of bigots and transphobes and I obviously share some of their concerns e.g the unexplained rise in prevalence of gender dysphoria in female adolescents and rigorous evidence that shows the benefits outweighs the risks. I’ve posted before in this thread about social contagion. I think most people here believe that trans people are “born that way.” I tend to believe most things are a combination of nature vs nurture and it’s only for controversial topics that people will adopt this “it’s entirely genetic” or “it’s entirely environmental” dogma that hasn’t been proven.
In general I think gender affirming care is not something that should be immediately adopted. I’m also not familiar enough to know if it is or not. I don’t think a boy goes to a therapist for the first time and says “I’m a girl and my name is Susan” and the doctor says “Hi Susan.” I would hope there would be some “interesting… well why do you feel that way” beforehand. But ultimately it may be the judgement of the doctor and the parent that it’s not a phase they will grow out of and gender affirming care may be necessary. So I would say generally I think there should be a line drawn between reversible and irreversible interventions. E.g. role playing and puberty blockers as reversible. There’s some evidence that puberty blockers transitioned into hormone therapy in teenagers causes infertility, and I don’t really think anyone should be having top/bottom surgery before 18.
Transgender women in supports
This is anecdotal but most transgender women I meet are not athletes. They are definitely not elite athletes. I also think there’s a gap between men and women in sports, and not a small one. Often high school level boys can compete with professional women at the top levels. I also think Rayzda is right that without protections over time most world records would belong to MTF athletes. I also think most reasonable people agree this is unfair. I think most people think there should be some protections in place. For example to be a transgendered woman there are no requirements other than proclaiming yourself to be a transgender woman. I think if a male athlete just proclaimed themselves to be a transgender woman and wanted to race the next day against women most people would opposed this.
In short, a blanket ban on all MTF athletes doesn’t make sense because for the vast majority of the less talented athletes it accomplishes nothing in protect women’s sports and only excludes transgender athletes needlessly. Obviously there’s a small percent of cases where there is an obvious advantage that allows them to dominate and become champions and they are the few that should be excluded.
Bathroom bans
Just political theater in my opinion. People don’t go into the wrong bathrooms not because it’s the law but because that’s what societal norms dictate. I’m not aware of this being a problem and if it becomes a problem then you can worry about legislating it.
Firstly, because you get a lot of negative feedback on your posting currently: I think this is a very good post. You very clearly detail your position, and describe what you think on issues instead of trying to play games. I hope you will find that this leads to much better discussions with other people!
I actually agree with most of your positions. I want to emphasize one thing, and have a few questions to some others.
"Obviously no sane person would oppose gender affirming care for adults". Very important here, but sadly has a good chance to get glossed over because it was only half a sentence. Before talking about children and teenagers, lets just make sure that we all agree on this. Let adult peoples make their own decisions. This should be the baseline we start from.
I also agree with you on transgender sports. Reasonable solutions need to be found for top-level female athletes. Afaik there are already testosteron level limitations, i think someone posted about a born-female athlete who isn't allowed to compete due to her naturally too-high testosterone levels a while back?
On bathroom bans: Just to clarify (and to help you avoid getting mischaracterized), what do you think is the right or wrong bathroom for a transgender person to go into? Putting aside legislation for a moment, do you think that a transgender woman should be going into the womans bathroom, or should she go into the mans bathroom?
I like how you mention that a lot of this is pointless political theater and really shouldn't be an issue, and i very much agree with this. I believe that a large majority of the problems involving trans people can be solved by just letting them do what they want and treating them with the same compassion one would treat any other person with, because usually what they want doesn't actually have any negative effects on anyone else.
@Rayzda yes, I forgot to mention that the other caveat for MTF athletes competing in women’s sports besides them not being allowed to win is that there needs to be locker room accommodations made for women that may not feel comfortable undressing in front of someone with a penis.
EPT
