Gender again. Sorry!

[monkers]

No attempt to police the debate at all, well intentioned or otherwise. @monkers claimed that role in post #1286 and I agree with Sparks that "this town ain't big enough for the both of us".

No rules so people can contribute, or not, in the way they see fit and also, as I have, comment on the way the discussions are going.

It is a personal view of mine that I dislike it when people in a debate make assumptions about others' motivation rather than simply addressing the points raised.

Irony. I thought it spottable. Never mind.

 

[Rusty Nails]

I was talking about the disease, not the cure.

AIUI in homeopathic medicine the disease is used in the cure.

Don't take my flip comment about homeopathy as any pretence of knowledge of the complexities of the subject.

 

[Rusty Nails]

Irony. I thought it spottable. Never mind.

I saw your irony and raised it with humour.

I did not see you as being entirely serious over the 'Policing' comment. I need to consider the use of emojis such as the tongue-in-cheek one.

 

[monkers]

I saw your irony and raised it with humour.

I did not see you as being entirely serious over the 'Policing' comment. I need to consider the use of emojis such as the tongue-in-cheek one.

My thinking you had not spotted my attempt at irony only to find it's me not spotting your humour. More irony than I had thought.

My irony meter exploded earlier today though when I saw a clip of Johnson saying that Ukraine must join Nato and the EU.

 

[Unkraut]

I would respect the right of religious people to believe what they believe but it's not unlawful to say I don't believe in the idea of a soul.

I don't think arguing about the concept of a soul is generally regarded as likely to do anyone harm. Both sides in the transgender debate contend that transgenderism itself or arguing against transgenderism can do harm. The former look at de-transitioners who are mentally and physically scarred for life. The latter don't want what they consider mental torment to be made worse.

Comparing gender identity with religious belief is obviously a bogus argument.

Doesn't this depend on whether you regard both as subjective? Proponents of Judeo-Christianity would argue for there being an objective reality upon which the belief rests. If gender is a social construct it seems to me that it can only ever be subjective.

Unless someone can persuade me otherwise, I take gender to be almost synonymous with biological sex. People vary within the two categories of male or female, but these categories are immutable. You cannot change sex nor can you change gender. This 'simplistic' view at least has the merit it ends all the current confusion, the agonising over the meaning of words that have been clear to every generation since the beginning until about a decade ago.

You are undermining the existence of gender identity by pretending to yourself that it is no more than a belief system, as in, and to paraphrase ' poor deluded little things, it's all in their heads'.

I think transgenderism is a delusion. It is simply in people's heads.

Most who suffer from gender confusion as teenagers grow out of it. I would also suggest that such confusion itself is more often than not the result of others (activists) putting the idea in children's heads in the first place. Unlike adults, children are not capable of making permanent life-changing decisions such as hormone therapy involves. This is the reason for the traditional age of consent, and it needs to be preserved.

 

[dutchguylivingintheuk]

There is a reason why so many have walked. Dishonest, low-grade debating tactics gleaned from zealot twitter-feeds and substacks are likely to rile, and they have.

Who the heck are you to decide whatever the reasons are for people not to responds in this thread? Let me give you a spoiler, the title is '' Gender again, sorry'' it's the numerous topic about the same subject.

 

[monkers]

Unless someone can persuade me otherwise, I take gender to be almost synonymous with biological sex. People vary within the two categories of male or female, but these categories are immutable. You cannot change sex nor can you change gender. This 'simplistic' view at least has the merit it ends all the current confusion, the agonising over the meaning of words that have been clear to every generation since the beginning until about a decade ago.

I think transgenderism is a delusion. It is simply in people's heads.

Most who suffer from gender confusion as teenagers grow out of it. I would also suggest that such confusion itself is more often than not the result of others (activists) putting the idea in children's heads in the first place. Unlike adults, children are not capable of making permanent life-changing decisions such as hormone therapy involves. This is the reason for the traditional age of consent, and it needs to be preserved.

I'm not convinced that you are actually open to persuasion. It doesn't sound like you are. But just in case you are, I'll do my best.

People don't get to choose their sex or gender before birth any more than they get to choose their genetic parents, or place of birth. To the unaware infant these these just later become accidents or coincidences of birth.

More understanding here of gender. Gender is a social construct, it varies from culture to culture and it has no fixed point. That is because gender is concerned with the traditional social roles and expressions of that culture. People do not change gender because through their journey of transition they usually continue to live within the same culture, usually doing the same work, living with the same people, having the same circle of friends. Some of this may change, and some not. Where changes do occur, it tends to be through the non-acceptance of others.

So we are not talking about gender here in that sense. We are talking about gender identity. Every facet of our identity is in our heads, our sex, our sexuality (as in what people we are attracted to), and our gender identity. Other facets are where we are from, country, county, city, town, or village. Being 'a proud Yorkshireman' is an identity. Being a teacher is an identity. We all self identify facets of our identity in the way we dress, some mannerisms express a facet of our identity. We perceive facets of a person's identity all the time, and on meeting people we typically ask them, so where are you from, are you a local, what work do you do, what are your hobbies - amateur astronomer is an identity.

Being a Christian for example is an identity, but it is not an innate feeling, it comes from exposure to teaching of christianity. As a child I was baptised in the Church of England, but I am not a Christian because I am agnostic. So my parents chose an identity for me, but I have rejected it. Your name at birth is recorded, it's a parental choice rather than your own choice, and you can change it, and when you do it changes your identity. People have nicknames for each other, these create new identities.

So yes our gender identity is in our heads, because every other facet of our identity is in our heads. To say that a person's identity is just in their head, is to not accept their identity. You place yourself as the person who has the right to say who they really are.

This causes offence commonly to people who are perceived to have a non-native background, a person might have grandparents originally from some place, let's say Jamaica. The person is asked where are you from, they might say 'London', and the questioner says 'no, where are you really from?'
The questioner is not accepting that person's sense of identity. It's considered very rude.

A gay person does not 'choose to be gay', they just know who they are attracted to. You might prefer redheads, but this is not something that you had to learn. In that case it is the aesthetics of sexual attraction.

So to say that a person's gender identity is just in their head is true, but it reveals that the listener has already made up their mind, they don't accept it as a valid identity, to the listener it's a wrong answer, and the 'all in your head accusation of mental illness or a delusion results. It isn't a belief as a firmly held principle like a moral, it is a person's self-knowledge, just as a person's sexuality is. In my opinion gender identity should not be demeaned.

Biological sex can not be changed, but legal sex can be. Bodies can be changed to make them more masculine or more feminine and cis gender people do this all the time, women have breast reduction or augmentation for example. This can be purely as an aesthetic you might say, but women say that breast augmentation make them feel more complete. This is related to their sense of gender identity. You can't feel more masculine or more feminine unless you have one.

Erroneously some gender critical people will claim they have no gender. Well of course they don't because gender is not an identity. But they exercise their gender identity every time they shop for clothes saying 'not this it's too ultra-feminine for me', 'pink is too girly for me', 'I think shapeless clothes make me look to masculine. On that basis the claim, 'I have no gender' is faux.

If you ask people to rate how masculine or feminine they are on a scale of one to ten, most people are capable of it, though the question might make them too uncomfortable to answer. How feminine am I? Oh I'd say maybe a 5, or maybe a 6. How masculine are you? The answer is just in your head, but the ability to answer honestly doesn't make you delusional. It proves you have self-knowledge.

You say 'trangenderism is just in people's heads'. This doesn't work, because transgenderism is the expression of a gender identity, and not the gender identity itself. It's like saying 'learning is knowledge it's just in people's heads'. Knowledge is the part that is people's heads, but learning is the process of filling up those memory cells.

Being congruent in sex and gender means that you never face the misery of them being not. There's nothing to question or fathom out; it just is what it is. For the trans person it is an intense feeling of confusion, it's like tinnitus, a constant unsettling background noise that can not be turned off or escaped from.

If gender identity was a choice, trans people would not choose incongruence, they would choose congruence. Incongruence is something that is suffered or endured. For some people it is like torture and can lead to suicide. Incongruence is not a disease, and not a mental illness. It's a condition without a cure. The process of transition promotes congruence. Nobody pretends it's perfect, because it isn't. One trans woman I know has poor hearing. She says, my hearing aid doesn't cure my deafness, but it enables me to hear; and just as transition has not changed my biological sex, or provided a cure for my gender variance, but it enables me to live as my authentic self.

 

[monkers]

''Most who suffer from gender confusion as teenagers grow out of it. I would also suggest that such confusion itself is more often than not the result of others (activists) putting the idea in children's heads in the first place. Unlike adults, children are not capable of making permanent life-changing decisions such as hormone therapy involves. This is the reason for the traditional age of consent, and it needs to be preserved.''

This is a very serious allegation, and it frightens me that you think so. You really should bring proper peer reviewed evidence of this or otherwise withdraw it.

 

[multitool]

Who the heck are you to decide whatever the reasons are for people not to responds in this thread? Let me give you a spoiler, the title is '' Gender again, sorry'' it's the numerous topic about the same subject.

Because they've explicitly said why they've left, you eikel.

 

[multitool]

I think transgenderism is a delusion. It is simply in people's heads.

As monckers has said, everything that means you are not just a slab of meat "is simply in people's heads"

Most who suffer from gender confusion as teenagers grow out of it. I would also suggest that such confusion itself is more often than not the result of others (activists) putting the idea in children's heads in the first place.

Any actual evidence for this assertion? Or is it merely repeating the trope of abusive paedophilic weirdoes preying on our children? Do you know any of these children? Have you ever spoken to one?

Would you include gender clinic doctors and psychologists as examples of these "activists"?

The thing is you've actually made an assertion with no supporting evidence. Are we now back in the 1980s when the govt. banned discussion of gayness in schools in case it turned kids gay? Are you making a claim that discussion of trans lives will turn kids trans?

 

[newfhouse]

I think transgenderism is a delusion. It is simply in people's heads.

Most who suffer from gender confusion as teenagers grow out of it. I would also suggest that such confusion itself is more often than not the result of others (activists) putting the idea in children's heads in the first place. Unlike adults, children are not capable of making permanent life-changing decisions such as hormone therapy involves. This is the reason for the traditional age of consent, and it needs to be preserved.

Yeah, thanks Donald.


View: https://twitter.com/esqueer_/status/1620757034080821248?s=61&t=Q4-NrZc_P1zcZfqm2v6sSA

 

[AuroraSaab]

The research on transgender issues tends to be of poor quality. There is some evidence that most children who identify as trans in their early teens desist if they do not go on puberty blockers or cross sex hormones. If you go on puberty blockers you tend to carry on onto cross sex hormones.

The whole model of giving 'trans kids' drugs comes from what is known as the Dutch Study. Turns out this was funded by the makers of puberty blockers. Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands are all now questioning the use of puberty blockers as there are issues over long term effects and whether children can consent to bone damage, infertility, loss of sexual function, at age 11 - 14.

There are a growing number of detransitioners though. The Detransitioner forum on Reddit has 25k members, though they won't all be transgender. If it was innate like same sex attraction, people would not completely detransition.

Would you include gender clinic doctors and psychologists as examples of these "activists"?

There's a huge amount of money to be made from transgender patients, especially in the US. Life long drugs-requiring patient from early teens til death, plus surgery costs - it's a massive cash cow and the surgery market is growing year on year with a cost of $100k per patient.

The thing is you've actually made an assertion with no supporting evidence. Are we now back in the 1980s when the govt. banned discussion of gayness in schools in case it turned kids gay? Are you making a claim that discussion of trans lives will turn kids trans?

No, but social contagion is a real thing. We know that from studies of anorexia. Why is there a sudden upsurge in children being referred to gender clinics? Why are many of these kids gay? Why are there disproportionately high numbers of teenage girls? We need to look at this and proceed with caution.

There's a worry we might be transitioning our gay kids rather than encouraging them to be comfortable with their gayness. Which is what they do in Iran, of course. There's certainly some parents who would rather have a straight daughter than a gay son.

The interim Cass Report on UK gender services noted all this - and said that even social transitioning isn't a neutral act. It can concretise a gender identity which might otherwise be a passing phase.

Yeah, thanks Donald

Plenty of left wing people are concerned about this issue too. Just because the US right wing have piled in on it, for different reasons, does not mean there isn't anything at all to be concerned about.

 

[newfhouse]

Plenty of left wing people are concerned about this issue too. Just because the US right wing have piled in on it, for different reasons, does not mean there isn't anything at all to be concerned about.

There's a difference between genuine concern and dog whisting for electoral purposes. Do you really believe Trump cares about teenagers for any reason other than his sexual fantasies?

Is prohibiting any discussion, counselling or help the best way to fix those concerns?

 

[AuroraSaab]

No, of course not. Trump is electioneering. However, there's a path that falls between outright banning of all care for dysphoria children and the model of automatic affirmation and then drugs on demand and double mastectomy under 18 - which is what you can get in the US if you can pay.

 

[bobzmyunkle]

There's a difference between genuine concern and dog whisting for electoral purposes.

Wasn't it you who brought Trump into this? You may not agree with Unkraut but that doesn't mean you have to liken him to Trump.