People are confusing their psychological mind with their physical reality. You don’t just get to decide you’re a bird and be able to fly. Why do we debate this stuff? Instead of getting so offended stop Defineing yourself by something so insignificant
No one is claiming to be a bird. That's a non-sequitur.
We debate these things because some people say "I feel X" and others say "You aren't allowed to feel that way and here is how we will marginalize you for that".
These are complicated issues. We should be willing to listen more and not assume we have all the answers about people who may have a very different life experience than you or me.
> We debate these things because some people say "I feel X" and others say "You aren't allowed to feel that way and here is how we will marginalize you for that".
Talk about missing the plot. This is 100% incorrect and not at all what the debate is about. No cares how anyone feels, people can feel any way they want, this is not the complaint.
The issue is “I believe I am <gender>, and I demand you treat me as <gender>, and also demand that you also agree that I not only feel like <gender>, but that I actually am <gender>.”
Yeah, sorry no that isn’t how biology works. It’s also selfish and narcissistic to demand everyone else partake in your self perception. Demanding everyone use your “pronouns” is just as silly if I demanded that everyone use the adjectives “strong and handsome” when they refer to me because that is how I feel and perceive myself. Having my own adjectives is extremely pompous, and so is having your own pronouns. You can feel however you want that’s fine, but you don’t get demand every else in the world must take part in your self perception and compel their speech and behavior to do so.
Equating gender / identity phenomena with wanting to be considered "strong and handsome" is not very... charitable.
The whole pronoun thing is massively overblown from what I've seen. Very, very, very few people are asking for unusual pronouns. Calling someone "they / their" is not hard. I live in LA and only come across someone asking once or twice. It's not a big deal.
For what it is worth, I sort of agree with you on the unusual pronouns. I'm not sure what I would do if someone asked me to call them some pronoun I've never heard of. I'm usually pretty agreeable, so I would try to be polite. But it would probably weird me out a bit. However, I don't even know if I will ever face this scenario. I'm not too worried about it :)
Your source is a site solely dedicated to anti-transgender propaganda. Every second headline on the front page is "transgender person commits crime". The headline for this article even invents the unwieldy term "Male Who Identifies as Female" so that it can avoid saying "Trans Woman," presumably because it would be too respectful of her.
I wasn't able to find a better source than this, presumably because "Man Jailed 21 Days, Fined For Harassing Woman In Street" isn't the kind of headline to make international news (and I don't speak Norwegian).
I dont think it is a lie if everyone’s truth is “equal” but I also dont think my preferences should be able to control others speech, even though I personally don’t mind using preferred pronouns. Even if offense was intended, you don’t tend to get jail time for insulting someone.
We already do this in our every day life. If you talk to someone named Johnny and repeatedly call them John against their wishes (perhaps they just hate that shorthand name for whatever reason), you're likely going to get them to a point where it agitates them. And if you keep doing so at work it'll likely get you fired.
Transgenderism is the treatment to dysphoria. Dysphoria is a condition that is just as demonstrably provable as depression or any other mental illness.
If you were to wake up tomorrow in the wrong body you would also have dysphoria, and you would also try to treat that.
Humans are not some machines of perfect logical emotions and reasoning - you are no exception. On the contrary, it's narcissistic and selfish to think everyone has to be you, someone whom doesn't have dysphoria. That you are somehow the arbiter of what gender is. From what source is your knowledge based?
I used to think things were defined in books and by experts, turns out we know jack about humans, all we can really know is by experiencing them, and I can tell you first hand dysphoria is enough for good people to kill themselves. So, think on why that is, and look to the truth for an answer.
Saying transgenderism is the treatment to dysphoria is itself an extremely controversial statement and not one you can present as as a pillar of any argument. There is a contingent that _don't want_ anything other than transgenderism to be the solution to dysphoria, because it would put a lot of question marks over the accepted dogma.
This was previously on the WPATH Wikipedia page but has since been removed:
In 2021, WPATH's President-Elect, Marci Bowers called the association intolerant of dissenting opinions. She said, "There are definitely people who are trying to keep out anyone who doesn't absolutely buy the party line that everything should be affirming, and that there's no room for dissent."
It's not controversial, and the vast majority of transgender individuals belong to no orgs nor follow them. They're just people that are looking for solutions. There is always going to be political organizations using people and muddying the narrative for clout.
It's not a "treatment" at all. By definition a treatment (in this context) is:
`The use of an agent, procedure, or regimen, such as a drug, surgery, or exercise, in an attempt to cure or mitigate a disease, condition, or injury.`
Transgenderism is the rejection of any treatments, and an insistence there is no disease, condition, or injury.
> On the contrary, it's narcissistic and selfish to think everyone has to be you
I never claimed this. That said, if you want to have any useful discussions and dialog there has to be an agreement on things like definitions and facts. Otherwise communication is completely a useless endeavor.
> That you are somehow the arbiter of what gender is.
Again, never claimed I am somehow solely the arbiter or what gender is.
>From what source is your knowledge based?
From 1,000's of years of human history and language of people classifying biological sex. Also, just having common sense and the ability to do basic reasoning.
If you receive surgery to stop your back from hurting, is that not a treatment?
Transgenderism does not reject that there is a problem. It exists exactly because there's a problem it is resolving.
I'm going to make a number of assumptions.
1. Your ideas of transgender comes from fabricated ideas you've heard other people say.
2. You've never experienced what working with real humans is like, nor do you care to.
3. You didn't learn this topic before deciding to talk about it.
To have an honest conversation you have to do honest work to learn something. From what I see you have chosen to watch a few YouTube videos or sources that align with your pre conceived ideas. Therefore, you are not interested in being convinced.
If you're actually interested in learning the topic you're going to have to accept humans are different from you, feel things you don't, and have to live lives you do not. Look into why, be honest, and persue truth over whatever fancy you're having here.
> If you receive surgery to stop your back from hurting, is that not a treatment?
Yes that would be treatment. If you look back at the definition of a treatment you will see they are all things you do only to the affected individual. Treatments are directed inward to fix an issue with the self. Transgenderism, at least in its current form, is directed outward demanding everyone else prescribe to an ideology, that is not a treatment, that is tyranny.
> I'm going to make a number of assumptions.
Feel free to make all the assumptions you want about me. However, all the ones you have listed are 100% false.
> To have an honest conversation…
Seems to me your idea of an “honest conversation” is simply me siding with your point of view, anything less in your view is somehow “less than honest”. There doesn’t seem to be any room for disagreement in you definition of an “honest conversation”.
> From what I see you have chosen to watch a few YouTube videos or sources that align with your pre conceived ideas. Therefore, you are not interested in being convinced.
Now you are simply attacking my character and dismissing me rather than trying to dispute my arguments or engage in, as you put it, an honest conversation.
> If you're actually interested in learning the topic you're going to have to accept humans are different from you, feel things you don't, and have to live lives you do not.
I have never disputed that people can’t feel whatever the hell they want. That’s fine. I don’t expect, or even imagine, that anyones life experiences have been the same as mine. You are totally misrepresenting what I have argued.
Look the fundamental problem here is that the world, the universe, exists inside a framework, and we exist in that framework. We can manipulate it to some extent, but we aren’t gods. We cannot rewrite the framework. You don’t have to like the framework, but you can’t fundamentally change it either.
For example, someone paralyzed from the neck down may hate that they are paralyzed. They may wish with all their being that they weren’t paralyzed. They may feel that they are in the wrong body and that they should be in an abled body. And no doubt being paralyzed probably causes people to go through emotional hell. But reality isn’t going to change. Treatment is accepting reality, however fucking hard that may be, and playing the best hand you can with the cards that are dealt. Not demanding that you are able bodied, and asking the world to agree that you are able bodied because that is how you feel. And by no means am I ridiculing, or disparaging paralyzed people here. There are paralyzed people that have accomplished amazing things, and have done way more impressive things than I could ever hope to do. But those people didn’t, and never would have, accomplished those things if they refused to accept the cards they were dealt and instead became hyper focused on their disability and how it made them feel. No technology exists, yet anyway, that can change a persons XX chromosomes to XY, or vice versa. You might think that sucks, you might hate it, but it is the framework and reality that exists.
If your asking me to denounce that framework (reality), and enter into a delusion, then sorry but my answer is no.
"Look the fundamental problem here is that the world, the universe, exists inside a framework, and we exist in that framework. We can manipulate it to some extent, but we aren’t gods. We cannot rewrite the framework. You don’t have to like the framework, but you can’t fundamentally change it either."
This is a belief, not a fact. Delusion is where you use mental gymnastics to represent your beliefs as facts. Humans don't fit into frameworks, and you nor I know what those would be even if they do. Psychology, again, is a heavily flawed and infant science that can't treat the overwhelming majority of people.
Biology says nothing of how we as humans identify ourselves, it says nothing of sexuality. The deeper you look into biology you discover the core differences are almost entirely hormones. The science of biology is why we can transition our bodies, it does not prevent it.
Xy and xx chromosomes don't represent sex either. They're signals of what may be identifiable as man or woman but are not exclusive. When you look at the difference of male to female reproductive organs the core difference is a few genetic switches and hormones at an early stage. 8th grade science class on human body development is not representative of this more complicated reality.
Your framework is not based on reality, and you nor anyone else can claim they have a framework on human biology or psychology. That's not how science works. If you want actual answers look towards those that study genetics in relation to body development. We have more questions than answers.
>This is a belief, not a fact. Delusion is where you use mental gymnastics to represent your beliefs as facts. Humans don't fit into frameworks...
If you believe biology, and physics, etc. are not factual frameworks (which they are), then I am afraid there isn't much of a discourse or discussion here. Since we can't seem to agree on fundamental concepts.
>Biology says nothing of how we as humans identify ourselves
Agreed. And male and female are biological terms, that have absolutely nothing to do with how anyone identifies or feels.
> it says nothing of sexuality.
Incorrect, biology explains a lot about sex, namely how reproduction fundamentally works.
> Xy and xx chromosomes don't represent sex either.
Of course they do, that is the literal definition of male and female.
>Your framework is not based on reality, and you nor anyone else can claim they have a framework on human biology or psychology.
Unfortunately your framework is the one not based in reality. You are operating under a crazy assumption that biology is so complex that no one could possibly understand it, and we have so much more to learn! What you are actually doing is rejecting what science has known for 100's of years, and projecting yourself as some profound "deep" person who is able to see beyond what science has already settled.
>We have more questions than answers.
Agreed, there are so many unknown things in the universe, and things to discover, which is why its ridiculous to waste time disputing basic biology 101 things like "What is a male, and what is female" when this has been answered for 100's of years.
> We debate these things because some people say "I feel X" and others say "You aren't allowed to feel that way and here is how we will marginalize you for that".
Sounds like a straw man fallacy. Some people are saying "I feel like such and such", and the others are saying "you have a mental condition, let's seek medical treatment".
Being gay used to be considered a medical condition, but now everyone agrees that was a huge mistake. We should tread carefully here.
Maybe there are genuine disorders affecting some aspects of the less commonly found gender / identity phenomena. I'm not an expert. I don't know. I'm guessing you aren't either.
I'd prefer to error on the side of respecting the way someone feels if they aren't hurting anyone or imposing a large burden.
I would say hormone blockers in prepubescent teens without parental consent is not treading lightly.
The de-transition community on reddit and Twitter can more concretely explain and show the harm being done under the desire to be blindly supportive and affirming.
Hormone blockers in prepubescent teens has been used for decades before transgender people had the option available. It was frequently used to treat people going through early puberty. We know how safe and effective they are because we have a whole body of scientific literature around people being on hormone blockers for 5-6+ years.
It's only as a result of the fear around transgender people that this is causing problems and, as usual, it also affects cisgender children because they issue blanket bans on treatments.
On a case by case basis, sure. However we are seeing a mass psychosis around trans identity in middle school. The rates of middle school girls identifying as something other than CIS are reaching levels as high as 40% in some school districts.
Maybe that is not a problem for some but that will be a problem for society in about a generation.
It's easy to look at all the forums where people regretted what they did. These fads are not reversible, and when people grow out of them, as many are, there will be ill effects on society.
Bluntly society exists to serve current and future generations. All future generations are predicated on a nuclear family. No significantly large human cultures without a basis around a nuclear family have survived from an evolutionary perspective.
For society to continue to exist it needs to primarily serve and be determined by people who meet, have kids, and form a nuclear family. While there are societies that do not do this they do not last more than a generation or two at the most.
While good societies should be inclusive and welcoming of non paired or alternative lifestyles they by definition need to remain alternative for society to continue to flourish or else the society dies as its members do.
We already have a birth rate below replacement rate. Societies where that is the trend typically do not last long either and have some fairly bad outcomes while they disappear.
Yeah I agree that hormone blockers in teens is not an action to take lightly (my understanding is that it is not reversible). I don’t have a ton of knowledge on it, but it seems we should be careful with that.
Note that there is no ethical way to determine if hormone blockers on children are nonreversible due to the known long term possible side effects of any medication.
> Maybe there are genuine disorders affecting some aspects of the less commonly found gender / identity phenomena. I'm not an expert. I don't know. I'm guessing you aren't either.
You don't have to be an expert to see the parallels between this and any other fad we've seen before, such as hipsters and goths and emos and punks.
> I'd prefer to error on the side of respecting the way someone feels
We're witnessing postmodernism today, where everything is relative, and no absolute truths exist anymore. What you mentioned is a symptom of that way of thinking.
We have an intrinsic sense of morality by means of what Islam calls "Fitrah" - the natural disposition which God instilled in us. This is why people are naturally inclined to believe in The Creator. This does not mean that the Fitrah cannot be concealed and/or corrupted. A lot of society today still has remnants and fragments of Truths from the previous Messages. In the West, this manifests through the remnants of Truth from Judaism and Christianity, even though they have been corrupted, generally speaking.
Once we establish, through proof and evidence, the True message from God, then it is only rational to obey and submit (e.g. see https://www.provingislam.com/). What is wrong, or why something is wrong may not be immediately apparent to us. As long as God ordained it, we would be irrational not to obey.
This is one of many opinions. In a diverse society it’s better not to speak in absolutes, lest you fall for the relativistic trap of ‘there is no absolute truth except this sentence’.
The otherkin community does believe they are birds, and the overlap between them and trans people is likely quite high (specifically I claim that many more otherkin are trans than would be expected from non otherkin)
Same with furries but less extreme. Also lots of overlap.
