Here I am sticking my nose into things again. Sigh, will I never learn?
It’s whatever, people think what they want, religion, politics, trans, Manchester United or Manchester City if you are my boyfriend, New York Yankees or everyone else if you are my uncle, white after Labor Day, anti or pro guns, they pick sides and are rarely swayed. This will sound offensive and it is but not meant at all to be hurtful, because we are all guilty of it to some extent. We pick sides then parrot any intelligent argument, study or girl that works in the next cubicle that agrees with us. I mean I try to think things through and form my own opinion, try to keep my opinions to myself if I don’t have enough facts to support them, but there have been times when I was too lazy or too emotionally involved in the subject to be rational and I was a parrot too. It has burned me more than once and I have become much more cautious as a result.
So what am I rambling on about?
Please stop using “Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden” as an anti trans argument. It doesn’t say what you think it says, it is outdated and they even admit, “Since most psychiatric care is provided in outpatient settings (for which no reliable data were available), underestimation of the absolute prevalences was inevitable.” They only compare morbidity rates of post op transsexuals with “healthy” people, (Still irks me that people think I am sick, glad that opinion is outdated as well) not pre op transsexuals. Yet people use this study to argue that reassignment surgery does not help transsexuals when the study clearly states, “For the purpose of evaluating whether sex reassignment is an effective treatment for gender dysphoria, it is reasonable to compare reported gender dysphoria pre and post treatment. Such studies have been conducted either prospectively[7], [12] or retrospectively,[5], [6], [9], [22], [25], [26], [29], [38] and suggest that sex reassignment of transsexual persons improves quality of life and gender dysphoria.“ I have had this study thrown in my face repeatedly by people who have never read it and have no idea what it actually says, or even that it says that healthcare for transsexuals has become much better since the test groups in the 1970s and 1980s.
What does this all mean?
Absolutely nothing, people believe what they want to believe. I also believe that anything other than blockers for a child is wrong. I only commented because I am tired of people using this study to make a point.
So do you think that people's gender identity is formed pre-puberty? Was that the case in your experience? It's only by gathering people's personal experiences that we can judge whether or not a particular treatment is viable. I was definitely not an alpha in middle or high school so a couple of my friends weren't cis. I feel bad about it now, but I kind of lost connection with them once they came out as gay. I wonder if at least one of them wasn't trans rather than gay. It doesn't really matter, I guess, since I was just a kid then, but being raised strictly religious I felt I had to sever connections with them once they 'came out'. It does make me feel like a dick in retrospect though...
n=1 doesn't make statistics, I can only say from personal experience that not every pre-puberty gender identity remains the same.
I spent years of my childhood praying to wake up as a boy. If I had met a fairy, my wish would have been "make me male". When my breasts started to develop at 10, I felt terrible. I actually thought about using bandages to make them flat. I slept on my belly, hoping it would keep them from growing. I slumped my shoulders to hide them, I never wore tight shirts. I thought "can people have surgery to remove them?" I wanted to wear only shorts in summer, and couldn't. I hated my female body. Ironically, Nature gave me one that my female friends envied.
I'm quite sure that nowadays people would have encouraged me to take puberty blockers, and I would gladly have taken them. But during puberty, I developed an acceptance of my physical sex.
I don't say that people can't form a gender identity before puberty. I know a few exceptions.
I'm just saying, children might have other reasons to want what they want, and not understand the consequences. It's right to let them take puberty blockers after careful assessment, to give them time to figure things out. Puberty is irreversible, but so are other treatments. *Not* developing a male voice, a beard and broad shoulders can make life a lot easier for a trans girl.
We've had a 19yo trans girl in the ICU after a suicide attempt. Her parents seemed supportive, but who knows what was really going on in her life?
About transphobia among some gay people:
Belonging to a minority that has been discriminated doesn't necessarily make one more inclusive. People are people, and some of them are only going to support their small group and hate everyone else. There are lesbians who hate trans people, people in wheelchairs who are racists, whatever.
Sometimes people say they fight for people's rights, but in fact they only fight for their own limited interests and don't want anyone else to profit from what they have achieved.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but maybe it's also that some gay people don't want trans people in the same community because they have been fighting against the prejudice that a gay man is somehow "not a real man", more feminine than a straight man, and if they're mixed with transgender people, it blurs the borders?
Also, people, straight or gay, don't always seem to understand that gender identity is independent of sexuality. A transgender person transitioning from man to woman isn't necessarily attracted to men.
No one really knows anything about this case. All I know is it's been ejudicated in a court, in front of a judge AND jurors, in Texas no less. And all I see on conservative Twitter is the "trans mental illness" crowd talking about how his mother decided to transition him after one viewing of "Frozen". Yeah. I'm sure that's exactly how it went down. Maybe the mother is doing the wrong thing. You know what is just as likely?? The father can't handle the idea his son isn't what HE envisioned and can't handle it.
What I do know is this. We have two people who have ACTUALLY gone through this exact process and set of feelings who can lend their expertise (so to speak about it). And when I take my car into the mechanic, I don't tell him he's wrong about my transmission because of what some reactionary said on YouTube. So, I don't know, I'm just throwing this out there, but let's maybe listen to what they're saying instead of relying on information being disseminated by people who are obviously doing nothing but using this case to push an anti-trans agenda.
And I can gather that simply from reading Twitter comments about it. You know what I see?? Trans people show up and what do you know, out comes the malicious cruelty. "Wanting to cut your dick off is a mental illness". "Define what a girl is". Misgendering on purpose. The vast majority of the people I've seen comment on this on social media don't give a flying fuck about this kid, what they are is foaming at the mouth to unload their transphobe greatest hits based on a headline that showed up in their Facebook feed.
@ThacoBell: I'm not sure how large it is, of course, but there are folks in the queer community that don't want trans people to be a part of it, just like there are folks who think bisexual people shouldn't be included ("make up your mind! pick women or pick men, one or the other!"). There's actually a term for some people like that: TERF, or "trans-exclusionary radical feminist," a pun on the word "turf." It's a unique type of liberal transphobe (or cis-sexist, the word for a less serious type of transphobe) that doesn't think trans women count as women, feminism isn't meant for trans women, and that we should be treated as men. It's just another brand of intolerance using a popular ideology as a shield. Some people shield themselves with a fake brand of Christianity; some people shield themselves with a fake brand of feminism.
The national discourse is a bit more than just trans-friendly and transphobic. Within the queer community, there are lots of debates about what transgender means, what the different types are, and whether X counts as Y, or is actually just a variant of Z. Most of us, myself, prefer to err on the side of inclusion.
If it's raining outside, it's good to have a wide umbrella.
There are many folks, especially the religious types, that think bisexuals are just hyper-sexual people with little to no self-control. It kind of makes sense from a logical viewpoint too. Do you have any insights into this?
That's the stereotype. It assumes that bi people MUST want multiple partners, otherwise why would they be interested in multiple genders? Nevermind that, you know, people make their own decisions and being bi has nothing to do with what you view as an ideal relationship. I don't know how much this would affect the general perception, but porn pushes this HARD.
@Arvia "I don't say that people can't form a gender identity before puberty. I know a few exceptions."
I'm in the "No one is born with sexuality" camp (is that a camp?). Its something that develops based on the person and their experiences. How quickly or slowly this hapens would depend on the person though.
@jjstraka34 Call me optimsitic, but I think that if half of these people actually met and talked with just a couple trans people they'd change their view. A lot of discrimination is based off of fear of what you don't know.
Yeah, some people seem to think that bisexuality means "they're not satisfied with the usual, they want everyone", while it can also mean that someone falls in love with a personality without regard to the person's sex or gender.
I have a friend who had been married to a man for years. She's my age, and widowed for a few years, and now she's happily living with a woman. No promiscuity, just loving a person.
Same as some men don't like a gay man in the same locker room, afraid they might drop the soap, as if every gay man just can't control his sex drive, while he most likely is just a man who happens to be attracted to other men, not women. That doesn't mean he wants to have sex with everyone he meets, just because that person is male.
I personally am not in the "sexuality is learned and developed" camp, if it exists. I think there might be external influences, but (I don't know if there's hard biological evidence for it) I think people are also born with a certain inclination.
Otherwise, those people who want to cure homosexuality might be right. If it's learned, it can be changed, and I don't know if many gay people agree with that.
@Arvia I don't think an infant out of the womb has any kind of sexuality. Certain people may be predisposed based on their own personality and thought patterns, but its something that develops over time, like anything else about a person. That doesn't make it something to be "cured". Its just a part of the human experience.
Now I see what you mean.
I just wanted to remind us that there are so many things we thought were "caused" by education and upbringing, while we now know there are strong genetic predispositions for them.
Like many mental illnesses, for example.
(And please let nobody get me wrong now and accuse me of comparing homosexuality to mental illness )
Biology is a lot more solid than just a guess. Its not like every aspect of it is just a blind shot in the dark. There are, and always will be, things that we don't yet know. That doesn't mean that what we do is not reliable. Biological sex doesn't really add much to the conversation when it and gender are separated though.
There is more and more evidence that hormones play a role in not only biological sex, but also gender identity. That's one of the reasons that certain chemicals are being investigated as to whether or not they have hormonal effects on the human body. Being exposed to estrogen mimicking chemicals either in-vitro or as an infant/toddler (or both) may possibly affect future muscle mass, bone density, and brain function (and who knows what else?).
They did the same thing in 2000 during the Florida recount. Sent of bunch of Bush campaign staff and Hill staffers to pose as "concerned citizens" to pound on the door of the vote counting room that was going on in either Broward or Miami/Dade to try to stop the recount.
All 400+ members of the House are not allowed in every meeting. You are put on committees by party leadership, and those are the ones you attend. There are Republicans on the committee holding these depositions, and they are pretending there aren't. What they did was nothing short of witness intimidation. Straight-up mob tactics. Moreover, more than one of them brought cell phones inside, which is totally illegal.
We have long been too paranoid about mass shootings. The reason they seem like such a huge issue is because they keep getting plastered all over the papers and they run nonstop on TV news channels, simply because it makes money to publicize them. People buy papers and watch news they find attention-grabbing, and mass shootings are very attention-grabbing indeed.
The reality is that no, mass shootings are vanishingly rare even in the United States, and represent a tiny fraction of our admittedly high gun violence death toll. Being afraid of violent crime in general can be perfectly reasonable depending on your neighborhood and demographics, but mass shootings specifically are a minor threat compared to the others.
A 10-car pileup will involve more deaths than a 2-car collision, but the 10-car pileup is so incredibly rare, and the 2-car collision is so incredibly common, that it makes more sense to worry about being in a 2-car collision.
Odds are, if you do get shot to death, it's not going to be in a mass shooting. Those are not the primary cause of gun-related deaths.
Tldr: Republicans are totally involved in the impeachment and this was a stupid stunt for the stupid reality TV president and his followers who are being lied to by conservative media.
The point is saying "you can't wantonly abuse your power without consequences". And the goalposts at this point are just running around from stadium to stadium like a chicken with it's head cut off. Once they've cycled through 4 or 5 different versions of events that are all obliterated within 48 hours, eventually, they just start making process arguments, including arbitrary shit they just make up like "you can't do this because there is an election in 14 months", which is sort of like saying a bank robber shouldn't be prosecuted because he will get a large inheritance in 6 months and thus is no longer likely to rob any more banks. Except in this case, we know that Trump was emboldened to hold foreign aid hostage for personal political bribery precisely BECAUSE he was emboldened by no one holding him to account in any serious way.
Bernie Sanders has called for the full national legalization of marijuana. This is about 50-70 years overdue and I can't think of a position I can more wholeheartedly support, and I have less than zero interest in smoking any of it. The idea pot is still illegal anywhere in a country where you can buy 80 proof liquor and cigarettes on every block is madness.
Bernie Sanders has called for the full national legalization of marijuana. This is about 50-70 years overdue and I can't think of a position I can more wholeheartedly support, and I have less than zero interest in smoking any of it.
You really just have to look to Canada on how successful it actually is.
But you can look to Canada to see how successful single payer health care system is, but you all have been piddling that away so.
Bernie Sanders has called for the full national legalization of marijuana. This is about 50-70 years overdue and I can't think of a position I can more wholeheartedly support, and I have less than zero interest in smoking any of it.
You really just have to look to Canada on how successful it actually is.
But you can look to Canada to see how successful single payer health care system is, but you all have been piddling that away so.
He also wants to expunge all former convictions, which is even more laudable.
Bernie Sanders has called for the full national legalization of marijuana. This is about 50-70 years overdue and I can't think of a position I can more wholeheartedly support, and I have less than zero interest in smoking any of it.
You really just have to look to Canada on how successful it actually is.
But you can look to Canada to see how successful single payer health care system is, but you all have been piddling that away so.
He also wants to expunge all former convictions, which is even more laudable.
I agree, but not 100%. I'm sure some pretty nasty dealers got put away for selling weed because that's just what they were caught selling. I'd agree with a case-by-case reevaluation though...
As usual, there's more going on here than what we're being told. The judge wouldn't have ruled for joint medical decisions if this was a clear-cut case either way. I feel so sorry for this poor kid...
As usual, there's more going on here than what we're being told. The judge wouldn't have ruled for joint medical decisions if this was a clear-cut case either way. I feel so sorry for this poor kid...
As far as I'm aware from what I've read absolutely no decision had even been made yet on whether to put him on blockers or not. The mother was simply seeking an evaluation at a clinic that specializes in this field. The reaction from the right has been as if the kid was going to be wheeled into surgery at any second. Moreover, the reaction for the Governor of Texas promising intervention reminds me ALOT of what the Bush brothers did in regards to Terri Schiavo. In other words, small government conservatism gets thrown out the window at the drop of a hat to placate the religious right, and the highest levels of power in the Republican Party will go so far as to intervene in the lives of specific individual familes to pander to their voters.
My prediction?? In ten years time, the kid will turn out to have been transgender, his/her mother is going to get death threats for the foreseeable future, and not a single person pushing so hard for his/her "well-being" will have an ounce of remorse or apology if they turn out to have been wrong in retrospect. They'll just pretend it never happened.
As usual, there's more going on here than what we're being told. The judge wouldn't have ruled for joint medical decisions if this was a clear-cut case either way. I feel so sorry for this poor kid...
As far as I'm aware from what I've read absolutely no decision had even been made yet on whether to put him on blockers or not. The mother was simply seeking an evaluation at a clinic that specializes in this field. The reaction from the right has been as if the kid was going to be wheeled into surgery at any second. Moreover, the reaction for the Governor of Texas promising intervention reminds me ALOT of what the Bush brothers did in regards to Terri Schiavo. In other words, small government conservatism gets thrown out the window at the drop of a hat to placate the religious right, and the highest levels of power in the Republican Party will go so far as to intervene in the lives of specific individual familes to pander to their voters.
My prediction?? In ten years time, the kid will turn out to have been transgender, his/her mother is going to get death threats for the foreseeable future, and not a single person pushing so hard for his/her "well-being" will have an ounce of remorse or apology if they turn out to have been wrong in retrospect. They'll just pretend it never happened.
I can see where you're coming from but I'm just not sure that these kinds of decisions should be made for a seven year old. Identities are not formed that young. My daughter is a tom-boy, likes playing basketball, and has never been interested in dolls, make-up or anything else traditionally 'feminine' but that hardly means that she's going to 'identify' as a boy. It's interesting that nobody has a problem with a tom-boyish girl these days and there's little, if any, pressure for them to 'transition' but when it's the other way around, it's seen in a completely different light. Why is that?
As usual, there's more going on here than what we're being told. The judge wouldn't have ruled for joint medical decisions if this was a clear-cut case either way. I feel so sorry for this poor kid...
As far as I'm aware from what I've read absolutely no decision had even been made yet on whether to put him on blockers or not. The mother was simply seeking an evaluation at a clinic that specializes in this field. The reaction from the right has been as if the kid was going to be wheeled into surgery at any second. Moreover, the reaction for the Governor of Texas promising intervention reminds me ALOT of what the Bush brothers did in regards to Terri Schiavo. In other words, small government conservatism gets thrown out the window at the drop of a hat to placate the religious right, and the highest levels of power in the Republican Party will go so far as to intervene in the lives of specific individual familes to pander to their voters.
My prediction?? In ten years time, the kid will turn out to have been transgender, his/her mother is going to get death threats for the foreseeable future, and not a single person pushing so hard for his/her "well-being" will have an ounce of remorse or apology if they turn out to have been wrong in retrospect. They'll just pretend it never happened.
I can see where you're coming from but I'm just not sure that these kinds of decisions should be made for a seven year old. Identities are not formed that young. My daughter is a tom-boy, likes playing basketball, and has never been interested in dolls, make-up or anything else traditionally 'feminine' but that hardly means that she's going to 'identify' as a boy. It's interesting that nobody has a problem with a tom-boyish girl these days and there's little, if any, pressure for them to 'transition' but when it's the other way around, it's seen in a completely different light. Why is that?
I'm not an expert on the subject. I just think this idea that the mother is some kind of monster who is basically engaging in this exercise to prove some "political" point is stretching it at best and outright projection at worst. It's amazing how anything that is seen as being in favor deference to gay or trans rights is immediately dismissed as "political" and opposition to them is just seen as normal, default behavior. They won't stop at 50/50 decision making. They're going to move to destroy the mother. Give an inch, they'll take 100 miles. Again, NOTHING has been done to this child yet from a medical perspective.
As usual, there's more going on here than what we're being told. The judge wouldn't have ruled for joint medical decisions if this was a clear-cut case either way. I feel so sorry for this poor kid...
As far as I'm aware from what I've read absolutely no decision had even been made yet on whether to put him on blockers or not. The mother was simply seeking an evaluation at a clinic that specializes in this field. The reaction from the right has been as if the kid was going to be wheeled into surgery at any second. Moreover, the reaction for the Governor of Texas promising intervention reminds me ALOT of what the Bush brothers did in regards to Terri Schiavo. In other words, small government conservatism gets thrown out the window at the drop of a hat to placate the religious right, and the highest levels of power in the Republican Party will go so far as to intervene in the lives of specific individual familes to pander to their voters.
My prediction?? In ten years time, the kid will turn out to have been transgender, his/her mother is going to get death threats for the foreseeable future, and not a single person pushing so hard for his/her "well-being" will have an ounce of remorse or apology if they turn out to have been wrong in retrospect. They'll just pretend it never happened.
I can see where you're coming from but I'm just not sure that these kinds of decisions should be made for a seven year old. Identities are not formed that young. My daughter is a tom-boy, likes playing basketball, and has never been interested in dolls, make-up or anything else traditionally 'feminine' but that hardly means that she's going to 'identify' as a boy. It's interesting that nobody has a problem with a tom-boyish girl these days and there's little, if any, pressure for them to 'transition' but when it's the other way around, it's seen in a completely different light. Why is that?
I'm not an expert on the subject. I just think this idea that the mother is some kind of monster who is basically engaging in this exercise to prove some "political" point is stretching it at best and outright projection at worst. It's amazing how anything that is seen as being in favor deference to gay or trans rights is immediately dismissed as "political" and opposition to them is just seen as normal, default behavior. They won't stop at 50/50 decision making. They're going to move to destroy the mother. Give an inch, they'll take 100 miles. Again, NOTHING has been done to this child yet from a medical perspective.
I'm not saying that at all, I'm just not also jumping to the conclusion that the dad is some testosterone laden Neanderthal that can't live with the fact that his 'boy' is a bit too 'feminine'. Conclusions can be jumped to either way...
As usual, there's more going on here than what we're being told. The judge wouldn't have ruled for joint medical decisions if this was a clear-cut case either way. I feel so sorry for this poor kid...
As far as I'm aware from what I've read absolutely no decision had even been made yet on whether to put him on blockers or not. The mother was simply seeking an evaluation at a clinic that specializes in this field. The reaction from the right has been as if the kid was going to be wheeled into surgery at any second. Moreover, the reaction for the Governor of Texas promising intervention reminds me ALOT of what the Bush brothers did in regards to Terri Schiavo. In other words, small government conservatism gets thrown out the window at the drop of a hat to placate the religious right, and the highest levels of power in the Republican Party will go so far as to intervene in the lives of specific individual familes to pander to their voters.
My prediction?? In ten years time, the kid will turn out to have been transgender, his/her mother is going to get death threats for the foreseeable future, and not a single person pushing so hard for his/her "well-being" will have an ounce of remorse or apology if they turn out to have been wrong in retrospect. They'll just pretend it never happened.
I can see where you're coming from but I'm just not sure that these kinds of decisions should be made for a seven year old. Identities are not formed that young. My daughter is a tom-boy, likes playing basketball, and has never been interested in dolls, make-up or anything else traditionally 'feminine' but that hardly means that she's going to 'identify' as a boy. It's interesting that nobody has a problem with a tom-boyish girl these days and there's little, if any, pressure for them to 'transition' but when it's the other way around, it's seen in a completely different light. Why is that?
I'm not an expert on the subject. I just think this idea that the mother is some kind of monster who is basically engaging in this exercise to prove some "political" point is stretching it at best and outright projection at worst. It's amazing how anything that is seen as being in favor deference to gay or trans rights is immediately dismissed as "political" and opposition to them is just seen as normal, default behavior. They won't stop at 50/50 decision making. They're going to move to destroy the mother. Give an inch, they'll take 100 miles. Again, NOTHING has been done to this child yet from a medical perspective.
I'm not saying that at all, I'm just not also jumping to the conclusion that the dad is some testosterone laden Neanderthal that can't live with the fact that his 'boy' is a bit too 'feminine'. Conclusions can be jumped to either way...
Whatever the case may be, by FAR the most political thing about it is State Representatives and the Governor vowing to personally intervene in a family dispute. It's about the farthest thing from "small government" one can imagine. It is now the mother vs. the entire Texas government. I simply don't trust the people the father is aligned with. I've seen what they've done in the past, and again, I mention Terri Schaivo. Their attempt to nullify the husband's legal guardianship and her express wishes (including Bill Frist diagnosing her as not being in a vegatative state from the Senate floor) back then was nothing short of ghoulish.
Comments
So do you think that people's gender identity is formed pre-puberty? Was that the case in your experience? It's only by gathering people's personal experiences that we can judge whether or not a particular treatment is viable. I was definitely not an alpha in middle or high school so a couple of my friends weren't cis. I feel bad about it now, but I kind of lost connection with them once they came out as gay. I wonder if at least one of them wasn't trans rather than gay. It doesn't really matter, I guess, since I was just a kid then, but being raised strictly religious I felt I had to sever connections with them once they 'came out'. It does make me feel like a dick in retrospect though...
I spent years of my childhood praying to wake up as a boy. If I had met a fairy, my wish would have been "make me male". When my breasts started to develop at 10, I felt terrible. I actually thought about using bandages to make them flat. I slept on my belly, hoping it would keep them from growing. I slumped my shoulders to hide them, I never wore tight shirts. I thought "can people have surgery to remove them?" I wanted to wear only shorts in summer, and couldn't. I hated my female body. Ironically, Nature gave me one that my female friends envied.
I'm quite sure that nowadays people would have encouraged me to take puberty blockers, and I would gladly have taken them. But during puberty, I developed an acceptance of my physical sex.
I don't say that people can't form a gender identity before puberty. I know a few exceptions.
I'm just saying, children might have other reasons to want what they want, and not understand the consequences. It's right to let them take puberty blockers after careful assessment, to give them time to figure things out. Puberty is irreversible, but so are other treatments. *Not* developing a male voice, a beard and broad shoulders can make life a lot easier for a trans girl.
We've had a 19yo trans girl in the ICU after a suicide attempt. Her parents seemed supportive, but who knows what was really going on in her life?
About transphobia among some gay people:
Belonging to a minority that has been discriminated doesn't necessarily make one more inclusive. People are people, and some of them are only going to support their small group and hate everyone else. There are lesbians who hate trans people, people in wheelchairs who are racists, whatever.
Sometimes people say they fight for people's rights, but in fact they only fight for their own limited interests and don't want anyone else to profit from what they have achieved.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but maybe it's also that some gay people don't want trans people in the same community because they have been fighting against the prejudice that a gay man is somehow "not a real man", more feminine than a straight man, and if they're mixed with transgender people, it blurs the borders?
Also, people, straight or gay, don't always seem to understand that gender identity is independent of sexuality. A transgender person transitioning from man to woman isn't necessarily attracted to men.
What I do know is this. We have two people who have ACTUALLY gone through this exact process and set of feelings who can lend their expertise (so to speak about it). And when I take my car into the mechanic, I don't tell him he's wrong about my transmission because of what some reactionary said on YouTube. So, I don't know, I'm just throwing this out there, but let's maybe listen to what they're saying instead of relying on information being disseminated by people who are obviously doing nothing but using this case to push an anti-trans agenda.
And I can gather that simply from reading Twitter comments about it. You know what I see?? Trans people show up and what do you know, out comes the malicious cruelty. "Wanting to cut your dick off is a mental illness". "Define what a girl is". Misgendering on purpose. The vast majority of the people I've seen comment on this on social media don't give a flying fuck about this kid, what they are is foaming at the mouth to unload their transphobe greatest hits based on a headline that showed up in their Facebook feed.
That's the stereotype. It assumes that bi people MUST want multiple partners, otherwise why would they be interested in multiple genders? Nevermind that, you know, people make their own decisions and being bi has nothing to do with what you view as an ideal relationship. I don't know how much this would affect the general perception, but porn pushes this HARD.
@Arvia "I don't say that people can't form a gender identity before puberty. I know a few exceptions."
I'm in the "No one is born with sexuality" camp (is that a camp?). Its something that develops based on the person and their experiences. How quickly or slowly this hapens would depend on the person though.
@jjstraka34 Call me optimsitic, but I think that if half of these people actually met and talked with just a couple trans people they'd change their view. A lot of discrimination is based off of fear of what you don't know.
I have a friend who had been married to a man for years. She's my age, and widowed for a few years, and now she's happily living with a woman. No promiscuity, just loving a person.
Same as some men don't like a gay man in the same locker room, afraid they might drop the soap, as if every gay man just can't control his sex drive, while he most likely is just a man who happens to be attracted to other men, not women. That doesn't mean he wants to have sex with everyone he meets, just because that person is male.
I personally am not in the "sexuality is learned and developed" camp, if it exists. I think there might be external influences, but (I don't know if there's hard biological evidence for it) I think people are also born with a certain inclination.
Otherwise, those people who want to cure homosexuality might be right. If it's learned, it can be changed, and I don't know if many gay people agree with that.
I just wanted to remind us that there are so many things we thought were "caused" by education and upbringing, while we now know there are strong genetic predispositions for them.
Like many mental illnesses, for example.
(And please let nobody get me wrong now and accuse me of comparing homosexuality to mental illness
All 400+ members of the House are not allowed in every meeting. You are put on committees by party leadership, and those are the ones you attend. There are Republicans on the committee holding these depositions, and they are pretending there aren't. What they did was nothing short of witness intimidation. Straight-up mob tactics. Moreover, more than one of them brought cell phones inside, which is totally illegal.
I heard they bought pizza for everybody though...
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/brave-freedom-fighters-having-pizza-republicans-storming-closed-hearing-order-dominos
https://theconversation.com/have-we-become-too-paranoid-about-mass-shootings-125364
The reality is that no, mass shootings are vanishingly rare even in the United States, and represent a tiny fraction of our admittedly high gun violence death toll. Being afraid of violent crime in general can be perfectly reasonable depending on your neighborhood and demographics, but mass shootings specifically are a minor threat compared to the others.
A 10-car pileup will involve more deaths than a 2-car collision, but the 10-car pileup is so incredibly rare, and the 2-car collision is so incredibly common, that it makes more sense to worry about being in a 2-car collision.
Odds are, if you do get shot to death, it's not going to be in a mass shooting. Those are not the primary cause of gun-related deaths.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/matt-gaetz-scif-trump-impeachment-inquiry-republicans-storm-a9168646.html
Tldr: Republicans are totally involved in the impeachment and this was a stupid stunt for the stupid reality TV president and his followers who are being lied to by conservative media.
Essex Police: 39 people found dead in lorry container - BBC News
You really just have to look to Canada on how successful it actually is.
But you can look to Canada to see how successful single payer health care system is, but you all have been piddling that away so.
He also wants to expunge all former convictions, which is even more laudable.
I agree, but not 100%. I'm sure some pretty nasty dealers got put away for selling weed because that's just what they were caught selling. I'd agree with a case-by-case reevaluation though...
https://thetexan.news/breaking-judge-grants-joint-medical-decision-making-in-younger-case-issues-gag-order-on-father/
As usual, there's more going on here than what we're being told. The judge wouldn't have ruled for joint medical decisions if this was a clear-cut case either way. I feel so sorry for this poor kid...
As far as I'm aware from what I've read absolutely no decision had even been made yet on whether to put him on blockers or not. The mother was simply seeking an evaluation at a clinic that specializes in this field. The reaction from the right has been as if the kid was going to be wheeled into surgery at any second. Moreover, the reaction for the Governor of Texas promising intervention reminds me ALOT of what the Bush brothers did in regards to Terri Schiavo. In other words, small government conservatism gets thrown out the window at the drop of a hat to placate the religious right, and the highest levels of power in the Republican Party will go so far as to intervene in the lives of specific individual familes to pander to their voters.
My prediction?? In ten years time, the kid will turn out to have been transgender, his/her mother is going to get death threats for the foreseeable future, and not a single person pushing so hard for his/her "well-being" will have an ounce of remorse or apology if they turn out to have been wrong in retrospect. They'll just pretend it never happened.
I can see where you're coming from but I'm just not sure that these kinds of decisions should be made for a seven year old. Identities are not formed that young. My daughter is a tom-boy, likes playing basketball, and has never been interested in dolls, make-up or anything else traditionally 'feminine' but that hardly means that she's going to 'identify' as a boy. It's interesting that nobody has a problem with a tom-boyish girl these days and there's little, if any, pressure for them to 'transition' but when it's the other way around, it's seen in a completely different light. Why is that?
I'm not an expert on the subject. I just think this idea that the mother is some kind of monster who is basically engaging in this exercise to prove some "political" point is stretching it at best and outright projection at worst. It's amazing how anything that is seen as being in favor deference to gay or trans rights is immediately dismissed as "political" and opposition to them is just seen as normal, default behavior. They won't stop at 50/50 decision making. They're going to move to destroy the mother. Give an inch, they'll take 100 miles. Again, NOTHING has been done to this child yet from a medical perspective.
I'm not saying that at all, I'm just not also jumping to the conclusion that the dad is some testosterone laden Neanderthal that can't live with the fact that his 'boy' is a bit too 'feminine'. Conclusions can be jumped to either way...
Whatever the case may be, by FAR the most political thing about it is State Representatives and the Governor vowing to personally intervene in a family dispute. It's about the farthest thing from "small government" one can imagine. It is now the mother vs. the entire Texas government. I simply don't trust the people the father is aligned with. I've seen what they've done in the past, and again, I mention Terri Schaivo. Their attempt to nullify the husband's legal guardianship and her express wishes (including Bill Frist diagnosing her as not being in a vegatative state from the Senate floor) back then was nothing short of ghoulish.