That aside, I don’t care if they’re fake, the AI-generated photos of Trump being arrested are hysterical.
I think we're hitting a point where the issues confronting the LGBT community need to be fragmented. The L's, G's, and B's are confronting very different issues than the T's, and while there's a sliver of overlap, the legislative agenda is very clearly targeting a subsegment that cannot "pass" (ie, you can clock a trans person, but for the LGB segment, there's plausible deniability, like Lindsey Graham). The LGB folks may tinker with gender, but the T's are calling the entire construct into question. I think the trans folks could reasonably say "can we do gender neutral competitions" or "can there be a weirdo open" segment of the Olympics, but they haven't. The issue seems to be money (and it cannot be emphasized enough how absolutely tiny this population is, we're literally talking about a few dozen cases nationwide), in that some students would get scholarship money or whatever. There's a very, very VERY stupid idea that LeBron James could just shave, wear a skirt and declare himself trans and dominate the WNBA (ie, you could compete in the sport of the opposite gender without being treated for dysmorphia, identifying with that gender, or undergoing transition) and that by and large strikes me as bullshit. Eric Cartman isn't trying to fuck up children's sports. This is similar to the argument that you could declare yourself trans, and go to the women's bathroom and...do whatever the fuck is apparently inappropriate there, but isn't otherwise considered assault? I think cheating in sports is pretty clear, and the idea that a trans person is somehow disproportionately advantaged, and that this unfair advantage demands legislation is...a bit removed from reality. Instead of treating these fringe cases as just that, and handling them with the normal mechanisms for fringe cases, the fuckface brigade want's to write trans laws around kids sports...and then why stop at sports....why not just ban all trans everything, because "penises on girls make my pee pee confused and I don't want to explain that to children." And the ones who kill themselves or suffer wildly deeper mental illness due to dysmorphia and the other nightmares around transition can just be written off because...dick stuff? I think the LGBT community has learned the wrong lessons in terms of addressing their issues, and one of them is very much a "no exceptions, no quarter, no leeway whatsoever", because when the LGBT communities formed, it was during the AIDS epidemic, and that solidarity was integral to survival. Also, it's not like there haven't been attacks, lynchings, shootings and some truly horrific shit outside of that. Are there nuanced arguments to make with trans kids and when they get life-altering care for gender dysphoria? Absolutely. However, by and large, we're talking about less than 3% of the population, and probably closer to .4%, which is about 1.4 million Americans. That 1.4m is heavily skewed young, because an entire generation of trans folks was closeted, died of HIV, etc. Ms. Jenner was only a thing in the last few years, before that you just had To Wong Fu, and Tootsie, and....yeah, no. So, even if we're talking about 700,000 children (we're not), less than 3500 of them are serious enough athletes for this to be even a mild consideration. Can you just one day declare yourself the opposite gender and pursue whatever advantages that entails? Probably not, or if you try, reasonable objections would occur, and as far as I know those cases are few and far between (or are laughable, like Florida man). I think therein lies the nuanced argument that seems to be so elusive. For some reason, the trans community triggers a powerful disgust and derision reaction, and that seems to be driving these conversations, as opposed to what the fuck they need to not die, be mentally ill, victimized, etc.
The More Plates More Dates guy has broken it down pretty extensively how both situations still give biological males advantages. Millions of years of evolution isn’t going to be turned on its head by simply giving preteens puberty blockers. While the actual numbers of trans women in female sports is relatively low, for now, Crown is right that all records are going to fall in time. Even if it remained a low participation rate, which with growing percentages of the youth identifying as trans this is highly unlikely, you’ll eventually usurp biological women’s achievements, with dick swinging men’s. Congratulations, such progress. Since a lot of school districts (the state) have policies to hide students’ gender identities from parents they feel might not be accepting they’ve already crossed that bridge in the worst possible way. No way were you ever going to pitch hiding information from parents and usurping parents’ decision making and not get wild push back.
I would go so far as to say that LeBron has enough talent to dominate the WNBA even without the skirt.
Right, but no one will have any of these conversations if the perception is, “compromise = weakness in value systems.”
Which frankly I believe is doing more harm to their cause than good. I’m pretty open minded and supportive of people to live their life, but I also think the pendulum is swinging way too far in terms of putting kids and adolescents on hormone blockers. And yet just saying I question that makes me “the enemy” I guess. As far as the GOP, I’m sure if they ever actually met the average trans person they wouldn’t even know it. Instead, they use the drag queens made up like circus clowns ( which, admittedly weirds me out a bit ) to illustrate their point. Kind of the low hanging, uh, fruit.
The problem is that they really have no choice. Republicans don't want a compromise, they want the fight. If they can make political campaigns about "the queers" then they don't have to run in campaigns that are about healthcare or wages or whatever else. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile, because they don't actually care about the inch, they care about the point where the LGBT crowd says "no further," regardless of where that is.
I got the more debaucherous stuff of Pride Parades. Decades of being forced into the closet, that pendulum is going to swing. You are going to have people wanting to put their thumb in the busybodiy Christian’s’ eyes for the mistreatment. Make them catch the vapors seeing assless chaps and bondage gear strutting down Main Street. Now the kid thing gets weird. I got and support the story hour concept. Normalize the normalness of drag queens with innocuous child story book readings. Trying to normalize the lifestyle with kids by showing them the overtly sexual side of the concept of drag queens by putting on shows for toddlers? Giving them dollar tips to play along? A bridge too far. Not saying they should be banned or what Desantis is doing is right, but I get the outrage to it and it doesn’t surprise me people that would be offended by it want something done about it. Got to stick to every gun or else the republicans might gain an inch? Come on, let’s use some common sense.
Perhaps you’re right, but at the same time it tends to push away the average “live and let live” kind of person. Which I believe the majority of people to be in the long run. That’s one of those things where I land on both sides of the fence. We had a kerfuffle about it here where one of the county legislators ( a real conservative douchebag ) wanted to defund the entire library system over it. What he failed or refuse to understand is, the library is for everyone. It’s not something I’d take my kids to, I honestly don’t see the point or think it’s appropriate, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be allowed. That’s a parental decision. It’s a big world, and I try to remember that. Doesn’t mean it’s always easy.
You are not wrong, and the therapy for trans kids is very new, and the long-term implications aren't well understood. Also, some of this has to do with global sperm rates declining (and presumably testosterone levels, but that varies wildly). https://mentalhealthcommission.ca/resource/transgender-people-and-suicide-fact-sheet/ The base assumption is the benefits outweigh the risks, because the risks are primarily driven by stupefying mental health outcomes (namely suicide, followed by every ensuing bad outcome, down to higher rates of autism). Is it a fair opinion to have? Sure, I guess, but if it's influenced by a bunch of Fox News/Maga/Q-tard bullshit around grooming, you can see the objection. If it's influenced by personal experience or some level of medical/biological familiarity, or a genuine openness and concern, I think the conversation gets much further. The references to evolution are dog whistles for anti-trans rhetoric. There's 8 billion of us now, and never in history has a species had this level of self-control over it's reproductive success, nor has it been subject to influence by so many different things (molecules, compounds, chemicals, etc.). Evolution is great for us understanding how we got from ape to Abraham, but human history is 8000 years more or less, and that's...123 generations, the most recent 4 or 5 as wildly the most successful. We're not seeing the evolutionary advantage in terms of genes, as much as we're seeing an environment and behavioral set WILDLY AND STUPIDLY advantageous. The idea that "the world's strongest man is stronger than the world's strongest woman" as a sign of some evolutionary advantage that can be universally applicable is wrong, and all too easy to mis-apply to a total population. This all boils down to gender. Gender is a social construct. Anything you consider inherently masculine or feminine has an exception, it's not absolute. And if it's not absolute, it's a question of fidelity...or in some cases now, zealotry. Should gender roles be so rigidly enforced in our culture? I think the answer is no. Should we view alternative expressions of gender in kids a bit more kindly? I think yes, especially because the longer they can live in that gray area of gender, the less traumatic transition is, and the more time they have to mature. I look at just about anything the GOP is fighting against right now as an inherent losing issue. They stir up a "culture war", with no real plan of what winning is, or definition of what the problem is (the definition of woke being elusive, for example), and to the prejudiced among their base, it's a dog whistled appeal. To the folks in the middle, they run to the media with these weird fringe cases or one-off scenarios and howl that "these transgendered frogs are coming for your kids Christmas money!" to rile them up. When reality hopefully sinks in, and those cases never actually materialize or occur in the way these folks cry they will, the whole thing feels silly. Remember the gay marriage argument that men would want to marry goats or blow up dolls, and thus an entire swath of the world couldn't formalize their relationships? It's all still using the Satanic Panic playbook, and it seems to have a diminishing value of return. The appeal of the good ol days is inherently hollow, especially in the information age, so they rely on fear and outrage. The main objective is to avoid any serious discussion on labor, economics or the state of capitalism, because that simply cannot happen. I say that because...the kids are largely on board. Most of the younger crowd are supportive of the various lifestyles, and don't automatically recoil. Remember, there's a new generation of kids for whom having two moms or two dads or a mom/dad becoming the opposite is the norm. The representation in media is now fully their experience, they are not old enough to remember Will and Grace or MASH (seriously, y'all fuckers forgot?). I think that's the missing piece to the drag queen argument: the kids SEE these people on Drag Race or youtube, and they are entertained (just like everyone else was...fuck, technically there were drag performances in "White Christmas" for God's sakes). It's bizarre to think of drag queens reading to children in the same vein as entering a dispensary and seeing more marijuana on a retail shelf than the movie "Half Baked" could portray...it wasn't how we grew up, and it feels weird, but it's the reality for millions of kids now. I also have to imagine the drag folks doing this are fucking aware they are presenting a lifestyle to children. One of the fundamental elements of this confusion is how sexual orientation is separate from sexual behavior. Ie, the LGBT folks are a lifestyle, and they are well aware of how not to persuade people to join them. When my niece thinks she's gay, I cannot fathom she's thinking about sex, but more around how she likes the Owl House and her and her friends relate to one another.
I think this is the tipping point. When there are attempts to undermine parents’ relationships with their children, there is a massive pushback and consequential overreaction. The whole, “You don’t have to tell you’re parents you’re [XYZ]” is a breach of social contract and I wouldn’t be happy if my kid’s school pulled that shit. Whether or not some parents would be more tolerant than others is irrelevant. It’s not the state/system’s job to interfere unless they’re some kind of looming or imminent harm. And I mean actual harm, not pretend “harm”.
Except there are a few areas that the T community is trying to tie gender roles to biology. Sports and hormone treatments are the most prominent. If it was only about gender and gender is only a social construct then there would really be no need pumping yourself with hormones. Live as a tomboy or drag queen whatevs. I’m also not against treatments people with gender dysphoria are suffering and should be helped, whatever that looks like. What I take issue with on this topic is the outright sprint in one direction, hormones, hormone blockers, radical surgery, and any questioning of this path is bigoted transphobic dog whistles. New frontiers in psychology have not had the best track record throughout history. See the original treatment of homosexuality and lobotomies as examples. Surgeries and hormone blockers to delay puberty are radical interventions that without much research, relatively speaking, could be as barbaric as lobotomies. People claim with scant long term evidence that puberty blockers can easily be reversed. There are no free lunches in nature and subverting hundreds of thousands of years of evolution with chemicals isn’t going to end well (homo sapiens are well over 8 thousand years old). We will fall onto the correct course of treatment over time, like leaving homosexuals the fuck alone instead of conversion therapy, but the myopic focus on what are now political courses of treatment is not going to end well. The sports subject is the most ridiculous because you are told to disregard simple scientific truths. Beyond two Olympic caliber athletes we are talking your average male and female on a basic level. It wasn’t too long ago on this board I mentioned I never really got over the sting of rejection from females, fake phone numbers or real ones only to be stood up. I was comforted by the girls on this forum that it wasn’t me, every woman had to be on guard as to not get overpowered and raped or murdered by rejecting and pissing off the wrong man. I just happened to be a man. This sentiment was a subplot to the whole #metoo movement. A shitty reality women do have to deal with. Yet these same physical differences somehow stop existing when it’s a trans female in women’s sports? Really?
Here's a good example. Remember the "don't say gay" bill down in Florida, and Republicans were all "it only applies to K-3, and you guys are a bunch of groomers if you oppose it, and we can all agree it's reasonable not to talk about sex and gender to children, even though the law is way more broad than we're admitting to"? Well they've already proposed expanding it: This isn't about solving some problem that arrived on their doorstep and then being satisfied with the solution, this is about going out to find a minority to hate, and attacking them for as long as it is politically useful.
This is why everyone should just stay out of it and let the kids, parents and doctors decide the best path forward for each person. What do you or me know about the science of all this? Leave it up to the professionals and the people involved to decide what is or isn't risky. Maybe an extreme treatment is necessary if the kid is having severe emotional issues. For someone else therapy, wait and see would be the better approach. My argument is that the state shouldn't be involved in dictating what treatment should be available to someone. Also, conservatives are not doing this in good faith. They don't really care about these kids. They just see another issue to whip up the base with.
That is applicable to any political stance about anything these days. At this point I don't give a shit what any politician's motivations are because they're all full of shit anyway.
Whew. Ok, so....you're clearly working through a lot here. This is where the trans community (about 1.4m, nationwide, according to: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/transgender-population-by-state) needs to be given a LOT of leeway. Some of them think gender is dumb, and wish it wasn't a thing...this is sort of where the nonbinary contingent live. Some of them think gender is rad and they were just handed the wrong one and want to go swapsies, please and thank you. Some of them couldn't give a shit less, but their body feels wrong to them, and they need to switch genders for their body to feel appropriate. As a group, it's incredibly difficult to summarize or lump them together. It's also...yeah, dude it's transgender, not necessarily transsexual. Very few trans folks undergo hormone therapy (lots of them aren't healthy enough to do so), and those that do are under pretty high levels of medical vigilance. My partner is required to do therapy, and has quarterly physicals, because some of the medications are "off-label usage", ie, using testosterone for transition as opposed to the usage it was designed for. By your logic, there's no need for fake tits, either. I cannot imagine anyone getting hormones without a dysphoria diagnosis, and for most places you need to be working with a therapist for 6 months (or more) before you can get actual medical (ie not therapy) treatment for dysphoria. I agree with you, leaping straight to hormones is wildly inappropriate and the long term impacts are frightening. The scariest people to me aren't the anti-trans religious fanatics, it's the pro-trans individuals that feel the need to virtue signal so hard they can compel a child into some situations it cannot nor should not navigate. The "protect trans kids" movement has to go beyond "ignore gender" and "pretend anything other than cisgender, heteronormative relationships don't exist", and it must include empowering parents, doctors, community stakeholders and the kids themselves to make choices on transition and gender expression. This isn't exactly a new problem, but it does seem to be tinged with privilege and that can be hard to ignore. I have a LOT less faith in the biology as a constraint than you do, and largely history has enough counter-examples to make it a debate. The trans kids in sports is a fringe issue when compared to the incredible challenges trans folks (especially kids) face getting medical care, mental health care, and community support (I'm referring generally to teachers, and any group that supports kids).