As I've written before, I have known several transsexuals and dated two of them, in the full sense of the word. Just to reiterate, I support fair and just treatment to gender dysphoric people and would approve raising my taxes to provide for their needs.
But two points are being lost here.
1) Gender dysphoria is not part of "normal human …
As I've written before, I have known several transsexuals and dated two of them, in the full sense of the word. Just to reiterate, I support fair and just treatment to gender dysphoric people and would approve raising my taxes to provide for their needs.
But two points are being lost here.
1) Gender dysphoria is not part of "normal human variation" like left-handedness and homosexuality, both of which appear at about 5% across time and culture. Gender dysphoria is a medical condition, and not just because it has an entry in the big book (as homosexuality did until 1974). This is not a dodge into definitions; the dysphoric are suffering with a pain of feeling incongruous with their biology, suffering that is only relieved by medical intervention. Genuine dysphoria is extremely rare, one in 30,000 male births and 100,000 female births. It is not at a level that demands changes to language and law, aside from prohibitions on discrimination.
2) At this time there is a movement of people who claim not to be of the opposite pole of gender but somewhere between the two; this is not a medical condition, it is a fad and its members, in all my experience, are nothing more than attention-seekers, demanding privileged treatment, demanding an extra ration of special attention from everyone. Online they are the angriest and most unbalanced people I have ever seen, unable to change the subject. And they demand to be under the "trans" umbrella, which they do not deserve. Gender is not a continuum; gender is binary. And no I am not talking about pink vs. blue or football vs. dolls, I am talking about identity.
There are a few people in the world who have two heads. We don't need to specify "monocephalous" when talking about everyone else, why do we need to refer to the overwhelming majority who are gender-congruent as "cis?"
"At this time there is a movement of people who claim not to be of the opposite pole of gender but somewhere between the two; this is not a medical condition, it is a fad and its members, in all my experience, are nothing more than attention-seekers"
Yeah, again, I think we're almost completely in agreement on non-binary people. This conversation just doesn't include them. I'll be as charitable as I can and say that rather than just being attention seekers I think some non-binary people are genuinely confused by being exposed to gender ideology at an early age. And, in the case of non-binary women, are trying to escape the expectations that a misogynistic society places on them.
I haven't written about non-binary people mainly because I'm trying to figure out how to do so without triggering any laser beams. But I will.
But when you talk about identity, no, I don't think gender identity is binary at all. There aren't two gender identities, there are ~8 billion. That's why I think it's so ridiculous to claim to be non-binary. Of course you are. Everybody is! Who is the man or woman at the 100% end of the "gender spectrum"?! There's a sex binary (male/female) and there's a gender spectrum so broad that it's best referred to as personality.
Of course we're all individually different. I'm a man who has zero interest in sports and who used to do cross-stitch. Does that compromise my biological maleness? No. It's just outside societal expectations that boys play football, work on cars, and lust after women.
A woman I knew online was at a teachers' meeting for the women at her school. At the end she piped "goodnight ladies!" and out in the parking lot one of the other women hurried to her and whispered that one of the other teachers is "nonbinary" and took offense at being called a "lady." What did she expect? Probably to get her own Special goodbye. This makes me sick.
I don't think you can talk about the new "trans" thing without bringing these piggybackers into the discussion. They are after all a few hundred times more numerous than actually dysphoric people. But you should scrupulously avoid mentioning them on Medium because you'll be banned in a heartbeat; Medium has elected to coddle these people and even using a gendered pronoun will get you ejected. I lost a thousand dollars a month income when one of the nastiest people in my decades online reported me for refusing to use "they." As if I had any reason to refer to her at all, I had already blocked her.
And it's the "they" thing that gives me a dog in this fight. On social networks I simply block those with they/them profiles, but these irritating people are demanding we drop gendered pronouns from the language. When I read the singular they it feels like walking into a telephone pole. It's not the hill I want to die on but I will never use it.
"When I read the singular they it feels like walking into a telephone pole"
Also, I love this line and feel exactly the same way. I'm actually in favour of a new gender neutral pronoun. But I'm not sacrificing the very useful "they."
We already have a gender-neutral singular but people call it "dehumanizing," The word is "it." OK if you refer to people like goldfish they're going to take offense. Well ... you don't want he or she, I m not using they for one person, that only leaves it.
The irony is that the same people who'll turn themselves inside out at "it" will proudly refer to themselves, and to me, as "queer," which is to say, defective and they will never honor my offense at it. NoooOOOOOoooo, it's my issue, I suffer from "internalized homophobia."
"The irony is that the same people who'll turn themselves inside out at "it" will proudly refer to themselves, and to me, as "queer," which is to say, defective and they will never honor my offense at it."
I've always thought it so strange that "queer" became, not only a term people used to refer to themselves, but a separate letter in the ever expanding alphabet soup.
And absolutely, isn't it interesting how the people who are so sensitive about labels think nothing about applying labels to other people, regardless of the feelings of those people.
I hear over and over again how people find terms like queer and cis offensive, yet I've never seen any of the "be kind" people respecting that.
"Probably to get her own Special goodbye. This makes me sick."
😅Every time I hear about something like this I'm reminded of this video (https://youtu.be/bX9FgvXZXZ8) from all the way back in 2019. Yes, I absolutely think she wanted her own goodbye. And indeed I think that most of these narcissists want the entire world to be tailored to their feelings in that moment. Neo-pronouns are another perfect example of this.
But yeah, I do consider transgender people separate from non-binary people, just as I consider the LGB community separate from trans people. There is overlap, and some people in each group have been convinced that they're all fighting the same battles, but the mindset and aims of these groups are meaningfully different.
I've seen a few people write about pronouns on Medium without being banned, so I think it's possible. But yeah, it'll take some care to write something that can't be mischaracterised as "hateful" by people acting in bad faith. I'll figure it out eventually!
I have long understood that men and women all have various elements of attributes associated with masculinity and femininely without cause for more than two genders.
I understand your use of "gender spectrum" for degrees of conformance to convention and pereception, but it is a large enough change in thinking to give people pause.
"I have long understood that men and women all have various elements of attributes associated with masculinity and femininely without cause for more than two genders"
When you say "gender" here are you referring to the terms male and female or man and woman or masculine and feminine? Again, this is the kind linguistic precision we need to try to really pin down. Here's my framing:
There are two sexes. Male and female. The words for these sexes when referring to human beings are man and woman. You can't be anything other than a man or a woman because you can't be anything other than a male or a female.
But gender, at least as it's used in most of these discussions, refers to the stereotypical expectations placed on men and women. We could use words like masculinity and femininity here. Masculinity and femininity clearly are spectrums. I have some masculine traits and some feminine traits but I'm still a man.
Everybody will have some varying combination of "gendered" traits, and I think it would be positive if we truly embraced greater expressions of femininity in men and masculinity in women. As long as we don't lose track of what men and women are in the process. Not sure if that clarifies things or not😅
Reality War. I like that. More to the point than my own term for it, Epistemological Crisis, which also includes the deprecation of truth on the right.
When we look back on this era, should anyone survive it, the disease of the age won't be Covid or HIV, it'll be relativism,
As I've written before, I have known several transsexuals and dated two of them, in the full sense of the word. Just to reiterate, I support fair and just treatment to gender dysphoric people and would approve raising my taxes to provide for their needs.
But two points are being lost here.
1) Gender dysphoria is not part of "normal human variation" like left-handedness and homosexuality, both of which appear at about 5% across time and culture. Gender dysphoria is a medical condition, and not just because it has an entry in the big book (as homosexuality did until 1974). This is not a dodge into definitions; the dysphoric are suffering with a pain of feeling incongruous with their biology, suffering that is only relieved by medical intervention. Genuine dysphoria is extremely rare, one in 30,000 male births and 100,000 female births. It is not at a level that demands changes to language and law, aside from prohibitions on discrimination.
2) At this time there is a movement of people who claim not to be of the opposite pole of gender but somewhere between the two; this is not a medical condition, it is a fad and its members, in all my experience, are nothing more than attention-seekers, demanding privileged treatment, demanding an extra ration of special attention from everyone. Online they are the angriest and most unbalanced people I have ever seen, unable to change the subject. And they demand to be under the "trans" umbrella, which they do not deserve. Gender is not a continuum; gender is binary. And no I am not talking about pink vs. blue or football vs. dolls, I am talking about identity.
There are a few people in the world who have two heads. We don't need to specify "monocephalous" when talking about everyone else, why do we need to refer to the overwhelming majority who are gender-congruent as "cis?"
"At this time there is a movement of people who claim not to be of the opposite pole of gender but somewhere between the two; this is not a medical condition, it is a fad and its members, in all my experience, are nothing more than attention-seekers"
Yeah, again, I think we're almost completely in agreement on non-binary people. This conversation just doesn't include them. I'll be as charitable as I can and say that rather than just being attention seekers I think some non-binary people are genuinely confused by being exposed to gender ideology at an early age. And, in the case of non-binary women, are trying to escape the expectations that a misogynistic society places on them.
I haven't written about non-binary people mainly because I'm trying to figure out how to do so without triggering any laser beams. But I will.
But when you talk about identity, no, I don't think gender identity is binary at all. There aren't two gender identities, there are ~8 billion. That's why I think it's so ridiculous to claim to be non-binary. Of course you are. Everybody is! Who is the man or woman at the 100% end of the "gender spectrum"?! There's a sex binary (male/female) and there's a gender spectrum so broad that it's best referred to as personality.
Of course we're all individually different. I'm a man who has zero interest in sports and who used to do cross-stitch. Does that compromise my biological maleness? No. It's just outside societal expectations that boys play football, work on cars, and lust after women.
A woman I knew online was at a teachers' meeting for the women at her school. At the end she piped "goodnight ladies!" and out in the parking lot one of the other women hurried to her and whispered that one of the other teachers is "nonbinary" and took offense at being called a "lady." What did she expect? Probably to get her own Special goodbye. This makes me sick.
I don't think you can talk about the new "trans" thing without bringing these piggybackers into the discussion. They are after all a few hundred times more numerous than actually dysphoric people. But you should scrupulously avoid mentioning them on Medium because you'll be banned in a heartbeat; Medium has elected to coddle these people and even using a gendered pronoun will get you ejected. I lost a thousand dollars a month income when one of the nastiest people in my decades online reported me for refusing to use "they." As if I had any reason to refer to her at all, I had already blocked her.
And it's the "they" thing that gives me a dog in this fight. On social networks I simply block those with they/them profiles, but these irritating people are demanding we drop gendered pronouns from the language. When I read the singular they it feels like walking into a telephone pole. It's not the hill I want to die on but I will never use it.
"When I read the singular they it feels like walking into a telephone pole"
Also, I love this line and feel exactly the same way. I'm actually in favour of a new gender neutral pronoun. But I'm not sacrificing the very useful "they."
We already have a gender-neutral singular but people call it "dehumanizing," The word is "it." OK if you refer to people like goldfish they're going to take offense. Well ... you don't want he or she, I m not using they for one person, that only leaves it.
The irony is that the same people who'll turn themselves inside out at "it" will proudly refer to themselves, and to me, as "queer," which is to say, defective and they will never honor my offense at it. NoooOOOOOoooo, it's my issue, I suffer from "internalized homophobia."
Door's over there. Don't darken it again.
"The irony is that the same people who'll turn themselves inside out at "it" will proudly refer to themselves, and to me, as "queer," which is to say, defective and they will never honor my offense at it."
I've always thought it so strange that "queer" became, not only a term people used to refer to themselves, but a separate letter in the ever expanding alphabet soup.
And absolutely, isn't it interesting how the people who are so sensitive about labels think nothing about applying labels to other people, regardless of the feelings of those people.
I hear over and over again how people find terms like queer and cis offensive, yet I've never seen any of the "be kind" people respecting that.
"Probably to get her own Special goodbye. This makes me sick."
😅Every time I hear about something like this I'm reminded of this video (https://youtu.be/bX9FgvXZXZ8) from all the way back in 2019. Yes, I absolutely think she wanted her own goodbye. And indeed I think that most of these narcissists want the entire world to be tailored to their feelings in that moment. Neo-pronouns are another perfect example of this.
But yeah, I do consider transgender people separate from non-binary people, just as I consider the LGB community separate from trans people. There is overlap, and some people in each group have been convinced that they're all fighting the same battles, but the mindset and aims of these groups are meaningfully different.
I've seen a few people write about pronouns on Medium without being banned, so I think it's possible. But yeah, it'll take some care to write something that can't be mischaracterised as "hateful" by people acting in bad faith. I'll figure it out eventually!
"Every time I hear about something like this I'm reminded of this video (https://youtu.be/bX9FgvXZXZ8)"
Jesus.
I'd have left that meeting on a stretcher or in handcuffs. Maybe both.
Hi my name is Blither Ingidiot, he/him.
I have long understood that men and women all have various elements of attributes associated with masculinity and femininely without cause for more than two genders.
I understand your use of "gender spectrum" for degrees of conformance to convention and pereception, but it is a large enough change in thinking to give people pause.
"I have long understood that men and women all have various elements of attributes associated with masculinity and femininely without cause for more than two genders"
When you say "gender" here are you referring to the terms male and female or man and woman or masculine and feminine? Again, this is the kind linguistic precision we need to try to really pin down. Here's my framing:
There are two sexes. Male and female. The words for these sexes when referring to human beings are man and woman. You can't be anything other than a man or a woman because you can't be anything other than a male or a female.
But gender, at least as it's used in most of these discussions, refers to the stereotypical expectations placed on men and women. We could use words like masculinity and femininity here. Masculinity and femininity clearly are spectrums. I have some masculine traits and some feminine traits but I'm still a man.
Everybody will have some varying combination of "gendered" traits, and I think it would be positive if we truly embraced greater expressions of femininity in men and masculinity in women. As long as we don't lose track of what men and women are in the process. Not sure if that clarifies things or not😅
Reality War. I like that. More to the point than my own term for it, Epistemological Crisis, which also includes the deprecation of truth on the right.
When we look back on this era, should anyone survive it, the disease of the age won't be Covid or HIV, it'll be relativism,
But that's just me being *subjective*