General observation: whether it's the history of mathematics, contemporary software development, postmodernism, or this "trans" fad, the invention of new terms for non-new concepts should always arouse suspicion. You're being manipulated, and language is being used as a weapon.
These people are as obsessed with their gender identities as…
General observation: whether it's the history of mathematics, contemporary software development, postmodernism, or this "trans" fad, the invention of new terms for non-new concepts should always arouse suspicion. You're being manipulated, and language is being used as a weapon.
These people are as obsessed with their gender identities as RKBA nutters are with their guns. Transphobic (afraid of them? I don't think so), transantagonisic, trans woman/man .... can you imagine how tiresome these people must be in person? Do you think it's possible to change the subject?
Note too that one of them concedes openly that not all "trans" people are dysphoric. For those who are not, I don't need to invent a new word, we already have one.
"Fakes"
Truly dysphoric people are suffering and, unlike past attitudes toward homosexuality, the pain is not from bigotry, it's internal. They deserve our support and respect. I can't say the same for the other 99.9% who are clearly in it for attention and who urge young girls to get surgery. The activists whom Steve wrote about (like the one on Medium flipping off the reader) have a lot to answer for.
"the invention of new terms for non-new concepts should always arouse suspicion. You're being manipulated, and language is being used as a weapon."
100%. It's a sure sign that academia has infused itself into the debate which pretty much ensures that post-modernism can't be far behind.
There are an awful lot of words in the English language. They're well understood and versatile enough to handle any situation. We don't need to redefine them or enforce new ones by diktat.
I don't mind language changing organically, but when there's any sense that I can't use ordinary words the way I choose, that sets off alarm bells.
Well, when we discovered that protons and neutrons had substructure we needed a new word for the triplet particles comprising them, but James Joyce came to the rescue with "three quarks for Muster Mark."
But that's rare.
I would think that postmodernism would collapse under the weight of its ridiculousness. It hasn't yet.
I won't bore anyone with another run-through of my loathing for the singular they, but it's astonishing how many uh people justify it with the exact same arguments, excepting how far back it goes; one person tried to tell me that it goes back to the 11th century, which was Old English.
Judging by Twitter Likes, I have a lot of company.
"can you imagine how tiresome these people must be in person? Do you think it's possible to change the subject?"
OMG, I noticed even in the '90s when running into a trans person became the very occasional thing, how self-obsessed they were. They weren't arrogant and aggressive the way they are today, but boy oh boy could they not shut up about transtioning and trans stuff. There is *nothing* I want to talk about all the time and on the basis of the two or three I knew, I just stayed away from transfolk just because they were so one-track-minded.
When I was still living in CT we had a transwoman join our Pagan group. She was a perfectly lovely person and I liked her but I avoided talking about trans stuff with her, and fortunately she only rarely brought it up, if there was a point to it (I remember she once told a hilarious story about being hassled by a couple of young misogynist guys, so she stepped out of her car, all six feet of her, used her man voice and...hilarity ensued :) ) One day, feeling comfortable enough with her, I asked her about it, and confessed that I'd never wanted to talk with her about it before because of my previous experiences and she kind of rolled her eyes...she knew what I was talking about.
Those early ones were the folks who truly were GD. Many of them today didn't always feel like that regardless of what they say - they're encouraged to tell a certain narrative the way the born-again Christian community doesn't like boring sin stories from new converts - they're subtly encouraged to embellish and exaggerate. An ex-fundy told a discussion forum I was on about it many years ago - this is why you find so many ex-Satanists, Pagans and atheists in the born-again set. Recruitment posts and videos on social media can take the normal pathologies and insecurities of young people and convince them the real problem is GD rather than just being young and trying to figure things out.
One of the very few times I met someone at the gym and went home with him and had sex, the guy was gay and not at all trans-anything. He could communicate, we met several more times, then disappeared.
Years later I ran into him again and went to visit him. He had become a transvestite, wearing bright-colored feminine clothes, and looked , well, pretty weird. We talked for a while but every few minutes he would interject, apropos of nothing,
"my friends like it when I dress up"
Huh? Yeah I'm sure they do.
It was creepy and strange, it didn't matter what we were talking about, somewhere in the back of his mind he was constantly thinking about his impersonations. I left and never contacted him again.
And his eyes looked really weird, myopic, like he was in a different world.
General observation: whether it's the history of mathematics, contemporary software development, postmodernism, or this "trans" fad, the invention of new terms for non-new concepts should always arouse suspicion. You're being manipulated, and language is being used as a weapon.
These people are as obsessed with their gender identities as RKBA nutters are with their guns. Transphobic (afraid of them? I don't think so), transantagonisic, trans woman/man .... can you imagine how tiresome these people must be in person? Do you think it's possible to change the subject?
Note too that one of them concedes openly that not all "trans" people are dysphoric. For those who are not, I don't need to invent a new word, we already have one.
"Fakes"
Truly dysphoric people are suffering and, unlike past attitudes toward homosexuality, the pain is not from bigotry, it's internal. They deserve our support and respect. I can't say the same for the other 99.9% who are clearly in it for attention and who urge young girls to get surgery. The activists whom Steve wrote about (like the one on Medium flipping off the reader) have a lot to answer for.
"the invention of new terms for non-new concepts should always arouse suspicion. You're being manipulated, and language is being used as a weapon."
100%. It's a sure sign that academia has infused itself into the debate which pretty much ensures that post-modernism can't be far behind.
There are an awful lot of words in the English language. They're well understood and versatile enough to handle any situation. We don't need to redefine them or enforce new ones by diktat.
I don't mind language changing organically, but when there's any sense that I can't use ordinary words the way I choose, that sets off alarm bells.
Well, when we discovered that protons and neutrons had substructure we needed a new word for the triplet particles comprising them, but James Joyce came to the rescue with "three quarks for Muster Mark."
But that's rare.
I would think that postmodernism would collapse under the weight of its ridiculousness. It hasn't yet.
I won't bore anyone with another run-through of my loathing for the singular they, but it's astonishing how many uh people justify it with the exact same arguments, excepting how far back it goes; one person tried to tell me that it goes back to the 11th century, which was Old English.
Judging by Twitter Likes, I have a lot of company.
"can you imagine how tiresome these people must be in person? Do you think it's possible to change the subject?"
OMG, I noticed even in the '90s when running into a trans person became the very occasional thing, how self-obsessed they were. They weren't arrogant and aggressive the way they are today, but boy oh boy could they not shut up about transtioning and trans stuff. There is *nothing* I want to talk about all the time and on the basis of the two or three I knew, I just stayed away from transfolk just because they were so one-track-minded.
When I was still living in CT we had a transwoman join our Pagan group. She was a perfectly lovely person and I liked her but I avoided talking about trans stuff with her, and fortunately she only rarely brought it up, if there was a point to it (I remember she once told a hilarious story about being hassled by a couple of young misogynist guys, so she stepped out of her car, all six feet of her, used her man voice and...hilarity ensued :) ) One day, feeling comfortable enough with her, I asked her about it, and confessed that I'd never wanted to talk with her about it before because of my previous experiences and she kind of rolled her eyes...she knew what I was talking about.
Those early ones were the folks who truly were GD. Many of them today didn't always feel like that regardless of what they say - they're encouraged to tell a certain narrative the way the born-again Christian community doesn't like boring sin stories from new converts - they're subtly encouraged to embellish and exaggerate. An ex-fundy told a discussion forum I was on about it many years ago - this is why you find so many ex-Satanists, Pagans and atheists in the born-again set. Recruitment posts and videos on social media can take the normal pathologies and insecurities of young people and convince them the real problem is GD rather than just being young and trying to figure things out.
One of the very few times I met someone at the gym and went home with him and had sex, the guy was gay and not at all trans-anything. He could communicate, we met several more times, then disappeared.
Years later I ran into him again and went to visit him. He had become a transvestite, wearing bright-colored feminine clothes, and looked , well, pretty weird. We talked for a while but every few minutes he would interject, apropos of nothing,
"my friends like it when I dress up"
Huh? Yeah I'm sure they do.
It was creepy and strange, it didn't matter what we were talking about, somewhere in the back of his mind he was constantly thinking about his impersonations. I left and never contacted him again.
And his eyes looked really weird, myopic, like he was in a different world.