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Social Justice Transgender and gender identity discussion

Atelier3 said:
Those things are very rarely in perfect alignment and everybody* moderates their social selves to conform to social norms that are themselves always and everywhere in flux.
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Are you referencing Goffman and dramaturgy (as it’s used in sociology)? Great concept with back stage and front stage self.
en.m.wikipedia.org

Dramaturgy (sociology) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
 
birdup.snaildown said:
Speech is a much better weapon and they are taking it away from us.
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I don't like censorship either, but in this conversation anyway, being asked to use preferred pronouns isn't censorship or an impediment on free speech. And if people want to recognize the right to misgender people, they will have to recognize the right of other folks to consider them rude.

Now, making misgendering someone an actual crime, is a different story.
 
birdup.snaildown said:
Why?
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Individuals are all different and unique. They have personal norms that are unique. Groups are aggregates of individuals but they also have norms. These group norms are a kind of equilibria derived from the competitive assertion of individual norms by the members of that group. It never precisely matches any one individual as individual norms are moderated by processes like social levelling and ostracisation which are rooted in the human desire for social acceptance and integration.

Now sure there can be individual rebels and iconoclasts but they are, by their definition not a part of the community. If you want to participate in a group or community there will inevitably be compromises between your desires and group outcomes. You will self censor and moderate yourself. That’s just the reality of group dynamics. The alternative is really the definition of anarchic nihilism.
 
Are you contributing to that archaic system by resigning yourself to it? Is this any different between you and a racist or a homophobe resigning themselves to what they believe is the "nature of man"? We are between natures. We are a work in progress. Not animals. Not quite what we would like to call human.

Looking at people in a scientific way (like you would study numbers) is useful for certain applications, but it is not the ultimate perspective.

I think people envy transgender people because they have been allowed to free themselves in a way that we cannot. There is no equivalent freedom given to cis people. The same applies to homosexuals. If you're a straight male, you have to act straight. If you're openly gay, you can exist on any part of the spectrum. Straight acting. Gay acting. It doesn't matter.

The whole idea of transgenderism is that people should be allowed to be themselves.

You can't condemn groups for not accepting transgender people and then tell me that it's unrealistic to be myself.
 
Yeast infections are gender neutral and the ingredients found in Monistat are safe and effective for men as well as women, however it's only marketed towards cis women. As a male with a severe yeast infection, does anyone know of a over the counter, gender neutral version of Monistat or do I really have to go pick this up by myself as a cis male? I've the done the research. The answer is NO.

Fuck your gender roles, I need medical help.
 
Good article.

spectator.com.au

The Hansel and Gretel house of transgenderism | The Spectator Australia

I was this week given cause to reflect how many years it has been since I read the story of Hansel and Gretel. I am fifty in just a few months, so it would certainly be over forty years.
spectator.com.au spectator.com.au

I was this week given cause to reflect how many years it has been since I read the story of Hansel and Gretel. I am fifty in just a few months, so it would certainly be over forty years. Yet while scrolling through Twitter, I came across a creepy gender cultist, singing to children about the joy of being found and not lost. My first thought was that this person lived in a house of sweeties.

For those who don’t know the story of Hansel and Gretel, you can Google it, but I’ll summarise either way. This famous 1812 Brothers Grimm tale is of a brother and sister who were abandoned by their weak father and their dominating heartless stepmother in a huge dark forest, due to extreme poverty. Starving and exhausted, the siblings come across a house made of bread and sweeties and begin to feast on it. The evil witch who owns the house lures the unsuspecting starving children inside with the view of fattening them up and eating them. Gretel outsmarts the witch, who meets a fiery end in her own oven. The children then loot the witch’s wealth and find their way back to their father. Their father is deeply repentant, and we are relieved to learn the stepmother has died. We leave the children and their father in a happily ever after scenario.

There is a house made of sweeties being built in our society. It is beautiful on the outside, it is most attractive to vulnerable children, but inside lurks, at best a lucky escape, and at worst a catastrophe. Gender ideology has now saturated our culture and government departments, with little scientific backing but accompanied by a compelling saccharine exterior.

In the transgender debate, we are so often given a story instead of a sensible argument. We are most frequently presented with a beautiful male child who passes seamlessly for a girl. We are told that the beautiful maletrans-identified child has a girl soul, and will grow up, with the help of medical science, to be a woman, their true self. We are encouraged to see with our own eyes, that this child was born in the wrong body.

The latest Human Rights Campaign – a Washington based LGBTIQ organisation – is a perfect example. The online campaign is for the inclusion of trans-identified male children in female sport. The promotional video shows Rebekah, a strikingly attractive sport-loving, feminine presenting male child who we are told is a 14-year-old girl. Rebekah is academic, not very good at sport, but loves the camaraderie of their team. The mother does make a good point by saying that accepting the child in every part of their life as a girl but not in sport, is contradictory. Rebekah finds the questioning of their gender “violating and embarrassing”. Who, we ask ourselves, would violate this innocent child?

With the help of puberty blockers that male child will never develop the sex characteristics of a man and will be able to “pass” well as a “woman”. After years of puberty blockers and then cross-sex hormones, some of the characteristics they may never develop are a full-size penis and testes, fertility and sexual function.

The star of “I am jazz”, Jazz Jenkins, has experienced well-known complications with “gender confirmation surgery” because puberty blockers prevented the development of a full-size penis and testes. This means that there is not enough tissue to create a neovagina, and they have had to use tissue from the stomach lining to create what is referred to, but is not, a “vagina”.



Jazz cuts a sympathetic figure. Many transgender advocates place these young people out front, precisely for this reason. They don’t want us to be frightened. Unfortunately, the saturation of these young feminine males terrifies a lot of gay men, like YouTuber Arty Morty.
Arty often comments that he was a very feminine boy, and it was a painful life. Despite the difficulty of being gender non-conforming, he is now very thankful for being a full-bodied gay man. He is thankful, that in his dark forest of pain and isolation, he didn’t come across this house made of sweeties that is modern gender affirming medicine. Arty and other gay men are wondering if the transitioning of feminine boys into trans girls, is based in our social discomfort with the feminine male child. In other words, in systemic homophobia. In a world of so much talk of systemic discrimination, this is surprisingly not a conversation many are prepared to have.

The thing with sweets, is that they look very appealing, and they give an immediate rush of acceptance and joy, but they contain almost no nutrition. The long difficult path that often awaits a transgender person is shielded from the young by the media and well-funded medical marketing. Given that up to 90% of gender dysphoric children will accept their natal sex through puberty, if encouraged to do so, many are asking why we have taken the “affirmation” path. Are we transitioning children to alleviate our own discomfort? Are we as a society fundamentally uncomfortable with the feminine boy and the masculine girl?

It is no longer a majority of male children that are being enticed into the house of sweeties, and they are not necessarily even gender dysphoric, nor will most of them turn out to be same sex attracted. There is a massive surge in girls identifying as transgender in what has been labelled a social contagion similar to anorexia. There is debate around this increase, but very little government-sponsored research or mainstream media curiosity. In the recent landmark Bell v. Tavistock judgement in the UK (completely ignored by the Australian national broadcaster), the judges found the lack of data analysis and investigation by the gender clinic surrounding the spike in referrals, particularly the ASD component, “surprising."

Surprising is a more amiable conclusion than my implication that a cannibalistic witch is luring the vulnerable with deception. But for Scott Newgent, a 48-year-old trans man, this is not a stretch. Scott, a natal female, engaged in a series of surgeries that literally involved ripping the flesh from his body to feed an industry that gave him little perceivable benefit. He remains living as a transgender person but is fervently against the medical transitioning of children. He wrote in Newsweek about having; “seven surgeries, a pulmonary embolism, an induced stress heart attack, sepsis, a 17-month recurring infection, 16 rounds of antibiotics, three weeks of daily IV antibiotics, arm reconstructive surgery, lung, heart and bladder damage, insomnia, hallucinations, PTSD, $1 million in medical expenses, and loss of home, car, career and marriage.”

Of course, there are some success stories for the current “gender affirming” model of transgender medicine. The early use of puberty blockers in children to treat gender dysphoria is based on the “Dutch Protocol”, a method developed in the Netherlands. The case of patient “B” is cited by the Dutch research team as an early success story. “B” was a female to male transgender person who was one of the first to undergo puberty suppression to treat gender dysphoria. At the 22 year follow up in 2011, the cosmetic results for “B” were perfect. Cosmetic results are not insignificant in transgender medicine, as gender is largely the social and cosmetic expression of sex.

Despite good looks, “B” had persistent difficulties forming relationships with women due to feelings of sexual inadequacy, even in his thirties. Issues of long-term relationship happiness and the importance of sexual function, fertility and family formation are rightly being questioned as beyond the ability of a pre-pubescent child to consent to sacrifice for cosmetic results.

Some LGB activists, like gender dysphoria sufferer Lauren Black, argue that we must give gender non-conforming girls broader options. She advocates for “trashing the old fashioned, regressive stereotypes” that lock people in rigid gender roles. Lauren works to get the message to young dysphoric people that there is an alternative to “altering healthy bodies with drugs and surgeries in an endless quest to become someone that, in the end, you biologically can never be.” Lauren is happily married to her long-term partner and has children. She chooses to cling to these fulfilling realities of her life, refusing s to capitulate to incessant bullying to medicate her condition with hormones or treat it with surgery. Rather, she advocates for wider acceptance of masculine-presenting women and the rejection of defining human sex by gender.


Classic liberals, socialists and feminists are coming to similar conclusions about gender ideology, but with different approaches. The right frequently refers to the “cultural Marxism” that dominates gender ideology, while the gender-critical left sees it more as cultural capitalism. Genuine socialists are materialists after all, and don’t believe in the ethereal concept of a gender soul. They object to the unrestrained capitalist greed of the medical-industrial complex and the commodification of the human body. Radical Feminists oppose gender ideology because it seeks to remove the word “woman” from the biology that defines female reality. The removal of sex-based safeguarding from spaces and sport has long been warned of by heavily cancelled and censored feminists.

Across the political divide, we seem to agree we are dealing with a powerful oligarchy, if it is driven by ideology or greed, it doesn’t much matter to me. If we are to protect children and women’s rights, we need a united front. Such left/right association is being cast by the cultural left as an evil alliance in an increasingly polarised political environment. On the left, gender dissenters are being accused of alignment with the Christian right. Christian centrists like me are being accused by the progressive Christians on my left of abandoning compassion and by the right-wing Christians of capitulating to anti-man feminism.

Having lived on both sides of the political divide, I see the solutions to be found both in the principles of classic liberalism as well as some more traditional left–wing approaches. We need to insist on freedom of speech, separating ideology from government (the secular state), and the rule of law. Also, there is a need for more traditional left-wing restraining of the capitalist powers of the tech oligarchies and the medical industry.
We have to focus our alliance on a human level. Many of us know what it is like to be lost and alone in a dark forest. Hansel and Gretel is a human story of loneliness, abandonment and vulnerability. The house of sweeties is the glittering promise of salvation for children who lack an alternative source of nutrition. The witch is not transgenderism, or gender dysphoria, or gender nonconformity, but the lurking devouring monster that awaits children when they are abandoned by adults. We mustn’t continue to allow safeguarding to be removed around children’s education and safety. We need to listen to the Gretels, to Arty, Scott, Lauren and the growing ranks of de-transitioners, who have escaped, not entirely unscathed, from the house of sweeties. Most importantly we must equip our children with all the resources they need to find their way through the dark forest, to their adult selves.
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birdup.snaildown said:
Are you contributing to that archaic system by resigning yourself to it? Is this any different between you and a racist or a homophobe resigning themselves to what they believe is the "nature of man"? We are between natures. We are a work in progress. Not animals. Not quite what we would like to call human.

Looking at people in a scientific way (like you would study numbers) is useful for certain applications, but it is not the ultimate perspective.

I think people envy transgender people because they have been allowed to free themselves in a way that we cannot. There is no equivalent freedom given to cis people. The same applies to homosexuals. If you're a straight male, you have to act straight. If you're openly gay, you can exist on any part of the spectrum. Straight acting. Gay acting. It doesn't matter.

The whole idea of transgenderism is that people should be allowed to be themselves.

You can't condemn groups for not accepting transgender people and then tell me that it's unrealistic to be myself.
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I’ve been thinking about my answer to this one for a while. Mainly because at a superficial level my answer is going to let you charge me with being some kind of a bigot.

I don’t think we can or should allow unfettered freedom for everyone to ‘be themselves’ in a way that is excessively detrimental to the institutions of society. Now my problem here is that I am equally a liberal, a utilitarian and a conservative. I believe very strongly in individual freedoms but also in the wisdom embedded in social institutions. Although both individuals and institutions are fallible and quite capable of not being advantageous to the greater good.

For people to prosper in a eudaemonic sense we seem to need an established social order. This includes types of familial organisation: tribes, clans, moieties, families, partnerships and so on. Much of society is then built around sustaining those familial organisations that most (but not all) people seem to prosper best in. Things such as organisation of labour, education and learning processes, levels of social authority/legitimacy and so on. Each society looks superficially different, but they all have those processes.

Beginning in the West in the 1960’s and as part of Gramsci’s earlier call for a long march through the institutions, the progressive left has attempted to destroy all such institutions in Western culture on the presumption that many of them were created or tainted by Capitalism which is sui generis evil. The sexual revolution for example targeted families and the emergence of queer culture in the 1980s targeted heteronormativity more generally.

However, there is a very good case to be made that these institutions (and I’d broadly include gender norms as an institution in this sense) have developed as a technology (techne) oriented towards optimising the greater good. Tearing them down leads us into facing a great uncertainty and we see signs of that now (for example crime rates and recidivism amongst children of single parent families).

So while I totally think it’s great to be iconoclastic at an individual level and to be as genderqueer as one wants, I have a concern for the large scale erosion of social normas and institutions that is driven by the exact same forces that encourages the individual to be out and proud.

It is a question, I think, of whether one prioritises the happiness of the individual or the welfare of the many. And it is indeed a very difficult question that I don’t have a final answer for.
 
Me: Do you have Monistat?
Cashier: Are you here for your vaccine?
Me: I got my shot already, I'm wondering if you carry any Monistat 7.
Cashier: Yes *points to isle using curious eyes*
Me: *Finds the ridiculous price*
Me: *Leaves store and goes home*
Me: *Uses MCT oil instead of Monistat and saves a bunch of money*

If I had to deal with these types of issues everyday, I'd be mad and sad all at once all the time. Seriously, fuck your gender roles.
 
birdup.snaildown said:
I think people envy transgender people because they have been allowed to free themselves in a way that we cannot. There is no equivalent freedom given to cis people. The same applies to homosexuals. If you're a straight male, you have to act straight. If you're openly gay, you can exist on any part of the spectrum. Straight acting. Gay acting. It doesn't matter.
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You don't have to "act straight" to be straight.
You don't have to restrict how you express your gender, either. There are plenty of people who choose not to label themselves at all and simply do what feels right from day to day.
 
I'm male but something like genderqueer (chronic crossdresser?)

Last couple years have been getting into crossdressing (not really in a sexual way, I have a low enough drive to self describe as asexual).

First started doing drag for a planned event (volunteers were needed, and the clothes and makeup were provided. Getting made up was quite an experience, i kept asking people how to act but as my face was done I began to assume form).

Really didnt explore much the next year. Then did "drag" a few times (never did makeup more complex than eyeshadow and lipstick) at festivals and clubs, but never felt the character aspect I did when I was proper set up.

After a while I began to just like wearing the clothes without a persona or a "purpose," then covid hit. I feel like I began to realize I wasn't doing "drag" as in putting on an exaggerated character, and was more just being myself in a feminine getup. Using the terminology of drag has been easier for communicating with people I consider more typical (like open minded folk who I don't think are super versed in various terminology), but I think it has truly separated from what I practice (If I ever was made up by that first makeup artist, i would don the persona in an instant. That is just not my day to day goal or even something I engage in with my unfortunately rudimentary makeup skills (definately enjoy learning)).

I ready miss(ed) dancing, and the whole to do. Started dressing femme after showering after working out after work. Slowly I have been cultivating a separate wardrobe that represents a non-work state.

Been lucky to be around supportive people around me(and have a few "mentors" who made me realize its fine to be a bit odd). I do not identify as trans (for example I use male pronouns unless somebody else thinks otherwise, I guess idk much), but I do have trouble defining exactly my thing.

Now days I feel I inhabit the femme space at least a few evenings a week. I do not really feel any need to be femme more often. I am somewhat out to my coworkers (lucky to be in a fairly open minded area), but kind of wish there was more of a script for informing new people.

I've read this thread (I lurk ceps out of morbid fascination) and wanted to give my stance. I kind of feel too ignorant to engage a lot of points raised here (I can't even decide on labels for myself lol. ), but want to at least drop my perspective.
 
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mal3volent said:
mal3volent said:
You don't have to "act straight" to be straight. You don't have to restrict how you express your gender, either. There are plenty of people who choose not to label themselves at all and simply do what feels right from day to day.
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Nobody has to do anything.

It's just harder in some circles (and countries) than others.
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Intersex is real but extremely common.


Mental health problems are far more common than real intersex according to the research I've seen
 
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