76 trans children at one school

Soldato
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I went a bit acronym blind in reading the last few pages of this thread so I did a bit of Googling. I stumbled upon this article, apologies if it's been posted before:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/trans-rights-have-gone-wrong/

I've found my opinions changing on this issue recently. I support the right of people, including children, to act as they feel and explore what their gender means to them. In relation to children I have a suspicion that the growing Trans movement has allowed kids to opportunity to rebel against societal norms that they don't feel they conform or want to conform to, e.g. I identify more with guys, I like guy stuff, am I a guy? In a lot of ways this is a symptom of what I would describe as the de-genderising of society, people are still male of female on a physiological level but there's a growing belief that being either male or female shouldn't pigeonhole you into certain cultural life choices. The difficulty is that society as a whole hasn't really caught up with that mindset, "A chick playing rugby? Must be a lesbian or a dude in a dress" "A guy who does ballet? Clearly gay" etc. Over time I think societal gendered norms like this will become rarer and then this gender identity conversation won't be so broad, it will be about whether or not somebody feels they have been born in the wrong body, rather than what they identify with.

So I guess I come down on enabling freedom of expression in a way that doesn't impact on other people in a significantly negative way. The issue that I see at the moment is that, as the spectator points out, we're not able to adequately debate this subject. Any dissent is jumped upon, silenced, and the offenders labelled bigots. I don't mind having a conversation about trans people playing sport, about trans use of gendered facilities, about how best to identify kids who genuinely are having a trans crisis and how to support them, but it needs to be a discussion, it needs to be frank, and it needs to be in good faith. We can't find ourselves going further down the rabbit warren of promoting life changing drugs to kids, or causing massive societal upheaval without having a) evidence to work off and b) a discussion about what is the right thing to do.

Now I think the points made above make a pretty reasoned argument, and i know that the anti-trans crowd would vehemently disagree, however I also know that even though I've said I'm open to discussion, the extreme pro-trans side of the argument will brand me a bigot and seek to shut me down, and that's the problem with allowing the debate to be led by the extreme.
 
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[..] Now I think the points made above make a pretty reasoned argument, and i know that the anti-trans crowd would vehemently disagree, however I also know that even though I've said I'm open to discussion, the extreme pro-trans side of the argument will brand me a bigot and seek to shut me down, and that's the problem with allowing the debate to be led by the extreme.

I think the biggest flaw in your argument is the idea that an ideology that is so extremely about conformity to gendered rules is about freedom from them. To put it bluntly, I think you're very badly and very obviously wrong about that.

I'll address a specific point, although it applies to everything and not just this point. You wrote this:

The difficulty is that society as a whole hasn't really caught up with that mindset, "A chick playing rugby? Must be a lesbian or a dude in a dress" "A guy who does ballet? Clearly gay" etc.

That's partially true, at least for the man. Women have far more gender freedom than men in this country at this time, obviously, but the position you state is far from universal even for men. In addition, even if it's assumed that a male ballet dancer is gay that's not necessarily a bad thing any more. Being gay is vastly more widely socially acceptable than it was in the past. Very many people genuinely don't care and will say so publically. It's not entirely equal, but it's not true that it's universally or even predominantly assumed that gay = bad.

In addition, it's not a direct correlation with either gender or sex. Even if it's widely assumed that all men who are ballet dancers are homosexual, then it's not the same as forbidding men from being ballet dancers. Even if it's widely assumed that all women who play rugby are homosexual, then it's not the same as forbidding women from playing rugby.

But compare that with the TRA position on the same thing. From a TRA position, it is the same thing because the whole TRA ideology includes and is largely based on the belief that gendered stereotyping should be taken to such an extreme that sex is identical to gender. So from a TRA point of view, if ballet dancing is feminine then yes, men must be forbidden to be ballet dancers and if playing rugby is masculine then yes, women must be forbidden to play rugby. The only difference between TRA ideology and more traditional ideologies about gender == sex and extremist stereotyping is the addition of the belief that a person can change sex by decree without actually changing sex. Which is obviously nonsense, but that doesn't matter because, as usual, all that matters is power. It's possible to force nonsense on people if you have enough power.

But it goes even beyond that due to the fact that it's extreme authoritarianism based on nonsense and without any internal checks and balances on forcing itself on people. For example, I am a man. If I declared that I was a woman without any changes at all and a man didn't consent to have sex with me because he was straight and therefore wasn't sexually attracted to my very definitely male physiology, just wasn't into ****, then under TRA rule he would be a criminal, an evil-doer who should be taken by force to a "re-education" facility. And no, this is not hyperbole. It's central to the whole TRA ideology. Also central to the whole TRA ideology is specifically targetting children because they're more vulnerable to manipulation. Any authoritarian ideology should target children because that's necessary for long term power.
 
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Lauren Southern has legally changed her his gender from female to male, so if a male finds her him sexually attractive would that make me him gay, bisexual or pansexual?

Asking for a friend....
 
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I think the biggest flaw in your argument is the idea that an ideology that is so extremely about conformity to gendered rules is about freedom from them. To put it bluntly, I think you're very badly and very obviously wrong about that.

I actually think we're agreeing, I was just a bit clumsy in my argument. I believe the wider social move towards breaking down gender norms is about freedom from constriction, for example:
  • Heightened discussion around whether or not advertising aimed at children impacts on their development in a way that almost shoe horns them into traditional gender roles and potentially damages their ability to make choices.
  • Improving equality in terms of parenting roles, this time in a way that probably benefits men rather than women.
  • Industries looking at whether or not there are aspects of their culture that lead to a higher proportion of men or women.
  • Parents trying not to influence their children in a way that reinforces stereotypes about what a person should or shouldn't aspire to in relation to their gender.
All of the above I see as a positive movement to try to a) ascertain whether or not societal and cultural approaches to gender based on physical sex impacts on a persons ability to make informed life choices b) try to limit the impact of those soft barriers to entry.

Now that approach inherently has to assume that sex is not a defining factor in a persons ability to be whoever they want to be, it seeks to separates sex and gender, and in my opinion we could do with entirely getting rid of the concept of gender, why do the multitude of factors that make up my personality need to correlate to a gender? They don't, I have a physical sex, but everything else is just me, I don't need to choose to identify one way or the other.

Now the wider social movement doesn't correlate to the agenda that we're discussing in this thread, even though people pushing that more extreme agenda will swear blind that it does. They take the exact opposite approach, under their ideology gender is all important, how you define your identity overrules all other aspects. I suppose where I differ with these people is that a) I don't feel the need to define my identity formally in that way b) I don't think that we should legislate in such a way that my feelings about myself are able to negatively impact on other people. That's why I have serious concerns about the possibility of self identification becoming law, and that's before considering the impact that would have on people who would have been considered trans prior to this widening of the definition.

In terms of the rest of your response I actually muddied the water by using the example of sexuality, I suppose what I was effectively trying to get at is that gender, sex, and sexuality are entirely independent concepts, in my opinion gender doesn't need to be defined at all, physical sex is the identifier that is most useful (and I take into account the feelings of trans people who genuinely feel they were born into the wrong sex as opposed to those who feel they identify with one gender more easily), and sexuality shouldn't be considered to have an impact on either of the other two categories.

I think the side of this that is so difficult, and that leads to people not feeling they can weigh in on this (aside from the aggressiveness of the trans movement) is that the wider trans movement have co-opted a cause that originally related to a subsection of society who were and still are extremely isolated, who have been the victims of great abuse, and as such are extremely vulnerable, and are worthy of support. It means that your wider and more extreme groups pushing the trans agenda can point to any dissent and imply in a way that seems convincing, that they're a legitimately oppressed minority, that's why there's unease from within the trans community itself about the movement.

Looking to the future I don't think this is necessarily going to be the massive issue that other people think. I think the movement will lose steam and the general effect will be a further blurring of the lines between what society believes it means to be a man and a woman in a cultural rather than a physical sense. If it gets to the point where people are banned from discriminating against sexual partners based on physical sex then I'm moving to Mars.
 
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Lauren Southern has legally changed her his gender from female to male, so if a male finds her him sexually attractive would that make me him gay, bisexual or pansexual?

Asking for a friend....

Actually, according to TRAs and TRA dominated groups like Stonewall (I no longer consider it representative of lesbians), yes. People have tried getting Stonewall to state that homosexuality is same biological sex attraction and they wont. Stonewall, let me repeat that in caps, STONEWALL are now denying that homosexuality is being exclusively attracted to your own biological sex. By the new doctrine, if a man declares he's a woman, lesbians are supposed to include him in the category of people you're attracted to. TRAs call the refusal of lesbian to do so "the cotton ceiling". I'm going to link you to some of the abuse lesbians get for excluding men who think they're women. Warning, there's some strong stuff in here.

https://terfisaslur.com/cotton-ceiling/

"TERF" is a derogatory term for people (usually women) who don't accept a man as a woman. One of the ones in the above that leaps out at me is the workshop on "breaking down sexual barriers for trans women". I.e. breaking down lesbian's resistance to sleeping with men. For some reason, lesbians are particularly targeted by the Autogynephile crowd. I think because it "validates" them and also because the vast majority of AGs are heterosexual and therefore think of themselves as "lesbian".

EDIT: And you're not the first person I've heard remark that Lauren Southern is the only guy they'd sleep with. ;)
 
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I actually think we're agreeing, I was just a bit clumsy in my argument. I believe the wider social move towards breaking down gender norms is about freedom from constriction, for example:
  • Heightened discussion around whether or not advertising aimed at children impacts on their development in a way that almost shoe horns them into traditional gender roles and potentially damages their ability to make choices.
  • Improving equality in terms of parenting roles, this time in a way that probably benefits men rather than women.
  • Industries looking at whether or not there are aspects of their culture that lead to a higher proportion of men or women.
  • Parents trying not to influence their children in a way that reinforces stereotypes about what a person should or shouldn't aspire to in relation to their gender.
All of the above I see as a positive movement to try to a) ascertain whether or not societal and cultural approaches to gender based on physical sex impacts on a persons ability to make informed life choices b) try to limit the impact of those soft barriers to entry.

Now that approach inherently has to assume that sex is not a defining factor in a persons ability to be whoever they want to be, it seeks to separates sex and gender, and in my opinion we could do with entirely getting rid of the concept of gender, why do the multitude of factors that make up my personality need to correlate to a gender? They don't, I have a physical sex, but everything else is just me, I don't need to choose to identify one way or the other.

Now the wider social movement doesn't correlate to the agenda that we're discussing in this thread, even though people pushing that more extreme agenda will swear blind that it does. They take the exact opposite approach, under their ideology gender is all important, how you define your identity overrules all other aspects. I suppose where I differ with these people is that a) I don't feel the need to define my identity formally in that way b) I don't think that we should legislate in such a way that my feelings about myself are able to negatively impact on other people. That's why I have serious concerns about the possibility of self identification becoming law, and that's before considering the impact that would have on people who would have been considered trans prior to this widening of the definition.

In terms of the rest of your response I actually muddied the water by using the example of sexuality, I suppose what I was effectively trying to get at is that gender, sex, and sexuality are entirely independent concepts, in my opinion gender doesn't need to be defined at all, physical sex is the identifier that is most useful (and I take into account the feelings of trans people who genuinely feel they were born into the wrong sex as opposed to those who feel they identify with one gender more easily), and sexuality shouldn't be considered to have an impact on either of the other two categories.

I think the side of this that is so difficult, and that leads to people not feeling they can weigh in on this (aside from the aggressiveness of the trans movement) is that the wider trans movement have co-opted a cause that originally related to a subsection of society who were and still are extremely isolated, who have been the victims of great abuse, and as such are extremely vulnerable, and are worthy of support. It means that your wider and more extreme groups pushing the trans agenda can point to any dissent and imply in a way that seems convincing, that they're a legitimately oppressed minority, that's why there's unease from within the trans community itself about the movement.

Looking to the future I don't think this is necessarily going to be the massive issue that other people think. I think the movement will lose steam and the general effect will be a further blurring of the lines between what society believes it means to be a man and a woman in a cultural rather than a physical sense. If it gets to the point where people are banned from discriminating against sexual partners based on physical sex then I'm moving to Mars.

To me, you and Angillion seem to have a lot of common ground. You are certainly saying a lot of things I agree with. I think Angillion is just a little more fixed in their wording.

I even agree with you that I think (and hope) this will eventually mostly fizzle out and people get less hung up on gender roles and confused kids will get proper support rather than people pushing an agenda and drugs on them. Not sure that the AG lot will go away but hopefully with the veneer of human rights issues they effect eventually stripped away, they'll no longer be able to get away with punching and kicking someone for saying they're a man.
 
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Actually, according to TRAs and TRA dominated groups like Stonewall (I no longer consider it representative of lesbians), yes. People have tried getting Stonewall to state that homosexuality is same biological sex attraction and they wont. Stonewall, let me repeat that in caps, STONEWALL are now denying that homosexuality is being exclusively attracted to your own biological sex. By the new doctrine, if a man declares he's a woman, lesbians are supposed to include him in the category of people you're attracted to. TRAs call the refusal of lesbian to do so "the cotton ceiling". I'm going to link you to some of the abuse lesbians get for excluding men who think they're women. Warning, there's some strong stuff in here.

https://terfisaslur.com/cotton-ceiling/

"TERF" is a derogatory term for people (usually women) who don't accept a man as a woman. One of the ones in the above that leaps out at me is the workshop on "breaking down sexual barriers for trans women". I.e. breaking down lesbian's resistance to sleeping with men. For some reason, lesbians are particularly targeted by the Autogynephile crowd. I think because it "validates" them and also because the vast majority of AGs are heterosexual and therefore think of themselves as "lesbian".
I read one comment that said "trans women are women" - hang on, according to the blurb being distributed to schools by East Sussex council the term "trans" includes cross-dressers and androgyny, which absolutely do not mean a man becomes a woman. The levels of insanity here are almost off the scale.

EDIT: And you're not the first person I've heard remark that Lauren Southern is the only guy they'd sleep with. ;)
My friend says if he found out she he had a penis it would be game over.

Probably. :D
 
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I actually think we're agreeing, I was just a bit clumsy in my argument. I believe the wider social move towards breaking down gender norms is about freedom from constriction, for example:
  • Heightened discussion around whether or not advertising aimed at children impacts on their development in a way that almost shoe horns them into traditional gender roles and potentially damages their ability to make choices.
  • Improving equality in terms of parenting roles, this time in a way that probably benefits men rather than women.
  • Industries looking at whether or not there are aspects of their culture that lead to a higher proportion of men or women.
  • Parents trying not to influence their children in a way that reinforces stereotypes about what a person should or shouldn't aspire to in relation to their gender.
All of the above I see as a positive movement to try to a) ascertain whether or not societal and cultural approaches to gender based on physical sex impacts on a persons ability to make informed life choices b) try to limit the impact of those soft barriers to entry.

Now that approach inherently has to assume that sex is not a defining factor in a persons ability to be whoever they want to be, it seeks to separates sex and gender, and in my opinion we could do with entirely getting rid of the concept of gender, why do the multitude of factors that make up my personality need to correlate to a gender? They don't, I have a physical sex, but everything else is just me, I don't need to choose to identify one way or the other.

Now the wider social movement doesn't correlate to the agenda that we're discussing in this thread, even though people pushing that more extreme agenda will swear blind that it does. They take the exact opposite approach, under their ideology gender is all important, how you define your identity overrules all other aspects. I suppose where I differ with these people is that a) I don't feel the need to define my identity formally in that way b) I don't think that we should legislate in such a way that my feelings about myself are able to negatively impact on other people. That's why I have serious concerns about the possibility of self identification becoming law, and that's before considering the impact that would have on people who would have been considered trans prior to this widening of the definition.

Yes, we're in agreement. I wasn't disagreeing with your position, I was disagreeing with your placement of TRA within that position:

In relation to children I have a suspicion that the growing Trans movement has allowed kids to opportunity to rebel against societal norms that they don't feel they conform or want to conform to, e.g. I identify more with guys, I like guy stuff, am I a guy? In a lot of ways this is a symptom of what I would describe as the de-genderising of society, people are still male of female on a physiological level but there's a growing belief that being either male or female shouldn't pigeonhole you into certain cultural life choices.

when in fact it's utterly opposing that position. As you have just written in this post, "They take the exact opposite approach".

In terms of the rest of your response I actually muddied the water by using the example of sexuality, I suppose what I was effectively trying to get at is that gender, sex, and sexuality are entirely independent concepts, in my opinion gender doesn't need to be defined at all, physical sex is the identifier that is most useful (and I take into account the feelings of trans people who genuinely feel they were born into the wrong sex as opposed to those who feel they identify with one gender more easily), and sexuality shouldn't be considered to have an impact on either of the other two categories.

We agree again. A large part of the problem IMO is the idea that sex and gender are the same thing. They're completely different things, therefore "transexual" and "transgender" are completely different things. I'm fine with someone actually changing sex. What I'm not fine with is someone not changing sex, saying they have changed sex and demanding that everyone else goes along with that completely in every way. It's no different to, for example, me declaring that a straight man who doesn't want to give me a blow job hates homosexuals and should be reviled, lose their job and social status and be forced to undergo "re-education". It's authoritarianism and it's bullying and it's vile.

IMO gender should be mostly just binned because most of it is made up, at best useless and often harmful. I can see that it served a purpose millenia ago in small hunter-gatherer groups, but not now. The few remaining bits of gender that are real are only trends and should therefore never be applied to any individual. Height is the most obvious example of gender that's real - there really is a trend for men to be taller than women. That's relevant in some contexts, e.g. what amount of which sizes of clothing to manufacture, but it's irrelevant to any individual because even in situations where height is genuinely relevant it's nowhere near a 1.00 correlation with sex.

I think the guts of my position is that I think the fundamental unit of humanity is "person" and not "group identity". I'm not even convinced that the groups "men" and "women" are real in any meaningful way. Does it really make sense to splodge billions of different people into 1 group on the basis of a minor biological trait that's irrelevant in almost all contexts? I think it isn't.

I think the side of this that is so difficult, and that leads to people not feeling they can weigh in on this (aside from the aggressiveness of the trans movement) is that the wider trans movement have co-opted a cause that originally related to a subsection of society who were and still are extremely isolated, who have been the victims of great abuse, and as such are extremely vulnerable, and are worthy of support. It means that your wider and more extreme groups pushing the trans agenda can point to any dissent and imply in a way that seems convincing, that they're a legitimately oppressed minority, that's why there's unease from within the trans community itself about the movement.

It's a sadly effective way of obtaining and maintaining power. Believe (or claim to believe) in group identity, select a Chosen Special Group, position yourself as the Righteous Champions of the Chosen Ones, claim anything you do is justified because the Chosen Ones are Oppressed by the bad group identity. The Nazis are the most infamous example of that, but far from the only one.

Looking to the future I don't think this is necessarily going to be the massive issue that other people think. I think the movement will lose steam and the general effect will be a further blurring of the lines between what society believes it means to be a man and a woman in a cultural rather than a physical sense.

I hope you're right, but I wouldn't bet a bent ha'penny on it. Why would a power-crazed authoritarian ideology of True Believers lose steam?

If it gets to the point where people are banned from discriminating against sexual partners based on physical sex then I'm moving to Mars.

You'd better start building your spaceship now, because they're already working on that and making some progress. How do you think it will go when they've had a generation to brainwash from young childhood?

Although coming up with a way of surviving on Mars would be a better first step. As it stands, you might be able to get there but it would be a very elaborate and expensive way to commit suicide. Mars really isn't a good candidate for somewhere habitable to humans. But that's another topic entirely. An interesting one, I think, but a derailment of this thread so extreme that the rail would be heading offplanet. Maybe to Mars :)

(edited to remove wrongly placed quote tags)
 
Soldato
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It's "trannies" if you must resort to derogatory terms, at least learn basic English before revealing your true self.

STOP THE PRESS!

NPC fails to grasp obvious attempt at humour and resorts to labelling someone as far right.

It's just too easy.
 
Soldato
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What's up with all the people in here spouting crazy nonsense about trans people. Just pure madness that doesn't reflect reality at all.

What, of all the things I've written, is "crazy nonsense". Point out something specific and I'll back it up or re-evaluate according to whether it's found to be true or not. I believe I can support any of the things I have written.
 
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