Yes.
This doesn’t follow at all. What if the impact is “nothing, you feel normal” unless your BNST volume is mismatched?
For it to have an impact on how trans people feel, the only impact it necessarily has is on how trans people feel. You are choosing to assume that it must have far-reaching impacts on daily life for cisgendered people for… no particular reason as far as I can tell?
Are you under the impression that trans people would not accept a medical solution to their problem, or would not want to find a medical solution to their problem? And that a medical solution to their problem would not be “trans affirming”?
This seems kind of ridiculous to me. Many trans people already seek medical solutions to their problem. They literally seek to “address gender dysphoria medically” right now, today. Why do you think that they would categorically reject future medical solutions?
Yes, I agree some people would say that, and it would be rightly considered a foolish/bigoted thing to say. Because it presupposes that there is only one possible cause of trans feelings, and therefore if we find one cause and some trans people don’t have it, we can safely invalidate their experiences and say they are fake.
This is would be like saying that we have found the cause of headaches, which is neck tension. If you have neck tension, then your headache is real. If you claim to have a headache but we can’t find neck tension, then you’re faking it.
That sounds stupid and cruel to me. If it was said about headaches, it would be stupid and cruel but possibly not bigoted (because IDK what existing demographic it is bigoted against? Maybe women, who suffer more non-tension-related migraines than men?). But when something seems stupid and cruel and explicitly targeted only against trans people, I think it is fair to call that transphobic.
Yes, of course. Right wing transphobes have a history of disliking and seeking to shut down research into transness like this. Do you think pro-trans lefties have a comparable history?
Do you agree? Your comments above seem to contradict that. Maybe you were citing the cause of trans topic as an example of what other people might say, and you agree it would be an example of foolish transphobes jumping to conclusions?
So you think trans people simultaneously hate the idea of there being a genetic cause but also hate the idea that there is not a genetic cause?
Bold added by me above. Those bolded weasel words are doing a lot of heavy lifting. I don’t think most anti-trans conservatives say that being trans is “cultural and memetic.”
Also, the “woke mind virus” is absolutely not exactly this. It is a loose term that gets applied to a wide range of topics well beyond trans people.
I think the claim that there are “changes to language and acceptable speech being pushed by people obviously bigoted against cis people” is false and kind of ridiculous. There is no appreciable faction of people bigoted against cis people. The closest you can find, which I assume is the content that you get amplified to you by right wing fearmongers and algorithms, would be isolated instances of members of a beleaguered minority lashing out at the people who routinely demean them.
They can sometimes look foolish and hostile, I agree. But they don’t have the power to push changes to language regardless; that’s done by a much broader population of people using language.
If you dropped off the last part and just said “there are changes to language and acceptable speech happening that I don’t like” then I would consider it much less ridiculous and more plausible. But also that happens all the time. Changes to language tend annoy people who feel like language should be a static thing following concrete rules. And changes to acceptable speech tend to annoy people who don’t like being told that their previous standards were harming people.
This is a red flag. When you say “many trans people think that taking HRT turns you biologically into a woman” and that this belief is “insane”, that implies they would believe that they are identical in every way to an AFAB cis women. But then you acknowledge that they know that’s not the case and is too high of a bar.
But if they know that’s too high of a bar, then they must mean something else by “biologically” or they recognize that “woman” is a social term not a biological one, or something. And then it might not be insane. Let’s read on.
Yeah so I was right to notice that red flag.
This person is rejecting the term “biological female” as a nonsense term. But they also explicitly say:
Also being female is not a requirement of being a woman.
Which implies they do in fact recognize possible distinctions. They also say “HRT gives you changes associated with the opposite sex” which implies they are using sex to refer to sex, and they are using gender to refer to gender.
I don’t think they needed to get angry about the term “biological female” — it may or may not be a bit nonsense but it is clear Dev means it as another phrasing for “cis woman” or “female sex” or whatever.
Dev is in a weird spot because he spent years cultivating a reputation for being conservative (by Canadian standards), anti-SJW, skeptical of what he saw as the extremes of feminism, transness, leftism, etc. But now he’s realized that has left him with an audience of mostly stupid, far-right bigots. So he fights his own audience a lot, but he doesn’t get much/any support from most of the lefties who he alienated. It’s unfortunate, he seems like a decent and relatively principled guy from what I’ve seen.
So that does mean I’m not surprised this person attacked Dev despite him trying to defend trans people.
You quoted me but didn’t reply. I’ll repeat it here:
Seems like the person in the screenshot agrees with this. They mention some distinctions such as sex and sex characteristics (and imply e.g. trans men start off with female sex characteristics, since HRT gives them “opposite” ones). But they clearly think that trans women are women.
Because woman is a social classification, like I said.
I don’t know what any of this has to do with what I said. But I’ll try to connect it. Here’s what I said again:
This is still correct.
To rephrase what you said: for most of history there were no people in society who wished to/were allowed to exist in society without conforming to an existing binary gender role. So the only instances where the gender neutral “they” came up were instances of unspecified/unknown gender.
But now we have people in society who wish to exist without conforming to one of the binary gender roles. These people wish for us to use “they” even after they specify their gender identity to us. That’s the part that is new.
So what “the left” is pushing is: Let’s respect these people that wish to exist in society without conforming to a binary gender role. We already have a gender neutral pronoun, so let’s just use that.
Right? So they aren’t really pushing a new linguistic thing, they’re just applying the most logical preexisting linguistic structure to a new social phenomenon. Instead of doing what the right recommends, and telling those people “fuck no, you have to conform to the binary gender roles”.
What am I missing?
Woman has always been a social role. Do you sincerely, truly think that the word “woman” has not primarily referred to a social role throughout most/all of human history? Do you really not know what “social role” means?
We can go down this tangent too if you want, but I’m not convinced it’s necessary because I’m skeptical that you’re being honest here. I think you know what social role means and why “woman” has been a social role.
“Pushed” is a strong word but “forcing” is an even stronger one.
Your belief is that “the left” is forcing people to use neopronouns? Or forcing people to use they/them?
What is your argument for this claim? It seems pretty absurd to me.
Huh?
My point was that when discussing the position, I’ll use gender critical instead of TERF, because TERF is like a euphemistic way to needle someone meanly with a bit of plausible deniability (like TRA). I don’t care to do that. And if I want to call out some specific position as bad, rather than calling it a TERF position to not-so-subtly signal I think it’s bad, I will just explicitly call it transphobic instead.
Sure, I’m aware. I do think it is plausible since lots of people are very stupid and easily swayed. I think that lots of conservatives got called nazis and then they decided that if they were being called a nazi anyway, maybe nazis aren’t that bad. I think this is a plausible partial explanation for why so much of the right wing now just openly embraces nazi rhetoric.
And I think something similar may have happened with transphobic. For example, that Dev tweet being called disgusting transphobic language. I think that’s too extreme, and I think someone who is less principled than Dev might get twisted by that sort of thing. They could decide that if they’re going to be called transphobic anyway, maybe transphobia is based and cool actually.
I do think this is a problem. In general more far left factions all share a big problem with purity testing and pushing people away who disagree a little bit. And most people do not have the wisdom or fortitude to stay out of tribes, so when they get pushed out of one tribe they often fall headfirst into the opposing tribe. So a lot of weaker-minded people who got the reply that Dev got may very well become transphobes.
I’m not sure that’s what you meant, or if you meant something similar but a bit different. To me, while this is a problem with purity testing, it is a bigger problem with the people who radicalize into terrible views because someone who they thought they were allied with was mean to them. It’s a personal failing in those people, first and foremost.
To me this reply is a big red flag. I think you are getting algorithmically radicalized by being pushed random niche content that is designed to make you angry about “wokeism”.
I think you should be better able to articulate what teaching CRT or wokeism in schools actually is before you say you are against it.