The Republican War on Transgender People, Drag Queens, and Queerness in General

[padraig (u.s.)]

that's strange, because you in essence are a champion of feminist nonsense.

Me and Poetix thrashed this out here. Get with the times.

I'm not sure about everything in the last paragraph but otherwise as incisive a quick dissection of TERFs as I've seen

not that I want to get sidetracked into TERFism - tho at least it's more relevant than [sighs] incest - either, but

the points about both its implied all or nothing stakes and the way it de facto has to reject intersectionality, are both very good I think

anyway, I shouldn't let it get to me really but the pigheaded, blatant denial of the lived reality of so many people I know - and all the suffering and obstacles they've overcome and continue to overcome - is so infuriating that it's hard not to

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

If you think that Biscuits doesn't deserve a real argument, fine, that's its own problem

I don't really, given their track record

that's why I gave you a real response instead. I think you have many terrible ideas but they're sincerely held ones.

 

[sus]

but since someone has to address it, let's bullet point

-there's a serious history of straight culture and pederast culture: see child marriage, which is still prevalent in parts of the world (for example, West Virginia, where state lawmakers just blocked - as in, on Wednesday - a bill to ban child marriage) and unlike NAMBLA, practiced openly and without taboo in many of those places. As always, pedophilia is not related to sexual preference, or gender identity. Labeling queer people as deviants trying to recruit children is both the oldest and ugliest smear in the book.

-there is no objective standard of "conforming" sexual practices. Attitudes to both sexual practices and gender identity have varied widely across human societies. This is, as you put it, a sociological fact. So you/anyone can take that "historically deviant" argument as a basis for anything and shove it.

-and since I'm stuck addressing incest: no, I don't have a problem with it if adult siblings on birth control want to fuck each other. The issue isn't sex, or attraction, but that their potential children can't consent to being the product of inbreeding. I might find it weird, but it's their business. And to get the inevitable reductio ad absurdum out of the way: same goes for adult child and parent relationships. I would assume that virtually all parent-child incest begins or takes place when the child is a minor, i.e. molestation which is obviously unacceptable, but in the hypothetical event that an adult was like yeah I want to fuck my dad and we use birth control, go with god. Presumably it would cause difficulties with their relatives and, I mean, many other facets of life but again, that's their business.

I will note that one reason that Republicans shouldn't try biscuit's galaxy brain level incest gambit is that they have a long, long history of actively defending sexual assault and misconduct, as well as pedophilia (see: Roy Moore). So do the Democrats tbc; it's only recently that they've been dragged into more responsible positions by MeToo etc.

(1) It is pretty obviously and uncontroversially true that gay American communities in the last 50 years have laxer and more open norms about adult-minor relations. Yes, obviously there's tons of sexual abuse in straight communities but come on dude. There's a reason the Spacey stuff had its own very unique dialogue in the gay community. And there may well be valid grounds for saying maybe 14 year old boys can consent more than a 14 year old boy.

(2) There is an objective standard! It's called "American norms the past century." Yes obviously these are cultural. But the relation of deviant acts to a social standard is objective and measurable. I'm a very deviant individual objectively speaking relative to my culture. It's not a subjective thing, it's a sociological fact. Bourdieu or Foucault would say the same thing.

(3) Great! That's a fine stance to take I think. I think it's clear that this would be a losing policy for the left to adopt, but ostensibly you (and I may well agree! Not sure/haven't thought much about it) think that eventually, when politically possible, it should be adopted.

 

[sus]

I apologize that I've participated in derailing your thread

 

[sus]

We don't need to keep talking about it. I just in general want discourse to happen in a way that takes principles seriously rather than being adhoc and makeshift policy by policy.

 

[sus]

And I fully agree that you can and should separate orientation from adult/minor vs adult/adult. We aren't really in disagreement about anything important I don't think. Subjective/objective deviance is splitting hairs, we both know there are norms and deviations.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

one thing we don't have here that I've noticed in re the UK is the expansive use of "bullying"

or I guess it's just yall's version of people complaining about wokeness and getting canceled?

bc I seem to see it used most commonly by someone talking about how they were bullied by leftist groupthink for their TERF/TERF-lite opinions

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I apologize that I've participated in derailing your thread

no worries, I famously derailed the ACAB thread recently. what goes around comes around,

 

[sus]

I will think about the actual thread topic now. I have been sympathetic to arguments on both sides of decreasing vs increasing # of hoops teens have to go through to make life-altering decisions. Especially considering we think it's normal to require parental permission for like... tattoos or alcohol lol. But I think stats like Tea says about regret are important. I don't totally trust these issues' ability to be polled atm—too heated—but that does seem like an important thing and I want to investigate.

 

[DannyL]

one thing we don't have here that I've noticed in re the UK is the expansive use of "bullying"

or I guess it's just yall's version of people complaining about wokeness and getting canceled?

same thing really.
Normally means I was being obnoxious on social media and someone told me to shut up

 

[sus]

You know as well as I do that feminism (stricto sensu) was founded on the defence of white upper middle class womanhood, and the defence of white upper middle class womanhood as its own particular interest, I.E: what Gus would call non-deviant. You also know as well as I do that this has always been a tension within feminist thought and practice, that there have been people who have attempted to iron out the contradictions (with varying degrees of success: socialist-feminism, trans-feminism, marxist-feminism). But it remains that feminism is not called working-womanism (heaven forbid!) Now I have no interest pursuing that line of enquiry but Benny being like I'm a man therefore its odd to call me feminist is the cheapest cop out of cheap cop outs on this forum.

Not to continue derailing but is a "working class woman" really more aligned with supporting greater individual deviance? I get the race argument ("black" has historically been ~"deviant" in the West) but given e.g. communities of color records on gay marriage and other sexual deviances, it's not obvious to me that this "sympathy of the marginalized for the marginalized" transfers. I would like to hear why you think working class people are more supportive of freaks

 

[Benny Bunter]

But that's the thing its a question of choice of belief for you and me. Some chat and cross words on a forum. Its a bit more fucking real for someone in an American state trying to pass this legislation.

The whole idea of 'trans' 'gender identity' 'born in the wrong body' etc are beliefs. I don't believe in them and I've never even seen a convincing or coherent argument or even clear definitions of any of these terms, there's no scientific basis for them either (you get these so called gender experts claiming that sex isn't binary for example)

OTOH, there are undeniable clashes of rights that the trans movement is demanding with women's rights to sex segregated spaces - fairness in sport, changing rooms, prisons, rape crisis centres etc etc. I think women should have them and males need to be excluded from them, for reasons of fairness and safety for women.

As for the American State - well, it's an issue here too. Look at what's been happening with the SNP's gender bill and all the scandals concerning Mermaids and the Tavistock clinic. More people are waking up. Maybe the US is a lost cause, I dunno, I don't really want to comment on it cos anyone critical of it gets lumped in with all these republican nutters and i'm not up for that.

 

[sus]

@padraig (u.s.) Do you have a better "ontological" or "metaphysical" (ugh, for lack of a better word) foundation for us to think about trans than as "born in the wrong body"? Biologically that seems very strange/nonsensical to me and also is basically gender essentialist in the sense of saying there's a "male" or "female" brain which is obviously super problematic and opens the gates to serious gender discrimination. When trans people say this, it's OK if they're being metaphorical or loose, but I'm unable to make a leap to the steelman

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

(1) It is pretty obviously and uncontroversially true that gay American communities in the last 50 years have laxer and more open norms about adult-minor relations. Yes, obviously there's tons of sexual abuse in straight communities but come on dude. There's a reason the Spacey stuff had its own very unique dialogue in the gay community. And there may well be valid grounds for saying maybe 14 year old boys can consent more than a 14 year old boy.

(2) There is an objective standard! It's called "American norms the past century." Yes obviously these are cultural. But the relation of deviant acts to a social standard is objective and measurable. I'm a very deviant individual objectively speaking relative to my culture. It's not a subjective thing, it's a sociological fact. Bourdieu or Foucault would say the same thing.

2 is fine, as long as you make that clarification up front so it's clear you're not referring all human cultures everywhere for all of history

1 is more complicated. It's not totally untrue, but I would also argue that it's impossible to separate out those "laxer and more open norms", or perception of same, from the way that gay people (and later, more expansively, queer people) were viewed by straight people/society until relatively recently. I'd also argue that straight people just had/have a different set of laxer norms sexualizing minors - child beauty pageants, underage marriage, etc - that weren't or still aren't perceived as taboo. So you can say something like that, but not casually and not without those kinds of caveats.

and yes, we don't have to continue talking about this. as I said, just couldn't let it stand unchallenged.

 

[thirdform]

Not to continue derailing but is a "working class woman" really more aligned with supporting greater individual deviance? I get the race argument ("black" has historically been ~"deviant" in the West) but given e.g. communities of color records on gay marriage and other sexual deviances, it's not obvious to me that this "sympathy of the marginalized for the marginalized" transfers. I would like to hear why you think working class people are more supportive of freaks

I would not claim that the working classes are more sympathetic towards freaks, or that certain racialised working classes are more sympathetic to other racialised working class folk. But the substantial difference, I think, is that the working class can only attain power (in a programatic sense) to abolish itself, whereas the middle classes see their power precisely within alienation (I.E: ideological fetishism as such.)

It comes down to: is your approach to intervene in politics to abolish politics (like the 19th and early 20th century socialists.) Or is it to augment and strengthen politics as its own sphere with its own norms of understanding, which are constricted by their own borders? This is the real problem with the contemporary left today, but so is it of the right.

It is sheer hyperbole to suggest that we have seen an uptick in class struggle in the last 20 years. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Of course, you could argue, like the school of Freidman and co. that social consciousness determines social being, which would problematise what I'm saying, but that would also invalidate any sort of sociological investigation. It's why sociologists are always half-hearted historical materialists.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

once more into the breach

you get these so called gender experts claiming that sex isn't binary for example

it isn't. presumably you've heard of intersex people? you know, on whom doctors have often operated on as infants or children to make them fit into a binary idea of male and female. the exact kind of operations that, being both irreversible and commonly regretted (predicated as they are on a societal norm rather than the patient's self-identity), you should be 100% against, correct?

or is this is a case where, according to you, people should have an irreversible medical procedure rather than "learn to accept their bodies thru other therapeutic means"? since they affirm rather than challenge that binary that you believe in.

or to put it another way, how is it that you what you believe is correct and what other people believe is nonsense? other than "because I say so"

 

[Benny Bunter]

How many sexes have evolved?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

How many sexes have evolved?

it depends how you define "sex". if your sole criterion is production of reproductive cells, then 2. if you go by karotype (i.e., complete set of chromosomes) then 6 - X, XX, XXY, XY, XYY, XXXY.

 

[thirdform]

The whole idea of 'trans' 'gender identity' 'born in the wrong body' etc are beliefs. I don't believe in them and I've never even seen a convincing or coherent argument or even clear definitions of any of these terms, there's no scientific basis for them either (you get these so called gender experts claiming that sex isn't binary for example)

yes because Iran subsidised gender reassignment surgery in the 1980s because of the woke agenda right?

Come on man, this is embarrassing.

FYI: I'm not defending Iran's approach to transgender issues, but it's ironic how westerner feminists are happy to legitimise homosexuality, but invalidate the existence of trans people.

The Iranian approach is seriously fucked, and I in no way defend or endorse it, but their idea is that the transgender person can live in heterosexual marriages. Which is why biscuits trolling was so vexacious.

So the question is, why don't you go to the root of the matter? namely that your standards for deviancy, lack of ethical standards, freaks, aborrations, brainwashing, etc etc are culturally constituted and cannot by their nature possess scientific weight.

I do not think contra @suspended that being gay in the US is as much as a deviant behaviour as it might have been 50-60 years ago (apologies if I've got the wrong end of the stick.) Most English and American youth grow up to be quite sexually tolerant, even if they are raised in hard core conservative/religious families. Even anti-social behaviour in ones late teens and early 20s (promiscuous alcohol consumption, braindead marijuana smoking, immature boys immaturely dumping their girlfriends after accidental pregnancy/need for an abortion) is to an extent the new, permitted normal. These standards are always in constant flux.

PS: it goes without saying that I unequivocally and unconditionally defend and support every womans right to an abortion, even and especially if those circumstances for pregnancy were engendered by foolish tomfoolery during Freshers week.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

@Benny B I don't know why you're laughing. it gets to the very heart of your position.

you say people aren't born in "the wrong bodies" - which yes @suspended is a terrible framework, give me a minute, I'll get to it - and that they're convinced of this by some fad (i.e. social contagion)

here is a situation where people born neither definitively male nor female, and historically that decision has been made for them by doctors and/or parents. and usually arbitrarily, not after years of deliberation and involvement of the child themself. they are being surgically/hormonally altered to fit into a binary view of both sex and gender.

your entire position is that it's horrible to perform irreversible procedures to alter children's bodies. these are procedures that, unlike gender-affirming care, don't even have the consent of the patients. surely then, you find this at least equally horrible, if not worse?

or, because it makes people fit into a sex binary, is it acceptable to you?

don't dodge the question, answer it. is this about children, or is it just about your ideological belief in sex and/or gender binaries?

pretty clearly it's just about ideology, so it should be easy to answer