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

[padraig (u.s.)]

then again since you clearly don't think trans people exist at all - Fallon Fox is a "male trans identified" not a woman - maybe for you it is simple

 

[Benny Bunter]

Keep males and females separate in sports, like always. It's only fair.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

do you think trans people exist, yes or no?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

no equivocating, no sidestepping, don't bring up anything else

yes or no

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

because it seems very clear that the @Benny B worldview is thus

"whatever you were assigned at birth by a doctor and/or your parents, that's what you are. it's set in stone. it can't change. any desire to change is actually a delusion brought on by social contagion and various quacks (for ??? undetermined reasons). any desire to change is also a threat to women, by which I, benny, specifically mean people assigned female at birth. unless they're intersex like Caster Semenya, in which case they're not actually women. I, benny, know this to be true and everyone else who disagrees with me is wrong. I can't and don't need to produce any evidence to support anything that I've said. I simply know it. I, benny, am the ultimate arbiter of gender and more specifically, who is or is not a woman."

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

feel free to tell us which part of that is incorrect, if any

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

you say this conversation is unproductive and not going anywhere, yet you keep coming back to crudely hammer away at every old saw - bathrooms! Fallon Fox! cutting tits off! - in the book, so ipso facto you're unable to let it go. come on, if I'm wrong about you, tell me why.

 

[WashYourHands]

 

[Benny Bunter]

A bit intense for me this. I'll leave it there I think.

 

[thirdform]

in the words of @craner

'COWARD'!

 

[IdleRich]

I see I'm obligated to address the sports question too. alrite, let's get into it

I understand it's a very common and tired line of attack but it's an area where I've got a lot to learn and I'll read what you say here with interest.

I've nothing really to add but I do appreciate you taking the time to go over what is no doubt for you tired ground. So please don't feel you are wasting your time.

 

[IdleRich]

Seems a bit like the bladerunner guy, Pistorious, my friend is adamant that they could make the blades in such a way as to exactly mimic his running if he had legs, in other words they conferred no advantage on him, and this being the case he should be allowed to complete in the Olympics 100m. He also spent ages talking about them being big trainers and posing lots of annoying questions about where one should draw the line between what should and shouldn't be allowed. All very clever and no doubt valid arguments but I think if he won gold at 100m there would be a question mark against that victory and it would feel "wrong" for want of a better word to a lot of people.

 

[sus]

We don't tho? Maybe we should, but we definitely don't.

Who cares about sports Padraig let's talk the important stuff! Sports becoming complicated for a couple decades isn't an argument against civil liberties, altho it's probably always true that the transition could be handled better than it inevitably is and will be.

 

[sus]

Why do you say we grant people this radical self determination as a society when we don't?

Why do you say "just listen to the demographic in question" like that's unproblematic? Having plenty of trans or enby acquaintances and friends I know how broad the spectrum of reasons beliefs "metaphysics" of trans there are. It's not like they're a monolith of opinion whose policies recommendations we can simply follow. Rather, specific, very vocal portions (often minorites) of these demographics with institutional voice and organizing power end up pushing an agenda that censors many of their own. You and I both know the outcome/process is as political as it is about a community's truth, and that wealthy, privileged representatives have a way outsized influence.

 

[sus]

Whether or not these judgments are morally or strategically right:

We definitely don't grant teenagers radical self determination as a rule.

We are brand new to giving women that right.

Societies have always tightly limited members' behaviors to a narrow range of norms and everything outside that range is punished.

I need a prescription just to take antibiotics or get painkillers or birth control.

Endless regulation for businesses and consumers alike.

Dem COVID policy clearly favors group good over individual choice.

This open minded, free and unbridled libertarian society *might* be an ideal, but it's definitely not the status quo, and it's not even the progressive agenda. There are a thousand cases where the left says, "Group good over individual liberty" and nobody blinks. Let's not pretend that individual self determination is this obvious, straightforward standard in our society that is uniquely violated by trans issues.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I understand it's a very common and tired line of attack but it's an area where I've got a lot to learn and I'll read what you say here with interest.

I've nothing really to add but I do appreciate you taking the time to go over what is no doubt for you tired ground. So please don't feel you are wasting your time.

hey rich. I actually don't mind discussing sports, both because it's a personal interest and something I actually know a fair bit about, and because it's one of the only areas where people on both sides can and do make reasonable arguments in good faith. for example, I first learned about Laurel Hubbard when some weightlifting coaches I follow made a video about it, and their take was completely reasonable - they thought it was a bad and unfair decision based solely on the data (that Springer paper, as well as her results as a pre-transition male lifter, and then a post-transition female lifter) and they were very clear that it wasn't an attack on her personally or trans people or athletes in general. you don't usually get that kind of civility when it comes to gender-affirming care or bathrooms or, these days, drag performances. that said, I'm definitely not an expert, it's just something I've followed over the years, so I don't know how much more I can really add.

the most important thing in re trans people sports is actually I think to separate, as issues, adults in competitive settings from children. competition where there is money, medals, etc on the line is a hugely different thing. of course kids also want to win, but there's a much stronger argument for the benefits of inclusion offsetting competitive advantages, which again don't really start manifesting until puberty, and also are going to be unevenly distributed in any population, unlike elite adult athletics where everyone is a genetic freak and relatively small advantages can have outsize effects. and then as I said, going sport by sport. I'd recommend just looking into it yourself if you're interested, I think there's a pretty significant body of literature on it.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

This open minded, free and unbridled libertarian society *might* be an ideal, but it's definitely not the status quo, and it's not even the progressive agenda. There are a thousand cases where the left says, "Group good over individual liberty" and nobody blinks. Let's not pretend that individual self determination is this obvious, straightforward standard in our society that is uniquely violated by trans issues.

if you want to regulate something, there should be a good enough reason for it to curtail the individual's autonomy

teenagers aren't considered capable of making their own decisions sans guardians. they're being protected from themselves. that's exactly why gender-affirming care - at the heart of this GOP war on queer people - isn't something that a minor can procure without the consent of their guardians.

limiting unnecessary antibiotic (degrading effectiveness) and painkiller (social cost of addiction) use both have societal interests. I don't think birth control should require a prescription.

regulations for businesses and consumers are both meant to protect individuals from the proven ravages of unchecked capitalism

COVID regulations were in the interest of less people getting dying or suffering long-term health consequences

you can argue, and people do, that some of these regulations are bad, but they're all either meant to protect the individual or say that the societal interest outweighs the individual interest

what exactly is the societal interest in regulating gender? what good does it do that isn't outweighed by the harm it does?

again I don't like to always jump to this place, but what was the societal interest in Jim Crow laws that outweighed the harm they caused?

and I never said we grant everyone radical self-determination. you said that. I said we should take seriously people's beliefs about themselves.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I'll acknowledge you could get sidetracked into half a dozen rabbit holes here about the age of consent or consent and mental illness or etc

I'm determined not to so I'll just say that as always - real life is messy and imperfect and cannot be contained by any set of laws or policies ever devised

you do the best you can based on your principles, your judgment, available data, and basic empathy

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

and not all members have society have always been bound by the same norms. James VI/I of King James Version fame almost certainly had sex with male courtiers, or at very least was widely believed to have done so. Christina of Sweden presented in a way that we'd now recognize as something like trans masc or genderqueer. plenty of other trans or queer avant la lettre examples could be cited, and while I'm sure some could be individually dissected in aggregate they show that there have always been people who did not fit into those norms, and that punishment was not universally applied. that's not even getting into the varying attitudes toward gender and sexuality in the West over time, or non-Western societies that view gender and sexuality differently.

tldr; a variety of gender and sexuality has almost certainly always existed, whether or not people had the freedom to live it and the vocabulary to describe it

trying to corral that reality into two neat boxes is like trying to catch water in a sieve

 

[sus]

teenagers aren't considered capable of making their own decisions sans guardians. they're being protected from themselves. that's exactly why gender-affirming care - at the heart of this GOP war on queer people - isn't something that a minor can procure without the consent of their guardians.

Is this true!? The right always says that parents standing in kids way can get reported to CPS