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

[thirdform]

Frankly we should all be hanging our heads in shame that he's got us talking about this completely irrelevant issue.

I'm neither a liberal, nor anarchist, so their debts to Christian moralism don't concern me.

Social revolution is the most authoritarian act there is (paraphrasing Engels).

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Giving children hormones and puberty blockers and cutting off the breasts of teenage girls are awful things to do.

you know what's an awful thing to do? to ignore people's understanding of their own identity and refuse them care that affirms that identity.

queer youth are 4x as likely to attempt suicide as heterosexual youth

trans youth are then 2.5x as likely as cisgendered queer youth to attempt suicide. that number is higher still for trans youth of color.

that's not even getting into all the many less serious mental health issues, and suffering, caused by lack of access to gender-affirming care.

care which, btw, is not easy at all to access. there is a wildly misguided idea that kids can just walk into gender care clinics and get anything they want. in fact, it's the opposite. there are many, many hurdles to get across. these are not lightly taken decisions. and by all means, let's continue having medical professionals and patients use measures like stability of gender identity over time to inform those decisions.

undeniably, some % of people will regret the procedures. that is true with literally any elective medical procedure. plastic surgery has difficult or impossible to reverse effects. some people regret it. it's not a social crisis. every study ever done of gender-affirming care - and absolutely, more need to be done, ASAP - suggests that regret and especially detransitioning is very rare. so if you're seeking to limit harm, the tradeoff gained by making gender-affirming care more accessible more than offsets the potential for regret. as soon as the data says otherwise, let's revisit it.

this article, by a trans journalist who has been covering these issues for many years lays it out much better than I can

Do You Think “Too Many Kids Are Transitioning”? Here’s the Reality.

There’s an empirical argument for affirmative health care.

slate.com

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Calling a bloke on a forum (who you really know very little about) who thinks you shouldn't chop young girls' breasts off and sterilize children with hormones/puberty blockers or fill their heads with nonsense about being born in the wrong body etc etc (list of insanities is too long) a 'radical feminist' is pretty funny, but thanks for acknowledging I'm sincere...I guess 🙄

I've seen you for years here promoting your TERF/SWERF lines, boss

if you don't want the labels that's fine, but it's just an issue of semantics

when someone posts a relevant study that contradicts exactly what you've just said - which you offer no evidence for - and instead of 1) finding some other relevant data to support your position or 2) saying "you know what, maybe I was wrong", you instead double down on your position and dismiss them as quacks, I'd call that a rigid ideological position.

we can compromise - I'll drop radical feminist and we'll just call you "trans-exclusionary". since that seems to be all you actually give a shit about anyway, excluding trans people from the ability to be themselves.

 

[DannyL]

Calling a bloke on a forum (who you really know very little about) who thinks you shouldn't chop young girls' breasts off and sterilize children with hormones/puberty blockers or fill their heads with nonsense about being born in the wrong body etc etc (list of insanities is too long) a 'radical feminist' is pretty funny, but thanks for acknowledging I'm sincere...I guess 🙄

1) Trans identity isn't reducible to those concerns
2) Even if it was, you still can't deny that the Republican party and all of the worse people in the fucking world are using these and other arguments to cynically whip up anti-trans hysteria. What will the likely outcomes of this be, do you think?
3) I read recently, most discourse about trans stuff is about cis-people's concerns, not about listening to trans people. Your list above is a fairly classic example of that. Why do you care? It doesn't impact you in the same way as it impacts those who might be struggling with or concerned with their gender identity.

 

[Benny Bunter]

All these gender experts and clinics are complete quacks. 'Gender identity' is so vague a concept as to be totally meaning meaningless, and affirming these eccentric/fashionable/plain wacko ideas in the minds of young people, then setting them off down some medical pathway where they need hormones and surgery for the rest of their lives rather than learn to accept their bodies through other therapeutic means, is awful.

Slowly more people are coming round to this (they're closing the Tavistock clinic, thank fuck) but America is absolutely insane and has a long way to go.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

1) Trans identity isn't reducible to those concerns
2) Even if it was, you still can't deny that the Republican party and all of the worse people in the fucking world are using these and other arguments to cynically whip up anti-trans hysteria. What will the likely outcomes of be, do you think?
3) I read recently, most discourse about trans stuff is about cis-people's concerns, not about listening to trans people. Your list above is a fairly classic example of that.

well, he doesn't give a shit about trans people, danny. he's been making that clear for years.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

All these gender experts and clinics are complete quacks. 'Gender identity' is so vague a concept as to be totally meaning meaningless, and affirming these eccentric/fashionable/pain wacko ideas in the minds of young people, then setting them off down some medical pathway where they need hormones and surgery for the rest of their lives rather than learn to accept their bodies through other therapeutic means, is awful.

Slowly more people are coming round to this (they're closing the Tavistock clinic, thank fuck) but America is absolutely insane and has a long way to go.

do you know any trans people? have you ever talked to any? have you ever heard their ideas about themselves?

I mean I assume you're just a fucking bellend, as you all would put it, but prove me wrong

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

do you all know how hard it is to get gender-affirming care?

the wait times for HRT are insane (and especially bad in the UK, I believe). that's exactly why there's a huge black market/DIY scene for for it.

the idea that medical professionals are putting these ideas in people's heads - why? to what end? - is so fucking crazy it's hard to wrap your head around

 

[Benny Bunter]

I was wondering when the insults would start. Hey ho, believe what you want, don't expect others to buy into it though or try to bully them into believing nonsense.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I was wondering when the insults would start. Hey ho, believe what you want, don't expect others to buy into it though or try to bully them into believing nonsense.

go ahead, cite any interaction you've ever had with a trans person in your entire life. just one.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

cite any kind of data from anyone anywhere supporting any of your ideas

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

come on benny, don't leave us hanging. you're the authority here. you're apparently the one who knows how people feel about and treat their bodies.

show us the way. impart your wisdom.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Your intimidation and bullying won't work with me i'm afraid.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

lmao you started the namecalling first my dude

what else are "quack" and "whacko" but namecalling?

what else are you doing besides bullying trans children?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

seriously, leave everything else aside

just give us one piece of data from anywhere, even a personal anecdote, that supports anything you've said

how is that request bullying, or intimidation? I think you're just dodging the question because you can't answer

 

[Benny Bunter]

Plenty of stuff out there for people to explore if they have any doubt. This interaction is going nowhere though. You win, congratulations.

 

[thirdform]

I was wondering when the insults would start. Hey ho, believe what you want, don't expect others to buy into it though or try to bully them into believing nonsense.

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 wonder if it's true that TERFery is, so to speak, the truth of feminism. Obviously there have been attempts to say it ain't so, to make it not so, to shake out the contradictions and so on. But what happens if we take a pessimistic view of the matter?

Certainly it's true that TERFs recognise, in their own TERFery, a last-ditch defence of the absolute core of feminism. It could not be more central to feminism, in their eyes, to defend the fusion of female political identity (rooted in women's phenotypical distinctness from men) with female political agency (the possibility of a "women's movement" as such). The two go together in such a way that anything that compromises the integrity of female identity contributes to the politicide of women, shatters the basis on which women as such can have collective political agency. The TERFs are very clear that those are, as far as they're concerned, the stakes of the whole thing. If they lose, it's game over.

Does anyone except TERFs actually want women to exercise collective political agency - as women, as such - any more? Most available trans-inclusive feminisms have plenty to say about the gendered inequity of our social and political systems, the enduring violence of patriarchy, the denial of bodily autonomy, the intesections of gendered oppressions with racial oppressions, and so on. All true and important stuff. But does any of them actually propose that the answer to all this is a women's movement? I think the answer is obviously no - at the level of revealed preferences (how people actually act, what goals they organise towards) if not at the level of stated commitments. Instead, everybody should be a feminist, just as everybody should be anti-racist, and so on. Of course men who call themselves feminists are immediately self-identified as deeply untrustworthy, but equally, no man within a left-wing milieu would ever dream of saying that he is not a feminist.

From time to time I hear muted complaints from women saying, more or less, that they find feminism exhausting. They mean, I think, The Discourse, the way feminism carries itself on social media: the tiresome simplifications, the clout-seeking, the blatant grifts, the shoring up of a position of righteous victimhood at the expense of anyone, male or female, who presents an exploitable vulnerability: uncool enough to be easily mocked, racialised enough to be easily stereotyped into a threat profile. It's morally disorientating, sickening even. Feminism has become this commitment that everybody has to hold, but that nobody actually likes in terms of what it's become: there are rare shining triumphs of measured polemic, of righteous anger against true malefactors, but it's such a slog separating out the good stuff from the dreck. The only ones enjoying their feminism are, again, the TERFs. They have clarity of purpose. They get to stick it to a clearly-identified enemy, all day, every day.

 

[sus]

So many things wrong with this, and so sick of people dragging it into everything queer-related, in bad faith the overwhelming majority of the time

and before I waste time answering it, let's be 100% clear that you know just as well as I and everyone else that @mixed_biscuits absolutely isn't bringing this up in good faith, and neither is chava or any of the other resident alt right/shitheel brigade (I'll grant that benny b, being a hardline TERF/SWERF, is probably at least sincere in his beliefs)

and I want to note strongly that in a thread about a devastating attack on the right of trans people to simply exist, what they've chosen to focus on, and you've chosen to facilitate, is this kind of bullshit.

I think this is a fair response, I just didn't think Tea or Sufi's were. If you think that Biscuits doesn't deserve a real argument, fine, that's its own problem

 

[DannyL]

I was wondering when the insults would start. Hey ho, believe what you want, don't expect others to buy into it though or try to bully them into believing nonsense.

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.

 

[thirdform]

I've seen you for years here promoting your TERF/SWERF lines, boss

if you don't want the labels that's fine, but it's just an issue of semantics

when someone posts a relevant study that contradicts exactly what you've just said - which you offer no evidence for - and instead of 1) finding some other relevant data to support your position or 2) saying "you know what, maybe I was wrong", you instead double down on your position and dismiss them as quacks, I'd call that a rigid ideological position.

we can compromise - I'll drop radical feminist and we'll just call you "trans-exclusionary". since that seems to be all you actually give a shit about anyway, excluding trans people from the ability to be themselves.

Nah, just call him a feminist, and don't compromise. Because that is what he is, an opportunistic troll who loves to become a dooped fashion victim of grift. Incapable of interrogating the motivations behind political lobbying ('I know when i see it, guv!')

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.