Furthermore: how can we help people? How can we be nice?
Re: US Government rules on Gender Identity
Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 2:52 pm
by brekin
Luther Blissett wrote:Both of my friends are fine, thanks though. Far more normal and conformist than I. There have been no additional doctor's visits beyond the usual vaccinations and check-ups.How can we help trans people? That is my primary concern.
I think you've kind of hit on the conundrum.
How much of "helping" involves telling the people the truth versus shielding them from the truth? Having them conform to reality, versus having reality conform to their wishes? Where is the line between acceptance and enabling?
Granted no one has the ultimate truth but those who suffer from dysphoria are suffering from a disorder, which I think they would agree with (that is how they identify). Is the disorder caused by their "thinking", or is it a disorder of "nature"?
That aside the real issue is on what is the solution, and that is where people differ greatly. Do you accept nature, or do you try to refashion it?
Further, if you suffer from a disorder you may not be the best person to know how to solve it.
Especially if you are 4 years old.
Gender dysphoria
Gender dysphoria or gender identity disorder (GID) is the dysphoria (distress) a person experiences as a result of the sex and gender they were assigned at birth. In these cases, the assigned sex and gender do not match the person's gender identity, and the person is transgender. There is evidence suggesting that twins who identify with a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth may do so not only due to psychological or behavioral causes, but also biological ones related to their genetics or exposure to hormones before birth.
Luther Blissett wrote:Both of my friends are fine, thanks though. Far more normal and conformist than I. There have been no additional doctor's visits beyond the usual vaccinations and check-ups.How can we help trans people? That is my primary concern.
I think you've kind of hit on the conundrum.
How much of "helping" involves telling the people the truth versus shielding them from the truth? Having them conform to reality, versus having reality conform to their wishes? Where is the line between acceptance and enabling?
Granted no one has the ultimate truth but those who suffer from dysphoria are suffering from a disorder, which I think they would agree with (that is how they identify). Is the disorder caused by their "thinking", or is it a disorder of "nature"?
That aside the real issue is on what is the solution, and that is where people differ greatly. Do you accept nature, or do you try to refashion it?
Further, if you suffer from a disorder you may not be the best person to know how to solve it.
Especially if you are 4 years old.
Gender dysphoria
Gender dysphoria or gender identity disorder (GID) is the dysphoria (distress) a person experiences as a result of the sex and gender they were assigned at birth. In these cases, the assigned sex and gender do not match the person's gender identity, and the person is transgender. There is evidence suggesting that twins who identify with a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth may do so not only due to psychological or behavioral causes, but also biological ones related to their genetics or exposure to hormones before birth.
Why we would we get involved with someone's private business like this? It doesn't seem very nice to me, and when I ask myself who benefits from social control over individuals privacy, authoritarianism, standards and the traditional ways of doing things, the answer isn't great.
Luther Blissett wrote:Both of my friends are fine, thanks though. Far more normal and conformist than I. There have been no additional doctor's visits beyond the usual vaccinations and check-ups.How can we help trans people? That is my primary concern.
I think you've kind of hit on the conundrum.
How much of "helping" involves telling the people the truth versus shielding them from the truth? Having them conform to reality, versus having reality conform to their wishes? Where is the line between acceptance and enabling?
Granted no one has the ultimate truth but those who suffer from dysphoria are suffering from a disorder, which I think they would agree with (that is how they identify). Is the disorder caused by their "thinking", or is it a disorder of "nature"?
That aside the real issue is on what is the solution, and that is where people differ greatly. Do you accept nature, or do you try to refashion it?
Further, if you suffer from a disorder you may not be the best person to know how to solve it.
Especially if you are 4 years old.
Gender dysphoria
Gender dysphoria or gender identity disorder (GID) is the dysphoria (distress) a person experiences as a result of the sex and gender they were assigned at birth. In these cases, the assigned sex and gender do not match the person's gender identity, and the person is transgender. There is evidence suggesting that twins who identify with a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth may do so not only due to psychological or behavioral causes, but also biological ones related to their genetics or exposure to hormones before birth.
Why we would we get involved with someone's private business like this? It doesn't seem very nice to me, and when I ask myself who benefits from social control over individuals privacy, authoritarianism, standards and the traditional ways of doing things, the answer isn't great.
Well, this isn't people's private business, but public. They are seeking the publics approval and acceptance. Gender/sex identity is not just the individual but society, and how one raises ones children is often visited on the rest of society, for good or bad. Surgery/hormone therapy need to be procured from institutions and often have near irreversible effects. If this was just a matter of kids being dressed as the other sex (which use to be fairly common) few would care. Normalization and acceptance of transgenderism as mainstream and a choice for small children with medical assists is a public consideration that effects social norms, a public, not a private matter. And we routinely get involved in people's business when it can be harming to minors. Is it nice to ignore possible irreparable harm to minors?
Re: US Government rules on Gender Identity
Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 4:25 pm
by Luther Blissett
Few would care? Why has there always been so much violence aimed at people who did not conform to gender stereotypes, either woman or man, especially throughout American history where there never was an accepted third / fourth gender as in some other cultures?
I disagree that this is public. It has absolutely no bearing on you what people do with themselves.
Yes, if it is out of sight, it is out of mind. People have been dressing up as the opposite sex in their own homes covertly and in clandestine places for ever. Many conservatives and moderates don't know or care, probably some even participate, but bringing it out into the public discourse regarding children as a choice is what is in contention. Victorian/Edwardians use to dress boys in dresses until they were a certain age, but that was temporary, what we are talking about is a permanent, life altering change that most likely won't be reversible.
Luther Blissett » Mon May 15, 2017 3:25 pm wrote:Why has there always been so much violence aimed at people who did not conform to gender stereotypes, either woman or man, especially throughout American history where there never was an accepted third / fourth gender as in some other cultures?
I disagree that this is public. It has absolutely no bearing on you what people do with themselves.
Not sure. My guess is when others try to change their identity outside of accepted norms it threatens everyone elses identity and the structure of society. Sex and gender are perhaps the very basis for civilization for good or bad and so there is less tolerance for variance because the survival of a people and species depends on accepted roles. Whether that it is true or not is moot, as many are convinced of it and so it is a self fulfilling prophecy.
And of course it has a bearing on myself what people do with themselves.
As much as the cyber-illusion has conditioned us against it, the fact is we live in a society.
Peoples choices effect other people in a myriad of ways.
People aren't changing their appearance and identity for themselves but for others.
Why would you even have to change your appearance/identity if you believe yourself to be something inside?
When you don't see yourself except for the brief bit brushing your teeth and in a storefront window occasionally?
People are changing their appearance/identity because 1. they want others to believe they are something 2. that they believe they are 3. that others currently don't.
The problem is many people don't believe others are what they are claiming to be before and after the fact of modification.
I'm totally against forcing people to be something they are not. But I'm not for playing god with the whims of a four year old's biology when their reality is a cartoon universe. You can't force others to believe they are something that they don't believe they are, but then again, you can't force others to believe you are something if they don't.
I think it should be a law that you can't modify a minor's major biology except for necessary health reasons and definitely not for elective cosmetic or ideological reasons of choice.
Re: US Government rules on Gender Identity
Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 10:39 am
by Luther Blissett
We're closing in on 7.5 billion people in the world, trans individuals' choices have absolutely no bearing on your life.
Why does everyone else keep bringing up surgical procedures on children to attack my position on this? It's grim. I never had that conversation with either parent and have no clue what is happening (BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING PRIVATE AND WHY WOULD I KNOW THAT). I was just with the father last night at a wake.
Re: US Government rules on Gender Identity
Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 12:26 pm
by Wombaticus Rex
Luther Blissett » Wed May 17, 2017 9:39 am wrote:We're closing in on 7.5 billion people in the world, trans individuals' choices have absolutely no bearing on your life.
The past century has been a continuous education in how individual choices scale up.
The population explosion does not dilute the impact of these choices, it amplifies them.
Not speaking on the OP, speaking in general. The sentence I quoted really jumped out at me.
Re: US Government rules on Gender Identity
Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 1:57 pm
by brekin
Luther Blissett wrote:We're closing in on 7.5 billion people in the world, trans individuals' choices have absolutely no bearing on your life.
Why does everyone else keep bringing up surgical procedures on children to attack my position on this? It's grim. I never had that conversation with either parent and have no clue what is happening (BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING PRIVATE AND WHY WOULD I KNOW THAT). I was just with the father last night at a wake.
Because I don't think anyone really much cares if someone at 18 decides to change their sex. I don't. But changing the structure and biology of someones sex before it even has been established is destructive to a persons potential and well being. Children are dependent on their providers to make choices for them they are unable to navigate at a young age. That is what seems to be the issue for most on the thread and that is what I'm speaking to. If someone wants to circumcise their 14 year old son or genitally mutilate their 10 year old daughter that really doesn't have any bearing on my life either and is also a "private" issue. But in a society we try to minimize unnecessary harm and barbaric practices on its members, and especially the vulnerable.
If someone wants to raise their boy as a girl, or vis versa, thats not something I would agree with (*jesus, reedited, basically I don't agree) as it could just be a phase they are going through. Also, until they hit puberty I'm not even sure how much you really have to raise a boy as a "boy" and a girl as a "girl" now these days. In my experience, couples I've met who go down the gender fluidity road are already ideologically primed to do so, and they make a thing out of it with very little prompting. To decide to do so, based on what the child wants, to me most of it seems like extended role playing and overindulgence in childish whims with elements of munchausen by proxy syndrome. So, on one hand I think it is severely misguided identity wise, but I really don't care. I'm more than a little alarmed that adults would be so swayed by such a given what the child wants, and to act on it in that matter. But I see many kids growing out of it, and later asking their parents, "What and the hell were you thinking?" But beyond gender-washing their kids brains is the matter of forever changing their kids biochemistry and/or physical features. That to me is just plain abuse.
What this stems from, it seems to me, is an inability to accept roles and identity and by extension reality, fate, destiny and to thereby model and teach the importance of being over appearances. It doesn't seem that there is an emphasis on accepting who you are and what you have been given, but the hubris and vanity that you can remake it to fit what you please, which probably has largely been largely influenced by the child's viewing of Disney princesses and one or both parents being gender studies minors. It is the child's dream-reality colliding with the technological hubris that everything is negotiable and po-mo nonsense we all create our own reality. The flattery that with more choice will come more satisfaction to tinker with our soft and hard wares.
Now, seeing that there are these four arts, two attending on the body and two on the soul for their highest good; flattery knowing, or rather guessing their natures, has distributed herself into four shams or simulations of them; she puts on the likeness of some one or other of them, and pretends to be that which she simulates, and having no regard for men's highest interests, is ever making pleasure the bait of the unwary, and deceiving them into the belief that she is of the highest value to them. Cookery simulates the disguise of medicine, and pretends to know what food is the best for the body; and if the physician and the cook had to enter into a competition in which children were the judges, or men who had no more sense than children, as to which of them best understands the goodness or badness of food, the physician would be starved to death. A flattery I deem this to be and of an ignoble sort, Polus, for to you I am now addressing myself, because it aims at pleasure without any thought of the best. An art I do not call it, but only an experience, because it is unable to explain or to give a reason of the nature of its own applications. And I do not call any irrational thing an art; but if you dispute my words, I am prepared to argue in defence of them.
The fact is we are entering a phase where we have all been entered into a competition for survival in which children are the judges, or men who had no more sense than children are the judges, and there is the technology now to remake reality into what they prefer. And the children judges will prefer the cartoon to the real. That's all folks!
Luther Blissett » Wed May 17, 2017 9:39 am wrote:We're closing in on 7.5 billion people in the world, trans individuals' choices have absolutely no bearing on your life.
The past century has been a continuous education in how individual choices scale up.
The population explosion does not dilute the impact of these choices, it amplifies them.
Not speaking on the OP, speaking in general. The sentence I quoted really jumped out at me.
Referring to the bolded:
I don't think that's the population explosion per se. It's the changes in media and communications and tech. Or "globalization," for want of a better term. The Spectacle, if you prefer. It's why there are trivial gossip things about non-entities that everyone on the planet almost seems required to know, why blockbusters now open in 15,000 theaters worldwide on the same day, why the O.J. Simpson cases define an era of American history in people's memories of their own lives, why everyone in New York City was outraged for weeks that time a lady was killed by a speeding bicyclist in Central Park but have no idea how many pedestrians are killed by automobiles in a year, etc.
.
Re: US Government rules on Gender Identity
Posted: Thu May 18, 2017 4:01 am
by Project Willow
^Yep.
Luther Blissett » 15 May 2017 05:53 wrote:
It's madness to suggest that my friends are impressing this upon their child. A lifetime of ostracization, fear and anger and disgust directed at them, violence, etc? Sign them up! What parent wouldn't?
No, not madness, as your friends are following the currently authoritative voices in our culture, and only want the best for their child. They know not what they do, and such is often the case when it comes to enculturation. However, you cannot ignore the science of child development. A child of that age knows nothing *inherently* about its sex, outside of what its parenst and its culture tell it. There is far too much evidence documenting the process by which children become aware not only of their sex, but their sexuality. There is NO in-born awareness of a sexed body. I'm sorry but, there is simply no science behind the claims of your friends.
Re: US Government rules on Gender Identity
Posted: Thu May 18, 2017 9:58 am
by yathrib
It is darkly humorous that people who would sooner drive a railroad spike through their own eye than accept the preposterous claims of old or new age religions are completely on board for accepting that one can have Magical Woman Essence (or Man Essence) in spite of having neither sociology nor biology in one's corner. This is essentially a religious claim, like Zenu and his thetans, but more harmful in the long run.
Re: US Government rules on Gender Identity
Posted: Sun May 21, 2017 4:50 pm
by Heaven Swan
Re: US Government rules on Gender Identity
Posted: Sun May 21, 2017 7:55 pm
by JackRiddler
yathrib » Thu May 18, 2017 8:58 am wrote:It is darkly humorous that people who would sooner drive a railroad spike through their own eye than accept the preposterous claims of old or new age religions are completely on board for accepting that one can have Magical Woman Essence (or Man Essence) in spite of having neither sociology nor biology in one's corner. This is essentially a religious claim, like Zenu and his thetans, but more harmful in the long run.
Well, it hasn't been a very long run quite yet. I don't expect this phase to prevail for much longer. Also, the group coming out with it, i.e., people who are gender non-conformist (especially male-bodied persons who do not present according to masculine norm) have really been and remain a general target of outrageous levels of unfounded hatred and violence. In Latin America, for example, the murder rate among the "travesties" is shocking. Suicide is a more complicated thing but of course a hostile environment encourages it. They are preyed upon. Which is not to say this justifies the ideology and jargon requirements currently being pushed as a program, which is generally coming from a more socioculturally privileged set.