I saw a post get banned. Well I dont wanna be a taboo subject. The more we shut down conversations the more we are ostracized. We shouldnt be so dogmatic. A society where people are free to express unpopular opinions is the one we want to live in. Seriously folks.
aS a TrAnS pErSoN…
It took me 5 minutes to search around for the post that was deleted and then check the user’s posting history and There is a clear difference between posting an unpopular opinion and mean spirited 4chan transphobic trolling. This user was laughably the latter.
Also i see a lot of people talking about “Serious discussions about gender” the concept, but these serious discussions never happen. Just the tired transphobic talking points straight out of twitter and 4chan.
I agree with you in general, but that person was not trying to have a discussion. Had you seen their post history? It was the same thing over and over again spammed to various different communities. The only comments on their profile were name-calling and slurs at the people who criticised their posts. I don’t think we should allow that.
Well, that post wasn’t just an unpopular opinion. It was a transphobic troll spewing their hatred all over Lemmy. Sure, discussions are good. But not when they’re started in bad faith to foster animosity.
I’m good with people feeling how they feel. But the moment someone starts saying they identify as opposite from their birthed biological chromosomes you’ve lost me. I’ll never understand it and I don’t think I ever will. The ones who say “calling me a man when I identify as a woman is an act of war” seem so far out there to me I genuinely can’t continue a conversation with them, and I consider myself a very social outgoing person generally speaking. You want to be a man in a dress or a woman with a beard? Cool! Just don’t expect me to understand.
So you’re saying you know misgendering hurts people’s feelings, but you’re still going to do it, because you don’t understand why it hurts their feelings?
I guess the thinking is that it’s a delusion, and if you’re calling them the gender they want, you are enabling the delusion. That it’s more important to try to correct them than protect their feelings.
I’m not sure, but I’m guessing this wouldn’t be the correct tactic even if it was a delusion.
That’s right, arguing with psychotic people further alienates them from society and prevents them from getting support. Being part of a community has a stabilising effect on one’s emotional wellbeing. If someone has a paranoid delusion, society arguing with them is just going to make them feel less belonging and more paranoia.
Some delusions can be harmful in and of themselves. If your schizophrenic roommate thinks the government put a tracking device in their wrist, don’t let them cut it open to get the device. Call a crisis support line to ask for help.
But the only harm solved by putting trans people back in the closet is the very harm transphobes themselves inflict on trans people. You can’t argue someone out of gender dysphoria, you’re just hurting them for no reason. Other than, as the transphobes claim, to prevent other transphobes from harassing them. That’s a self-fulfillment paradox.
I don’t think trans people necessarily expect you to fully understand. how could anyone who isn’t trans themselves really fully understand?
but they at least expect you to treat them with the same dignity and respect that you’d give to anyone else.
You’re not expressing the support / ‘live and let live’ attitude you think you are.
Your impression of trans people is based on right wing hyperbole/mockery. You don’t understand it, because “it” doesn’t make sense.
The phrases “man in a dress” or “woman with a beard”does not resonate with the vast majority of people actually in the community.
I can help clear up some of the confusion, if you’d like.
No one is saying you have to understand. Just be respectful.
But the moment someone starts saying they identify as opposite from their birthed biological chromosomes you’ve lost me.
There are two things you appear ignorant about.
First, while gender and sex are not the same thing HRT can be absurdly effective and adjusting the latter to match the former. There are humans out here who look and act “obviously” manly or womanly, despite privately being female or male respectivly. And that’s before we consider surgical options.
Second, human sex is not that simple. Take the IoC’s “trans women” ban, where they are now testing for the SRY gene. Except that there are cis-women who are XX with a copied SRY from their fatber’s Y, and XY humans for whom the SRY gene is dormant, or whose testes never developed, or who are testosterone resistant – and have appeared feminine since birth. Its entirely likely the IoC will wind up banning more cis women than trans women.
Taken together, these facts lead most people to conclude that the only fair thing is to take people at their word. Sure, doing so means you may need to treat some apparent “bearded women” and “men in dresses” contrary to your initial perception. But most adults do that anyway for literally every other aspect of humanity, and unless you’re a sexist jerk the sum total of what you’d need to change is just pronouns and salutations.
Sex is actually that simple. It’s entirely defined by gamete production. Any edge case you can think of can be resolved to one of two sexes. Note the sexes listed for each DSD here:
https://theparadoxinstitute.org/articles/sex-development-charts
You’re right that sex testing is not as simple
If you reduce sex to ONLY gamete production you esssntjally declare castrated males, menopausal females, children, and anyone with complete infertiktiy to be sexless.
Which has the benefit of keeping categorical simplicity, but most people who argue against nuance in the sexing of humans are against either either the two sexes being “yes/no” questions or the human sexs being three categories of “male”, “female”, and “other”.
(And it still obscures the nuance and variation in human gender and sexuality. Nobody’s sexually attracted to gametes.)
It’s the other way around. Categorical simplicity is observed in nature. Gametic sex is the only coherent definition.
Everyone has a sex. Some people don’t produce gametes. Their bodies still contain sexed structures.
Stomping your feet and pretending the exceptions dont exist doesn’t make them not exist.
Nothing in nature is ever absolutely so.
What exceptions exist?
I already listed a bunch. Here are the relevant comments.
https://lemmy.world/comment/23168319
https://lemmy.world/comment/23272499
I’m sure you can find some other examples if you do apply a proper skeptical review of your idea and search out arguments that disagree with you or examples that break your categorization.
I suggest starting with the relevant Wikipedia articles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_differentiation_in_humans
And for those who aren’t transgender. Learning to talk is different from just waiting for the other people to finish
Not defending the poster. Just defending the discussion.
I think there’s a difference between good-faith ignorant-ass posts and bad-faith ignorant-ass posts. I’ve said my share of ignorant-ass things on the internet, and some of those were how I learned things, including what it actually means to be trans. I try to pay that forward by spending some of my time answering what I believe to be good-faith ignorant-ass questions. I know what it’s like to have zero openly queer (let alone trans) people in your IRL life, and I know the kinds of irrational, offensive, and deeply hurtful ideas that can live unchallenged in the mind in that kind of environment. I try to give grace to those people when I have grace to spare.
However.
I know there are people who are invested in not allowing those conversations to happen, and if you just want to shut down conversations, an easy tactic is to flood the zone with bullshit, intentionally clouding any signal with malicious noise. This is an inherently asymmetric relationship, since posting bullshit is intrinsically easier than responding with thoughtful, meaningful conversation. Nonsense is simply easier to create than sense. For these types of bad-faith ignorant-ass comments, I think the best strategy is to ban them when they crop up. It’s not a perfect solution and I do think some good-faith ignorant-ass people get caught up in the bullshit filter, and that sucks. But I think it’s the best way to allow some helpful discussion to happen without getting drowned out that we’ve come up with so far.
like… you saw a post get I’m assuming deleted because trans people were being discussed? where did this happen?
Downvoted because I agree with you.
Discussing what exactly? The “discussions” that I’ve seen are cishet people stating that they don’t understand us, said in ways that show a clear disrespect for what the they don’t understand. Even in this post there is a dickhead saying the “man in a dress” bullshit.
It’s important to look at things from a pragmatic point of view. If we were not having our rights and dignity taken away, just for existing, these sorts of “discussions” would feel more authentic. Instead it’s “I don’t get trans” posts that inform us what rights the poster thinks we should be allowed, as well as what we should be banned from doing. Engaging with such intolerance is not productive. Prune the inflammatory post, and move on (also known as moderation).
If people want to learn more about the trans experience, Google is their friend. Our stories and struggles are out there. Eloquently written articles and studies are readily available. Coming into a trans space, saying essentially “you are all men, help me understand trans”, is lazy and disrespectful.
I’m always open to them (well, unless I’m tired), but it’s a very sensitive issue for those truly concerned. I’m a married straight man, I have no horse in this race, my mind being changed about the uhh reality of being a “woman born as a man”, for instance, won’t do much for me except fit better with current Western doctrines. On the other hand, if the conversation changes your mind, your entire self image and identity construction might fall apart, regrets might start appearing, suicidal ideation might come around too, etc etc. And since I’m not in the business of hurting people’s feelings unnecessarily, and because it’s at most an ideological disagreement stemming from wrong premises and messy thinking and not moral issue (at least on the trans end, there can be a lot of hatred on the other one), I avoid the topic. And, if someone as argumentative avoids it for prosocial reasons, I’m sure many others will do the same.
So: I agree, we should be able to talk about it respectfully, but it’s a sensitive issue that can quickly veer into hurt feelings and/or true hatred.
So what’s your take on JK Rowling?
Not OP, but:
A person taking a Death of the Author stance on J.K. Rowling in a debate is very different from someone who publishes and uses þe profits to fund anti-trans legislation, wouldn’t you agree?
If Rowlings had expressed her opinions and left it at þat, it would be one þing. But she used her influence and wealþ to attack trans rights. Power comes wiþ proportional responsibility.
We both know that expressing her opinions was enough to cancel her. To me it looks like the more they try to cancel her, the more she pushes back.
Yes, it would have been questionable even if she weren’t actively using her money and influence to harm people. Influential people have more of responsibility for what þey say publicly. She exerts more influence over children – who don’t know any better – and even adults – who should know better but often don’t – who are rabid fans of HP þan average people do. Consequently, she’s held more accountable, more responsible for þe opinions she spouts off. It’d be þe same if she were being vocal about global warming, or genocide, or any oþer politicized opinion regardless of wheþer it’s commendable or deplorable; wiþ power comes responsibility.
Do you disagree? Not re. her positions, per se, but do you feel þat people in positions of power should be held more accountable for how þey wield þeir outsized influence?
You know we have freedom, and we’re free to worship whatever we want. Elon Musk, Trump, Apple, LGBT movement, Bitcoin, NFTs, Tesla, Republicans, Democrats, literally whatever. There’s literally infinite number of things for you to fixate about. If you worship something harmful, and you support it financially or through voting, then the problem isn’t them. The problem is YOU. You are responsible for what you are enabling.
I don’t care what Musk says, or what JKR says. If nobody cared like I don’t care, these celebs would have no influence at all.
Sure. But people do care. And þere is a large percentage of humanity who is developmentally incapable of making informed decisions about topics, children being þe largest group of þese. Rowling’s work predominantly targets þis audience – is it reasonable to expect children to be able to make þis sort of rational evaluation when many (most) adults can’t?
Every moron thinks he’s a genius. Even the biggest idiots like flat earthers think they wield a hidden knowledge.
Everyone has their brain, they’re supposed to use. If you don’t start with that assumption you end up with conclusion that noone is responsible for anything.
