Michael Knowles demands a retraction, and gets it.

[rjs330]

If two people need to find a suitable solution to a problem then there has to be some give and take. There has to be some way of finding a position that might not entirely satisfy either, but which goes someway to solving the problem. The very first step is agreeing what the problem is in the first place. To reach agreement on the basic facts and then move on.

The basic fact of the matter is this. That some people's concept of their gender is different to their biological sex. Esse

That is a sentence to which you won't agree, because you don't accept that gender exists. There is then nowhere to go as far as you are concerned. The very fact that you deny what gender is excludes you from being part of any reasonable discussion as to how to solve problems which are directly associated with it.

And nobody is interested in who you think popularised the term or what you think of his sexuality. It's like saying the square on the hypotenuse doesn't equal the sum of the squares on the other two sides because Pythagoras was known to have sex with minors. It's totally irrelevant and an excuse for you to reject what everyone else accepts as normal.

The problem is not not their concept of different gender than their sex. The problem is they think they are supposed to be the opposite sex.

You don't have to reject gender to still believe in biological sex and look at solutions from that angle. Because the problem is they believe they should be the opposite sex. That's a serious mental health issue.

People do care about the man who created the theory. Because the theory is directly related to his own sexuality and his beliefs that surround it. He was a pervert and even his own theories were failures. The more people know the more they question the motives behind the theory and the validity of it. I don't have to convince you, but I can open others eyes.

And trust me I have.

So I don't really care if you can't stand the fact that gender is a manufactured theory that not based upon any provable science.

I have biology and science on my side. You have a sick twisted pervert who's theory's failed on yours.

 

[Pommer]

It's an impossible question to answer. Because we don't have any idea what kind of counseling or treatment they received. As you implied by calling it in the wild.

And one thing for sure is we haven't actually done that.

Since it is a mental health issue we certainly ought to be doing more than we are.

Yes a comprehensive system of healthcare would require that we treat all sufferers of mental illnesses with dignity and respect no matter how morally repugnant their “illness” make them.

Let’s try that?
A real nation that takes care of its citizens instead of the other way around!

 

[ThatRobGuy]

No-one needs to claim that gender 'is a thing'. There isn't any definition that anyone could find (except maybe in a religious blog or forum post) that says that gender and biological sex are the same thing. There isn't a medical paper or article that would say that. To deny it is like sticking your fingers in your ears and singing lah lah lah. Even people who argue against problems they believe transgender people cause readily accept the difference between sex and gender.

I was replying to this statement you made

"But if people want to talk about minors or toilets or sport then they have to get an agreement on the very basis for the problem. Which is gender. If they deny gender even exists, you have no basis on which to start looking for solutions."

Your statement made it sound as if there needed to be some sort of agreement on gender in an ideological sense for finding a "compromise zone". So I provided examples (using religious ideologies) of ideological viewpoints, for which, there's not public agreement for the ideology itself, but where society has made it work.

For instance, Jewish people and Hindus have very different ideological viewpoints, different things they acknowledge and don't acknowledge, different concepts of things, but they still manage to function together in American society with little to no turmoil.

However, both have an understanding that the point of a society and various institutions isn't to exclusively cater to their viewpoints and work within their ideological framework.

Or to put it another way, they're content with tolerance, they're not pushing for compliance, and not seeking to leverage various levers of society for purposes of proselytizing.

That's where I think many trans activists have pushed it a step further, it would seem as tolerance isn't enough.

If a proposal like "you can dress how you want, go by whatever name you want, marry whoever you want, pursue whatever medical interventions you'd like once you're an adult...but for the purpose of society and public institutions, we're still going to separate certain things by biological sex" still gets the label of "transphobic" or "bigoted" or "well that's not good enough" by some activists, then it's clear that those particular folks aren't interested in compromise, they've set the bar at "the world (and everyone in it) should revolve around me".


In some ways, it's a similar mindset to what certain evangelical activists have. Where "it's not good enough" to simply be allowed to participate in their own ideology, they insist that "there should be prayer in schools", "stores should have to use signage that explicitly acknowledges our holidays and not the other ones", "everyone has to give lipservice to the idea that this as a Christian Nation" and "public buildings should put our (and only our) religious iconography up on their lawn". And anything less gets framed as a "war on Christianity".

 

[rjs330]

Yes a comprehensive system of healthcare would require that we treat all sufferers of mental illnesses with dignity and respect no matter how morally repugnant their “illness” make them.

Let’s try that?
A real nation that takes care of its citizens instead of the other way around!

I whole heartedly agree. We need to do a far better job of taking take of our mentally ill people. At least offer the assistance. Many of them would refuse to take the assistance and I don't think we could force them to, but it would be great if we had it fully available. Mental health is a serious thing and we need to take more seriously.

 

[rjs330]

I was replying to this statement you made

"But if people want to talk about minors or toilets or sport then they have to get an agreement on the very basis for the problem. Which is gender. If they deny gender even exists, you have no basis on which to start looking for solutions."

Your statement made it sound as if there needed to be some sort of agreement on gender in an ideological sense for finding a "compromise zone". So I provided examples (using religious ideologies) of ideological viewpoints, for which, there's not public agreement for the ideology itself, but where society has made it work.

For instance, Jewish people and Hindus have very different ideological viewpoints, different things they acknowledge and don't acknowledge, different concepts of things, but they still manage to function together in American society with little to no turmoil.

However, both have an understanding that the point of a society and various institutions isn't to exclusively cater to their viewpoints and work within their ideological framework.

Or to put it another way, they're content with tolerance, they're not pushing for compliance, and not seeking to leverage various levers of society for purposes of proselytizing.

That's where I think many trans activists have pushed it a step further, it would seem as tolerance isn't enough.

If a proposal like "you can dress how you want, go by whatever name you want, marry whoever you want, pursue whatever medical interventions you'd like once you're an adult...but for the purpose of society and public institutions, we're still going to separate certain things by biological sex" still gets the label of "transphobic" or "bigoted" or "well that's not good enough" by some activists, then it's clear that those particular folks aren't interested in compromise, they've set the bar at "the world (and everyone in it) should revolve around me".


In some ways, it's a similar mindset to what certain evangelical activists have. Where "it's not good enough" to simply be allowed to participate in their own ideology, they insist that "there should be prayer in schools", "stores should have to use signage that explicitly acknowledges our holidays and not the other ones", "everyone has to give lipservice to the idea that this as a Christian Nation" and "public buildings should put our (and only our) religious iconography up on their lawn". And anything less gets framed as a "war on Christianity".

I whole heartedly agree and I am one of those evangelicals. Whether we agree or not on the gender issue doesn't mean we can't address or consider people's actions and what we can agree on. I don't think any of us conservatives would say as an adult you have no right to pursue your transgender feelings. Living in a free country means you have the freedom to pursue your own values. If you want to dress up as a woman, get surgeries etc that is on you.

But we are not going to allow you to push your ideology on society as a whole. We are not going to allow you to seek punishment for those who won't go along. Those are consequences to your own actions.

And I'm with you with not forcing places to put up special signs or forcing prayer in school. If you want to say happy holidays instead of merry Christmas, go for it. We honestly should not be offended. That's dumb. But if you are forcing people to say happy holidays instead of merry Christmas that worse.

If you are allowing pride flags, trans flags, BLM flags in schools then you should allow Christian flags, the American flag a Muslim faith flag etc. It's all ideology and if one is allowed then all should be allowed.

 

[rjs330]

We do fully accept that regardless of what is done there will be transgender people out there. I don't know what trans people did before the whole bathroom debate started. But I imagine if they looked and dressed like a woman they would go into the woman's restroom and no one knew. The same goes for transmen.

No one deserves to be beaten up for being trans. No one should be made fun of in school or in public. Bullying is not acceptable for merely existing. But you have to accept the consequences of your actions which means you will have to figure out how to maneuver around societal rules regarding sex. No you can't use a women's locker room if you have a penis. You might just have to dress and undress in a private bathroom. You chose to give in to your mental health issues so you will have to work through the consequences of your actions. No you don't get to try and indoctrinate kids into the transgender ideology. No you don't get to participate in women's sports and take home awards that belong to actual women. Participate in the sports with men because that is your sex. The world does not evolve around you and should not have to cater to your feelings and mental health issues. If you walk into Home Depot dressed as a woman while looking like a man, no one should be mean to to you or make fun of you.

We as a society can learn to be nice without embracing and accepting and catering to this.

But if you are an activist who is trying to force your ideology on everyone, especially kids. Then the nice gloves come off.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

I whole heartedly agree. We need to do a far better job of taking take of our mentally ill people. At least offer the assistance. Many of them would refuse to take the assistance and I don't think we could force them to, but it would be great if we had it fully available. Mental health is a serious thing and we need to take more seriously.

I would elaborate further and suggest that there does need to be some funding allocated to research this topic in more detail.

To date (at least as far as I'm aware), there are no medications that address this particular dysphoria in the way something like Thorazine and Abilify addresses schizophrenia or how Fluoxetine helps address certain forms of body dysmorphia. And perhaps the same level of urgency isn't there due to the fact that the situation doesn't present the same level of potential externalities as the other ones mentioned. (for instance, a person seeing themselves as the opposite sex doesn't carry the same risks as a person who hears (potentially violent) voices in their heads, or a person trying to starve themselves when they already are underweight.


I don't know if it was due to public pressure, or because this issue acquired political implications due to "T" getting attached to "LGB" so people felt compelled to take the approach that was "the most PC"...but it does seem as if the medical scientific community kind of "called it quits early" on this one.

They made it as far as finding that "affirming care reduces self-harm risk more than the approach of trying to counsel the problem away", but seems like they stopped there and didn't try to address the issue any further. And while affirming care does reduce risks to a degree, the self-harm and suicide attempt rate are still high enough (even with affirming care) that I would think it still warrants efforts for further exploration into more treatment options.

It'd be like, if in the early phases of researching certain forms of depression, the medical community found that "being nice and giving someone a hug works better for reducing self-harm than telling them toughen up and deal with it", and stopped there and declared "hugs are the best way to treat depression and it's now everyone else's duty to give them a hug whenever you see them, end of discussion...any suggestions that question this as being the be-all end-all solution means you hate people with depression"

 

[Bradskii]

The problem is not not their concept of different gender than their sex.

If you reject the very basis of the condition then you have no right to be involved in any solutions to problems associated with it.

 

[Bradskii]

I was replying to this statement you made

"But if people want to talk about minors or toilets or sport then they have to get an agreement on the very basis for the problem. Which is gender. If they deny gender even exists, you have no basis on which to start looking for solutions."

Your statement made it sound as if there needed to be some sort of agreement on gender in an ideological sense for finding a "compromise zone".

Gender isn't an ideological position. But that's the argument you'll get. Even to the point of saying it was 'invented' by someone they think was sexually perverted for the own ends. A position like that is the ideological one. And so far removed from reality that anyone holding it is excused from any conversations regarding any problems there are.

 

[KCfromNC]

Why do so many people have a struggle with the English language?

GOP states cutting funding to education, I'd imagine. Not sure of the relevance to the thread ... oh wait, is this some sort of lame attempt at a personal attack? Oh, I get it, no real response to what I wrote, so start posting fabrications about the person posting. Quite droll, certain to sway a particular type of audience.

Do you believe racism should be eradicated?

Are you in favor of promoting it?

Is it deliberate ignorance or do they really know and are just being dishonest?

Speaking of posts struggling with English, who is the "they" in this question referring to? "They" were thrown into the sentence with zero introduction.

By the way I was responding to a post that brought it up. Just curious why you elected to ask me the question and not the original poster?

I responded to your post quoting mine. Shouldn't be that big of a mystery, it's how the forum here has worked for years.

 

[KCfromNC]

The speaker in question did clarify what it is they're looking for and what they meant by the statement when asked about it:

"...eradicating Transgenderism would...mean behaving as American society did before, say, 2015. Before around 2015 we did not have any acceptance of Transgenderism in public life."

Seems like a lie to me, perhaps appealing to some sort of imagined world where things which scare conservatives simply didn't exist at some random time in the past despite the evidence.

The pattern of saying things which aren't true would be consistent with my thoughts that his attempt to pretend this speech wasn't attempting to incite a reaction towards trans people isn't particularly sincere.

 

[KCfromNC]

I've floated the idea before that this needs to be treated (societally) the same way we treat religious ideas that we don't acknowledge as being valid.

Or perhaps an area where we let medical experts do their thing and keep random amateurs out of such decisions.
I mean, what other fact-based situations should we treat like religious ideas, where everyone gets to have their own opinions? Infrastructure improvements? Federal tax accounting? Election counts?

 

[Pommer]

Or perhaps an area where we let medical experts do their thing and keep random amateurs out of such decisions.
I mean, what other fact-based situations should we treat like religious ideas, where everyone gets to have their own opinions? Infrastructure improvements? Federal tax accounting? Election counts?

Conservatives will embrace a universal healthcare system once they make sure to have a law covering every single medical procedure and issue.

 

[FireDragon76]

No child is "mutilating their bodies". I know it's common knowledge among some folks that 10-year-olds are carrying their penny jars down to the local back alley gender reassignment outlet, or worse, are transported there by a gay teacher who wants to neuter them or whatever, and getting surgery, but that's not happening.

It's also interesting that you refer to "castration". It seems that some men who are most vocally opposed to gender affirming health care only shriek about trans girls, through they sometimes mention trans boys having mastectomies.

That said, no child receives puberty blockers unless they're close to puberty, and those drugs are entirely reversible. If they stop taking them normal levels of estrogen and testosterone production resume.

Certain hormone blockers, like spironolactone, can make you sterile if you take them long enough, I do know that.

However, the case is being overplayed. There's reason to show concern, but the level of alarm coming out of the right about gender-affirming care is not proportionate to reality. It has all the hallmarks of "culture war", a strategy embraced by the GOP ever since they wedded with conservative Evangelicals in the 70's. To understand why this works with conservative Evangelicals, you need to understand their polemical worldview- there always has to be a bogieman so that they feel they are fighting a crusade against "evil", even if educated people in society are befuddled by the tilting at windmills.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Or perhaps an area where we let medical experts do their thing and keep random amateurs out of such decisions.
I mean, what other fact-based situations should we treat like religious ideas, where everyone gets to have their own opinions? Infrastructure improvements? Federal tax accounting? Election counts?

Per my previous post:
************************************
I would elaborate further and suggest that there does need to be some funding allocated to research this topic in more detail.

To date (at least as far as I'm aware), there are no medications that address this particular dysphoria in the way something like Thorazine and Abilify addresses schizophrenia or how Fluoxetine helps address certain forms of body dysmorphia. And perhaps the same level of urgency isn't there due to the fact that the situation doesn't present the same level of potential externalities as the other ones mentioned. (for instance, a person seeing themselves as the opposite sex doesn't carry the same risks as a person who hears (potentially violent) voices in their heads, or a person trying to starve themselves when they already are underweight.


I don't know if it was due to public pressure, or because this issue acquired political implications due to "T" getting attached to "LGB" so people felt compelled to take the approach that was "the most PC"...but it does seem as if the medical scientific community kind of "called it quits early" on this one.

They made it as far as finding that "affirming care reduces self-harm risk more than the approach of trying to counsel the problem away", but seems like they stopped there and didn't try to address the issue any further. And while affirming care does reduce risks to a degree, the self-harm and suicide attempt rate are still high enough (even with affirming care) that I would think it still warrants efforts for further exploration into more treatment options.

It'd be like, if in the early phases of researching certain forms of depression, the medical community found that "being nice and giving someone a hug works better for reducing self-harm than telling them toughen up and deal with it", and stopped there and declared "hugs are the best way to treat depression and it's now everyone else's duty to give them a hug whenever you see them, end of discussion...any suggestions that question this as being the be-all end-all solution means you hate people with depression"
***********************************

I'd be glad to see more funding and research done for the topic.

With regards to having opinions on things...it would seem as credentialism and "deferring to the experts" is a requirement that seems to be selectively demanded, and one that only seems to apply when the expert in question happens to hold the opinion of the person citing them.

 

[rjs330]

If you reject the very basis of the condition then you have no right to be involved in any solutions to problems associated with it.

The basis is they think they are a different sex.

LOL, I don't believe you have the authority to tell me I have no right to be involved in any solutions.
Since it's based on the fact they think they are a different sex and the fact that gender is a bogus ideology you have no right to be involved in solutions. I guess. Yet I am willing out of the goodness of my heart to listen to your solutions.

By the way you never offered any for trans women being involved I women's sports.

 

[rjs330]

GOP states cutting funding to education, I'd imagine. Not sure of the relevance to the thread ... oh wait, is this some sort of lame attempt at a personal attack? Oh, I get it, no real response to what I wrote, so start posting fabrications about the person posting. Quite droll, certain to sway a particular type of audience.



Are you in favor of promoting it?



Speaking of posts struggling with English, who is the "they" in this question referring to? "They" were thrown into the sentence with zero introduction.



I responded to your post quoting mine. Shouldn't be that big of a mystery, it's how the forum here has worked for years.

Well if someone doesn't understand the difference between and ism and an ist them there needs to be some education so that the conversation can move forward. Cause when having a discussion we need to be talking about the same thing not two different ones.

You didn't answer the question you dodged it. Why?

They is anyone who says an ism is the same thing as a person. There seems to be quite a few people out there who are making that claim.

 

[rjs330]

Seems like a lie to me, perhaps appealing to some sort of imagined world where things which scare conservatives simply didn't exist at some random time in the past despite the evidence.

I'd like to see you back up that claim.
I don't think you can. That's just a random statement not based on any facts or reality.

 

[rjs330]

The pattern of saying things which aren't true would be consistent with my thoughts that his attempt to pretend this speech wasn't attempting to incite a reaction towards trans people isn't particularly sincere.

Oh? And what pattern is that? And what did he say that wasn't true?

 

[rjs330]

Or perhaps an area where we let medical experts do their thing and keep random amateurs out of such decisions.
I mean, what other fact-based situations should we treat like religious ideas, where everyone gets to have their own opinions? Infrastructure improvements? Federal tax accounting? Election counts?

Medical experts? Really? You mean like the ones who are willing to chop off perfectly healthy body parts of children and sew on other ones that don't really function properly?

The ones that would stand to make a lot of money one it?

Or the ones that would give kids drugs that are used for chemical castration? Those experts?

Are those experts also supposed to tell the rest of us that we have to put up with boys in the girls locker rooms? Men in women's locker rooms showering with them? Are those experts also supposed to tell the rest of us we have to have trans education and indoctrination at schools? Are they the ones that are supposed to tell us that men should be competing against women in women's sports? Are those experts supposed to be telling the authorities that if parents so not wish to trans their kids the kid should be taken away?

You know there are medical experts who don't believe in transing the kids?

But I don't suppose you would trust them.