I wouldn't say that. If there is a true brain-body incongruence, recognising that isn't mental illness.
Transitioning is a complex, multi-faceted process. I have no real problem with, say, letting a child choose a new name, or wear clothes they're comfortable in. The bar is - with good reason - higher for medical intervention, and the more serious the intervention, the higher the bar. That seems appropriate. It's not evil to give people necessary medical treatment.
Why should I - of all people - be so arrogant as to think I know better than a young person, their parents, and their entire medical team?
This comes back around to some of my very early posts in this thread, where I suggested that the church needed to relinquish power and control as a way of relating to others.
Yes, because it compares needed medical treatment with self-harm, which is a very different issue.
Get a grip. Women have breast reduction surgery for cosmetic or personal reasons all the time, and nobody carries on about "evil personified." Sex transition surgery on minors is very rare, and only when very strongly indicated. It's mostly fat tissue that's removed from the chest. This isn't "mutilation," it's intended as much needed medical treatment.
No, it isn't.
And a reply to me...
That wasn't my source; I think you're confusing me with another poster. The source we were discussing, that I provided, was a review in the Journal of Neuroendocrinology.
So I won't find any WPATH funded research or any of their researchers in the studies reviewed?
They write and publish more studies on this than anyone.
If you find it "blatantly tyrannical" to call someone by their chosen name,
I don't think changing names is an issue. People do this for all sorts of reasons...marriage for example.
I was thinking about pronouns and saying a man is a woman....things like that.
or the like, I think we have very different definitions of tyranny.
Well that's why I didn't specifically mention name changes. Imagine your church established a theocracy in your country....and to get a visa to visit, I had to affirm that Jesus is my lord and savior and the one true God. I have to continue this, at any given moment, or risk punishment of some kind....
I know it's a hypothetical that's not likely....but would you consider this tyrannical?
First, a caveat that I recognise that comparing transgendered identity to disability is offensive for a lot of people, it's difficult to avoid at this point, and I truly don't mean it in an offensive way.
You know, I saw that, and I considered pointing it out....
But then I thought "she probably didn't mean it in a cruel way" You simply cannot think of another problem of the body or mind to compare it to.
It's not my inclination to jump to the worst possible conclusions about anyone who disagrees with me.
Everyone disagrees with me on something.
That said, you may or may not be aware that there are massive debates raging in various parts of the disability community, about whether disability ought to be eradicated even if we can, about whether a eugenicist approach is ethical; and so on.
I'd like to make clear that I'm not discussing killing anyone. I'm simply pointing out the very real possibility of genetic alterations in the womb to remove the possibility of becoming transgendered. The result isn't death. It's simply the removal of the problem.
This gets particularly pointed around the Deaf community, around neurodiversity, and so on.
I don't really understand what neurodiversity means.
I put this question of possibly preventing transgendered development by gene manipulation in that light, and I am aware that there is a complex, difficult, discussion to be had about the ethics of such treatment, and at this point, I am not prepared to say I have all the answers to that. I don't know that it should be my decision to make.
You seem a rather passive participant in society as long as the mainstream agrees with you. I suppose you didn't speak out against the book banning? Or was that the sort of thing that a society does and you decide suddenly that your opinions are warranted?
Since you seem to have relegated the rest of the post to replying to others, I'd like to point out that we're talking about children....and according to the president of WPATH, puberty blockers that are continued through puberty or followed up with HRT result in sexual dysfunction (impotence) nearly 100% of the time. We are talking about medical care that may be effectively sterilizing children.
I don't think a child can consent to that...nor should a parent....without a medically necessary reason.
That brings us back to the trans youth suicide rate. A number no one seems to know.
When considering who is at risk for suicide....things like "suicide attempts" and "suicidal ideation" seem like good indicators of who is at risk. This is completely false in regards to gender.
We know that women, for example, have much higher rates of suicidal ideation. They also attempt suicide more. Does that mean they are at a higher risk than men for suicide?? No. Men commit suicide, by a significantly larger margin.
Until we actually have a suicide rate for trans youth....and an accurate one at that....this medical intervention is extremely drastic and likely permanent for what appears to be a relatively minor issue that typically resolves itself in time without any intervention at all.
Lastly, I don't even like the affirmative care model for adults. A short video clip of a female to male trans person has been making the rounds in conservative media. The person in the video seems to have achieved extremely desirable results. They are convincingly male in appearance (if slight of frame) and I doubt many would see past the disguise. On top of that, she makes a relatively attractive man (I would imagine most women would agree she's more attractive than me).
The video however, is her expression of extreme regret and disillusionment. She appears to have imagined the life of a man as this highly privileged easy thing to navigate. This is typical if one is a lesbian with a strong feminist background or indoctrination into gender theory. She now knows, these are lies....and her life is almost immeasurably harder. She laments the inability to make friends....the sort of thing most adult men could have told her beforehand. She complains about a feeling of being invisible, as if she doesn't matter or isn't even noticed....also something any man could have related to her. She is now friendless and alone....unable to live this sort of idealised version of manhood that she imagined. Even worse, I don't think she yet understood that since she is now perceived as a man by most people....no one really cares about her problems. She is a man, and is expected not only to deal with them on her own....but to not do the very thing she's doing....making her problems other people's problems. That's a weak man....and nobody cares about them. Consider the incel community for example. You have a group of men....with significant self esteem, social interaction problems, and a distorted worldview because of them. Does anyone care about helping incels? No...they're men....we don't care if they kill themselves and on the rare occasions they go on a rampage....we consider them as basically terrorists.
Society doesn't care about men's problems....not in the way we do women's....hence the reaction of much of the conservative media mocking this unfortunate person. They created this problem...and they did it under the assumption that they felt like a man.
Had they actually felt like a man....none of these difficulties she now perceives would have been a surprise. It seems like they would have been expected....especially if she ever spoke to men about the experience of being a man.
How did she get so far in a treatment that has utterly failed to help her in any way? She's well beyond the point of turning back. She's a lesbian who desired being a man....based on an idea of men that doesn't really exist for 90% of men. There's likely several culprits....from feminist ideology and gender ideology....but the main culprit is the one she is stuck paying money to....the medical community and its affirmative care model.
Exactly. So we should be open to new ideas and new concepts. It's worth noting the author of that hymn was a 19th-century English Congregationalist, so his work demonstrates that some of the attitudes I'm arguing for have been part of a more "traditional" take on Christianity than perhaps your arguments have allowed for.
Well, that view might be the basis of a fairly apodictic approach to Christian ethics. But there are other schools of ethics, even in Christian thought; virtue ethics, basic human goods ethics, consequentialist ethics, and so on. There's a book by Samuel Wells called Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics which looks at how our ethical responses might be less like reading from a script, and more like developing a godly character which then expresses itself in new and varied situations. It's a concept worth thinking about.
Perhaps, and it certainly helped provide a foundation for feminist thought. However, my point was simply that Christian views about things like being made in God's image, and what it means to be male and female, have not been unchanged through our history. This is demonstrable by a fairly quick glance at our history, and the diversity of views held even today.
Really? I'm not being open and fair to point out that Christians throughout history have not all valued women as made in the image of God?
Here's a quote from Augustine of Hippo:
" . . woman was given to man, woman who was of small intelligence and who perhaps still lives more in accordance with the promptings of the inferior flesh than by superior reason. Is this why the apostle Paul does not attribute the image of God to her?”
De Genesi ad literam Book 11.42
Or the same Augustine:
". . . the woman together with her own husband is the image of God, so that that whole substance may be one image; but when she is referred separately to her quality of help-meet, which regards the woman herself alone, then she is not the image of God; but as regards the man alone, he is the image of God as fully and completely as when the woman too is joined with him in one.”
On the Trinity, 12.7.10
Here's Aquinas:
“As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence. Such as that of a south wind, which is moist, as the Philosopher observes” (On the Generation of Animals 4.2).
Being "in the image of God" is not a matter of biology. God is not a biological being.
There are good things about Western culture, but there are lots of problems too.
It does kind of undermine your claim, though, that we had a wonderful, well-ordered society based on these unchanging "truths" until five minutes ago, and then it all went to hell in a handbasket.
I should create a bingo card for these threads.
"We" must? Who's "we"? And why is that something "we" have to control?
Really? Outside my marriage, to whom do my reproductive organs matter? Nobody else sees them (occasional medical checks aside), and they don't impinge on my work, my friendships, my hobbies. Likewise, outside my household, I don't see anyone else's reproductive organs, and which organs people have, doesn't impinge on my ability to work with them, engage socially with them, or even (shock horror) worship with them.
The range of contexts in which this actually matters is very small. It helps to keep that in perspective.
Some of them do; most of them, in my experience, come down to inhabiting a society which treats men and women very differently.
The point, though, is that biology, sex and gender are not what it means to be in the image of God. The "image of God" is not about a sex binary.
And by "trans ideology" you mean what, exactly?
I don't know whether you see the glaring irony of arguing against someone else's single worldview, while wanting to insist that everyone honour your take on "Truth."
There's some truth to this. I'd start by critiquing the way the industrial revolution has shaped our ideas about work, for a start. I don't think scapegoating some of society's most vulnerable people is really going to help tackle much of this in any constructive way, though. Nor - to come back around to my first post in this thread - is a bunch of Christians trying to exert power and control over the rest of society.
