• @[email protected]
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    05 months ago

    They are just propagandized. In general, it’s so much like racists - they may know trans people and just think they are the exceptions, like them as individuals and still think they hate them as a group. They are intentionally riled up by being forced fed edge cases and disinformation.

    Trans people are just people. They aren’t angels who are never criminals and they aren’t degenerates who are always criminal, they are a diverse group like all of us are. But you can bet your ass that whenever a trans person does something criminal it will be blown up so big in conservative media and used to paint them all as criminals. It’s just the right wing media machine.

  • NullPointer
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    35 months ago

    so the only redeeming value of trans people is that they don’t shoot up schools?

    /s

  • @[email protected]
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    15 months ago

    Because queerness (trans, gender non conforming, gender fluid, agender, bigender and related) threatens hierarchy.

    In western society regardless of how ‘progressive’ some parts of it have gotten, for the majority there’s still a strict hierarchy. Man most important, then woman, then children first boys then girls. Trans people completely disrupt this hierarchy by being able to change what they are and those who cling to hierarchy freak the fuck out over it.

    Then there’s the sexual panic, a straight man who’s insecure is gonna freak out if the woman they think is cute actually has a penis.

    • @[email protected]
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      05 months ago

      I don’t agree. For ages in any life or death situation it is woman and children first. Men are the strongest of the bunch, any respectable man is putting his children and wife onto a lifeboat before themselves. You’d have a hard time finding a father/husband who wouldn’t.

      • @[email protected]
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        05 months ago

        Your little scenario explicitly presumes that the man would be the one in charge, making this decision.

        • @[email protected]
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          05 months ago

          Who else would be in charge of a man making the decision to let others go ahead of himself? It is a self made decision, and a selfless one. So of course he is the one making the decision. A woman could just as easily make this decision, if she did would you still be saying “well of course she did, she’s the one on charge!”. I hope not. You just don’t like the fact that when shit hits the fan, oftentimes men are the ones who step up and help others and even sacrifice themselves. Have whatever qualms you will with men, but at least give them credit where they deserve it.

    • @[email protected]
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      05 months ago

      If that were true, then it would be trans men getting the most attention because they’re the ones cheating their way up this hierarchy. In my experience, 99% of the hate is directed at trans women.

      • @[email protected]
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        5 months ago

        If the transphobes thought trans men were men then your comment would be accurate. But they just see them as confused women and easy to just ignore them like they ignore cis women.

        (You are right about trans women bearing the brunt of the hate, and I think so much of that is sexual panic from cishet men about finding a penis owner attractive)

  • @[email protected]
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    365 months ago

    Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

    • @[email protected]
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      175 months ago

      And the twist is 99.9% of Republican voters think they are in the in-group just because the leopards haven’t eaten their faces yet.

  • @[email protected]
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    45 months ago

    If I remember correctly uvalde was a trans person, but most of the time its just people using one good thing about themselves to justify being horrible. Think holier-than-thou type shit.

      • @[email protected]
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        15 months ago

        The NYPost has an article about the Nashville shooter. Before she went through with the shooting she texted an old friend about it. The friend got interviewed and for whatever reason the NYPost used a Facebook picture of her all glammed up. It’s really out of place.

    • @[email protected]
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      5 months ago

      You are parroting a lie

      edit hey dumbasses, you can look it up for yourselves, the uvalde shooter was not trans and there was never anything real even suggesting that he was

      • DarkThoughts
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        105 months ago

        They just got the exact shooting wrong, which can happen with the sheer amount of school shootings in the US.

      • @[email protected]
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        15 months ago

        Damn if only I acknowledged somehow that my memory was imperfect and I may be wrong, maybe by saying smth like “if I remember correctly”.

        • @[email protected]
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          25 months ago

          well it’s kind of your responsibility to fact check that kind of thing before repeating it, no? regardless you’re not the one I called a dumbass, it was the clowns downvoting me for stating a fact.

          • @[email protected]
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            5 months ago

            Were I presenting it as a definite fact yes, but I was presenting it as a possible thing that I was pretty sure had happened. Also, I know you weren’t talking about me with the edit I didn’t even look at it while typing my reply.

            Edit: misspelled were as we’re, fixed it

      • Like the wind...
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        65 months ago

        Off topic but it’s quite fucked that there are so many of these that we mix them up ooof

  • @[email protected]
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    295 months ago

    Religious people control their kids through the village support system of their church. Some kids are learning things at public school which are not in line with those beliefs. This is scary for parents. Parents don’t want to lose their children, and can’t imagine loving them as somebody else. Case in point Elon And his trans daughter Vivian.

    I’m quite liberal and atheist, but the prospect of a transitioning child is troubling to me. While I’d have no problem supporting a gay child, I feel very strongly about body acceptance, and I reject body dysmorphia. Transitioning to another gender is to me, not too different from a woman who wants augmentation surgeries or a man who is taking steroids. That said I could care less what anybody else does. I think cosmetic surgery and steroids should be legal. I don’t think the government needs to be involved. It’s a decision to discuss with a child, doctor, and parent.

    I guess what I’m saying is, I can empathize with the transphobia of conservatives. Where we differ is in how we deal with that fear. They want the government to make society conform to their beliefs. I think it’s up to the individual parent to grow the love in their heart to accept and love whatever their child decides to be.

    • Dragon Rider (drag)
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      115 months ago

      I feel very strongly about body acceptance, and I reject body dysmorphia.

      Drag wants to take a crack at explaining this.

      The mind is a machine. We have free will, but that free will has limits. If you try to hold your breath until you pass out, you’ll probably fail. Your subconscious will demand air and you’ll give in. The human jaw is capable of producing enough force to bite off a finger. But you can’t chew off your own finger unless you’re on drugs. Your brain won’t let you. We can do a lot of things with our brains, but some are hard, and under normal circumstances some are impossible.

      Accepting your body when you’re five pounds heavier than you’d like is something our brains can do without that much trouble. Accepting your body when you’re a hundred pounds heavier than you’d like is hard. Some people never manage to summon enough willpower to do it. Accepting your body when you’re the wrong sex is, for most people, impossible. It doesn’t work. The brain has limits, and those limits kick in.

    • @[email protected]
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      175 months ago

      I just want to say as a trans person, first off, your views are very valid. I think it’s actually great that despite your misgivings you respect the principle of bodily autonomy, which I very much agree with myself. Totally think this is a good take.

      I also wanted to give my 2 cents on the experience itself. You liken transition to body modification, and there definitely are parallels. But in my experience, the two are distinct. Like, I have both dysmorphia at times, and dysphoria at others. I’m not 100% happy with my body after transition, but now it’s like, less because I look like a guy and more because I look like a girl but, maybe not with the ideal body I wanted. When that first hit me, my wife told me “welcome to womanhood” and I laughed a little (and cried a little) because it was true, I’d never known a woman who didn’t struggle with her body image.

      I also just, can’t really explain how much my mental health has improved. I had terrible anxiety when I entered puberty, and it wasn’t about gender or anything (that I was aware of at the time, anyways). It was almost just like my brain started malfunctioning. I got quieter, I overthought everything, I self medicated with weed and alcohol, became kind of aimless. Then I turned it around, got my career going, got married, worked on myself. I still drank to take the edge off and be able to socialize, but put on a face at parties and figured out how to push through the anxiety. I tried therapy, medication, meditation, you name it, but it never really got too much better, I just got better at working around it.

      I had kinda given up on there being an “answer”. I just figured, you know, this is life for me. Not bad, just hard. And then this thing happened, where a lot of stuff I had been pushing down all came up at once. And I transitioned.

      I really, really didn’t think it would “solve” things. Like, I thought it felt right, that it would make things better. But I was trying not to get my hopes up. And at first it didn’t, like hormones didn’t really immediately fix everything. It was more subtle. It was like… like slowly waking up from a long and tiring nightmare. The kind you don’t remember much of, you just keep that vague sense of unease for a while.

      It’s been a year and a half. I can go to parties and not drink now, and just, relax. Have fun. Socialize. I can make friends and talk to strangers. I still have anxiety, I still have problems, but like, my brain just works better. I don’t know how else to describe it. I make connections I never did before, understand people and empathize with them more.

      I feel happy. Not in a like, “this is new and exciting” kind of way, but a sort of deep contentedness. Peace.

      I don’t think this is a silver bullet. It doesn’t solve all your problems, and it sure as hell won’t solve anything for a cis person. It just helps to take a constant burden out of the way. And for me, even if there had been 0 physical changes, I would 100% take estrogen just for the mental effects it has had alone. It’s been the best mental healthcare I have ever received.

      • @[email protected]
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        5 months ago

        I appreciate your story and I’m really happy for you. I think if I was child free I would just say hell yes I support everybody to be themselves. But being a parent makes me more protective and cautious and concerned and if I’m being honest I kind of hate that change in myself. It’s so easy for me to say I support autonomy but I already know that it won’t be when my child is asserting their own autonomy. I know that parents don’t have control, only influence, but it’s hard for me to walk that fine line.

        • @[email protected]
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          5 months ago

          Yeah, I get that. I again want to take a second to acknowledge that children are hard when it comes to this stuff. I absolutely understand that people have hesitation around considering minors transitioning, I think that’s really valid and it’ll probably be a common feeling for decades, if not longer. I want to be a parent soon myself, and even though I’m trans, I’ve thought about “what if my kid is trans?” And tbh that gives me a lot of anxiety and worry. I’d much rather not have to deal with that 😅

          My path was also not 100% clear. Some trans people describe knowing since they were 4, or 8, or as soon as puberty started. I didn’t really start questioning until 19-20 or so, and I didn’t transition until 32. I would say I knew something was off for a lot longer, but it took me a while to figure out what that was. It was also a very confusing process, and I tried literally everything before accepting this. I remember being a teen and a young adult and thinking “this is it, this will fix things” so many times, only for it not to work out. It’s why I had given up.

          So I really get why it’s like, scary to let someone who’s still growing and learning make decisions that will change their path permanently.

          At the same time, that journey was really, really hard. There were times I wasn’t sure I would make it. I got into some really bad places, mentally and in real life. I sometimes wonder if it would have been easier, if I had figured this out sooner. And I do believe there are people who know much sooner, who just have that sense internally that they are a different gender, a much stronger internal compass than mine. That would have been torture to deal with if I had known that.

          I lost a brother to suicide, and I know a lot of trans youth are at risk. So all of that and my own experience is why I really feel that this path should be navigated between the parent, the child, and their doctors. It’s just not going to be an easy process, no matter what, and I don’t think anyone can do it perfectly. I don’t blame parents who hold back on affirming strongly, but I do hope in time there’s less worry and fear about this, as we spread knowledge and our experience. Especially around social transition and just trying things out and experimenting. That’s the best way to get more real information - does the child actually like living as the opposite gender, doing things like that? If they do, it’s still scary, but you know that they aren’t just imagining the grass is greener. And if not, then cool! It really was “just a phase” lol.

          Thanks for listening, it’s very much appreciated ❤️ you sound like a good parent and a kind person.

          • @[email protected]
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            15 months ago

            How to be supportive without being encouraging. How to stand firm without being inflexible. How to allow freedom but also supervision. There’s no manual for this stuff, and it seems like “experts” write advice for the extremes, not for the middle ground.

            • @[email protected]
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              15 months ago

              Yeah, like, even generally those are really tough questions. And every kid is different right? Even among my brothers, I had 5, and they were all different. One was a rebel, one was a golden child, one was a space case… it’s not really possible to be perfect.

              But if you’re talking specifically about gender and exploration, I can share my thoughts there. I’m not a parent yet, so I haven’t gone through this, but here’s how I would approach it I think:

              First, let’s talk about social experimentation and transition. All of this is pre-medication and would be the first steps of things generally. This is a time to figure out what they want by trying things out, which is something we all do during childhood and adolescence. It can start at any time, and it can fizzle out or keep going.

              • In general, I would let my kids play with and wear whatever they wanted from a young age. I think it’s important for them to have independence, and I also think that really by pushing them to dress “appropriately” for their gender, you kind of are encouraging that behavior (and implicitly discouraging them exploring themselves). Especially at a young age, kids just decide they like random things in my experience and letting them do that sets them up to not have like, a feeling that it’s “forbidden” for lack of a better word, AND especially it lets your kid know you’re safe. That if they want to try things out more when they’re a teen or later, they can trust you to talk about it and try to work it out together.
              • To be clear, I would not encourage my kids to experiment or try things at a young age. In fact, I would probably not encourage it at any age. The impulse or the idea should come from them, I wouldn’t want to plant the seed of it. In fact, that’s kind of the “prime directive” that we follow as a trans community: Even if someone seems to be struggling with their gender and asks you if their trans, you have to tell them that this is something only they can figure out. I can tell them about my experience, what I went through, etc. But even if they’re telling me every single symptom of gender dysphoria, the most I would tell them is something like “this really sounds like it could be, you should definitely be seeing a therapist about it and try to work it out and think on it.”
              • If my kid did bring up the idea of trying something out - like wearing a dress or a binder, trying on makeup, cutting their hair - I would make it clear that I think that’s completely ok. I would not necessarily encourage it. Like, if they said “I’m thinking about cutting my hair short” I wouldn’t say “oh definitely, you should try that, you’ve never had short hair!”. I would instead say something like “for sure, if that’s something you wanna try that’s cool. Let me know, I can take you to a barber.” Or if it sounds like they really want to, but are nervous, I might say “well it sounds like it’s something you want to try. If you’re worried what other people think, I don’t think that should hold you back, it’s completely ok to try things out.”
              • If it moves forward to full on social transition - that is, trying out a new name and different pronouns, etc. I would respect whatever they asked me to call them and expect others to do that as well. Honestly I would probably like to be part of the name-choosing process, it feels only fair haha! But one thing here is that I would NOT expect everyone else to always get it right, and I would NOT accept them being like, super upset if someone is really trying and they mess up. As a teen I would react way more emotionally to small missteps like that, but as an adult… I misgender myself a lot, lol. Like, I think for a lot of people it’s just mental muscle memory, and it takes time. And this is especially true if they’re like, trying tons of new pronouns or names or switching things up constantly. Like, you can’t both expect everyone to always get it right AND for there not to be a learning period 😝
              • In all of this, if they try things out and don’t feel happy, I would point that out. If my child thought they were trans and started socially transitioning, but then started really complaining about the things they had to do now, or complaining about missing certain things, I’d note that. I’d specifically be looking for if they were missing certain things due to their new gender role. Like, “I miss playing my sport” is different than “I miss hanging out with the guys and being one of them”, if that makes sense. And if that came up, I would just point out that there’s no reason they can’t do the thing and be trans. Like, if they want to be a guy but wear dresses, or want to be a girl but play football, at least in theory those things should be fine, because from my perspective those aren’t inherently gendered.
              • IMPORTANT NOTE: If the reason they can’t do certain things that don’t align with their new/old gender is due to society’s rules, then that’s a modifier here. There are high schools that let girls play football and places where it’s acceptable for boys to wear feminine clothing, and there are not, whether we like it or not. So if they’re like “I’m trans, but I still want to do a thing that’s not allowed by my old gender”, I WOULD NOT say “well, that’s the rules, that’s what happens because you’re transitioning”. That puts me on the side of people that made, from their perspective, unjust rules. I would instead say “yeah, that really sucks, I don’t think there’s really a good reason for them to have those rules, other than I think I’d worry for your safety because society is going to discriminate against you if you break them.” Hear them out, let them vent, let them know you support them, but that those are things that just might not change.

              So basically, let them try things out, respect whatever they’re doing at the time, let them know they have permission to try things out (within reason). The important thing here is that all of these things are easily reversible. They could decide to try something out one day, and change it back the next. So, there’s really not much harm in trying things out, unless we get all the way to like, legally changing their name or something.

              So, onto more permanent things, specifically medical treatment.

              • First off, I would find a doctor and therapist that is experienced with trans and gender non-conforming youth, and I would also look into and follow the WPATH guidelines (they’re the organization that recommends standards of care for trans adults and minors). These would help me set a baseline of what typical treatment looks like and what to expect.
              • Surgeries would not happen until they’re an adult. They can wait for that, and frankly a lot of surgeries should wait until they’re older, they are a lot to put on a person.
              • Hormones I think I would be ok with at a normal time for puberty, AFTER at least a year (and ideally several years) of social transition and blockers. So like, 16 I think is probably the right age, and plenty of people really hit full on puberty a bit late so I think that would be fine. But if they didn’t figure this out until they were 17, I would tell them they should try to wait at least a year before they start hormone therapy, and that maybe we could do hormone blockers in the meantime.
              • Hormone blockers are trickier. I would trust medical experts the most here, but it makes sense that in general you want to give the child as much time as possible to try things out socially and make sure this is right for them. So, I would probably be ok with starting them when puberty in general starts, and continuing as long as there no major side-effects. And I would absolutely be doing my own research into them to make sure it was safe, wouldn’t have long term effects, etc.

              So to sum that up, I would generally be conservative in the sense of trying to give as much time as possible before they make any permanent decisions, and I would do my research and really try to make sure that nothing they’re doing is going to cause permanent harm. But I would also trust my child’s doctors and medical team here.

              That’s how I feel about it all right now at least. Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions about this, and like I said before, I think if you were looking at this and saying “well I get why that works for you, but I wouldn’t want to buy my 8 year old son a dress” or “I think my kids would have to wait until 18 to do anything medical,” I do think those are understandable feelings and I would respect the right, as a parent, to parent your kid in the best way that you can. Every kid is different, every path is different, and it’s really hard to know what’s right. There’s lots of extremes out there and sometimes I think it feels like we can’t ever just not know or try our best, and the reality is, we never know and life is hard. You seem like you’re trying, which is more than a lot of people 😊

    • @[email protected]
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      5 months ago

      I feel the need to add to my feelings on this, because I don’t like admitting that I am somewhat transphobic. I strongly believe in bodily autonomy and I think 18 is too old to grant it. For tattoos, piercings, health decisions and anything else relating to oneself, I think autonomy should be granted as soon as it is claimed. In some cases of teenage pregnancy, the conception itself is a declaration of autonomy, unless the parents gave permission, which would be weird. I’m not sure a minimum age can be set. I think teenagers should be able to legally divorce (reverse adoption?) their own parents too. I recognize that this is also an extreme view that would frighten most parents. It frightens me too. But I kinda feel like picking out specific issues like trans rights or abortion is ignoring an overarching issue of parental/societal control. Not too long ago it was fairly common for husbands to view their wives as property. Many if not most parents seem to view their children as property. Maybe someday that too will change. It’s not as though 18 is some magical age of self actualization. Some people will be dependent on their parents well past that age if not forever, and some people are ready to face the world alone at 15, maybe younger.

  • @[email protected]
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    235 months ago

    After it became less acceptable to explicitly hate the gays in public they needed a new target. There’s a lot of people who like being riled up with hatred, who are fearful and need a bogeyman, etc. It’s either human nature or something deeply embedded in our culture. Eventually they will move on and find a new target to focus their hate on.

  • Rhynoplaz
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    675 months ago

    It’s strange to them.

    When people encounter something that’s different from what they are used to, they don’t know how to process it. It makes them uncomfortable. Some people, instead of learning how to deal with that feeling like a mature adult, blame the individual for making them feel uncomfortable and resent them for “making them feel that way”. Just staying away is not enough, they must be punished for existing.

    All because someone felt a little icky when they thought about a girl with a weiner.

    • @[email protected]
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      35 months ago

      Even as someone who fully accepts trans people and has trans friends and family, it’s still an adjustment to some really old, deeply-seated habits and mental structures. I’m over 50 so I was set in my ways when I learned about “they” pronouns and it still takes work for me to get it right. If I didn’t care about the people involved, it would be very easy to see it as a burden or annoyance.

    • @[email protected]
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      This is really it. They feel strange about it and cannot grok it. It’s bizzarre that it can break even people that I hold in high regard.

      For instance Graham Linehan, the brilliant writer of Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd went completely of the rails like his own father Jack when it came to transgender people. There’s people who just cant cope. Even including LGBT+ people. Theres plenty of gay people that hate transgenders with a passion and fail to see that the very same hate was directed at themselves a generation before.

      It boggles the mind. But really people feel really icky about the fact that people can choose their gender when they are being plagued by being welded to that gender in most of their lives.

    • zombie bubble kitty
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      125 months ago

      well yeah they don’t like the thought of a girl with a weiner, you can’t degrade and classify women into being just a hole+reproductive organs if they might not have that. (but also pre-op trans dudes can’t use women’s bathrooms cus they aren’t women but still will never be men???) bigots are bigots.

  • @[email protected]
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    135 months ago

    Ok, am conservative.

    I’m going to give my thoughts.

    So I’m fine with most things between consenting adults. The problem is when there isn’t consent and in a larger group, a lack of consensus.

    Kids can’t consent, and despite claims to the contrary, there’s been a couple of trans kids. The issue I see is the amount of push back on passing laws against trans kids. Why on earth do y’all care so much about banning something that isnt happening?

    I’m not into sports, but I can see how unfair it is when a bio man fights a bio woman. Even if they’re taking mtf hormones, there’s still a ton of testorone. Just from a safety aspect, they shouldn’t allow bio men in women’s boxing or MMA or anything like that. Chess and stuff of that nature doesn’t really care about the sex that much. And there’s been more a couple of sports women who are against it too. There’s a lack of consensus.

    As an aside, we were making a ton of progress against gender roles, and now here we are reinforcing them. Can’t even wear drag now without being called trans. It’s annoying.

    Why are you guys so obsessed with labels? Let dudes wear dresses and women wear whatever. You don’t need a label for it.

    • moonlight
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      15 months ago

      When we’re talking about trans kids, it’s about puberty blockers. Why force children to go through puberty that they didn’t consent to? Puberty has permanent effects.

      You seem misinformed about trans people in sports, but I think the other comment covered it. Also consider that it’s just a small minority of people, most of which are not even doing that well in their sport and just want to participate like anyone else.

      And as far as labels go, that’s because of the culture war.

      Can’t even wear drag now without being called trans.

      The left certainly isn’t saying this. That attitude comes from ignorance and not knowing the difference. If you had interacted with the trans community, you would know that we’re not putting people in boxes or reinforcing gender roles. Especially when you consider nonbinary people.

      Labels are actually important. “cross dressing” and being trans are two completely different things. One is personal expression, while the other is identity. A trans man could wear a dress, for example, and it wouldn’t make him less of a man.

      • @[email protected]
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        65 months ago

        Ok, tentatively, that’s a small sample size, but if it scales up, transwomen still have higher absolute handgrip strength, lower forced expiratory volume in 1 s:forced vital capacity ratio and lower relative V̇O2max. They still went through male puberty and are reaping the benefits.

        • moonlight
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          35 months ago

          But a higher expiratory volume and higher VO2max is better. So they have an advantage in grip strength and a disadvantage in everything else…

          Also consider that even within cis women, there’s a huge variation in ability. So there are plenty of cis women with a higher grip strength than some trans women.

            • Psychadelligoat
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              25 months ago

              You should learn basic facts about what you’re saying online before using them as basis for your trash political views

  • @[email protected]
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    555 months ago

    For a simple example: my mother is Catholic and until Trump came along, a lifelong single-issue Republican voter who always said she would be a Democrat if it weren’t for abortion. She attends church in an extremely progressive, famously LGBTQ-friendly town.

    There’s a transwoman who attends her church (let’s call her Rita). This lady is probably in her mid-50s to mid-60s and has been a fixture at the church for at least 5 years. My mom has been in choir and bible study groups with her for years now. She still just can’t see Rita as a woman. Treats her politely but behind her back refuses to call her “she” and says she’s a “man in a dress”.

    She’s really offended that Rita uses the ladies’ room. I’ve asked her why and she can’t articulate it, she just feels like it’s an invasion of her privacy, because men don’t belong in the ladies’ room. And when I point out that Rita isn’t a man, she just rolls her eyes. I’ve asked her if she’s worried that Rita is in there for predatory purposes and she admits that she doesn’t think Rita intends any harm. I’ve asked her how she’d feel if she were forced to use the men’s room and she says “but that’s different!”

    My mom prides herself in being a moral person, and still can’t manage to get past her bigotry to see Rita as a woman. There are just too many mental blockades against it. But since she thinks she’s so highly moral, she thinks she must be correct in this situation. It excuses her from finding empathy and bettering her attitude toward trans folks.

    My longwinded point is that when people who consider themselves highly moral are bigoted, there’s almost zero chance of getting through to them. And I think a lot of the people who are bigoted against trans folks feel that morality is on their side and being trans is morally deviant, so they think they’re justified in their prejudice.

  • Tiefling IRL
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    5 months ago

    Because conservatives are smooth brained and small minded. They need someone to hate in order to make themselves feel superior so they don’t feel like complete losers

  • @[email protected]
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    165 months ago

    Uneducated people in rural areas struggle very much with understanding their experiences of others, and have very strange ideas about how the world works. I told my grandmother I wanted to move to Chicago - she’s convinced I’m going to get gang murdered. (She would be horrified if I told her about wandering around LA on foot)

    The idea that there are options other than cisgender heterosexual people is threatening to their understanding of their world. Many have not thought about their gender or sexuality; it’s assumed that you’ll get married to the opposite sex, get gender appropriate jobs, have kids, and go to church on Sunday. That’s what life is in Anadarko or Siloam Springs. Many also struggle with unaddressed trauma from the opioid/fent crisis, or military service - so they think the appropriate response to anguish about your body should just be to just cope with it.

    Many of these men are secretly bisexual. Many, many, many heterosexually married men seek out sexual encounters with gay men on the side. They would never want to be in a relationship with a man or someone they perceived as a strange, mentally defective man - for many of them that would also assault their understandings of a relationship as more of a property thing. They feel guilty about porn usage, especially the Christian ones, but externalize it as hatred.

    The woman are miserable and are committed to making everyone else miserable as well. You gain power in those communities by policing others, especially young women. They are threatened by the idea that they weren’t locked into compulsive heterosexuality and performative femininity. There was a possibility that they could have graduated college, or not had children.

    They get the program though. They’re proper Puritans. If life is suffering then the only joy to be had is in watching other people. And what better target than those who are defying our most basic sociological roles? These are the same people who host gender reveal parties - it matters to them. So it must matter to everyone else.

    That’s my guess as a trans man at least, obviously I’m biased.