Some Discussion Questions for You Guys

jim_steak · 2021-07-14T22:09:24+00:00

To me the clearest difference between the trans movement and the gay rights movement is the messaging around identity. The gay rights movement encourages people to accept themselves, and is generally devoted to living in a way that's truthful and honest to who you really are. It's about acceptance of oneself and self love, and it's also against the lies straight people told when they pretended gay people didn't exist. In my opinion, honesty and truth are healthier than lies, and so a movement that is pro-honesty is a healthy movement.

On the other hand, the trans movement is all about denying reality and running away from the discomfort and pain caused by gender dysphoria. The message of the movement isn't about self acceptance, but about changing yourself into a new person, then forcing everyone around you to affirm that new identity. Trans people claim that they transition to become their true selves, but anyone who has (oftentimes accidentally) invalidated a trans person's view of themselves knows how fragile this transformation is. That's why they feel the need to censor conversations about trans people in a way that LGB people never do, because even the smallest dissent can break their denial. A movement that requires people to be constantly denying reality is a movement based around sickness rather than health.

onetwothree123 · 2021-07-14T22:36:38+00:00

The difference between being trans and being gay is that you don't have to hold any false beliefs to be a homosexual. Homosexuality is a desire/action, and being trans is a belief. Being a man or a woman is a physical reality that you can accept or deny, but denying it doesn't change your chromosomes. You don't have to hate yourself or change anything about yourself to be gay, but that's the entire point of being trans. Not to mention the fact that by pretending a trans person is the sex they wish to be, you're defining woman and man by sexist stereotypes. Being trans is a mental illness because believing you're the opposite sex is a delusion. People can argue that homosexuality is wrong if they want to, but gay people aren't deluded.

MilkTea · 2021-07-14T21:45:40+00:00

TQ+ rode the coattails of LGB. The only reason their movement gained quick traction was because they used us as a shield and spread lies. "Well they got their right to marry, so now listen to all of our demands, bigot!". "You owe all of your rights to transwomen of color!". And when I say right to marry, I only mean in some western countries. TQ+ wouldn't have a leg to stand on if they were independent and being honest. I don't doubt there are LGBs who supported them from the beginning, but I wouldn't necessarily say we created it.

We can agree that gender and sexual orientation are separate, so we shouldn't compare the two. Homosexuality doesn't require harmful surgeries in order to be our "true selves". We didn't try to convince straight people that we are also heterosexuals, but only attracted to the same-sex. TQ+ are manipulative.

lovelyspearmint · 2021-07-14T20:59:59+00:00

People still think homosexuality is a mental illness. I can't tell my family in Serbia that I'm a lesbian because about 60% of the population still think it's an illness. So it's not as recent as 30-40 years. It's still going on, even in western countries.

ArthnoldManacatsaman · 2021-07-14T21:12:45+00:00

people are blaming same-sex marriage equality for the current TQ mess

I can see the connection here. Gay rights groups existed to fight the last great 'battle' for true equality. They were (one can assume) reasonably well funded and employed a lot of people. When gay marriage was legalised (and I'm talking specifically about in the US here, because this woke nonsense is very much a US import) these organisations didn't simply disband, thanks for your hard work everyone, back to the 'regular' world of work with you.

It will sound like I've got a tin foil hat on, but I like to think of this as similar to cancer research. There must be billions of dollars of research going into curing cancer every year, all over the world, and the cancer research industry must employ hundreds of thousands of people. If they miraculously discovered a cure for cancer tomorrow, do you think they'd all quietly shut down and that would be that?

A better example might be Big Racism™. People like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X Kendi make thousands of dollars for appearing at a single event and telling people how racist they are. The armies of Diversity and Inclusion Managers and Unconcious Bias Training Seminar leaders depend on the existence of racism for their very existence. That's why racism is suddenly not only so pervasive that every interaction between two people of a different race is awash with racism in some way, but also so invisible and insidious that the very structures of society itself are now also racist. That kind of 'racism' will never go away and people like Robin DiAngelo will be laughing all the way to the bank until people realise she's little more than a fart in a frock and collectively waft her out of the room.

Second, it's sometimes hard not to agree with the foaming-at-the-mouth conservative radio hosts who argued that allowing gay marriage was a slippery slope to allowing all sorts of other nonsense. We're seeing the nonsense now. It's refreshing to see that things like paedophilia and bestiality are still beyond the pale, but it's only a short leap from 'children can consent to life-changing medical procedures' to 'children can consent to anything an adult can'.

As for your second point, I myself often struggle to reconcile the concepts of 'being trans is a mental disorder' with 'being gay isn't a mental disorder'. I'm not a psychiatrist so I can't weigh in on the intricacies of mental health diagnoses, but I am soothed by the evidence that you can't really 'treat' homosexuality; sexuality seems to be pretty fixed. Attempts at drug or conversion therapy don't appear to work, whereas many (most?) people who undergo intense therapy for gender dysphoria (especially younger people) will 'snap out of it'.

Of course, that's a poor yardstick by which to determine whether something is or is not a psychiatric condition. Many people have intensive medical and psychological intervention for all sorts of 'established' mental illnesses like schizophrenia or anorexia and never 'really recover'.

xandit · 2021-07-14T21:32:06+00:00

THe slippery slope from gay marriage was men marrying dogs. No one saw the gender stuff coming. If we hadn’t merged with th we would have just moved on to not getting fired for being gay, and then maybe international laws. I don’t see how marriage leads to gender ideology.

Homosexuality doesn’t cause you distress unless it’s coming from external pressure to not be gay. Younger lgb have less and less of this societal pressure. Trans with disphoria, they really have distress over their own selves, they see their bodies as wrong. Those that aren’t dysphoria are just playing with gender because they believe in the gender religion. Not sure if they count as mental illness though.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-15T03:45:44+00:00

Your analysis of the cultural/political fight leaves out one factor: the professional activist class.

Once marriage equality was achieved, the gay rights organizations we'd founded now needed something else to do to justify their continued existence. You had lots of people who were now professionally "LGBT." They needed a new cause to keep themselves employed, and gender identity became their new cause.

MyLongestJourney · 2021-07-14T20:46:57+00:00

The LGBT orgs were taken over by queer critical theory believers.

GatitoMalo · 2021-07-14T22:00:57+00:00

Well you've found a particularly sane corner of Reddit...

Yes, I think that we can look at the USA and the UK and historically assess that the TQ+ stuff didn't come until after gay marriage. In part due to the normal people packing up their activism and going home once the majority goal of full citizenship was accomplished. In part due to activist organizations like Stonewall and HRC needing to keep the lights on and the money flowing. Your points #1 and #2.

So yeah, the social conservatives were correct in their assumed outcome. It was a slippery slope, but I don't think they understood that it would work in this fashion. Correct outcome, incorrect reasoning for it. Now, the concern I have with regard to them is an inability to see the difference between the two camps of people. Those that just want to live their lives and those that are activists who will never be satisfied. That's an important distinction I would consider when evaluating social movements. Conservativeism is essentially a desire for things to remain static, if you reach an agreement with them that there is a Mission Accomplished step, you'll get a lot farther with support.

Gay 2.0 (TQ+) is not the same thing as gay 1.0, but the TQ+ crowd wants to bolt itself to the success of 1.0 and pretend to be the same thing. This much is obvious. The gay rights movement did not create the TQ+, they've been around for a while, but it did give them a framework. A framework with historical success, which TQ+ are in large part ignoring, because trans activism is not about living your own life in peace and tolerance, it's about forcing others to participate, say things that are untrue, robbing people of their livelihoods, etc.

As far as mental disorder goes, that's a philosophical problem, and one that it's easy and compelling to move the goal posts to get the desired outcome. What constitutes "clinically significant distress" anyhow? Where does that distress come from? Society? Internal to the individual?

But I see your point... will I look back 40 years down the line and think, gee, I can't believe I thought trans was a mental disorder? What though is the distinction between having a mental disorder and our attitudes around mental disorder though? Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder, and many people suffer from it. It's called depression, colloquially. We're quite sympathetic to it, because experiencing grief and loss is part of the normal human condition. Everyone can relate.

Unfortunately, the treatment we have available for the various etiologies of transsexualism--affirmation is one approach that may be appropriate, if you're only looking at the microcosm of the individual. Especially with regard to childhood-onset GD. You can find men with autogynephilia that fully understand they have a paraphilia that makes them motivated to become a facsimile of their erotic ideal, and that they are indeed men. You can also find children who learn about transsexuals from television and see their own path forward, cementing the idea in their heads.

That does not mean that affirmation approaches should be all-encompassing, such as sports, bathrooms, etc. It's very undemocratic to rearrange our entire society for a minority. I think there's a healthy balance, but don't ask trans activists about what a good compromise is, they don't understand the concept.

If I'm being cynical, homosexuality would not have been removed from the DSM if there was a "treatment" for it. Trans... trans we can "treat" with drugs so I don't see it coming out any time soon.

It's a question to me of whether or not you can have success getting the person to identify with their birth sex. Some cases yes, other cases no. If you can, then that's going to lead to the best life for the person. If you can't, then affirmation might be the only thing that improves their lives, but it's not going to be a great life in the overall. Trans isn't beautiful, like the activists say it is.

I don't view affirmation as discarding it as a mental disorder. I think of affirmation as one option as treatment for mental disorder. "Yes, you have major depressive disorder." "Reeeee! No I'm a depressive! It's my identity!" It's a weird way to treat, I'll give you that though, it's like telling schizophrenics that the voices in their head are indeed real.

Of course I can rope this into the DSM and homosexuality insofar as how the mental profession stigmatizing homosexuality is a cause of distress and draw the parallel to trans. Which some activists do, but they're between a rock-and-a-hard-place in terms of medical insurance vs stigma.

I don't think being in the DSM is all that stigmatizing, I think it's societal attitudes. E.g. what I mentioned about depression.

I think that perhaps further etiological understanding of homosexuality, paraphilia, and childhood-onset GD might blow this entire discussion up again. E.g. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-012-9900-3 That's many years down the line though.

Ultimately, the salient confluence of trans and mental disorder, to me, is false belief. In some circumstances, you can dissuade them from the false belief, but that won't necessarily change their situation.

millicentfawcett · 2021-07-14T22:53:48+00:00

I don't think same sex marriage caused this. Firstly because there are countries that have embraced transgenderism where marriage equality doesn't exist. Secondly the groundwork for much of what's happened was laid decades ago. Orgs like The Beaumont Society/Press for Change in the UK have been around for a long time. We had the Gender Recognition Act (2004) years before marriage equality, in fact one of the main reasons the GRA exists in the UK is because the government at the time did not want to introduce same sex marriage.

That said organisations like Stonewall have taken advantage and accelerated things due to having a vacuum post marriage equality. It's provided them with a new cause and new income stream. So I can see why people conflate marriage equality and what has come after.

Re the mental illness aspect. I don't necessarily think it's a problem to have removed the T from the DSM just as it wasn't with gay. For me it's a case of present outwardly how you wish but stop pretending people can change sex and that there are no consequences to that lie.

As a comparison it would be like gay people decades ago rather than fighting for acceptance of reality e.g two men can be in a relationship and that's fine, insisting their relationships were actually heterosexual despite the evidence of our eyes.

I really don't see how in 30/40 years the concept of gender ideology will have survived all the inevitable casualties. Things are pretty bad now and a hell of a lot of people are starting notice. Are people really going to be discussing in decades to come about how it's so great that no females compete in sport now? Will they reminisce happily about how backwards it all was when AFABs used to win Olympic medals? I hope that's not the dystopia we have to look forward to because it's not a world I want to live in.

sneeuweekhoorn · 2021-07-14T21:38:25+00:00

Same-sex marriage was legalized here in the Netherlands in 2001. The TQ shit really kicked off around the mid-2010s. Legal sex changes without sex reassignment surgery were in 2014 here.

That's 13 years between the 2 things. I think drawing a connection between them is just wishful thinking by religious conservatives.

NeedMoreCoffee · 2021-07-15T12:41:54+00:00

For me the TQ storm is a result of cultivating a generation of narcissists absorbed by insta selfies and cultivating online identity.

Most people are just not that interesting so something needs to be created for most people. Que ocd, mental illness, "introvert", autism and social anxiety becoming trendy to these narc kids. Perfect to get sympathy points and attention. But then everyone got "anxiety" so more needed to be created. And voila , gender bullshit was created.

Now everyone can be oppressed, have a weird flag, and freely call people bigots while toxically venting their narcissistic rage

LGB orgs jumped on it because they didn't have much to do anymore. Companies jumped on it because saving the rainforest worked so well so it was the new cause. Influencers are narcs so duh. Politicians jumped on board because they are all fucking morons disconnected from the real world. And big pharma, well ka tching!

As for the mental illness part, I mean it's not hard. The entire premise of transexuality was extreme rare severe mental anguish of young gay boys and a last ditch attempt to help them after years of therapy. Thats all changed now but one thing remains the same, that in studies looking for other mental illnes than "dysphoria" there is an unusual high percentage of transgenders that have narcissistic personality disorder (this is psychopath territory not just being narcissist), borderline personalit disorder, bipolar, and a sea of others.

It's become a clutch for mentally ill people to grab on, for attention and some think they must be trans because they feel weird and all their problems will be solved if they become a new person. A lot of teenagers are victim of this too, this demographic feels the most out of place and weird.

It's honestly quite sad.

JulienMayfair · 2021-07-15T03:42:42+00:00

Just because homosexuality is no longer classified as a mental illness doesn't mean that depression and schizophrenia are no longer mental illnesses. Also, studies have tended to show that transition really isn't a very good treatment for gender dysphoria since a large proportion of people who transition report continuing to be troubled by the same issues. This was why Johns Hopkins stopped doing gender transitions. They were tracking their patients and found out that it wasn't helping them.

Trans people have represented being transgender as Gay 2.0, but it's not the same thing.

Neo_Shadow_Lurker · 2021-07-15T03:44:02+00:00

Is there any validity to the idea that LGB created the TQ+ storm?

Yes, unfortunately.

The TQs just took the already existent political institutions formed to fight for LGB rights and repurposed them for their own ends. It also doesn't help that the majority of people still conflate transgenderism with being gay, even though most transgender people today are straight people.

Also, professional activists are drawn to money, never forget that.

It's a striking parallel, in my mind. Something feels different about it to me, but I wonder if that's not my own biases at play. As a gay man, of course I don't think that being gay is a mental illness that I need to be cured of. In 30 to 40 years from now, we will look back on this time and say, "I can't believe people thought that being trans was a mental illness; how backwards of them!"?

Do you need to subject yourself to hardcore body modification in order to express your sexuality? Hell, does any gay person needs to be constantly validated in order to not kill themselves?

The answer is no, which is the main thing that separates being gay with being transgender. A gay person can just blend in in society and be fine, which cannot be said of a transgender person.

Also, being gay is not based upon a false belief about one's body, like gender disphoria, which is another factor that differentiates the two.

Dromedary · 2021-07-15T09:02:31+00:00

"homosexuality was considered a mental illness and it was not that long ago that it was removed from the DSM"-

It's been 48 years. Almost half a century. I get what you mean, but it also wasn't just yesterday. It's actually a very long time ago.

PenseePansy · 2021-07-15T11:29:15+00:00

Firstly, there is a thing that I've seen popping up on Reddit a lot where people are blaming same-sex marriage equality for the current TQ mess we seem to find ourselves in.

My take is: not exactly. First, because the TQ+ epidemic, like America's opioid one (as documented in Sam Quinones' 2015 book Dreamland), is far too virulent to come down to a single source. This is the result of multiple factors. Second, same-sex marriage was just a symbol for LGB normalization. THAT was the REAL goal: acceptance of homosexual and bisexual people by mainstream society. This had to happen-- it's what "gay rights" were all about. And there's nothing wrong with that.

The problem, I think, is that a minority of LGB people didn't want to be "normal": they were very invested in seeing themselves as radical, countercultural, "edgy" and "freaky". This alienated them from the LGB majority, who had never wanted to be "freaks" in the first place and now eagerly abandoned that status/identity. So when the TQ+ showed up, these people were highly receptive to them as fellow "freaks" (based on their intense public fetishization of gender and "gayness", respectively). Plus, I suppose-- having zero appeal to the LGB rank-and-file anymore-- they needed allies.

So, even as recent as maybe 30 to 40 years ago, there were people that looked at gay people and said, "They have a mental illness and need to be cured of it." Then I look at some of the things that I've said about the T, specifically, "they have a mental illness and it needs to be treated as such and not just affirmed."

Here's the thing: both trans and LGB identity are based, ultimately, on one's feelings. But this is necessarily the case for the latter, since your sexual orientation is DETERMINED by feelings-- attraction to one or both sexes. I mean, there's no "gay gene test", so how ELSE are you gonna know? Conversely, neither your sex nor your gender are determined by how you feel. The former is a matter of biology, and the latter of social roles: your culture defines and imposes gender based on your observed sex. How you feel doesn't enter into it. If it did, do you think that women and girls wouldn't have escaped their sex-based oppression (like child brides, FGM, being unable to vote or own property, widows being thrown on their husband's funeral pyre, etc.) simply by saying, "oh, I don't identify as female"? So "trans" is doubly not a thing. Unlike being gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

As for whether trans is a mental illness, seems to me that it has all the hallmarks of a delusion. Much the same as someone who's convinced that they're the messiah. It's manifestly untrue, but they refuse to acknowledge this and demand that everyone else follow suit. If people won't go along, they lash out in a rage, and/or break down. Insert "opposite sex" for "messiah", and you have the T. Does this sound like a psychologically-healthy state to you?

Elvira95 · 2021-07-14T20:51:48+00:00

I do think being trans as homosexual trans isn't a disease but just extreme homosexuality, like being too masculine or feminine. It start it the womb, where they didn't get enough testosterone during brain development for male or got it too much for female. The hetero one got a fetish. They don't have natural and real gender disphoria.

Dromedary · 2021-07-15T09:14:33+00:00

An aspect that I don't see mentioned here is while trans rights or cultural ascendance came after significant gay victories- under the gay umbrella, riding gay coattails etc- there are factors that don't have to do with gay people. The explosion of social media has a lot more to do with it than gay org. Smartphones + social media, trans people are in touch with each other like never before, trading info on all sorts of things- meds, surgeries, laws, activism, coping- trans visibility today would not be what it was without social media. Parallel to are the explosion of gender clinics, recognition of dysphoria as a real medical/mental condition, insurance/Medicaid in the US paying for surgeries etc. Pharma companies and media companies seeing a new untapped market. There are a lot of other factors in trans visibility today that have nothing to do with LGB people and their organizations.

ThrowMeAway2879 · 2021-07-15T13:46:04+00:00

homosexuality was considered a mental illness and it was not that long ago that it was removed from the DSM.

I've found a useful shorthand for whether a condition is an illness or not is the question whether it needs treatment. Does being gay degrade your quality of life (in and of itself, disregarding societal pressures)? No, it does not, therefore it needs no treatment, therefore it's not an illness.

Discounting the transtrenders, trans people have or at least claim gender dysphoria. They 'can't live with their body' and need or want treatment. So it's an illness, because in untreated form it (by itself) negatively trans people's quality of life.

You can't say "I need surgical intervention and permanent hormone treatments to live my life" and in the same breath claim that you don't suffer from an illness.

HelloMomo · 2021-07-16T00:42:48+00:00

Same-sex marriage is legalized, and suddenly all of the people fighting for it have two options: (1) stop and go home and be happy that you achieved your goal, or (2) continue to fight and just find something else to fight for/about/over.

You're not wrong, but I do think it's worth remembering that for the people who were employed by a LGBT organizations, if they decided, "Well done, that's over now," then their employers would be closing up shop and they'd be out of a job. So they were incentivized. I'm trying to imagine a hypothetical situation in which that wouldn't be the case, and I'm coming up blank. How do you avoid that?

throwaway999 · 2021-07-15T17:47:59+00:00

suddenly all of the people fighting for it have two options: (1) stop and go home and be happy that you achieved your goal, or (2) continue to fight and just find something else to fight for/about/over.

No, they could have directed their resources towards places where homosexuality is illegal. But yes, all they gay rights activists just said "welp, we're done" and were taken over by TRAs because "you don't have to understand us, but our cause is exactly like yours because of this comparison, this analogy, and a healthy dose of shame if you don't support us, because don't you wish more people had supported gay rights when you were fighting for them? Nevermind that none of us participated in the fight for gay rights and actively work against them to this day.

not too long ago, homosexuality was considered a mental illness and it was not that long ago that it was removed from the DSM. So, even as recent as maybe 30 to 40 years ago, there were people that looked at gay people and said, "They have a mental illness and need to be cured of it." Then I look at some of the things that I've said about the T, specifically, "they have a mental illness and it needs to be treated as such and not just affirmed."

An unfortunate coincidence. Sexual orientation can be physically measured, while "gender identity" can not, because it has no basis in material reality, unlike homosexuality. This is proof that while homosexuality is not a mental illness, gender dysphoria is (which is an established fact anyway).

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