All: Is body acceptance better than transitioning?

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-11-28T02:46:47+00:00

Here's an attempt to explain it better. I'm talking about personal identity. Many people choose to or are taught to focus on certain physical traits and base their identity around that. (The what you are.)

It's a value statement. Identity should be based on who you are not what you are means:

Your humanity matters more than your sex.
Your humanity matters more than your weight.
Your humanity matters more than your skin color and so on.

Couldn't think of a clearer way to get the idea across to the QT crowd. I'm open to suggestions.

Queer theorists have conflated the cultural sex stereotypes with the physical reality of being a man or a woman. There's no social need to transition whatsoever if people separate the sexist stereotypes from what it means to be a man or a woman and stick strictly to the facts. Woman/man by itself isn't a full fledged identity nor should it be. It's just a fact about people. Same for skin color and other physical characteristics. I can simultaneously understand that being a man or a woman in our sexist culture has a huge impact on people's lives while also believing that their sex should not be a core part of their personal identity. Culturally and historically it's a huge deal, ethically it shouldn't be. The same idea also applies to skin color and other physical characteristics.

Skin tone doesn't = character or personality
Man/woman doesn't = character or personality

There's a bit of political black and white thinking divide that's going on with the word identity right now too, so it's real hard to talk about the concept casually without people getting up in arms about it and talking past each other.

Edit: Fixing formatting

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-11-27T03:55:43+00:00

Never said the different definitions of gender identity are on the same level. No shit shirlock I'm aware social identities exist. Also no shit sexism, racism, classism and about any other ism's effects people's prospects and position in life. Never said it doesn't.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-11-20T15:08:26+00:00

Using the other sides words and definitions when it makes sense to do so is essential to debate. I'm well aware there are different meanings, which is why I listed which definition of gender identity is being discussed. I'm not fond of the other definitions of gender identity either, but that is a separate discussion not applicable to this one.

(This is for the lurkers) Identity should be based on who you are not what you are.

That's what the fight against sexism, racism & homophobia is about. A person's sex, skin color or sexual orientation does not dictate the content of their character. That is why discrimination against those groups is unjust. That is what progressivism was supposed to be about until it got poisoned by myopic naval gazing identitarians.

That is what the genderists have gotten horrifically wrong. By claiming gender aka cultural sex stereotypes as innate parts of their identity they are cementing sexism instead of eradicating it.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-11-19T14:56:29+00:00

This discussion is about genderists definition of what a gender identity is not what you personally think it should mean which is why the genderists definition of gender identity is listed in the debate prompt.

They believe there is an innate sense of 'womanness' and 'manness' and they call that innate sense a gender identity. I am saying that that concept of innate womanness/manness is unprovable unscientific horse shit. There is no such thing as a man brain or a woman brain let alone a mix-up of woman/man brain in the wrong body. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence which QT consistently fails to provide.

The genderists are saying that there is an extra super special innate gender identity that overrides biological reality and social reality. Transwomen were raised as boys and are treated like extra special men. They deny that they received male socialization, because this super magical gender identity they believe in overrides a lifetime of culture and male socialization. I'm saying a personal sense of gender is bullshit.

Imagine if someone said they have a personal sense of 'wormness' and that they are actually a worm born in the wrong body. Even if society at large believed in the concept and taught little kids what wormness meant via wormy stereotypes (Ex. If you like dirt, and rolling on the ground you have a worm identity) it doesn't make the concept provable or true. The same applies to an innate sense of 'womanhood' or 'manhood' aka gender identity.

It is impossible for humans to know what it actually feels like to be a worm therefore to claim that a feeling of wormness is an innate part of their identity is absurd. It is impossible for men to know what it actually feels like to be women and vice versa therefore it is absurd to claim the men can have innate sense of 'womaness'. All they have to base their gender identity on are cultural stereotypes.

The concept of a gender identity does not clarify or improve our understanding of the world. It obfuscates it.

We'd be better off dropping the phrase from our vocabulary altogether and stop associating the many traits that men and women can have with only one sex or the other. There are two sexes and a practically infinite combination of personality traits that either sex can have. Some traits are more common in one sex than the other, but that does not mean those traits are innate to every member of that sex.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-11-18T20:49:41+00:00

Women don't know if a strange man poses a threat or not. That's why we need single sex spaces.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-11-18T20:32:37+00:00

Here's the deal if transwomen were actually women they wouldn't have the funding or backing from big companies, organizations and politicians that they do now. Men's desires matter more than women's physical reality. Tale as old as time. Abortion rights and other essential rights that affect women aka female people exclusively are taking a back seat to allowing super special males access to what should be women's single sex spaces.

Giving men everything they want at women's expense is not the civil rights issue of our time. The fact that society is treating it as though it is proof of transwomen's male privilege.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-11-18T20:15:13+00:00

Woman is not a title. It is an objective reality. Either you are one or you aren't. In an ideal world it would be a boring fact like being brown eyed or blue eyed. It's absurd for a blue eyed person to call him/herself a brown eyed person, much in the same way it is absurd for a man to call himself a woman. Because of sexism and biological reality men and women have very different experiences throughout their lives. To claim that you have the same experiences as women is a slap in the face. You will never fear unwanted pregnancy, menstruate or suffer from a long list of physical experiences that only women can experience. You cannot and should not speak for women, because it is literally impossible for you to know what it is actually like to be one. You and I are not the same. How dare you say that you are.

My physical reality isn't your identity to claim.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-11-18T20:01:16+00:00

What evidence do you have that gender identity actually exists? Is it consistently and objectively verifiable via brain scans or some other objective measure? If not then gender identity beliefs have no place whatsoever in how we run a secular society.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-11-18T16:17:31+00:00

Awareness of sex stereotypes and being influence by them does not mean that gender identity is a real thing. Gender identity is more akin to a soul than anything. We can't really disprove that souls exists, neither can we really disprove that gender identities exist. These concepts are not part of observable empirical reality, so they should have no influence on the law and should be treated like the faith based beliefs they are.

Some people have a deep personal sense that they are the second coming of Christ or Napoleon Bonaparte that does not mean that the whole of society should trip over itself to accommodate their subjective unverifiable beliefs. Gender identity is equally absurd and at odds with empirical reality.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-10-29T04:58:20+00:00

If saying trans women are men is bigoted. Then saying god is not real is also bigoted. Then saying cats are not dogs is bigoted.

Also you keep using that word I do think it means what you think it means:

Bigoted: obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.

Non believer does not equal bigot. Atheists like myself who think all religions are make believe nonsense can get along just fine with religious folks we just agree to disagree and carry on with normal life. Gender atheists likewise can get along with transgenderists without believing in the gender ideology. People not believing what you believe is not oppression, it is not bigotry. No one owes you agreement or validation.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-10-29T01:51:48+00:00

It's a reality vs make believe disagreement.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-10-25T14:04:52+00:00

That's a good point. Gender as a concept is so nebulous since it meaning changes from culture to culture and even from person to person. So many trans activists believe that gender identity is a real thing like homosexuality, but I'm not seeing it.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-10-25T03:17:06+00:00

Some people believe they have psychic powers. Some people believe they are the next coming of Christ. Some people believe they have souls. Some men believe they are women. Why should I take any of these people seriously? What evidence do you have that gender identity is real other than self declaration?

Also how on earth would it be possible for a man have an inkling of a clue what it feels like to be a woman? God and every religion on earth is more plausible than a man experiencing what it is literally impossible for him to experience.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-10-21T04:30:18+00:00

Adding to my response I see 3 main beliefs someone could potentially subscribe to if they have gender dysphoria:

I have some traits that are stereotypically associated with the opposite sex therefore I'm a tomboy/gender nonconforming not like other girls/boys
I have some traits that are stereotypically associated with the opposite sex therefore those beliefs about my sex are wrong and women/men can be masculine or feminine. Masculinity and femininity are bullshit and are not innate.
I have some traits that are stereotypically associated with the opposite sex therefore I have the opposite sex gender identity and I am really a woman/man or neither on the the inside.

Then there is sex dysmorphia. People seem to go 2 routes belief wise. 1. Transexuals, they transitioned to be more comfortable with their bodies, but accept the reality of their sex.

Transgenderists, they transitioned to be more comfortable with their bodies, but believe they are the opposite sex and/or they have an opposite sex soul/identity.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-10-21T04:13:37+00:00

Mental illness can definitely have a strong influence on identity. There is an element of choice in it as well. There are a lot of teenage girls who feel the same way I did about their bodies who believe, because of that they must be trans and subscribe to gender ideology. There are others who understand that being a woman is just a fact about you, like being a natural brunette, x inches tall or brown eyed.

The people you associate with also have a profound influence on identity. If a teenage girl is surrounded by gender identitarians she is much more likely to identify as trans and pursue physical transition. People who grow up in a Muslim family are unsurprisingly more likely to be Muslim, Christian families to be Christian and so on.

What you believe about yourself and your sex will also strongly influence whether you identify as trans or gender nonconforming. Despite being exposed to so much sexism in life and from books I refused to believe that women were in any way inferior to men. I had no desire to be a man, since I did not see them as superior to me in any way. Quite a few genderists have an extremely sexist view of men and women which feeds into their gender identity. They often have negative beliefs about their own sex and positive beliefs about the opposite sex.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-10-20T15:56:58+00:00

Gender dysphoria is a mental illness if it is so strong that it cripples the person who has it. Trans identity is a belief system. Like being a Christian or a Scientologist. A person can have crippling gender dysphoria and not subscribe to transgenderism.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-10-13T21:48:15+00:00

"Because we reach different conclusions, we must have different feelings, right?"

Not necessarily. Technically if we get really philosophical here it is impossible to know if most people who aren't color blind are experiencing the same green as everyone else, or if varying degrees of happiness feel the same to people, but practically speaking there is a common reality where happiness, sadness and other feelings have a consistent definitions/descriptions between people that we can safely assume a shared experience/reality, much in the same way people who aren't color blind can easily recognize the color green and people can easily recognize and relate to standard human emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, etc.

Mormons describing the holy ghost. I grew up Mormon and I've lost count of the ways church members have described and interpreted their feelings and concluded it was the holy ghost. Their descriptions and definitions of the holy ghost and how they know it exists are as vague, and sometimes as contradictory as queer theorists describing gender identity/feeling like a woman.

I have felt ecstatically happy while hiking, while playing my instrument, while playing sports and just in general while completely getting lost in the moment. Many church members have described this feeling as proof of god's existence and proof that the Lds church is the one true church. I did not.

I have felt a sense of foreboding, that something was off and trusted my gut to avoid what would have been really bad situations that I learned about later. I concluded that it was instinct. Members of the Mormon church often interpret this feeling as a warning from the holy ghost and proof that God is looking out for them. I could go on any feeling you can imagine from indigestion, to a profound sense of happiness has been used by church members as proof that there really is a holy ghost out there. (Mormon churches have a once a month testimony meeting that I've attended for 2 decades, so you bet I heard an absurd amount of testimonies.)

When a man says, "I feel like a woman" I can't help, but think about the Mormons who say "I feel the holy ghost". Who knows there might be a holy ghost out there working it's voodoo, but it is an unproven conclusion. Members of the 100s of other religious denominations cite the same feelings as proof that their church is the one true church. They can't all simultaneously be right, but they can all be wrong.

Men who claim to be women cite all kinds of different feelings as proof that they have a mismatched gender soul. I like quite a few things that are considered masculine, but I did not conclude that, because I enjoyed said masculine activities that therefore I am a man. I'm a woman who happens to have masculine interests, much in the same way a man can happen to have feminine coded interests and personality traits. Concluding that they are actually the opposite sex, because of those feelings is quite a reach to say the least. It is impossible to know what it actually feels like to physically exist in the opposite sex's body. A woman will never know what it feels like to exist in a male body and vice versa.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-10-13T20:08:42+00:00

Identity does not equal reality. A neighbor who watches the kids every now and then is not a mother. A babysitter is not a mother.

Identity is make believe, a personal fiction. Most drivers believe they are above average drivers, but that is impossible. Their identity does not match reality. Much in the same way a childless babysitter who identifies as a mother has a false identity. Or a man who identifies as a woman has a false identity that does not match reality.

Identities can be fairly accurate, but a lot of identities are false. Someone can identify as a great boss, but their employees would tell you otherwise. Someone can identify as a great singer and go on reality tv talent shows to blow people's minds and ears out with their complete lack of singing skills & mind boggling hubris. Identity no matter how much you want to believe it does, does not trump reality.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-08-19T01:04:03+00:00

Great question. How can you tell if someone is actually feeling God's presence or they're just misinterpreting the feeling you get when you have a particularly good day? How can you tell if someone legitimately has an objective gender identity or they're just happier conforming to opposite sex stereotypes? Is it the Holy Ghost warning you not to do something or indigestion? Does someone genuinely feel like a boy inside or are they just into shit that boys are stereotypically into? Did the secret work and you got what you always wanted by willing it to be or did you just get lucky?

The base feelings stay the same, but the conclusions drawn from those feelings can be all over the place. I feel happy while at church therefore God exists. I feel euphoric when I attempt to look like the opposite sex therefore I actually am the opposite sex on the inside somehow. The thing I prayed for happened therefore God answers prayers. See how the conclusion doesn't quite follow in these scenarios? I'd welcome a steel man from the QT side.

Gender Identity as something independent from subjective human belief is unprovable. People believe in weird shit. Gender identity is one of those things and should be treated with the same level of reverence as any other faith based belief, which is none at all.

This questions also opens a lot of other questions. What is gender identity exactly? Can you measure it? How is it even possible for anyone to actually know what it feels like to be the opposite sex? What about people who don't have a gender identity? Should gender atheists be obligated by law to play along?

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-08-11T01:58:01+00:00

Lost it as a teenager. I thought Wait a second. Saying I believe in a book that I've never read is insane, so I read the Bible and Book of Mormon cover to cover. Turns out that's a really good way to turn into an atheist.
Absolutely, I'm very wary of any woo woo beliefs, crystals, flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, health scams, gender identitarianism and so on. Of course I'm not immune to being fooled, but my experience of religion has made me much more skeptical in general.
It's not possible to believe men can be women magically somehow if you don't believe in a concept akin to the soul, some entity separate from your body. I'm an empiricist. It is impossible to be born in the wrong body. You are your body and there's no super extra special magical gender soul attached to it. Religion actually makes a lot more sense. At least God hypothetically could exist out there somewhere (technically I'm an agnostic atheist). Believing men can be women is such a blatant denial of empirical reality that it blows my mind that anyone took the idea seriously, let alone going so far as to allow men in women's prisons, rape crisis shelters and so on.

Edit: Typo

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-08-07T15:43:01+00:00

You still haven't cited your sources.

Edit: You also haven't proven that transition is the only effective treatment. There are many individuals who have chosen to not transition and have found other ways to manage their dysphoria. Many people with dysphoria desist over time. If transition was the only effective treatment why are there so many dysphoric people who have found other ways to effectively treat and/or manage their dysphoria?

You don't cite your sources. You only use your personal anecdotal life story, and completely disregard trans identified individuals who have found ways to cope without hormones and surgery. It shouldn't be surprising that I don't find your arguments convincing.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-08-07T14:10:11+00:00

"In regard to the emotional effects of transition, many activists will refer you to a 2018 Pediatrics journal article entitled “Transgender Adolescent Suicide Behavior.” But the study reported therein was based on just three years of data—collected between 2012 and 2015. What matters is the long term. And in this regard, the gold standard is a study of 324 medically transitioned adults, based on 30-year longitudinal data. The authors found that completing sex-reassignment surgery was associated with “considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity” as compared to the general population. Kids who are suicidal before their transition will likely continue to be suicidal, and the most intense ideation often comes years after transitioning. (Transgender folks themselves sometimes speak anecdotally of a seven-to-10-year trans suicide “itch” observed within the community.)"

The study this quote is referring to

Crazy idea, but if trans activists stopped drinking their own koolaid it would make it easier for researchers to test and try out mental health treatments, potentially in combination with drugs that could effectively cure or at the very least alleviate gender/sex dysphoria. (These are the treatments that should be paid for by the public dime) Transition in the long run is worse than the disease it purports to cure. By transitioned people's public behavior it is clear that for many if not most transitioning is merely a band aid and they still suffer hyper sensitivity, gender dysphoria and other comorbidities which are common among trans identified individuals. Changing the body without treating the underlying mental illness/s is not a real solution.

"Of the 298 transgender women, 41.5%of participants had 1 or more mental health or substance dependence diagnoses; 1 in 5 (20.1%) had 2 or more comorbid psychiatric diagnoses. Prevalence of specific disorders was as follows: lifetime and current major depressive episode, 35.4%and 14.7%, respectively; suicidality, 20.2%; generalized anxiety disorder, 7.9%; posttraumatic stress disorder, 9.8%; alcohol dependence, 11.2%; and nonalcohol psychoactive substance use dependence, 15.2%." Psychiatric Diagnoses and Comorbidities in a Diverse, Multicity Cohort of Young Transgender Women

Gender/Sex Dysphoria is essentially BDD. We should treat sex dysphoria in the same/or similar ways to the way we treat Body dysmorphic disorder. You know what is not recommended? Giving BDD sufferers a bunch of unnecessary plastic surgeries. Physical transition breaks the Hippocratic oath of "Do no harm". If sex dysphoria wasn't so politicized we could much more easily be giving real solutions to dysphoric people that won't wreck their health and bodies for the rest of their lives.

Adults should be free for the most part to take on cosmetic surgeries to change their appearance, but that should always be on their own dime. Wrong sex hormone 'treatments' should also be on their own dime. I'm still on the fence whether these procedures and treatments should outright be banned, because of how harmful they are in the long run. Clearly mentally unwell individuals saying they'll commit suicide if they don't get them makes me lean more towards advocating for outright banning these harmful medical practices. Unethical Doctors who 'help' people with their transitions are preying on vulnerable people who will have to pay the price for their rest of their lives.

Forget What Gender Activists Tell You. Here’s What Medical Transition Looks Like For this trans man her transition was pretty fucking high price to pay. Explain to me how we should be encouraging/making it easier anyone to do this with their bodies? The very least we can do is not pay for it with the public dime to make it as difficult as possible for adults to engage in this level of self harm. All of these surgeries are unnecessary, many trans people have found harmless/significantly less harmless ways to cope with their gender dysphoria, sometimes solving other mental health problems like depression have been effective. Physical intervention should always be the last resort and it is a fact that trans people will not keel over if they can't afford hormones or surgery.

"During my own transition, I had seven surgeries. I also had a massive pulmonary embolism, a helicopter life-flight ride, an emergency ambulance ride, a stress-induced heart attack, sepsis, a 17-month recurring infection due to using the wrong skin during a (failed) phalloplasty, 16 rounds of antibiotics, three weeks of daily IV antibiotics, the loss of all my hair, (only partially successful) arm reconstructive surgery, permanent lung and heart damage, a cut bladder, insomnia-induced hallucinations—oh and frequent loss of consciousness due to pain from the hair on the inside of my urethra. All this led to a form of PTSD that made me a prisoner in my apartment for a year. Between me and my insurance company, medical expenses exceeded $900,000.

During these 17 months of agony, I couldn’t get a urologist to help me. They didn’t feel comfortable taking me on as a patient—since the phalloplasty, like much of the transition process, is experimental. “Could you go back to the original surgeon?” they suggested."

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-08-07T04:13:53+00:00

Feel free to cite the studies you are referring to if you are so confident.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-08-07T04:12:53+00:00

Those articles are sourcing legitimate studies and link directly to them so you can easily check out the studies for yourself. Trans activists have been so tyrannical with speech suppression that researchers and journalists who don't toe the party line have limited places to publish their findings and views. Sexual reassignment surgeries and wrong sex hormones harm the body. That is an objective fact. Do these surgeries actually cure gender dysphoria? That is very debatable. Is the price to a transgender's person health for their entire lives worth it? That is also very debatable.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-08-07T02:00:00+00:00

I believe studies over one person's anecdotes.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-08-07T01:45:27+00:00

Giving anorexics free liposuctions is wrong. Cutting off the limb/s of people with Body Integrity Identity Disorder is wrong. Damaging healthy bodies of people with sex dysphoria is also wrong.

Crazy idea, but how about we treat people with mental health problems with mental health treatment. Not cater to their current inability to accept reality.

You may very well be one of those people in these 20 year studies who has to face up to the devastating long term consequences of physically transitioning and I don't wish that on anyone. In many of the studies people were initially happy but years down the line the dysphoria wasn't actually cured and they had to deal with the dysphoria and a body that was wrecked by unnecessary hormones and surgery. Surgeries are a big fucking deal and they should not ever be done casually. A person can easily end up suffering from chronic pain & disability for the rest of their life, because of them. Hormones are also a big deal and can have horrible even lethal health consequences in the long run. There are a lot of unknowns and every transgender person who uses wrong sex hormones is effectively a guinea pig participating in a long term unethical medical experiment. Unnecessary surgeries and hormones should absolutely be hard to get. There should be gatekeeping involved.

This isn't coming from a position of hate. It's coming from a serious consideration of medical ethics and how people with mental health issues ought to be treated and cared for by society. Sometimes the kindest most ethical thing society and individuals can do for a person with a mental health issue is to say no. No I will not help you cut your own arm off. No I will not help you starve yourself to death. No I will not help you get wrong sex hormones and unnecessary surgeries that will destroy and/or remove perfectly healthy body parts.

These articles cite legitimate sources about how transition is not the best treatment and often does more harm than good without solving the underlying issue, because body dysmorphia is a mental health problem not a physical health problem. A perfectly healthy male or female body is not a problem, refusal to accept that reality is. Trans people should get evidence based health care, not ideological wishful thinking healthcare.

Transition as Treatment: The Best Studies Show the Worst Outcomes

Transgenderism: A Pathogenic Meme "The idea that one’s sex is a feeling, not a fact, has permeated our culture and is leaving casualties in its wake. Gender dysphoria should be treated with psychotherapy, not surgery."

Correction: Transgender Surgery Provides No Mental Health Benefit "The American Journal of Psychiatry has issued a major correction to a recent study. The Bränström study reanalysis demonstrated that neither “gender-affirming hormone treatment” nor “gender-affirming surgery” reduced the need of transgender-identifying people for mental health services. Fad medicine is bad medicine, and gender-anxious people deserve better."

Insuring Rights for “Wrong” Bodies

Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden "Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group."

Correction to Bränström and Pachankis "the results demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care"

“Transitioning” Procedures Don’t Help Mental Health, Largest Dataset Shows

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-08-06T05:12:08+00:00

Give me what I demand or I'll commit suicide is unacceptable. You won't die without wrong sex hormones. Anyone who chooses to commit suicide that is 100% on them. Society isn't obligated to cave in to classic abuser manipulative tactics and this is coming from someone who spent many years feeling suicidal. You know what I never did, because I'm not an entitled manipulative abusive asshole? I never once threatened to commit suicide if I didn't get my way. I kept it to myself and dealt with my own shit. My problems were mine to solve, at no point was I so entitled to think that society at large was obligated to cater to me. (This is a telling difference between male and female socialization. Women are much more likely to internalize their problems and men tend to externalize their problems.)

If someone is in an abusive relationship are they obligated to stay in said relationship if the abuser tells them that they'll commit suicide if they leave? If a 100 million men threaten to kill themselves if we don't allow them to rape women should we cave in and give them what they want? If a trans person says they'll commit suicide if society doesn't pay for their 'affirmative' cosmetic surgeries and wrong sex hormone treatments that will more often than not turn them into a lifelong medical patient and a burden on society until the day they die am I obligated to prioritize them above people with lethal diseases and real physical disabilities? Not being able to accept your perfectly healthy body the way it is, is a mental health issue not a physical issue.

Destroying a perfectly healthy body to make it vaguely resemble the opposite sex is not a social good. It's not an individual good either. I prioritize making unhealthy bodies whole over destroying perfectly healthy natural bodies with my tax dollars.

Public funds are limited. People are literally dying (not abusively threatening suicide actually fucking dying) because they cannot afford even the most basic medical care. Poor kids are dying in the United States, because they cannot afford to go to the dentist.. Universal healthcare for all should not be sidelined by trans entitlement.

I've gone without any healthcare for years, because I cannot afford it, so I have a really hard time feeling any sympathy whatsoever for people who threaten to commit suicide if they don't get wrong sex hormones that will wreck their body. You know what's more important than that? The millions of women suffering from excruciating pain every single goddamn month. I can't even understand what people are saying to me level of pain. I can't identify out of that pain. (And yes the pain often gets so bad that I do feel suicidal, sometimes just ending it seems worth it so I don't have to go through one more second of the pain.) I'll just have to suffer through it until I hit menopause and I'll likely never be able to afford to treat it, but go on keep on moaning about how you can't accept your body the way it is and how having a body you don't like is such a tragedy.

You know that there are people with genetic disorders who suffer excruciating pain 360 days out of the year who cannot afford treatment right? If you have a healthy functioning body that works be grateful. A lot of us aren't that lucky. If the severely disabled can accept their bodies and make the best out of a shitty situation why can't you? Why should we accept you if you can't even accept yourself? Society can't make you love yourself, only you can do that.

Trans people need mental healthcare more than anything and they need to learn to accept themselves as they are. Having a healthy body is important, wrecking it chasing after a pipe dream is ill advised. 'Affirmative surgeries & hormones' is today's lobotomy. We'll look back at this point in history with shame. So many people will suffer the horrific potentially debilitating consequences of unnecessary surgeries and wrong sex hormones and there will be no going back for them, the damage is irreparable. It's a goddamn tragedy and absolutely no one should be encouraged to go that route. Trans people are hurting themselves and I for one am not willing to foot the bill for their self inflicted demise, especially when there are millions people who do have physical illnesses that desperately need care.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-08-05T22:59:32+00:00

Who should be first in line for public funding: a diabetic who needs insulin shots to not literally fucking die or someone who has mental health issues who 'needs' cosmetic surgeries? How is it not a slap in the face to those people for a man who claims to be a women to get public funding for his fake breasts for free, but if they miss a paycheck and can't get money in time they will literally die?

Will trans identified individuals die if they don't facial feminization surgery, fake breasts and wrong sex hormones? The answer to that is a definitive no they will not die. This is a matter of priorities more than anything.

I suffer excruciating debilitating pain every month most likely because of endometriosis. Public funding for similar conditions to that should also be prioritized over cosmetic surgeries.

How we should prioritize public health funding: Life or Death > Debilitating Illnesses (Including Mental Illnesses) > Cosmetic Surgeries

As long as diabetics insulin shots aren't being paid for by public funds trans 'affirmative care' should not be paid for either.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-08-05T00:54:51+00:00

Gender Identity should be treated like a subjective religious belief, because that is what it is. We can make reasonable accommodations for it in law much in the same way we do for religious people. Example

Other than that Gender Identitarians should have the same human rights as anyone else, but no special privileges. Single sex spaces should remain just that, single sex and based on objective verifiable reality not subjective 'gender identity'.

As for cosmetic surgeries, people who believe in Gender Identitarianism should pay for those with their own wallets. Every person who has a real life threatening or debilitating illnesses should be put in line first before even considering paying for unnecessary cosmetic surgeries with public funds. What should be provided for everyone is mental healthcare whenever they need it and ideally we would also have universal healthcare, but that seems to be a pipe dream in the U.S.

We need new laws to require researchers to gather sex disaggregated data for their studies especially when it comes to healthcare.

We also need laws that require researchers to test an equal amount of women & men (and make sure to sex disaggregate the data) for new drugs & disease treatments, because how a disease/drug affects one sex can be drastically different in the opposite sex.

Women need specialized laws/rights that specifically protect our bodily autonomy relating to pregnancy. Male politicians have catastrophically failed to take women's needs into account, it's time to get more women in politics so laws that take the reality of female bodies are a priority and not an afterthought in law.

This one is debatable, but having 50% gender quotas in all political positions could profoundly improve women's lives. Our needs and our issues have gone ignored too long. Men and that includes transwomen have failed to adequately represent women's interest in government. It is long past time for women to get equal representation in the most powerful positions in the land.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-31T17:42:41+00:00

Queer Theory seems to be mostly social contagion. It's spreading like a religious belief system, which is unsurprising, because that is essentially what queer theory is. They even have splintering belief groups: transmeds vs tucutes. When you disconnect from objective reality it's really hard to keep your story straight and splintering into different variations of queer theory over time is inevitable. Ex. Mormon Religious belief split

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-31T17:27:52+00:00

Women having less body autonomy than a corpse
The unacceptable lack of research into women's health (Many studies test only men and male cells, drug dosages are often wrong for women, because they didn't bother to test the drug on women and women are dying, because of this. Dysmenorhea is huge too, it's tragic how little we're doing to help the millions of women suffering from debilitating monthly pain)
How little to nothing is done to prevent men murdering, raping, harassing and/or assaulting women. Violent men have predictable patterns of behavior and we could intervene much sooner to prevent them from catastrophically harming women instead of telling women to just deal with it.
Child marriage
Slavery Worldwide, too little is being done to end it
Global Warming
Broken Economic System where we have billionaires with employees that are living hand to mouth

There are a lot of very important issues that the trans nonsense is distracting us from, which is one reason that politicians are embracing it. It's easier to support a faux civil rights movement than real ones.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-31T04:43:05+00:00

So gender identity is a deep personal subjective belief akin to believing in a soul with no verifiably way to confirm with objective reality.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-29T23:36:15+00:00

Gender Nonconformity is not doing or doing something different than what is expected of your sex by your culture.

*U.S. Culture Perspective: Mileage may vary since the U.S.A is a huge melting pot so this varies from community to community

All a Woman Needs to Do to be Gender Nonconforming is be her natural self which is crazy when you think about it. - Not Shaving - Not Wearing Makeup - Not Wearing Girly Clothing (That often falls apart after two washes)

Other ways women can be gender nonconforming - Going to college & gasp graduating! (I have actually been told repeatedly to not go to college and get married by my family) * Being competent at any field or hobby that is considered 'masculine'. * Being Assertive, Rude, Aggressive & Loud * Standing Up For Herself * Not putting others needs before her own * Not having kids * Not Marrying * Not Dating * Playing sports & gasp actually being competitive * Being Rational, Logical & Stoic * Actively Speaking instead of just listening. How Dare * Aging Naturally * Pursuing their dreams instead of being the support character in someone else's life * Being Angry (A lot of men prefer to believe women are 'crazy' instead of you know actually having very good reasons to be fucking furious)

This list could go on for a very long time. In summation women are expected to primp themselves so men have something nice to leer at and they are also expected to sacrifice their lives in service to their family, partners, friends & put men's needs above their own. And if they fail to live down to the society's widespread belief in women's inherent inferiority and prove themselves to be equal or better than the average man they are gender nonconforming.

Gender Roles/Sex Roles for women are bullshit. They're a straightjacket and any movement that embraces these gender roles is a sexist movement.

Edit: Formatting

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-24T01:21:33+00:00

A rando on reddit is not a legit source for anything. Cite your sources or there is no point in engaging with you. Here is a quick guideline tutorial on how to find a good source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdcmjPR7Ntw.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-24T01:14:24+00:00

We can acknowledge that there may very well be some average behavioral differences that may be innate to men and women respectively, but it is extremely difficult to separate nature from nurture. Sexism is a very likely reason why women are pushed out of certain fields and why pay raises when a field becomes male dominated and falls when it is female dominated. Women's work isn't respected, and it isn't valued.

Telling women they're not succeeding, because they aren't aggressive enough is just more sexism. Many women leave tech and high earning careers, because the bullying & sexual harassment just isn't worth it anymore.

If a male person behaves in a more stereotypically feminine fashion that does not make that male person a woman, that just means that some male people have personalities that are considered feminine. This proves that feminine and masculine gender roles being innate are bullshit, because if it was there wouldn't be so many exceptions to the rule.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-23T00:46:21+00:00

Also you aren't understanding the argument. Gender roles consist of a collection of cultural beliefs about men and women. For example there are many people who believe that women are inherently bad at logic and anything that requires it like math, the sciences and philosophy. Women who get into the sciences, math and philosophy and succeed prove that the regressive sexist belief that women don't logic well is bullshit. When women are no longer denied access to education they do great, go figure, but sexist gender roles are a big fucking deal, because women all over the world throughout history up to the present day have been denied an education, because of these sexist beliefs about women's gender roles. Deifying and identifying with gender harms women full stop. Trans Identity and Feminism are incompatible full stop. Gender identity is rotten to it's core, because when drill you down to what gender actually is it is sexism plain and simple.

Many male trans individuals spout off horrifically sexist regressive beliefs about women and play act their sexist idea of womanhood and claim that that makes them a woman then turn around and expect women to be a ok with it. That's to put it bluntly batshit.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-22T01:09:28+00:00

Dear Lord, if you don't understand the English language, biology and the why we categorize things like sex the way we do there is nothing I can do to help you or enlighten you. You are starting with a conclusion and scrabbling for any crumb that may support that conclusion. The burden of proof is on you. Cite legitimate sources and give damn good reasons for reaching the conclusions you are reaching. Otherwise your arguments as usual will continue to be utterly unconvincing.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-21T01:36:37+00:00

Just adding to your point. The type of bullying circling received at the hands of boys is male socialization. Males who don't fit male sexist stereotypes well enough will often get bullied for it.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-20T23:36:18+00:00

"If they have the capacity to father children they are male." Already solved the edge case. Reading comprehension is a thing. I recommend you try it. Your point isn't as effective as you think it is.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-20T05:22:53+00:00

I don't shave my legs. In the United States it is not normal for women to not shave their legs. In some cultures it is normal for women to not shave their legs. E.G. Gender is arbitrary bullshit. Name any stupid expectation of men or women you can think of and there is probably a culture out there who has the opposite belief about which 'gender' should be doing what. Gender is the problem not the solution.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-19T06:05:51+00:00

Gender nonconforming people are proof the gender is bullshit. Gender/sexist stereotypes is what makes makes their life harder. I sure as hell would be a lot better off without bullshit sexist gender roles for women.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-18T22:03:47+00:00

Is gender necessary? By gender I mean sex stereotypes.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-17T21:55:58+00:00

You're making the absurd claims. Back up your assertions, bring us proof of a spegg, of a living actual human being that is both male and female. Provide legit sources, you know actual scientific studies. Wikipedia & bullshit news scientist website links aren't going to cut it if you're trying to prove sex denialism is true and ideally the mods will start just banning you, this got tiresome a long time ago.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-16T23:53:25+00:00

If they have the capacity to father children they are male. Extremely rare edge cases aren't a concern of mine. I'll leave all of that to the scientists and the doctors.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-15T23:54:10+00:00

https://www.ted.com/talks/paula_johnson_his_and_hers_health_care?fbclid=IwAR0a_CAL2PpcZtUehHUBRzfHXB3fUrJBUxoC2zNxDCu9DkkGt2Ysc3v2JzU

Take a look at that video. You would have to change every single cell in their body to change a person's sex. Assuming we could even do that in the future, what are the odds of them surviving the process? It is extremely unlikely we will ever be able to change a person's sex with technology if not impossible.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-12T04:50:59+00:00

For as long as we have had written history man has meant adult human male and woman has meant adult human female. In just about every language you can think of they will have words for the adult of the male and female sex.. Redefining well established words with 1000s of years of history without a damn good reason is ridiculous.

How about you make up a word for people who have extra special gender feels. Some people are blurble gender. Some people are blarble gender. There you go those new words are entirely separate from a person's sex, have fun. The words woman and man are already taken. They're perfectly acceptable words with solid no nonsense definitions.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-11T15:07:01+00:00

Totally legit, bisexuals who don't respect LG spaces are assholes. The ones who encourage the trans woke homophobia are even worse. Bisexuals need to understand that they are not gay or lesbian and should not speak for those groups. They are bisexual which is it's own thing.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-09T03:38:56+00:00

I think it is more accurate to call it sex dysphoria or body dysmorphia more akin to anorexia than anything. If a person was raised alone in a vacuum would she or he have sex dysphoria, anorexia or any other body dysmorphia disorder? We'll never know for sure, but I'd bet a lot less people would.

Social contagion can increase the odds of someone developing symptoms, and culture has a big role to play as well. I do believe that the trans movement is making the problem worse by encouraging people to ruminate about it and embrace it instead of finding healthier ways of coping that don't involve life long medicalization.

So I'd say body dysmorphia disorders are definitely a real thing, but they are inextricably linked to societal influence. There is something very wrong with society when a lot of teenage girls develop anorexia. Likewise there is something horribly wrong with society if a lot of people are damaging their bodies in the pursuit of the impossible goal of changing their sex. The culture at large has catastrophically failed to accept gender nonconforming people as they are, much in the same way it has failed to accept teenage girls and women as they are.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-09T02:27:07+00:00

Yep. The lack of empathy & even the most basic consideration trans activists and their ilk have for others is a huge problem.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-09T00:24:32+00:00

Before sex disclosure is a must. Sexual orientation matters and should be respected. Gay men are not interested in vagina. Lesbians don't do penis. Heterosexual people aren't interested in people who are the same sex. Bisexuals are more likely to be open to it, but they deserve to know beforehand.

After surgery it should still be disclosed. Many people do not want to have anything to do with neo genitals. Surprise neogenitals are likely to be traumatizing for the other person especially if they get up and personal before finding out what they are actually dealing with.

Neovaginas aren't even remotely close to vaginas. Neopenises aren't even remotely close to penises.

Initial dating it should be up to the individual trans person when it makes sense to disclose, but for long term dating the other person should absolutely know. Kissing is a bit of a gray area, but knowing the sexual orientation of the person you are dating can help determine if it's okay or not.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-08T14:49:46+00:00

Not true at all. If a man wants to be 'dominant' I wouldn't touch him with 10 foot pole. When I think of dominants I think of abusive sad pathetic little men who only have an inkling chance with women who have very low self esteem.

This concept is very hard for the average man to grasp, but women are human beings. We have desires, we have fantasies that are completely independent of men's desires or fantasies. Men who don't know this are shit in bed guaranteed.

As for 'maximum desire', I don't want to be desired by people I find repulsive. Being groped, being followed, disgusting sexual comments made about my body, cornered, threatened and coerced, none of that shit is sexy. I feel a hot seething rage when dealing with every single one of those pieces of shit.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-08T00:50:05+00:00

Sex absolutely matters especially when people are naked. You have a lived a very lucky life if you haven't learned that already the hard way.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-08T00:24:48+00:00

If you go into a single sex space you are only consenting to be viewed naked by members of your sex. Your personal opinions on nudity are irrelevant to this discussion. This is about consent. A male walking into a female only single sex space is violating every single women's consent the moment he enters the space.

This is a non issue in unisex spaces, but we're not talking about unisex spaces right now.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-06T00:58:38+00:00

So for you would you describe it as a personal fiction that helps you get by? Are people who claim trans status, but do not have gender dysphoria actually trans? What you're describing sounds like transmedicalism which makes a lot more sense than woman gender. There is definitely a difference between preferring to be called a woman and claiming to be a woman. Preferring to be called a woman I would not consider faith based, but claiming to actually be a woman despite having a male body is quite a reach that goes right into faith territory.

I'm a woman because I have a female body not because I consider myself one. Identifying as something and actually being that thing is very different. Many transwomen claim that they have a woman gender and are claiming that they are actually women, which is where the conflicts arise like the Wi Spa incident, because women (female bodied people) have very different needs than male bodied people, which is why the law needs to be based on sex not gender identity.

There are objective external aspects of both of those illnesses that can be observed, tested for and measured. Objective criteria can also be defined for gender dysphoria making it diagnosable. Innate gender identity is a different beast though. It's too similar to the belief in a soul for my taste. Having gender dysphoria does not make a male bodied person a woman, but it is understandable given the nature of the condition that is what they would preferred to be seen as.

Major depression: an illness with objective physical signs Fibromyalgia: Understand how it's diagnosed

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-05T22:53:00+00:00

If a woman is not an adult human female, then what is a woman? If you're a woman then what am I? I don't have an internal sense of gender, so does that mean I'm not a woman?

Is there an objective way to prove that some male bodied people are actually women on the inside? Is there an objective independently verifiable way to measure gender identity? If not, it is a subjective faith based belief and should be treated as such.

I think the comparison to religion is quite apt, many trans activist arguments & claims are so similar to religious arguments & claims that they may as well be twins. Really I'm getting deja vu from my freshly minted apostate days.

Pseudoreligion: Belief or philosophy with certain aspects of religion (a founder, a principal text, faith-based beliefs, etc.).

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-05T21:35:33+00:00

It is a faith based belief question, especially since trans activists are demanding that biological men be treated as though they were women. It is impossible for a male person to know what it feels like to be a female person unless someone believes in something similar to a soul separate from the body (innate gender identity). A belief in something innate separate from the body has 1,000s of years of religious history. The only difference between a transwoman and any other man from a nonbeliever's perspective is that one man claims to be a woman and one does not. Physically they are indistinguishable. A man who has 'transitioned' is just a man who got some body modifications. There are men who have transitioned who believe they are still men. Is there an objective way to verify which male bodied people are actually women on the inside and which ones are not other than just taking their word for it?

I respect that it is a deeply felt personal belief hence my willingness to engage in some social niceties while engaging with trans identified individuals in real life, but I'm not willing to do more than that. My rights, my beliefs, my boundaries and my consent matters too.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-05T20:15:10+00:00

You might be in a different country than I am. Where I'm at people can just walk in and they are really common. It's possible, because that's the way it is where I live. Just sayin'

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-05T20:06:51+00:00

Gosh the news stories titles are infuriating. What about women's rights? This isn't a case of some poor beleaguered trans woman. He deliberately exposed himself and viewed women's naked bodies without their consent. It blows my mind how tilted the coverage is.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-05T20:01:46+00:00

Not pity, but politeness. I think Christianity is bullshit. Playing along to some of their social mores when I am in Christian company isn't pity it's a social nicety. I don't swear around people who don't like swear words either. Many smokers respect nonsmokers by not smoking around them or asking if they mind first, not out of pity just basic human empathy and politeness and as a nonsmoker who really hates smoke I really appreciate the courtesy.

I believe that transgenderism is bullshit too. I'm an empiricist, I don't believe in gods, gender souls, or regular run of the mill religious souls. I don't hate trans people, I don't pity them, I just disagree with them. I don't believe using the Lord's name in vain is wrong, but many Christians do. I don't believe misgendering is wrong, but many trans people do. So out of social nicety I change my behavior depending on who I am with. It would be a dick move for me to walk into a church and yell "God doesn't exist!". I wouldn't walk into a transwomen social gathering and shout "transwomen are men". That would just be rude, both groups have a right to believe what they believe and form social groups where they embrace that.

You don't have a right to force nonbelievers to adhere to every tenet of your personal belief system especially when you aren't present. It would be batty to demand that all atheists/unbelievers in the country never use the Lord's name in vain ever, because that hurts Christian's feelings. It is equally batty to demand that every gender atheist in the country never misgender any transgender person ever. What the trans movement is essentially advocating for is forced belief/forced religion and that is not okay. It is extraordinarily entitled. I also have the right to believe what I believe and hang out with people who have similar beliefs just like transgender people and I don't believe men can be women and vice versa. Christians have failed to convince me that their religion is the one true way. Transgender ideologues have failed to convince me that men can be women magically somehow. Thems the rocks.

Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion. Freedom of belief includes freedom from belief. It's not personal, we just have very different belief systems. There will always be unbelievers, you will have to find a way to cope with that. Christians(Insert any other powerful religion here) have to be forced every now and again to stop forcing their subjective faith based beliefs on the rest of society, trans people will have to learn that the hard way too it seems.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-05T19:37:17+00:00

That third unisex space is already built in a lot of places. They're called family restrooms and family changing rooms. I've lost count of the number of places I have seen family restrooms available. Male and female bodied people can both enter that space, that is the point of family restrooms, so opposite sex parents can take care of their young children, this space can also benefit trans people. If it was such a hard sell it wouldn't be so common.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-05T19:16:45+00:00

I actually worked with an out transwoman who was living as far as I could tell a very normal life hanging out with us outside of work too just like any other run of the mill person. He was visibly and behaviorally male, but decently androgynous. The key was that he respected my boundaries so we got along just fine. In person I would refer to him as she out of courtesy, much in the same way I avoid using the Lord's name in vain when I'm hanging out with Christians, but when I'm no longer in Christian company the Lord's name gets quite a thrashing.

I've also worked with a transman that was clearly female at first glance. She was also living a normal life just like any other coworker going out and hanging out with friends in her free time. My coworkers gave me a quiet heads up that she was trans so I could make sure to refer to her as "he" to avoid upsetting her. That's generally what happens for trans people who don't pass in the workplace at least. Their coworkers discretely give the new hire a heads up and more often than not out of courtesy they go along with it like I did out of politeness more than anything. It was a bit awkward at first, because forcing my brain to refer to a woman as he took some extra effort like saying the color of a word out loud when it says a different color.

Weird becomes normal if you're exposed to it enough times. I grew up under a conservative religious rock and didn't know about gay people until I was a teenager. My first thought was wait that's an option? Now it's just normal to me. A dude talks about his husband and I react the same way as if he was talking about his wife. You meet enough gay people and it just becomes a meh fact about them like their hair color. That's how gay people got more acceptance they came out of the closet, so society saw that they were boring run of the mill people like the rest of us with one small difference. It's hard to hate gay people when you find out Uncle Joe is gay and Aunt Lydia is a lesbian and so on.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-05T05:27:36+00:00

So I'm curious is there some self hatred going on there if you believe men are monsters? That kind of view just seems weird to me for a transwoman to have.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-05T03:03:58+00:00

So here's the deal if all or even most men were actually monsters human civilization would not be possible. Sexism against men is possible, but it doesn't have as much authoritative weight behind it as the institutionalized sexism against women. Feminism not the liberal feminism bullshit but actual feminism is about separating personality from sex. Little boys can be affectionate, empathetic, emotional and caring. (There are some incredibly thoughtful sweet little boys out there who grow up to be fantastic men) Little girls can be stoic, tough and domineering. Your sex is not your destiny, you could have any personality under the sun, we're all humans doing the best we can. Neither sex is inferior to the other, but we are very different physically and we need to account for those differences in law. Most behavior differences can be attributed to nurture, there may be some innate personality differences, but that would be very difficult to separate from cultural influence.

I seriously doubt that the average Joe would attack any transwoman they saw on site. Most likely they would give them a double take then carry on about their business. Many average Joe's might crack a tasteless joke, but that's more annoying than anything. I find it kind of funny that even I have more faith in men than you do. It's a very small percentage of men who are predators that I have to watch out for, most men are fine and thank god for that.

I don't know if this will help you feel better about men, but a very low percentage of men are responsible for the vast majority of violent crime. Many violent offenders also have mental health issues which is unfortunate. We really need to do a better job of taking care of the mentally ill in society. The 1% of the population accountable for 63% of all violent crime convictions

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-05T02:13:55+00:00

circlingmyownvoid2 is on topic. I did specifically mention Voyeurism as well, because women who are using women only locker/spa rooms are only consenting to be naked in front of other women. Men pre op or post op should not be allowed into women's only changing rooms, because women have a right to choose who views them naked and who does not. Fully or partially clothed men should not be allowed in women's changing rooms either. By using a women's single sex space they have denied every single male no matter how he personally identifies that consent. Women are not a roadshow for any male to peruse and view as he pleases. It doesn't matter if he's leering, staring or just plain ol' looking. Any man looking at naked women in a women's only locker room is violating their consent and should risk being charged with Voyeurism.

Many trans activists try to argue that good behavior should mean that women should make an exception for some males in the women's locker room, but that is not a justifiable, because their very presence in that space is a violation. The most well behaved transwoman in the world still does not belong in the women's locker room and he is still at the very least committing Voyeurism unless he closes his eyes the entire time.

So I disagree with circlingmyownvoid2, because I believe even if no 3rd space is currently available no male should be allowed in a women's only single sex space even if he has had genital surgery or made sure to cover the twig n' berries, that does not negate his maleness. Nor does it give him the right to violate women's consent, but I do appreciate circlingmyownvoid2's willingness to debate.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-05T01:18:56+00:00

By getting by I hope you don't mean males violating women's consent by using women's single sex spaces. A particular trans individual not feeling safe in the men's room does not justify violating women's sexual boundaries, bodily autonomy and consent.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-05T00:38:12+00:00

That is the point of single sex spaces. Any male entering them is willfully disregarding women's consent and can be immediately kicked out. This strict crystal clear standard makes it relatively easy to prosecute offenders.

By stepping into that space he has violated women's consent and is committing at bare minimum Voyeurism. It doesn't matter if he is leering or not. The women there did not consent to any male viewing their naked bodies. He could be a world famous painter who just wants to paint naked women, but if they did not consent to it he is to all intents and purposes a sexual predator and his neutral artistic intent is irrelevant. There's a reason artists hire models and don't go traipsing into opposite sex changing rooms when they need to practice drawing the human form. Consent matters.

If we make exceptions for some males we can no longer hold predatory voyeuristic & exhibitionistic men accountable which was why the Wi Spa fiasco happened. What if the man who entered the women's area was one of those extra super special exceptions? What if he really felt deep down that he was actually a woman on the inside? We see exactly how that plays out in the real world. Women are told to suck it up and now they no longer have a safe place to change nor are they allowed to seek justice for Voyeurism and Indecent Exposure. The comfort & desires of 1 male has been put above every single woman who goes to that spa.

Less than 1% of rapes result in convictions

Now if the conviction rate for rapists is 1% how low do you think it is for voyeurs and exhibitionists? I bet a lot of them face 0 consequences for sexually harassing women. Sexual harassment & assault is notoriously hard to prove and convict (especially in places where for privacy reasons cameras are not allowed like you know a locker rooms/spa rooms & don't get me started on the predators who place cameras in women's restrooms/locker rooms so they can violate women even further by posting the footage online. About 80% of the victims of spy camera porn are women.).

Women's only spaces are one of the very few areas where holding sexual predators accountable is a no brainer. If he wasn't a sexual predator he wouldn't have entered the women's only area in the first place. By making exceptions for men who claim to be women we go back to square 1 with that lovely 1% conviction rate. Allowing any male in destroys the entire purpose of women's single sex spaces. At that point we may as well make all spaces unisex, which leaves women once again having to deal with sexual harassment/rape with no recourse or justice the vast majority of the time making the space safe for no one. Now that's what I call a lose lose scenario.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-04T21:17:47+00:00

Men are dangerous to women and other men. That is acknowledged, but violating women's consent, boundaries and bodily autonomy is never okay. Not wanting to be in men's spaces does not give male bodied people the right to violate female bodied people's spaces.

If a certain subset of men/male bodied people are especially unsafe around other men the solution is finding a 3rd space for them or a more creative solution to protect them, not sacrificing women's rights.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-01T01:02:06+00:00

Key concept: Consent. Trans activists seem to have a really hard time understanding this. If it's not consensual it's not okay.

I have never once in my life been sexually harassed, threatened, or nearly killed by a woman. But I sure as hell have had to deal with all of that bullshit from men. Not just once, but throughout my entire life. Most women I know have experienced varying degrees of male sexual terrorism and violence. That's why I have no problem consenting to share a locker room with other women, but not with men. Do you really want to make life easier for sexual predators, pedophiles and creeps? Do you?

Allowing male bodied people into single sex spaces reserved for female bodied people does exactly that. Once that boundary is destroyed women no longer have a legal right to say no and we are fucked literally and figurately by piece of shit sexual predators who should've never been allowed in in the first place! You are arguing that we should destroy what little recourse women have when a piece of shit sexually harasses her and yes nonconsensual dick exposure is sexual harassment. In the good ol' days before this madness took off we could go to the manager and have that bastard kicked out of the establishment and put on the sex offender registry, so everyone would know that he is a dangerous rotten creep that should be kept far far away from women and children.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-07-01T00:46:03+00:00

What about consent?

If I walk into a unisex locker room I am consenting to share that space with strangers that have male bodies or female bodies.
If I walk into the women's locker room I am consenting to share that space with strangers that have female bodes.

Exposing genitals to people without their consent is indecent exposure and it is a sex crime for a reason. No one should be forced to see a surprise penis. Any man who exposes his penis to women who did not consent to it is a sexual predator full stop and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Some men need to be forced by law to keep their unwanted disgusting dicks to themselves. Women have a right to be free from sexual harassment and that includes freedom from exhibitionists who enjoy flashing their genitals in front of the unsuspecting public particularly women and girls.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-30T02:25:45+00:00

If it's not about humans, it's irrelevant. Cats have a tail. That does not mean that humans also have tails.
Scientists can also be ignorant. Especially when they step out of their lane. Ex. A physicist isn't the person you should be going to when asking questions about biology. Saying some scientists support x isn't a good argument.
Bad scientists exist. Bad studies exist. You need to use your best judgment to determine if a scientific study, theory or conclusion is reliable. As more data is gathered scientists throw out old theories, ideas and conclusions on a regular basis. Generally the most reliable information can be found by looking at scientific consensus. There is scientific and public consensus that human sex consists of males and females, because it is an easily verifiable objective fact.
Scientists can lie and can be paid to lie by big industries. This spectrum nonsense is coming from a few outliers. There are scientists denying climate change, there are scientists that were paid by the tobacco industry to deny the adverse health effects of cigarettes and there are scientists today that have a vested money motivated interest to legitimize transgenderism. So if you want to convince us that human sex is a "spectrum" you need a better argument than a couple nut job scientists say so. Give us some solid evidence that it's a spectrum. Ex. Junk Science and the Tobacco Industry
Even if you did manage by some miracle and it would have to be a miracle prove that human sex is a spectrum how does that relate to transgenderism? Even if a human hermaphrodite was discovered that would not negate the fact that 99.99% of humans are unambiguously male or female. It does not negate the fact that all transwomen are male. That does not give any credence whatsoever to males who claim to be women. They're still male.

Male bodied people are not female bodied people. It impossible to turn a male bodied person into a female bodied person. Why should we treat male bodied people the same way we treat female bodied people? Why should male bodied people who claim to be women be given access to women's single sex spaces, shortlists, sports and so on? Why should they be allowed to define what womanhood is instead of female bodied people? Trans activists are the left's version of young earth creationists. They're arguments are equally unconvincing. Stop grasping at straws and come at us with a real argument.

So let's assume the premise for a bit. Let's assume that human sex is a spectrum. Why should male bodied people be put in the same category as female bodied people? If you don't have an answer to that why are you wasting your time trying to claim that human sex is a spectrum? What exactly do you have to gain by doing this?

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-30T01:22:06+00:00

The Male Bodied Person aka man should be charged with indecent exposure.
If a business decides to allow any male bodied people in a women's single sex space the signage should be changed to unisex so women know what they are walking into. Keeping the sign women only and allowing male bodied people to enter is unacceptable.
Any male bodied person who exposes himself to women and girls in women's bathrooms and locker rooms is a sexual predator. Full stop. Trans status should not give male bodied people extra super special immunity from sex crime law nor should it give them permission to sexually harass women which is exactly what this trans identified individual did. Transwomen do not have a right to force women to see their penis without their consent. That this even needs to be said is absurd.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-30T01:05:36+00:00

Accepting that transgenderism is a personal subjective belief that should not be forced on the rest of society. Preferred pronouns should be voluntary. Respecting people's boundaries and right to consent especially in single sex spaces. Not sending death threats, rape threats, trying to defund rape crisis shelters and so on. The trans movement's entitlement (a lot of it is typical male entitlement under a different guise) is what is causing the animosity.

Ironically a lot of the bad actors in the trans movement are an excellent example of why women need single sex spaces away from male bodied people no matter how they personally identify. A disturbingly high percentage of males are a threat to women. It sucks that men cannot be blindly trusted because of this fact, but I'll be damned if women aren't allowed some measure of safeguarding from male violence and male sexual harassment.

Nowhere is safe for women. Not even our own homes. Let me repeat nowhere. The only time a woman can completely let her guard down is when no males are present. Now trans activists are trying to destroy single ex public bathrooms, changing rooms and rape crisis centers. Of course we're pissed off! Many of us have been sexually harassed, stalked, threatened or attacked on public transportation, minding our business walking down the street, at our jobs, at the gym, at the grocery store, the list is endless. What do you think the me too movement was all about? Now I'm supposed to let male bodied people who make my life a living hell into the locker room? Fuck no!

I am so done with being harassed & threatened no matter how conservatively I dress, no matter how careful I am. There is no escaping from it and the trans movement is pulling the ultimate dick move taking what little spaces women have that are set aside to specifically allow women to be free from that bullshit when they're vulnerable!

The double standard where women are expected to be nice doormats while men who claim to be women do whatever they want regardless of the very real sometimes deadly consequences for women is maddening. I'm a goddamn human being and I should be able to change in peace without being leered at, cornered, flashed, groped, inappropriate comments made about my body and if I'm really unlucky attacked by some unhinged misogynist who refuses to take no for an answer. The only way to give women that space is to ban all male bodied people. The alleged good men more often than not do nothing even when a women is being sexually assaulted on a crowded train station right in front of them! I don't trust any man anywhere near me when I'm vulnerable. If a movement takes my right to change in peace free from sexual harassment away, yeah I'm going to be angry and I'm not going to mince my words.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-27T00:50:46+00:00

I could see that working pretty well, where there could be additional data like sex that could accessed after scanning the license/passport number when needed. In most day to day activities sex shouldn't matter, so that compromise could potentially work with some caveats to protect women's spaces, shortlists, sports and so on.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-26T20:07:32+00:00

Thanks for linking that discussion. If there was a way to create a legal fiction to make a passing trans person life easier without opening a can of worms against women's rights I would be open to it. I have a hard time thinking of an alternative solution/compromise that works well for both parties though.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-26T04:39:46+00:00

That's a tough one. The slippery slope is very real here with men demanding and gaining! access to women's prisons, rape crisis shelters, women's sports leagues and so on. Things have gotten so absurd that a reductio ad absurdum is already the reality. Which is why I am drawing a hard line at not allowing legal document sex change. This is for the sake of women's rights and trans people safety. Ex. If the wrong sex is on their driver license in an emergency they may get opposite sex medical treatment that could kill them literally.

Normalizing gender nonconformity would go a long way to making trans identified people's particularly trans identified males lives easier. Women have already normalized dressing in 'men's' clothing. It's normal for us to wear pants now as an example. Source: Women arrested for wearing pants (not an ideal source, but you get the idea) Women were the change they wanted to see. I continue that tradition by not shaving and not wearing makeup, because I believe it should be normal for women to exist in their natural state the same way it is for men. Fortunately I'm not getting arrested for it though.

Trans identified males need to be inspired by women's history and toughness, buck up and start normalizing feminine presenting men in society. Claiming to actually be a woman is the cowards solution. Society is more comfortable with a transwoman than a gender nonconforming man which is one reason I suspect trans activism took off despite the absurdity. There are extremely conservative countries that harshly punish homosexuals that embrace transgenderism, because a transwomen is easier for them to tolerate and accept than a feminine gay man.

We need to embrace that there is no such thing as a 'girls toy' or a 'boys toy'. Girls aren't born innately feminine, boys are not innately masculine. Biology is not destiny. Femininity does not = woman. Masculinity does not = man. Both sexes can be varying degrees of masculine and feminine. We need to separate 'gender' from who a person is. Gendered expectations are cultural impositions, not innate. When feminine gay men are fully accepted as a normal part of human variation transwomen's lives will be much easier as well. The same applies to transmen.

The trans movement unfortunately is regressive, because it is pushing back the progress we were making in accepting gender nonconforming people. Saying a masculine woman must be a man isn't progress. Transing historical gender nonconforming individuals isn't progress. Most of us don't quite fit into the straightjacket of femininity or masculinity.

There are a lot of gender nonconforming people myself included who are horrified by the trans movement, because if we were born a decade or two later we would have been trans too. I wanted to be a boy when I was a kid, because I had a more masculine personality, but I'm glad I grew up before the trans movement took off. Transitioning for me would have been a tragedy. For many of the detransitioners it is a tragedy and I really feel for them.

A gender nonconforming woman explaining being gender free A collage of her life A gender nonconforming gay man talking about gender nonconformity

Sorry for the wall of text, I just find this whole moment in history so frustrating. It feels like we're going backwards and I'm pushing back hoping to do my bit to turn it back around.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-26T02:08:08+00:00

Should medical transition for gender dysphoria be allowed? For children no (they don't have the maturity or life experience to make such a permanent decision about the rest of their adult life, before they have an inkling of a clue what it is like to be an adult.) Adults potentially yes depending on what kind of physical transitioning they are engaging in. I do think we should take medical ethics very seriously and have a bare minimum level of gatekeeping involved to reduce the odds of someone making a permanent choice they could regret for the rest of their life. Many physical transition surgeries and hormone therapies cause irreversible lifelong negative health and quality of life consequences that cannot be undone. It makes sense to treat the mental health issues first before making any body modifications. So I am neutral about adults physically modifying their bodies to look more like the opposite sex, but it should absolutely be a last resort.

If you believe it should be allowed, why and with what restrictions (if any)? Adults must be fully informed of the consequences and risks involved in any body modification they are interested in. For more extreme modifications like genital surgery they should be required to undergo a reasonable amount of mental health treatment first before being allowed to replace a perfectly healthy body part with a poorly done faux one of the opposite sex. If you read about the side effects, the consequences of surgical failures and overall health consequences of genital surgery it makes sense to think no one should be doing this, hence why at bare minimum we should be requiring mental health treatment first if not outright banning some of the more objectively harmful body modification practices pushed by the trans movement.

What about legal/social transition (i.e. legal documents)? Legal documents absolutely not. I have a book recommendation: "Invisible women" which talks about all the ways failure to measure sex in studies has led to a huge data gap in every aspect in women's lives from the way cars are designed to the effectiveness on drugs on women vs men. It is also incredibly important for safeguarding. Allowing a man into a rape crisis shelter, women's prison, an all girls summer camp and so on can have catastrophic consequences, in fact it already has had catastrophic consequences. Allowing men to legally change their sex to female undermines women's essential sex based rights in the law. We have different bodies and drastically different needs than male bodied people and that should be recognized in the law with no confusion.

As for social transitioning eh, live and let live. As long as the trans person in question isn't being a jerk I have no problem using pronouns and whatnot as a social nicety. Part of not being a jerk though is male bodied people staying out of women only spaces. That's where I draw the line. I can be nice to them socially, but if a man who claims to be a woman tries to join me in the women's locker room oh hell no. If he barges into a lesbian meet up he should be kicked out. If he tries to participate in women's sports he should be called out for exactly what he is: a cheater. He can play on the men's team or join a unisex sports league. Pretending to be the opposite sex does not give men the right to be treated as though they really are the opposite sex in all aspects of life. There are hard lines they should not be allowed to cross to maintain women's rights and safeguarding so we can freely participate in public life.

I see trans individuals the same way I see religious fundamentalists. I lowkey think they're kinda nuts and disagree with them on a lot of things, but as long they leave me be I'll do the same for them. It's when they start destroying women's rights that I say now hold on a minute, there's a very important line I will never allow men to cross without a fight. Women's rights are tenuous at best and men's personal beliefs, identities, feelings whatever you want to call em' should never be allowed to override those rights. There is a very long history of horrific oppression against women up to the present day that we must never forget about. I am Malala is another good book to read. All it takes is one batshit crazy ideology to gain power for women's rights go out the window. Transgenderism is a pseudo religious movement. We can give them reasonable keyword reasonable accommodations the same way we do for regular run of the mill religious folks, but not at the expense of the rest of society.

Edit: Fixing wording

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-19T03:42:37+00:00

That makes sense. Relying on external validation instead of internal validation is a recipe for misery. It seems to also breed entitlement when external validation is made out to be a human right rather than something that's nice to have.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-18T20:38:27+00:00

"Jack Phillips isn't refusing goods or services to people, he's refusing to make very specific, custom artistic renditions, which are considered speech. He's not kicking people out of his business or refusing to sell them goods."

That sums up the crux of the issue.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-18T20:18:33+00:00

Excellent point

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-18T19:17:20+00:00

The big problem with cis is the assumption that everyone has a gender identity. There are many people myself included that do not have an innate sense of gender. Gender is something separate from me that is imposed on me by society. It is external not internal.

I agree with her that it doesn't make sense for the vast majority of people to live on the extreme end of the masculine or feminine spectrum in their culture, most of us fall in between those two extremes, but the in between is not transness or nonbinary it's just your personality. Pressure to conform to sex stereotypes definitely exists, but it is not necessarily trauma when people conform. Much of the time it is a matter of habit and convenience. In homophobic societies homosexual people who attempt to engage in heterosexual relationships may very well have some trauma involved. (This also includes homophobic subcultures where gay men and lesbian women are pressured to overcome their "genital preference" to be open to dating someone of the opposite sex.) Heterosexual people will not have trauma involved at all, because going with the cultural flow is well, easy.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-18T18:37:23+00:00

I totally agree. There are a lot of compromises that would make trans identified people's lives a lot easier without impinging on women's rights, but they're refusing to take the middle ground. I'd be on their side if they weren't determined to step on women.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-17T20:20:32+00:00

Do you deny that half of the human population have bodies built to be able to gestate and give birth? What are these bodies exactly if not female? Do you deny that the other half have bodies that are built to be capable of impregnating the other half? What are those bodies exactly if not male? Extremely rare exceptions to the rule do not a spectrum make.

If there are no female bodies how do you explain how we figured out with astonishing accuracy which half of the human population to deny basic human rights for 1,000s of years up to the present day? The baby girls being buried alive in misogynist countries didn't get to identify out of being female. The girls dying in menstruation huts sure as hell didn't to get to identify their way out of their demise. The little girls married off and raped by old men dying from being impregnated at a far too young age didn't get to identify out of it either. Female bodied people have bigger problems than whether or not someone recognizes their "identity" or uses the correct "pronouns". Why should trans activists be allowed to trample over the very real, very urgent needs of female bodied people? Why should sex denialists have any influence on the law? We may as well let flat earthers run the coop while we're at it.

Not being allowed to trample over women's consent, bodily autonomy and basic liberties is not oppression. Trans activists who are hellbent on destroying women's rights are the oppressors, not the oppressed. The cornerstone for women's liberty is being able to say no to men, no matter how they personally identify. If we cannot say no to men in single sex spaces, if we cannot reserve spaces for women to save them from male violence, child marriage and all of the other horrors that are inflicted by men on women throughout the world, how else exactly are we supposed to protect ourselves? Do you have an alternative better solution to protect women from male predation once all of women's single sex spaces are gone? Do you have a better way for women to advocate for their liberation when women are no longer allowed to meet together to advocate for their interests and rights free from male influence?

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-17T19:49:20+00:00

Trans men are not an easier front for predators, nor do they pose the same risk to women as transwomen. Thanks to self ID there are lot of transwomen that are unambiguously male, because they are male.

You are ignoring my point that it is predatory and creepy to violate women's consent when a male bodied person enters single sex spaces reserved for people female bodies.

Edit: Also if we don't allow trans people to change their driver's licenses and birth certificates we have an easy non intrusive way to verify who is actually male or female when needed if someone's actual sex is ambiguous thanks to body modification. Body modification is a choice. People who choose to modify their body should accept the consequences of that choice and not destroy the rights of other people to consent, safety, privacy and dignity.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-17T16:39:54+00:00

Are you saying that a space specifically reserved for people with female bodies also belongs to people with male bodies if they say so? What about female bodied people's consent? Is it okay to violate their consent without their express permission? How is it not creepy/predatory to violate people's consent especially when they are changing?

"There is no right to share intimate spaces with members of the opposite sex without their consent"

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-17T16:34:26+00:00

The issue is not transwomen's transness it's the fact that they have male bodies. If a transwomen uses a unisex communal changing room it is no longer creepy and predatory, everyone has already consented to share that changing room with male and female bodies. The issue is deliberately crossing the line into predator territory by going into women's single sex spaces without women's knowledge or consent. For 99% of society women means female bodied person. So when women see women only on the door they understand it means they are only sharing the communal changing room with other female bodied people. It is a violation for a male bodied person to enter that space. Only to the trans movement does it also mean a male bodied person who claims to be female.

This site breaks it down quite clearly: "There is no right to share intimate spaces with members of the opposite sex without their consent"

The refusal to accept third/unisex spaces as a good compromise only adds to the creepiness of the demand. Also if any male is permitted in a female changing room the sign should always be changed to unisex so people know exactly what types of bodies they are consenting to share the communal changing room with. You are asking women to give male bodied people the benefit of a doubt. It's not all men all over again.

Enough men are predators that we need to be able to enforce flashing & related laws to hold predatory men accountable in full force without any confusion. Any male bodied person in a women's changing room is a violation. Full stop. Any visible penis in a women's communal changing room is flashing and the male bodied person should be charged as a sex offender. The simple solution is for transwomen to use the space reserved for male bodies, a private individual changing room or a third unisex space which many facilities already have (Family changing rooms).

Your side is making the insane claim that men aka people with male bodies should be treated as though they were actually female. You should backup your claim with evidence. Prove to us that there is a special subset of men who are as low of a threat women as women are to each other. Give us good reasons why women should treat a subset of male bodied people exactly the same as female bodied people. My side is based on objective easily verifiable reality and decades of stats showing that men as a group are a threat to women's safety.

Transmen still have a lower rate of violence especially sexual violence than transwomen, because they are female. Many transmen do not pass at all, in fact I recommend that most of them continue to use female only spaces for their own safety. Their female socialization often gives the game away even if they do pass. I have no problem sharing a communal changing room with the Buck Angels of the world. Her female socialization makes it obvious that she is actually a woman. Many if not most passing trans men can put women at ease with a simple explanation. Heck the mastectomy scars make it really obvious they are actually women. Detransitioned women should also be welcome in female only spaces even if they look fairly masculine for the rest of their lives. They have female bodies, therefore they are welcome in women's single sex spaces. It's not fair or right to force men to share their single sex changing rooms with female bodied people either, but less of a pressing issue, because female bodied people aka women aren't a major threat to men's safety.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-17T04:37:11+00:00

That is the point of the question. It should be uncomfortable. It should make people squirm a little. When you take a cold hard look of the reality of what trans right activists are demanding, it isn't pretty.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-17T04:31:27+00:00

I am very worried about the consequences for teenage girls. Boys are watching violent porn from and attacking teenage girls at disturbingly young ages. Single sex spaces are a refuge when teenage girls really start getting the full brunt of male sexual terrorism and violence, now there is no refuge for them. I wonder how many of them must be harassed, assaulted and raped before the democrat party wakes the hell up. The scholarships and opportunities lost by young female athletes will also be a tragedy.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-16T20:17:42+00:00

I'm sad, because there were quite a few great gender critical essays on Medium too, but many of them got removed. It's crazy!

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-15T03:38:07+00:00

Yeah, I think you're out of luck on that one. The institutional capture is strong, from what I can tell Youtube is the most tolerant for now, but that may change. It's scary how much power these large platforms have for silencing political speech.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-13T18:57:04+00:00

Eh, sexuality isn't a choice. I suspect a lot of bisexual people make the mistake in thinking their ability to be attracted to both sexes can be extrapolated onto everyone else. Tastes aren't a choice. You're either into something or you aren't. Some people love licorice, some people hate it. Some people are only attracted to the opposite sex, others are attracted to both sexes in varying degrees.

Heterosexuality and homosexuality are both natural. Having blonde, brown, red or black hair is also natural. Humans come in quite a few varieties.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-10T22:07:29+00:00

Yeah it's nuts. I grew up religious, so I felt very strongly about sexism from a very young age since it was blatant in my little subset of American culture. Curious did you grow up with less blatant sexism in your local community?

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-10T15:26:49+00:00

In South Korea the sexism is more blatant and extreme. In the U.S. it is more under the surface, but still there in liberal circles. I have a strong suspicion that women who grew up with more blatant sexist cultures (quite often religious) in the U.S. have similar gender nonconformity to women in the take off the corset movement in Korea. There are a lot of people in the U.S. who deny sexism is even still a thing and women are gaslighted en masse to believe it isn't that bad. It really is that bad for women no matter where you live in the world. Some places it's more likely to happen out in the open in others behind closed doors. Either way women are still suffering.

I'm rooting for them. I don't shave my legs and I don't wear makeup. I like braids too much to keep my hair short all the time. Left my religion, because if god is a sexist asshole he isn't worth worshipping. So I totally get where they are coming from. I wish more women all over the world took off the corset. That would really get the ball rolling on women's liberation if we collectively said fuck this. Fuck all of this and embraced our goddamn humanity together. Femininity is a gilded cage. The misogynist men who claim to be women can have it.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-06T22:31:06+00:00

"Why aren't children sexless even though they can not release eggs or sperms?

Sure someone who removes all their sex organs in a surgery once had sex organs, but now they don't, and they don't meet the definition of sex, which requires one to have certain organs and release gametes. So why aren't they considered sexless or less of a sex?"

FairyPrincess you're the one who brought up this ridiculous idea in the first place, then freak out when someone is being somewhat charitable to this nonsense saying they could see it that way in very specific circumstances figuratively but not literally. You're the one making sex out to be much more complicated than it actually is. Even asking these questions in the first place proves you don't know what you are talking about. Sex isn't some abstract philosophical quandary than can be postulated, redefined and undefined to death. It's an easily verifiable objective fact that we have understood for 1,000s of years. We just a have a deeper understanding of it through modern science now.

If you cut off a cat's tale it is still a cat. If you surgically install a dog tail on the cat it is still a freaking cat! Same thing applies to human sex. All the surgeries, hormones and roleplay in the world cannot turn a man into a woman. If you cut a man's dick off he is still a man. If you surgically install a poor imitation of a vagina on him he is still a man. He still has a male body. It is physically impossible to turn a male body into a female body. The most we can do with our current technology is make a poor imitation. Ted talk about how fundamental and all encompassing in every cell of your body sex differences are Binary sex denialism/obtuseness just makes the Query Theorists look foolish and ignorant.

You're taking things way too literally and being deliberately obtuse. If your only method of engaging with GC is deliberately misunderstanding and misrepresenting what we are actually saying there is no point in discussing anything with you.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-06T15:05:12+00:00

What Bio Essentialism actually means:

"The belief that 'human nature', an individual's personality, or some specific quality (such as intelligence, creativity, homosexuality, masculinity, femininity, or a male propensity to aggression) is an innate and natural 'essence' (rather than a product of circumstances, upbringing, and culture)."

Bio essentialism is referring to sexist stereotypes not biological reality. Believing that women inherently want to be mothers/are nurturing is Bio Essentialist. Knowing that women have female bodies is not. Sexist beliefs and stereotypes can be self fulfilling prophesies via nurture, which is why we should avoid prescribing certain character/propensities traits on people based on whether they are male or female.

The concept of Bio Essentialism has gone over a lot of trans activists heads, because they so desperately want to believe that a man can be a woman or a woman can be a man somehow. Attempting to redefine well established terms & concepts to fit your queer world view then expecting us to argue with your redefinition doesn't fly with me. Bio essentialism has nothing to do with how we define/determine sex. It has everything to with what we believe about people based on their sex aka cultural sexist stereotypes.

A transwoman saying "Now that I transitioned I am bad at math now" is bio essentialist. They believe being a woman means you must be bad at math. "Now that I transitioned I'm super emotional and I cry at the drop of hat." Also bio essentialist. A very large percentage of transwomen believe that women are inferior intellectually & emotionally. (I know this, because I've read and listened to transwomen. Their beliefs about womanhood prove they don't have the faintest idea of what being a woman is actually like and many of their beliefs are extremely insulting. It blows my mind that any woman would play along with this. After reading transwomen's writing my first thought was, oh hell no, same sexist bullshit different century. The religious fundies left a cultural & political power vacuum and this is the sexist nonsense that is filling the void.)

The entire concept of a "gender identity/gender soul" is bio essentialist. Trans activists are presuming that everyone has an innate sense of gender and if it doesn't match they must switch to the other side magically somehow. Crazy idea, but being a man doesn't mean you have to be aggressive or violent. You can be as feminine, kindhearted and flamboyant as you want while still being a man. Being a woman doesn't mean you are fated to be stupid, weak or hysterical you can be tough as nails, invent X-rays and calmly stand up for yourself. Transitioning is superfluous, shallow and unnecessary self harm if you don't believe in bio-essentialism.

That's where I'm coming from. I feel bad for trans identified people. They could have much more fulfilling & healthy lives if they accepted their bodies as they are and embraced being authentically themselves, the bio-essentialist stereotypes imposed by society be damned.

Gender nonconformity aka radical authenticity the stereotypes be damned is the solution. Not transitioning.

Penultimate_Penance · 2021-06-02T05:55:33+00:00

Missexing someone is confusing and inaccurate. I don't trust sources that call men "she" and women "he". It would be a lot harder to destroy women's sports and spaces if media sources accurately sexed people in their articles. He broke all of the women sports records. He was transferred to a women's prison and shortly assaulted prisoners. He is demanding access to women's locker rooms. Accurately sexing people put's these issues in a much clearer light.

Penultimate_Penance