Just last week, when I was at a techno music gathering, a couple of my friends saw a guy in drag (it was more like over the top ball dress really) and were like "whoaa, did you see that".
I had to remind them that we used to have scores of trannies attending these events in the past and and no one cared. But now, after the latest round of propaganda, we, as a society, fear them again.
Alternative cultures have always had alternative niches of events but clubbing in the early days, at least in Europe, was often largely a culture of acceptance. Age, gender, attire, whatever... acceptance was high. As I started to age and dance music became more popular and more commercialised, the number of safe, relaxed and accepting cubs started to shrink as club culture became normal culture. There are still alternative club scenes out there, they are just more protective and secretive to stop the dilution of their culture.
Exactly. Even here in backwards Bulgaria we had large (as in thousands of people) electronic one-night music events where trans/cross/etc people would hang on ropes, perform stuff and generally have a good time along with everyone else.
Some of the best small time events 20 years ago were held in a popular gay. No one cared. No one.
Now it's 2023 and extremists on both ends are accusing you of either showing too much respect to the "weirdos", or not using the most up to date and precise language to describe things that are murky to begin with.
Good point, but you may want to avoid the word 'tranny' when you mean transvestite (or preferably, cross-dresser or drag queen) or transsexual or transgender person. 'Tranny' has been embraced as a hateful slur and is generally considered offensive and derogatory.
Your example hints at a man who dresses like a woman (but usually not transitioning or being uncomfortable with their (day-to-day) manhood), so cross-dresser (or drag queen if it is really over the top, well, drag queenish, which the ballgown sort of implies).
'Tranny' being derogatory isn't really new-speak. The only recent shift I know of is that men who dress up like (feminine) women tend to prefer 'cross-dresser' over 'transvestite' nowadays. The problem with 'tranny' in this context is also that it now mostly refers to transgender people (in a derogatory way) rather than cross-dressers.
Thanks. Have to say cross dresser fits much better given the context. I can no longer edit my post and will have to take the heat instead. Lesson learned.
Are you seriously equating treating people with respect with nuspeak? The post you replied to already answered your question. I'm just going to suggest that you should focus more on respecting others and less on thinking you're debating.
No. It's all about children. Nobody cares what adults do between themselves. Nopbody did, nobody does. Read all those "panic" stories again. It's about the children. Leave them alone.
Every invented moral panic is about “the children.” Rock music, Jewish people “corrupting” the youth, satanists, trans people. It’s sad that people still buy into these stories meant to outrage people and seed divide, anger, and violence. And it’s always pushed by people with clear political and financial agendas picking fringe extreme and uncommon examples pretending it’s everywhere.
Someday you’ll forget this was ever a thing and pretend you never bought into it. It’s what everyone does during every invented outrage. You’ve been told to be angry about some fringe thing and believed it. 10 years from now there’ll be another big thing to be angry about.
You’re not angry “for the children.” Please drop the act.
> Nope. What's you explanation then for why literally nobody cared about adult trans people just a few years ago?
What? They've been trying to ban trans people from bathroom via legislation since before 2014 and have been screaming about pronouns for nearly the same amount of time.
> What's you explanation then for why literally nobody cared about adult trans people just a few years ago?
Because it’s an invented political scapegoat, just like countless others. Trans people were out and about 10 years ago and nobody gave a shit. I’m from a small town in Appalachia and my grandma had a trans friend that was out and open 30 years ago. They stopped by when I was a kid and we treated her as a normal human. Nobody gave a shit.
Social media told you to be angry about people that’ve been around forever. You chose to only pay attention recently and get angry.
Right wing organizations are making huge buckets of cash from donations and “anti-woke” brand campaigns targeting trans people, getting gullible people to think being trans is some new trend and they need to fight back. Normal people have known trans people for several decades and we are absolutely bewildered that people like you are suddenly outraged about people we’ve known all our lives. Same with how 15 years ago ”the gays” were going to destroy the world.
> Social media told you to be angry about people that’ve been around forever. You chose to only pay attention recently and get angry.
Again, no. It's only when they started telling children it was a good idea to sterilize themselves. Just don't do irreversible damage to children, it's that easy. Find other shibboleths to identify good communists that don't involve chopping bits off kids.
You're inventing things people aren't arguing for. The purpose of giving puberty blockers, for example, is to buy time to avoid irreversible damage at a too young age. And yes, to a child whose dysphoria does not resolve, puberty as the wrobg sex is irreversible damage.
If you believe your own arguments, presumably you support them.
Irrelevant. If any significant number of them are "social contagion", then that is an argument for puberty blockers to remove any pressure for more invasive and irreversible changes while the person in question is too young to decide for themselves and have not had a chance to think it through.
Your reasoning is fundamentally flawed, and appears to just seek to justify the extensive harm your immoral stance would result in.
Puberty blockers themselves are not free of risk of irreversible damage, as you very well know.
And if you had to bet money, if I told you some kid started on puberty blockers, what would be the odds they later got surgery or further irreversible damage done? Higher or lower than if they didn't start on puberty blockers, as they did 10 years ago?
If I'm right and social contagion is much more prevalent than "real dysphoria", that is a very relevant point, and makes fighting against the contagion the right thing to do, not dishing out puberty blockers like candy.
Now, you can tell me that you believe there is little social contagion and we'll have to agree to disagree, but don't try to twist your way into roiding kids up, it doesn't make sense. And you know it.
> Puberty blockers themselves are not free of risk of irreversible damage, as you very well know.
Their risk is miniscule compared to the risk of untreated gender dysphoria.
> And if you had to bet money, if I told you some kid started on puberty blockers, what would be the odds they later got surgery or further irreversible damage done? Higher or lower than if they didn't start on puberty blockers, as they did 10 years ago?
Irrelevant, as if they later get surgery it is because they, once they are mature enough to decide, determine that it is the best outcome for them. If that number is higher than 10 years ago it is likely to be because the chance of an outcome that will actually help them will be drastically improved when they've not been forced to endure the massive harm of going through puberty with dysphoria.
Your reasoning is still invalid.
> If I'm right and social contagion is much more prevalent than "real dysphoria", that is a very relevant point, and makes fighting against the contagion the right thing to do, not dishing out puberty blockers like candy.
If social contagion is much more prevalent than "real dysphoria" that would justify trying to fix that, but it would still not justify doing massive harm to those suffering from that dysphoria whether or not caused by social contagion.
Irrespective of the source of the dysphoria, it exists, and it correlates to immense harm when untreated, and so arguing for withholding treatment is deeply immoral.
That you're suggesting this is out of some desire to "roid kids up" is just vile.
> Irrespective of the source of the dysphoria, it exists
No! What you have here is a bunch of confused girls that will do whatever tiktok influencers tell them to do. Do nothing and it'll pass in 99.99% of the cases. Start blocking puberties and you end up with a lot of unnecessary surgeries and sterile people who will suffer the rest of their lives.
How many people temporally confused by social contagion are you willing to sacrifice for each "real case" that you catch earlier? Where's your line? Ten, a hundred? A thousand? All of them?
You don't want to engage with the question, I get it, but it's the whole point here.
> Irrelevant, as if they later get surgery it is because they, once they are mature enough to decide, determine that it is the best outcome for them
Yeah, because the sunk cost fallacy develops only after puberty, or what? No. As you very well know, once they start on that road the identity kicks in and it's "who they are now". Which is exactly what you want, a normal person comes in, an activist for life comes out. Who cares about the actual person, right?
>No! What you have here is a bunch of confused girls that will do whatever tiktok influencers tell them to do. Do nothing and it'll pass in 99.99% of the cases.
The evidence does not support this claim. You're flat out making shit up to argue for denying treatment to people who untreated are at great risk of harm. However, it is right that it resolves for many. This is why puberty blockers are important as a means to minimise harm by reducing the risk either way by failing to accurately asses for whom it will resolve without transitioning.
What you're arguing for is an approach that maximises harm to one of the groups. It is then rather vile when you make this statement:
> How many people temporally confused by social contagion are you willing to sacrifice for each "real case" that you catch earlier? Where's your line? Ten, a hundred? A thousand? All of them?
You've set up a strawman, but you're the one who is willing to sacrifice - in your view 0.01%, but in reality far more - the wellbeing of those for whom it won't pass by arguing against harm reducing treatment.
What we know is that transitioning carries a lower risk of regret than almost all other kinds of cosmetic surgery, which is clear evidence that those who do go ahead with it have gone through a much more rigorous process before going ahead than the cosmetic surgeries pretty much nobody are arguing people shouldn't be able to consent to.
> Yeah, because the sunk cost fallacy develops only after puberty, or what? No. As you very well know, once they start on that road the identity kicks in and it's "who they are now".
Nothing to do with sunk cost, and that you bring it up suggests you're too ignorant to understand the issues.
No, we don't know that, because there's absolutely no evidence to support that. What we actually know is that for a significant number of people, dysphoria does resolve. Hence deferring irreversible changes is important.
At the same time, how very dare you want to tell people who by then are adults what is best for them? This kind of authoritarian, oppressive desire to force your view of what is best for other people on them, despite their wishes is a trait usually found in ideologies like fascism or nazism (fittingly, given the nazis destroyed the first institute focusing on helping trans people)
> Which is exactly what you want, a normal person comes in, an activist for life comes out. Who cares about the actual person, right?
It's exactly because I care about the person I don't want them oppressed by authoritarian people like you who want to strip them of agency over their own life.
It's not the same. Nobody cares what adults do. They do have agency over their own life and I defend their freedom to fuck themselves up in the most creative way they can think up.
But don't go after children. There is a reason they can't legally consent to many things. It's too easy to manipulate children to make really bad decisions they later regret, so at least lets not make irreversible damage.
Sorry, but no. I'm torn between hoping you'll understand once you have children of your own, or hoping you never, ever go anywhere near any child.
You keep moving goalposts. Nobody here has argued for "going after children". Nobody here has argued in favour of more surgeries for children. Exactly the opposite: We've argued for puberty blockers exactly to preserve their ability to choose not to be subjected to immense harm by letting them as much as possible defer decisions until they are old enough to make an informed choice.
I do have children, and that is exactly why your willingness to let children be subjected to immense harm makes me as angry as it does. Your authoritarian, oppressive desire to deprive children of medical treatment is flat out evil to me.
I don’t think communist countries have a higher rate of trans people. Blaming random, irrelevant things on communism is a hallmark sign of believing media fear mongering.
Let me spell it out, maybe it helps somebody else:
- "Communists" is shorthand for "envious losers who'd rather destroy society than improve themselves". "Elite overproduction" is what you want to google. I just think "communist" has a more, idk, "classic" ring to it.
Now, you can argue whether we have an "envious loser" problem or not, and how big their influence is, and if it's too late to do anything at all, or all is lost already.
A vocal minority is visibly complaining about another vocal minority visibly complaining. Thank god we have social media that enabled this in the first place.
This feels a lot like people during the civil rights movement complaining about "a loud minority complaining, and another minority complaining about that". Not everything is equivalent.
Vocal minority is complaining about another vocal minority targeting them, including violently. It is also complaining about other vocal minority trying to make their art and fun illegal (drag).
Yes, they have. And they have the right to exist and try to live their lives, just like other mentally ill people. But theres a reason societies don't celebrate deviance, and it's because you create social contagion and severely damage people and your society.
They did not propose mutilating surgeries to people throughout history. Also trans people existing does not mean there can't be a mass hysteria of kids being told to transition on shoddy scientific evidence.
They did not propose surgeries because no way of doing so were available until relatively recently.
And your claim of a hysteria of kids being told to transition closely mirrors the claim of kids being pressured into satanic rituals and similar. It's similarly fear driven and bigoted.
Many gay people now say the trans thing is the new conversion therapy for gay people, as they try to convince a lot of them that they are actually another gender.
This is also what whistleblowers at the Tavistock clinic in the UK spoke of, and is part of the reason why the UK's and other countries' health authorities are putting a halt to the affirmation model for children who are questioning gender identity.
The lack of good surgery options does not mean they don't help. If anything the fact that regret rates for transition is well below the regret rates for other cosmetic surgery should be a strong indication that if you actually care about patient wellbeing, it's the other kinds of cosmetic surgery you ought to be focusing on.
Citations? If you look into the actual studies, the picture may not be so clear cut. For example a lot if results actually only taje older people into account (who transitioned when they were older).
What analogy do you see to the satanic cult thing? Children were told they had been abused, and many caregivers were being sentenced. Who is being told what in the trans hype? Children are falsely being told they are not trans? Then they falsely believe they are not trans and accuse their doctors? Or how does the analogy work?
Meanwhile, finding actual studies of regret of cosmetic surgery is much harder, because nobody cares or want to stop people from getting boob jobs unless they're trans. So we're stuck with poor quality surveys like this one [1] claiming 65% regret, this one done for a group with a profit motive [2] claiming 65% regret.
For reconstruction after breast cancer, it's not "so bad", with this actual study [3] finding "only" ca 20% moderate to strong regret for even reconstruction, and another ~28% expressing mild regret.
Even for non-cosmetic surgery, such as e.g. hip replacements etc., it's hard to find regret rates as low as for sex reassignment.
The first study is a survey of surgeons, which seems rather useless. What warrants the assumptions that they would learn about the long term outcomes of their surgeries?
The second claims to have looked into several studies, which might include ones like the first one. Would be nice to have an actually useful direct study, especially for young people.
As for cosmetic surgery, you brought that up. I don't think it is as worrying, as many of them are reversible, and they don't sterilize the recipients. Somebody regretting to get a nose job is hardly in the same category as someone regretting they cut off their penis.
So is the mass hysteria now the belief that there is a mass hysteria against trans people, or the belief that there is a mass hysteria of kids being pushed to transition?
Or we can turn it around and say that the client one is the enabling of the alt-right.
Between the trans and the alt-right, which do you think is responsible for more harm?
Alt-rights are indoctrinating our children and eating away at society. They push their agenda into our schools and courtrooms. It's not <insert nationality here>
