• Welcome to the Internet Infidels Discussion Board.

This video doesn't show what the ACLU thinks it does

And "sex" only lives on the crotch. When what is "in the head" determines my experiences, who I am, how I understand the world, and pretty much every other aspect of my goals and desires and self, that seems so much more important to me than some part of me I could literally chop off and be the rest of it without much social difference for the rest of my life.

The 'biological reality of the rest of the body' does not change the 'biological realities that exist in the brain'.

And let's be clear, 'the rest of the body' in this discussion comprises a bit of flesh about the size of an apple that does no thinking, and has no heirarchical control over the rest of it.

Okay, let's take just a moment here and think about this. For you - who are male - your sex doesn't have a lot of impact on your life. Or at least, not an impact that you find important or impactful. For females, however, that's not the case. It is not our gender identity, it's not our mode of dress or our affectations that lead to our disadvantages, to the abuse and oppression that females face throughout the world and throughout history. It is our actual, real, biological sex. It is the fact - FACT - that we have uteruses, we have vaginas. The rapes and sexual assaults that we endure are not because of our makeup, they are because of our sex. Females are treated differently, treated as second-class in many cases, denied the right to drive or own property or talk to men who are unrelated to them in many parts of the world... because of our SEX.

This is the very epitome of privilege. There is an element of your existence that has never been a barrier to you, and has no big impact on your life. And because it's not important to YOU, you feel entitled to declare that it is not important to anyone... and in doing so you ignore the voices of half the human population to whom it is important and impactful.

Have to admit to being blind to many of the things you've pointed out here. It is only recently when confronted with this trans ideology that I've come to realize what jerks most of us males are toward females.

It is kind of strange. I would assume that many of the folks posting here are either materialists or non-religious. But they seem to think our material bodies have very little to say on what it is to be a man or a woman. Apparently it is some kind of male or female stuff that is inside someone that determines sex. Some kind of sexual woo-woo stuff.
 
I have no idea the status of the father or his child. What I do know is that a video is incapable of providing a lens into their life at home.

Then why did the ACLU put it out there? Don't you think they wanted people to draw some conclusions regarding how the father treated his children?

Do you think it right to force a boy to play only with 'boy toys' and wear only 'boy clothes'? Why did he try and force gender stereotypes on his son? There is nothing wrong with boys wanting to do those things.

I agree 100% that there is nothing at all wrong with a boy wanting to play with dolls or wear dresses or have pink shoes. Gender stereotypes are dumb.

On the other hand, however, a male child that does like all those "girly" things is not necessarily transgender.

As a child I did not like "girly" things. I still don't. But I am not transgender. I'm an adult female. And I'm pretty horrified by the fact that if I were a child today, there'd be a fair number of people convinced that I was transgender because I liked toy cars and climbing trees.
 
He can allow the child to do that now because he believes the male child is now a girl.
Make up your mind. Does he believe she's a girl or is he pretending he's a girl?

And the girl is transgender. That's more than just cross dressing, playing with dolls. The father is trying to break from being influenced by stereotypes.

He apparently believes his child is a trans girl. So now it is ok for her to act according to those sexual stereotypes. That is not breaking away from stereotypes that is reinforcing them.
 
I have no idea the status of the father or his child. What I do know is that a video is incapable of providing a lens into their life at home.

Then why did the ACLU put it out there? Don't you think they wanted people to draw some conclusions regarding how the father treated his children?

Do you think it right to force a boy to play only with 'boy toys' and wear only 'boy clothes'? Why did he try and force gender stereotypes on his son? There is nothing wrong with boys wanting to do those things.

I agree 100% that there is nothing at all wrong with a boy wanting to play with dolls or wear dresses or have pink shoes. Gender stereotypes are dumb.

On the other hand, however, a male child that does like all those "girly" things is not necessarily transgender.

As a child I did not like "girly" things. I still don't. But I am not transgender. I'm an adult female. And I'm pretty horrified by the fact that if I were a child today, there'd be a fair number of people convinced that I was transgender because I liked toy cars and climbing trees.

Of course. I agree completely.

If this young boy who liked playing with dolls and wearing dresses were to grow up gay and marry another gay man that would be fine too. Nothing wrong with that.
 
Have to admit to being blind to many of the things you've pointed out here. It is only recently when confronted with this trans ideology that I've come to realize what jerks most of us males are toward females.

It is kind of strange. I would assume that many of the folks posting here are either materialists or non-religious. But they seem to think our material bodies have very little to say on what it is to be a man or a woman. Apparently it is some kind of male or female stuff that is inside someone that determines sex. Some kind of sexual woo-woo stuff.

What I find most interesting (and also most frustrating) is that in a different context, I think a great many posters would take the opposite view. Most of us are atheists, and most of us do not believe in the existence of a soul. Most of us do not ascribe to the concept of mind-body duality. The mind and the body are one, and are inextricably linked. There is not special extra essence that is not part of our material bodies.

But on this topic, mind-body duality is back on the table. And things that are known science, such as the existence of a binary sex among mammals, gets cast as something much more complicated and magically other. The volume of things that need to be revisioned and redefined in order to make a good chunk of the transgender ideology work is astonishing.

That said, however, let me be very very clear. I am not in any way "anti-trans". Some people have gender dysphoria, and those people experience very real distress. I have a lot of sympathy for them. For those who cannot come to terms with their sexed bodies through therapy and counseling, physical and social transitioning is probably the best option available.

My objection is to the current dogma that a person who is transgender is in some meaningful way a member of the opposite sex. Transmen are not men, they are female humans who live as men. Transwomen are not women, they are male humans who live as women. Beyond that I'm extremely skeptical of self-identification, and I oppose self-id alone granting access to protection under the law. A person who says magic words shouldn't automatically be granted access to areas where females are naked or vulnerable, they shouldn't automatically be granted the right to compete against females in sports, and they shouldn't be placed in female prisons. I am open to some case by case considerations... but as a blanket entitlement, I don't think that self-declarations are sufficient to place females at risk. Additionally, I do not support the prescribing of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors without having had significant psychiatric evaluation beforehand. I understand that for some very few children, they experience dysphoria from a very young age, and it is very persistent. But a lot of the kids who have been given blockers and cross-sex hormones over the last decade, they aren't experiencing clinical dysphoria - they are experiencing the same kind of discomfort with our developing bodies and the changing expectations of society that all of us go through during puberty.
 
He can allow the child to do that now because he believes the male child is now a girl.
Make up your mind. Does he believe she's a girl or is he pretending he's a girl?

And the girl is transgender. That's more than just cross dressing, playing with dolls. The father is trying to break from being influenced by stereotypes.

He apparently believes his child is a trans girl. So now it is ok for her to act according to those sexual stereotypes. That is not breaking away from stereotypes that is reinforcing them.
Um, i don't think playing with dolls is a sexual stereotype. Unless they're sexually explicit dolls. Inflatable or otherwise.
Do you mean sexist?

And still, transgender is more than just those outward displays.
But that's all you see, possibly all you wanna see. So you're kinda hamstrung in analyzing this dituation.
 
But they seem to think our material bodies have very little to say on what it is to be a man or a woman.
No, no. The body has lots to say on that.
It's just by no means limited to "Penis [_]Yes [_] No."

I'm not limiting it to the penis or the vagina.
You really seem to be. You think 'biological' is the end of it, born boy is boy, born girl is girl, anything else is, to you, 'woo.'
 
Have to admit to being blind to many of the things you've pointed out here. It is only recently when confronted with this trans ideology that I've come to realize what jerks most of us males are toward females.

It is kind of strange. I would assume that many of the folks posting here are either materialists or non-religious. But they seem to think our material bodies have very little to say on what it is to be a man or a woman. Apparently it is some kind of male or female stuff that is inside someone that determines sex. Some kind of sexual woo-woo stuff.

What I find most interesting (and also most frustrating) is that in a different context, I think a great many posters would take the opposite view. Most of us are atheists, and most of us do not believe in the existence of a soul. Most of us do not ascribe to the concept of mind-body duality. The mind and the body are one, and are inextricably linked. There is not special extra essence that is not part of our material bodies.

But on this topic, mind-body duality is back on the table. And things that are known science, such as the existence of a binary sex among mammals, gets cast as something much more complicated and magically other. The volume of things that need to be revisioned and redefined in order to make a good chunk of the transgender ideology work is astonishing.

That said, however, let me be very very clear. I am not in any way "anti-trans". Some people have gender dysphoria, and those people experience very real distress. I have a lot of sympathy for them. For those who cannot come to terms with their sexed bodies through therapy and counseling, physical and social transitioning is probably the best option available.

My objection is to the current dogma that a person who is transgender is in some meaningful way a member of the opposite sex. Transmen are not men, they are female humans who live as men. Transwomen are not women, they are male humans who live as women. Beyond that I'm extremely skeptical of self-identification, and I oppose self-id alone granting access to protection under the law. A person who says magic words shouldn't automatically be granted access to areas where females are naked or vulnerable, they shouldn't automatically be granted the right to compete against females in sports, and they shouldn't be placed in female prisons. I am open to some case by case considerations... but as a blanket entitlement, I don't think that self-declarations are sufficient to place females at risk. Additionally, I do not support the prescribing of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors without having had significant psychiatric evaluation beforehand. I understand that for some very few children, they experience dysphoria from a very young age, and it is very persistent. But a lot of the kids who have been given blockers and cross-sex hormones over the last decade, they aren't experiencing clinical dysphoria - they are experiencing the same kind of discomfort with our developing bodies and the changing expectations of society that all of us go through during puberty.

Very nicely put. Agree completely.
 
He apparently believes his child is a trans girl. So now it is ok for her to act according to those sexual stereotypes. That is not breaking away from stereotypes that is reinforcing them.
Um, i don't think playing with dolls is a sexual stereotype. Unless they're sexually explicit dolls. Inflatable or otherwise.
Do you mean sexist?

And still, transgender is more than just those outward displays.
But that's all you see, possibly all you wanna see. So you're kinda hamstrung in analyzing this dituation.

I don't think it's that cut and dried. Over the last decade, there has been a lot of rhetoric that does reinforce those stereotypes. Mermaids and Stonewall in the UK were using a scale from "Barbie Doll" to "G. I. Joe" to teach children that if they didn't conform to one end or the other, they were transgender or nonbinary. And there have been a lot of kids over the last decade who have received blockers from Tavistock in the UK without sufficient evaluation or follow up, and most of them continue to cross-sex hormones. Part of the reason is that puberty blockers block maturation of the minds as well as the body... and by delaying puberty a lot of kids who would otherwise become comfortable with their newly developing bodies end up persisting.

This shouldn't be an all or nothing discussion. There should be room for actual civilized discourse around what the appropriate approach is.
 
I'm not limiting it to the penis or the vagina.
You really seem to be. You think 'biological' is the end of it, born boy is boy, born girl is girl, anything else is, to you, 'woo.'

Male is male, female is female. Behaviors, presentation preferences, etc. are unrelated to sex. But sex is a real thing. And it does not change.
 
I'm not limiting it to the penis or the vagina.
You really seem to be. You think 'biological' is the end of it, born boy is boy, born girl is girl, anything else is, to you, 'woo.'

Yes, our bodies determine our sex. We are bodies. I don't believe in some sort of spiritual or mental substance that dwells in our bodies and determines what sex we are.

Well then, what is this 'gender thing' that you apparently think determines one's true sex?
 
He apparently believes his child is a trans girl. So now it is ok for her to act according to those sexual stereotypes. That is not breaking away from stereotypes that is reinforcing them.
Um, i don't think playing with dolls is a sexual stereotype. Unless they're sexually explicit dolls. Inflatable or otherwise.
Do you mean sexist?

And still, transgender is more than just those outward displays.
But that's all you see, possibly all you wanna see. So you're kinda hamstrung in analyzing this dituation.

I don't think it's that cut and dried. Over the last decade, there has been a lot of rhetoric that does reinforce those stereotypes. Mermaids and Stonewall in the UK were using a scale from "Barbie Doll" to "G. I. Joe" to teach children that if they didn't conform to one end or the other, they were transgender or nonbinary. And there have been a lot of kids over the last decade who have received blockers from Tavistock in the UK without sufficient evaluation or follow up, and most of them continue to cross-sex hormones. Part of the reason is that puberty blockers block maturation of the minds as well as the body... and by delaying puberty a lot of kids who would otherwise become comfortable with their newly developing bodies end up persisting.

This shouldn't be an all or nothing discussion. There should be room for actual civilized discourse around what the appropriate approach is.

Unfortunately, as soon as someone starts to point out the problems with trans ideology the terms 'bigot' and 'transphobic' start getting thrown around.

I certainly want to make sure that trans persons are shown the same respect and treatment deserving of all human persons.
 
Back
Top Bottom