NOTE: I experienced technical issues with this post and the one above. I had intended for my reply to EndtheMadnessNow and Ninurta to be in one post but the quotes weren't working properly so I tried splitting it into two posts. I posted the first message to EndtheMadnessNow and it looked fine.
Although started as a new reply with the quotes from Ninurta, The quotes didn't display as quotes when previewed but it did display as a single post but when posted, kept appending to the post above I wrote to EndtheMadnessNow breaking all the quoted sections again and confusing the heck out of me because it was supposed to be two separate posts. I edited the post to ETMN to remove what was appended and re-posted it. It looked okay so I moved on to make the second post.
I created a New Reply for my comments with quotes from Ninurta. When previewing, more than two quotes in the post didn't properly display the quoted part as quotes. When returning to the editor in source code mode, the quote="Ninurta" turned into quote='"Ninurta"' (with brackets, of course) for the first two. In switching to the non source code view, the first two quotes showed up okay with the third not showing as a quote. Manually changing the '" to " didn't fix it either. I logged out and restarted my browser and was able to make the 2nd post without it appending but the quotes weren't quoting.
For clarity, I color coded what I wanted to quote.
[quote="Ninurta"]
I think, personally, that using it as a political football to ramp up fear and loathing - and that is being done by BOTH sides, each trying to one-up the other - does a disservice not only to the people actually involved, but to society as a whole.
[/quote]
I will agree with you to some extent. Yes, all the nonsense around this transgender business is detrimental to those youth that are actually and genuinely suffering and in need of care who are able to access treatment and go on to live happy, normal and productive lives but because the trans movement has so clouded the issues, some real trans kids are falling through the cracks and some kids that aren’t classically trans are getting swept up in the hysteria. Girls, who now outnumber boys 2 to 1 presenting at gender clinics are particularly susceptible to social influences but there are other factors for them as well that I can completely understand so the transgender thing has become a shitshow.
Where I tend to disagree is the holding of “both sides” as equally responsible for making the trans thing the political football that it is today. It was started by the conservative religious Republican right as a common rally cry to energize their base with the Democratic left only responding to counter attack. It is ugly AF and I have consistently said how much I hate all of it.
[quote="Ninurta"]
Those who have an actual vested interest in the matter already know they do, and no one else has any business interfering in their decisions. It's not a goddamned spectator sport, it's a private matter for them to wrestle with and get sorted out. It's between them, their doctors and support people, and their families, and NO ONE else.
[/quote]
We’ve had this discussion before and I couldn’t agree with you more.
[quote="Ninurta"]
I think, personally, there are two genders, and no more. There are "he's" and "she's", and unless I'm going to get involved with an individual myself, it ain't none of my damned business which plumbing they have. If I'm not personally going to be exploring around down there, I ain't got no dog in that fight. It does, however, confuse the hell out of me to hear someone referred to as a "trans-man" or a "trans-woman". Why can't they be just a man or a woman? Throwing "trans-" into the mix just leaves me wondering if the latter designation is the beginning stage or the end product, and since I don't know which, I don't know whether to refer to them as "ma'am" or "sir". For the love of God, just introduce yourself as "Mr." or "Ms.", and I can take it from there. Identifying as "trans" just means to me that you are still in a transition from one to the other, and I don't know which direction that transition is moving in.[/quote}
LOL! We’ve also had this discussion before too. I can pretty much guarantee you’ve never heard me refer to myself as a “trans woman”. As a transsexual, maybe occasionally even though that term is considered obsolete and not politically correct but historically, it does refer to someone that has had a “sex change”. As transgender? Practically never as this doesn’t mean anything and has become more of a political term and statement and for some, their whole identity. As a person of trans experience or history seems much more fitting and works for me if I am going to talk about it at all, which I don’t in the real world except very rarely.
For sure there are only two sexes and while some seem to think separating sex and gender into separate categories is some modern newfangled idea or perversion of language, sexologists, psychologists and researchers have been making the distinction between the two in published works since the late 1950s. Sex is pretty clear cut but what we think of as gender is less so as it involves how someone expresses themselves, their role in society and although it’s a dirty word, how someone feels about their level of femininity or masculinity or in other words, psychologically so there is a lot more room for variance in genders beyond just the male and female binary and the criteria varies across different cultures and different time periods.
Unfortunately, rather than just more feminine males or more masculine females, some have decided to label these variances with xenogenders that range from the absurd to the ridiculous which I completely agree is confusing (and stupid) AF. Although it has never happened to me, if someone tells me they are non-binary, internally I still want to know what sex they are if it isn’t obvious although statistically, 80% of those claiming to be non-binary, i.e. neither a man or a woman, are biologically female.
I am not any less confused by some of this than you are.
Although started as a new reply with the quotes from Ninurta, The quotes didn't display as quotes when previewed but it did display as a single post but when posted, kept appending to the post above I wrote to EndtheMadnessNow breaking all the quoted sections again and confusing the heck out of me because it was supposed to be two separate posts. I edited the post to ETMN to remove what was appended and re-posted it. It looked okay so I moved on to make the second post.
I created a New Reply for my comments with quotes from Ninurta. When previewing, more than two quotes in the post didn't properly display the quoted part as quotes. When returning to the editor in source code mode, the quote="Ninurta" turned into quote='"Ninurta"' (with brackets, of course) for the first two. In switching to the non source code view, the first two quotes showed up okay with the third not showing as a quote. Manually changing the '" to " didn't fix it either. I logged out and restarted my browser and was able to make the 2nd post without it appending but the quotes weren't quoting.
For clarity, I color coded what I wanted to quote.
[quote="Ninurta"]
I think, personally, that using it as a political football to ramp up fear and loathing - and that is being done by BOTH sides, each trying to one-up the other - does a disservice not only to the people actually involved, but to society as a whole.
[/quote]
I will agree with you to some extent. Yes, all the nonsense around this transgender business is detrimental to those youth that are actually and genuinely suffering and in need of care who are able to access treatment and go on to live happy, normal and productive lives but because the trans movement has so clouded the issues, some real trans kids are falling through the cracks and some kids that aren’t classically trans are getting swept up in the hysteria. Girls, who now outnumber boys 2 to 1 presenting at gender clinics are particularly susceptible to social influences but there are other factors for them as well that I can completely understand so the transgender thing has become a shitshow.
Where I tend to disagree is the holding of “both sides” as equally responsible for making the trans thing the political football that it is today. It was started by the conservative religious Republican right as a common rally cry to energize their base with the Democratic left only responding to counter attack. It is ugly AF and I have consistently said how much I hate all of it.
[quote="Ninurta"]
Those who have an actual vested interest in the matter already know they do, and no one else has any business interfering in their decisions. It's not a goddamned spectator sport, it's a private matter for them to wrestle with and get sorted out. It's between them, their doctors and support people, and their families, and NO ONE else.
[/quote]
We’ve had this discussion before and I couldn’t agree with you more.
[quote="Ninurta"]
I think, personally, there are two genders, and no more. There are "he's" and "she's", and unless I'm going to get involved with an individual myself, it ain't none of my damned business which plumbing they have. If I'm not personally going to be exploring around down there, I ain't got no dog in that fight. It does, however, confuse the hell out of me to hear someone referred to as a "trans-man" or a "trans-woman". Why can't they be just a man or a woman? Throwing "trans-" into the mix just leaves me wondering if the latter designation is the beginning stage or the end product, and since I don't know which, I don't know whether to refer to them as "ma'am" or "sir". For the love of God, just introduce yourself as "Mr." or "Ms.", and I can take it from there. Identifying as "trans" just means to me that you are still in a transition from one to the other, and I don't know which direction that transition is moving in.[/quote}
LOL! We’ve also had this discussion before too. I can pretty much guarantee you’ve never heard me refer to myself as a “trans woman”. As a transsexual, maybe occasionally even though that term is considered obsolete and not politically correct but historically, it does refer to someone that has had a “sex change”. As transgender? Practically never as this doesn’t mean anything and has become more of a political term and statement and for some, their whole identity. As a person of trans experience or history seems much more fitting and works for me if I am going to talk about it at all, which I don’t in the real world except very rarely.
For sure there are only two sexes and while some seem to think separating sex and gender into separate categories is some modern newfangled idea or perversion of language, sexologists, psychologists and researchers have been making the distinction between the two in published works since the late 1950s. Sex is pretty clear cut but what we think of as gender is less so as it involves how someone expresses themselves, their role in society and although it’s a dirty word, how someone feels about their level of femininity or masculinity or in other words, psychologically so there is a lot more room for variance in genders beyond just the male and female binary and the criteria varies across different cultures and different time periods.
Unfortunately, rather than just more feminine males or more masculine females, some have decided to label these variances with xenogenders that range from the absurd to the ridiculous which I completely agree is confusing (and stupid) AF. Although it has never happened to me, if someone tells me they are non-binary, internally I still want to know what sex they are if it isn’t obvious although statistically, 80% of those claiming to be non-binary, i.e. neither a man or a woman, are biologically female.
I am not any less confused by some of this than you are.
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.