All the transgender/nonbinary/genderqueer/LGBTQIA+ stuff of today, is just the 2010s equivalent of..

[Broomstick]

@uqekizig

For two years I was a trans girl. Then forced to detransition because of family pressure. I feel nonbinary but I also feel that’s kind of dumb and cringy, I can picture my parents scoffing and cringing at it. I’m just trying to make arguments to convince myself the gender thing is a wacky cult I got drawn into, and that my parents are right. They were born in 1956 so they could be right

1. Use the internet to study actual history, not just what your parents remember of it.

2. If you’re questioning/uncertain of your gender identity then you need some sort of non-judgmental environment in which to work this out. Unfortunately, we all have to live in the real world which is full of judges and scolds, hence the concept of a “safe space”. Find one.

3. Your parents conceived, gave birth to, and raised you. They do not get to dictate how you live your adult life. It sounds like you’re trying to please your parents and while that’s fine in many ways in other ways you need to be true to yourself. There was more than one decision I made as an adult my parents disapproved of or thought was wrong, but being the sort of people they were they didn’t “cringe” or “scoff” - they expressed their opinion followed by something along the lines of in the end it was my life and my decision. Sometimes I was right, sometimes they were, but the point is, as an adult your have to make your own decisions for you. That includes whether or how much you’re going to come out as LGBTQIA+ and how you’re going to live your life once you leave home. The only wrong choice is the one that leaves YOU miserable or worse.

[Ashtura]

So you’re saying transgenderism is just some fleeting thing that people will grow out of in a couple decades? Ok.

[Broomstick]

You might want to clarify if you’re aiming that at the OP, because that is not what I said.

[EmilyG]

As Leaffan and others in this thread say, gay and trans people have been around before, and had a much more difficult time in the past.
Things have gotten better, but things are still difficult, as evidenced by the fact that sadly, there’s still so much homophobia and transphobia around.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@Riemann

Are you aware of how LGBT people have been treated historically, that in much of the world they still risk severe persecution, including imprisonment and physical violence up to and including state-sanctioned murder? Yet your thesis is that all these people are really cis-het, and just pretending? Just acting out to be cool & rebellious, to annoy their parents? Does that really seem remotely plausible?

If you’re a teenager in the Bible Belt or some such benighted place, and you have been surrounded your whole life by ignorant bigots teaching you that “homosexuality is a choice”, well - maybe you get a pass on posting this drivel one time. But you need better critical thinking skills than you show here.

This.

Like, if you’re just a kid who doesn’t know any better, you may find some people here willing to teach you a bit about the LGBT+ movements. Hell, maybe I’m one of them.

But everything you’ve been saying is really really really wrong, to the point where you need to sit down, cool off, and listen. If you’re not willing to do that, we probably can’t/won’t help you.

[Ashtura]

@Broomstick

You might want to clarify if you’re aiming that at the OP, because that is not what I said.

I am, and I was being kind of facetious anyway.

However, I do think that Rapid-onset gender dysphoria does kind of fit into this.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@Ashtura

I am, and I was being kind of facetious anyway.

However, I do think that Rapid-onset gender dysphoria does kind of fit into this.

It also isn’t actually a thing.

Except, like so many of the spurious ideas thrown at us, ROGD is not a real condition and never has been. The one paper on the subject, published in PLOS One – a journal that reviews only the technical aspects of the papers published, rather than the interpretation of the results – endorses the “condition” based upon the claims of 164 parent responses that met study criteria. This sample was based on online survey results sourced from three blogs that all have a strong anti-transgender history, with no testimony from any neutral or pro-transgender online spaces, or from the transgender children themselves – the people who best would be able to describe their experiences.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health released a statement on the phenomenon, stating: “The term ‘rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD)’ is not a medical entity recognised by any major professional association … therefore, it constitutes nothing more than an acronym created to describe a proposed clinical phenomenon that may or may not warrant further peer-reviewed scientific investigation.”

Dr Julia Serano, a researcher with almost two decades of experience in developmental and evolutionary biology, explores this further. Citing the far more well-researched history of gender dysphoria and client-supportive transition care, she writes “what’s ‘rapid’ about ROGD is parents’ sudden awareness and assessment of their child’s gender dysphoria (which, from the child’s standpoint, may be longstanding and thoughtfully considered)”.

It’s not a real medical condition. It’s the latest in pseudoscientific claptrap used as a cudgel against LGBT people.

[Gyrate]

This, if true, is worrying:

@uqekizig

For two years I was a trans girl. Then forced to detransition because of family pressure. I feel nonbinary but I also feel that’s kind of dumb and cringy, I can picture my parents scoffing and cringing at it. I’m just trying to make arguments to convince myself the gender thing is a wacky cult I got drawn into, and that my parents are right. They were born in 1956 so they could be right

I have no idea whether you’re a transgirl, troll or just a confused person who went through a phase. If you’re genuinely a transgirl browbeaten into denying who you really are, there are resources and support groups available to you via the interwebs you should check out.

@uqekizig

I know i sound like a troll when I claim I was a trans girl for two years. But I have proof when I get back to home computer on monday.

I can’t imagine any “proof” you could post that would contribute constructively to the conversation. Either we believe you or we don’t, and either we’d accept the “proof” as genuine or we wouldn’t.

[Kimstu]

@Broomstick

There is a LONG history of trans sexual people in the world, it’s not a new thing at all, but it is an ignored and suppressed things.

Exactly. What we’re seeing now is another step in the long process of recognizing that people matter more than categories.

Humans naturally like to define common simple distinctions as immutable and universal. “Human beings are either male or female.” “Male humans have penises and female humans have vaginas.” “Male humans are sexually attracted to female humans and vice versa.” “Young male humans like trucks and young female humans like dolls.” And so forth.

The side effect has always been to relegate the minority of people who don’t conform to these “rules” to some kind of inferior or suspect status, “abnormal” or “unnatural” or “messed up” or whatever.

But pretty much everything about human beings exists on a spectrum of possibility rather than in some immutable unary or binary category: everything from our gender orientation to the number of fingers we have. Trans rights are part of the struggle to recognize that reality instead of trying to deny or suppress it with simple classification schemes.

[AHunter3]

@uqekizig

All the transgender/nonbinary/genderqueer/LGBTQIA+ stuff of today, is just the 2010s equivalent of…
…hippie counterculture in the 1960s

Somewhat, yeah.

The hippie countercultural male was a gentle peaceful… well, at least the model, the flower child, if you will… not just anti-war but anti-the attitudes and belligerence and violence that led to war. And what else? Well, the counterculture was sure into sex, but it was a different model of sex than either the Hugh Hefner portrayal or the older and often more hypocritical paterfamilias pillar-of-community version (in which the sinful dirty stuff is kept on the side); the countercultural hippie “free love” thing embraced (at least in comparison with the other models) an equal and joyous sexuality in which the hippie women were not denigrated with that double-standard stuff and in which sex itself wasn’t about adversarially conquering female prey or claiming her as sexual property that other guys were supposed to keep their hands off, etc.

Before you raise your hands and start in about belligerent authoritarian countercultural males chock-full of self-importance, leftward rhetoric that was still rife with pretentious male privilege and the general failure of the hippie boys to get on board with full-blown feminism and so forth, yeah I know, I’m well aware, probably more so than you are.

The point is, there is and was a sexual conservative establishment; your sociology teacher would have described it in terms of society’s tendency to control and constrain sexuality and reproduction; it takes the form of a narrow and restrictive definition not only of the sex act (and of reproduction) but of the genders, polarizing them, defining them as opposites, with intolerant attitudes towards people who don’t conform to the descriptions and play by the rules. And with that as the background, yes the hippie counterculture was in large part a social revolution against all that and so of course is the modern LGBTQIA+ (I prefer “MOGII”, see note below) explosion of identities and gender expressions and sexual orientation variation and so on.
MOGII: “minority orientation, gender identity, and intersex”. An elegantly generalized alternative to the never-ending proliferation of alphabetic-soup additions to the chain.

[gytalf2000]

@Filbert

Are some kids jumping on the bandwagon, because it’s accepted and their friends are doing it? Yes, probably. Does that mean the entire movement is nonsense that will just blow over? No.

It’s inevitable that some people, especially young people who are still exploring their identities, will be exposed to a new concept and be attracted simply because it’s new and interesting. Most of them will drop the idea pretty quickly as they realise that it doesn’t really work for them.

About 18 years ago when I was at school, the idea of same-sex relationships was just starting to gain limited acceptance, and a whole bunch of my female classmates started identifying as bisexual. It quickly became obvious that some of them were just saying that to, slightly ironically, get guys. It’s also pretty obvious that the ones who wound up married to, or in long-term relationships with, other women were not trying to make themselves look more interesting to boys. They were taking advantage of the new acceptability to come out about their sexual preferences, yes, but they weren’t just playing or curious, even if others were.

Incidentally, some of those who jeered at the ‘freaks’ back then also wound up coming out as gay later.

None of this is new, not the L,G or B, not the T, not the Q, most definitely not the I and not even the +. What is changing is the level of information and acceptance. As I said, when I was at school, it was just starting to be OK for girls to identify as bi (though even those who now identify as lesbian had to say bi to be safe), but it was only the first hint of acceptance. I still had a friend at another school who was ostracised and attacked (by teachers, other students and when out on the street) for ‘being a queer’, and it was actually illegal for teachers to say anything positive about ‘alternative lifestyles’. Someone who came out as L,G, T or bi if they were male, back then, had thought long and hard about it. They knew they were taking a big risk, and might lose jobs, friends and family. In some places now, a kid can come into school on Tuesday morning and say to their friend ‘I think I’m gay/a boy/non-binary’ and expect the response ‘OK, cool.’ Of course people in that situation are going to come out at an earlier stage of their inner journey than before. And yes, that means some are going to change their mind later, once they’ve spent time seeing if this new identity works better for them and decided that actually, no it doesn’t. Some might even change their mind again later, and re-identify as LGBT+ as an adult, especially if their reception wasn’t quite as easy as they’d hoped and they’re now in a better place mentally.

Teens are still figuring stuff out, part of that includes trying out new ideas, some of which won’t fit. That doesn’t negate the existence of those who truly identify with concepts the others are just investigating.

Exploring the idea of being LGBT+ may well be ‘just a phase’, being LGBT+ isn’t. Either way, considering the possibility isn’t dumb.

Hey, excellent points!

[Riemann]

@AHunter3

Somewhat, yeah.

The hippie countercultural male was a gentle peaceful… well, at least the model, the flower child, if you will… not just anti-war but anti-the attitudes and belligerence and violence that led to war. And what else? Well, the counterculture was sure into sex, but it was a different model of sex than either the Hugh Hefner portrayal or the older and often more hypocritical paterfamilias pillar-of-community version (in which the sinful dirty stuff is kept on the side); the countercultural hippie “free love” thing embraced (at least in comparison with the other models) an equal and joyous sexuality in which the hippie women were not denigrated with that double-standard stuff and in which sex itself wasn’t about adversarially conquering female prey or claiming her as sexual property that other guys were supposed to keep their hands off, etc.

Before you raise your hands and start in about belligerent authoritarian countercultural males chock-full of self-importance, leftward rhetoric that was still rife with pretentious male privilege and the general failure of the hippie boys to get on board with full-blown feminism and so forth, yeah I know, I’m well aware, probably more so than you are.

The point is, there is and was a sexual conservative establishment; your sociology teacher would have described it in terms of society’s tendency to control and constrain sexuality and reproduction; it takes the form of a narrow and restrictive definition not only of the sex act (and of reproduction) but of the genders, polarizing them, defining them as opposites, with intolerant attitudes towards people who don’t conform to the descriptions and play by the rules. And with that as the background, yes the hippie counterculture was in large part a social revolution against all that and so of course is the modern LGBTQIA+ (I prefer “MOGII”, see note below) explosion of identities and gender expressions and sexual orientation variation and so on.
MOGII: “minority orientation, gender identity, and intersex”. An elegantly generalized alternative to the never-ending proliferation of alphabetic-soup additions to the chain.

All I can say is - that’s a lot of words in proximity to one another.

[Emiliana]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

It also isn’t actually a thing.

Except, like so many of the spurious ideas thrown at us, ROGD is not a real condition and never has been. The one paper on the subject, published in PLOS One – a journal that reviews only the technical aspects of the papers published, rather than the interpretation of the results – endorses the “condition” based upon the claims of 164 parent responses that met study criteria. This sample was based on online survey results sourced from three blogs that all have a strong anti-transgender history, with no testimony from any neutral or pro-transgender online spaces, or from the transgender children themselves – the people who best would be able to describe their experiences.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health released a statement on the phenomenon, stating: “The term ‘rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD)’ is not a medical entity recognised by any major professional association … therefore, it constitutes nothing more than an acronym created to describe a proposed clinical phenomenon that may or may not warrant further peer-reviewed scientific investigation.”

Dr Julia Serano, a researcher with almost two decades of experience in developmental and evolutionary biology, explores this further. Citing the far more well-researched history of gender dysphoria and client-supportive transition care, she writes “what’s ‘rapid’ about ROGD is parents’ sudden awareness and assessment of their child’s gender dysphoria (which, from the child’s standpoint, may be longstanding and thoughtfully considered)”.

It’s not a real medical condition. It’s the latest in pseudoscientific claptrap used as a cudgel against LGBT people.

Yep, BPC is correct here. Many parents, ranging from the clueless to the transphobic, claim their kiddo has never shown signs of being gender variant or trans. Talk to the kiddo and you get a very different story.

[Miller]

The main problem with your idea that being trans is just the latest generations way of being rebellious, is, of course, the thousands and thousands of trans people who are middle-aged or older.

[Riemann]

This quote deserves highlighting in case anyone missed it:

@Budget_Player_Cadet

…Dr Julia Serano, a researcher with almost two decades of experience in developmental and evolutionary biology, explores this further. Citing the far more well-researched history of gender dysphoria and client-supportive transition care, she writes “what’s ‘rapid’ about ROGD is parents’ sudden awareness and assessment of their child’s gender dysphoria (which, from the child’s standpoint, may be longstanding and thoughtfully considered)”.

[Voyager]

Parental cluelessness about a child’s sexual identity is nothing new. Lenny Bruce had a bit about a mother’s inability to see a son’s obvious gayness back over 50 years ago.

[uqekizig]

Just abandon this thread. I know the OP was screwed up

[nearwildheaven]

@Riemann

Your parents are just wrong.

Being a hippie was a choice to participate in a cultural phenomenon. LGBT identity is not a choice. That doesn’t mean that everyone is completely certain of their identity from early childhood, but the emergence of your identity is a process of self-discovery, not a process of choice.

Your parents may think that it seems like there many more LGBT people than when they were growing up. But that’s not because the number of LGBT people has increased, it’s not because it’s “trendy”. It’s because gay and especially trans people now no longer all feel that they must hide in the shadows and deny who they are. It’s because we have made some progress in tolerance and awareness in recent years, so (in some places, at least) LGBT people are less afraid of ostracism or worse.

If your family won’t accept who you are, you need help and support from outside your family. Do you have that?

I wish we had a “like” or “agree” button I could push about 100,000 times.

[Kimstu]

@uqekizig

Just abandon this thread. I know the OP was screwed up

No problem, we all sometimes fall into the trap of posting a novel exciting idea before really thinking it through. You can request a mod to have your thread officially closed if you like.

[Riemann]

@Kimstu

No problem, we all sometimes fall into the trap of posting a novel exciting idea before really thinking it through. You can request a mod to have your thread officially closed if you like.

I don’t agree with closing a thread just based on OP no longer wanting to participate, unless it was narrowly focused only on one person’s circumstances. This seems like a general discussion that may be of interest to many other people too.