This is a great way to put it, and was possibly the most important epiphany of my late teenage years.
I was almost a Thor, and that would be a tough name to live up to.
My dad had names picked out for twin boys. My parents had do some quick thinking when I turned out to be none of those things.
Back then? 
Until I read your post a few seconds ago, it did not occur to me that pre-op individuals could identify as transgender without gender dysphoria.
Even now this is the only place I have ever heard words like “trans men” or “trans women” in normal conversation, as opposed to “transgender” or “transvestite” or quoting some liberal news. The idea that gender is separable from sex holds no currency in the community I actually live in - water cooler discussions about relevant current events use language that would be patently offensive here.
Even I haven’t changed my opinion since the linked discussion. I disagree where you say it makes no sense to say “illness” or “disorder” if it shouldn’t be fixed. Of course there are disorders and diseases that can’t or shouldn’t be fixed! If a cure is even possible, you have to weigh the risks and benefits. That’s what I explained in this very thread about homosexuality and conversion therapy - the benefits aren’t clear and risks aren’t worth it and that is why I am against conversion therapy. It’s the same analysis I would use in a case of sex-reassignment surgery which quite literally tries to fix gender dysphoria.
That the KKK is not a terrorist group. I said they are a hate group.
You aren’t being consistent. You want my position on transgender/homosexual being a disorder to be verboten because it causes harm, not because you accuse me of malicious intent. Which you are allowed to do here, this is the Pit, if you think you are justified.
And the correctness of a post has nothing to do with whether it causes harm or is made with malicious intent. So the benefit of the doubt you use to justify separating me from those you want banned, ‘maybe he was just ignorant’, is totally irrelevant.
I’m sure you have some internal way of working out what should or shouldn’t be allowed, but you aren’t conveying it very well.
~Max
You have improved greatly since then, yes. You back off a lot more when you realize you are out of your depth. This is a welcome bit of growth from you. It shows are you aren’t quite the narcissist and sheltered child that you seemed to be when you first joined. Back then, the only reason I was sympathetic is that I made the same stupid mistakes when I first joined, so I gave you time to see if you’d stop. And you seemed to have done so.
That said, I hadn’t stumbled upon your attempt to prove that that the airforce is unconstitutional. There you seem to have regressed back. You’re not a lawyer, legal expert, or legal scholar. The way you interpret the law is at odds with those people. And it leads you to a conclusion that any legal expert would consider absurd. Yet you demand that people prove to you using your legal method. And, well, they can’t, because it is fundamentally flawed.
Still, I had the occasional one off as I was getting better, so I don’t begrudge you so much as not get why other people are playing along with your game.
But that’s getting way off topic. The main point is, if you are aware of the problem, then I hope you will continue working on it.
That is true, but it wasn’t what I was talking about. I was actually referring to the fact that a trans person is still trans even after they transition and reduce or eliminate gender dysphoria. The mental anguish lessens or stops. Thus it is clearly not the trans part that is the disorder.
But, yes, the fact that you can be trans without gender dysphoria is also shows the trans part is not the disorder.
Except for certain isolated pockets, I could say basically the same thing. And, sure, you can’t pick who works with you (or your family). But there’s no reason that should stunt your intellectual development. There’s a whole wide Internet out there. And given that we’ve apparently driven off all the trans people, it would probably make more sense to go elsewhere to interact with them—as long as you do so respectfully. (And don’t say you don’t know how. All you have to do is type trans ettiquette into Google.)
I was a bit unclear here. I don’t mean this on some individual basis. I’m talking conceptually. Both disease and disorder are words that convey the underlying of something that needs to be fixed. That’s the point of the terms. You work at a doctor’s office, so you should know that.
Homosexual people have no desire to be cured, and the actual psychologists indicate there is not reason they need to be. That’s why it’s offensive to call homosexuality a disorder. Not to mention that it’s rude in general for anyone who is not a doctor to tell someone they have a disorder (and even a doctor should only do it when diagnosing).
You also seem to miss the main issue I had with your use of “disorder.” You completely redefined the word. So, when you said homosexuality was a disorder, you had already indicated that you thought disorder meant something more like “differs from the norm.” That bit of nonsense saved you.
That said, I would not recommend taking chances on saying it again. Or saying it to or around gay people.
That the KKK is not a terrorist group. I said they are a hate group.
[/quote]
Except you redefined hate group to mean they are non-violent, which is ridiculous. Most hate groups are violent, including the KKK.
In fact, I’ve revealed on this board before that I had a friend in my last year of junior high who was chased out of town by the KKK.
Thus your claim that black people should share spaces with KKK members was profoundly ignorant. There is no reason a minority should have to put themselves at risk to fight bigotry. That’s not to say they can’t, but they are not obligated to do so.
You were showing a naive understanding of racism, which is because you lacked information on the subject. So, while stupid, it wasn’t inherently offensive.
That said, I did almost pit you for it back then. But I decided it was more likely you were an idiot, not malicious.
To be clear, it already is verboten. There is a rule that says that you cannot say trans people have a disorder. And saying something is a disorder is not an opinion. It is a claim of fact. The term disorder in this context is a medical term.
I think that it should be verboten because it causes harm, yes. But I think that only people who do it maliciously should be punished. Hence why I argued you should have just gotten a Note.
Of course it does. The underlying reason why bigotry is hurtful is that it is wrong—morally and factually. For example, cats are in fact stupider than humans, which is why it’s not wrong to say to think they are stupider.
And those who are (non-willfully) ignorant that they are being bigoted can be corrected. While those who do it intentionally generally need to be punished. The latter are the ones who are malicious.
Oh, and I am saying malicious biogtry should be a banable offense. Not maliciousness in general. There have always been lesser forms of maliciousness in the Pit. But bigotry is actually worse than just calling someone a mean name.
Finally, do note that this post took me a very long time to post (multiple hours), and I am very drained to have posted it. So don’t take offense if I don’t keep replying. And don’t assume that you’ve found the better argument. Sometimes arguing with you feels more like dealing with gish gallop. I know it’s not intentional, but you think is such essoteric ways that it’s hard to wrap my head around where the issue is. Heck, sometimes it’s hard to follow.
You are a better arguer than you used to be, but it can be exhausting dealing with even a good arguer who picks everything apart. So please try to be satisfied with what I’ve given.
You also clearly have some internal way of working out what should or shouldn’t be allowed, since you consider homosexuality/transsexuality to be wrong and a disorder.
Can you convey to us the basis of your opinion?
I’m sure this is not what you’re doing, but it reminded me of a story that happened to me many years ago. I was standing in line at a Taco Bell. It was a long wait, and we all stood there in silence. Suddenly, the guy in front of me starts speaking to me in really bad Spanish. I said to him, I don’t speak Spanish (I don’t). The lady in back of me said that I should say to him that I don’t speak hillbilly either. Then a really long awkward silence until I could get my food.
I didn’t like the assumptions he was making about me.
I was reading up on this topic of gender pronouns and saw this article in the Harvard Crimson. Like a lot of things dealing with people, things can get pretty complex since people are so different. For this author, giving an answer to gender puts some trans and non-binary people in an awkward position since the answer is complicated. In addition, the question of “outing” a person is raised.
I just made that point in the thread in GD about publishing your pronouns. I’d love the support there. 
I don’t know enough about the topic to provide any support. All I know about the topic in GD is what I’ve read in articles. I also know what it’s like to be spoken for instead of spoken to, but that thread is less about that.
What, that you were Hispanic? How is that something to get upset about?
Well, the first time i made that argument, i was talking to a trans man, and the context was that i was helping him obtain “pronoun dangles” for his club’s name badges – something I’d helped a gender non-conforming man in my own club do. He was super excited about getting the dangles, and i am personally not comfortable asserting a pronoun due to my own gender discomfort.
So i feel I’m on really solid ground talking about this.
AFAICT, the main difference between ‘trans man’ or ‘trans woman’ and ‘transgender’ is that the first two are specific about what gender the person now identifies as, where the latter is nonspecific.
But aside from when I pull out my “Rocky Horror” DVD, I haven’t heard anyone say ‘transvestite’ in longer than I can recall.
One comment on the pronoun stuff that seems more relevant to this thread than the GD thread: ISTM that including pronouns in one’s sig is far less burdensome than wearing a goddamn mask to the freakin’ grocery store. And that’s a pretty trivial burden.
More importantly, the word “tranny” has finally been restored to its rightful use in polite conversation. It was recently used by my auto mechanic and we were talking about the car’s transmission.
For the record, this is a quote from @Max_S, not from me. I don’t hear it much in real life, but I read webcomics and just interact in online spaces where these terms show up. I did initially learn some stuff here, and initially seek out some additional information, but it’s largely just been something that I stumbled onto by naturally gravitating towards spaces where sexism, racism, and homophobia weren’t allowed.
As for the post: while transgender is indeed gender nonspecific, I would say that the word “trans” is far more often used in casual conversation, with “transgender” being more clinical/academic.
“Transvestite” is a word that is still used, but it refers to those who crossdress for sexual purposes, and is generally considered offensive in any other use. Someone who crossdresses as part of everyday life is just, well, a crossdresser. And, if they do it for performative purposes, to play a character, it’s generally referred to as “drag,” with there being drag queens (male acting as female) and drag kings (female acting as male).
And, of course, if you are genderfluid, it’s not necessarily crossdressing at all, if you only where feminine clothes when you feel more feminine and only masculine clothes when feeling masculine. In fact, it’s not uncommon for someone to originally consider themselves a crossdresser, but to later realize they’re more genderfluid–that they were dressing the gender they felt, rather than just ignoring clothing gender norms.
At minimum, Republicans countenance racism. You can’t see it any other way. Whether they personally subscribe to racist theory doesn’t matter if you continue to support a political party that runs campaigns and governs on racist themes. So in effect, @mikecurtis is basically right.
If conservatives walk away because they’re tired of being offended, it probably will have an adverse impact on this board - probably has already. But it’s not particularly surprising. Off-line I’m seeing conservatives walking away from difficult conversations, and it’s hurting real life relationships and it’s even harming our democracy. Conservatives don’t want to understand and empathize with other people - that’s the problem.
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
– John Kenneth Galbraith
Yup, that explains “Muh freedumz” when it comes to guns, masks, and vaccines. Conservatives have always been excessively individualist, but what’s disturbing is that I remember a time when conservatives weren’t afraid to openly show that they had an intellect.
Not me, My Friend! I’m gonna pull a Mallory!
How am I supposed to read this, except as ‘stay in your lane’? Everyone has their own reasons for coming to the 'dope. Mine is to argue on subjects I am interested in and want to learn more about - to learn through debate. I stated so much in my very first post here (now cornfielded, sadly).
Staying in my lane is fundamentally opposed to my raison d’être, at least on this message board. I do not claim to be a legal expert, or quite frankly an expert on anything. When I remember to I will explicitly say I am not a lawyer/doctor/whatever. I do not expect my opponents to be experts. I do not discount my opinions nor that of others because experts disagree - I’m not generally satisfied with because ‘experts say so’, because to stop there only teaches me to parrot. Expert opinions carry more weight but if I cannot adapt my own reasoning they are not convincing.
Your criticism about my USAF topic is particularly unwarranted, in my opinion. ‘but then the USAF would be unconstitutional’ is a common criticism of originalism, one that was actually raised, and I spun off a dedicated topic to debate that.
I hope you will forgive me for stopping this entire line of conversation specific to disorders, enlightening as it may have become. As you pointed out my opinion is already forbidden on this particular subject.
Ugh. I know you put a lot of effort into your post and I have things to say about the disorder/disease tangent, but I edited it out because rules.
I’m not aware of any KKK related violence since before I was born*, and I checked before posting at the time. I think I had read that no extant organization (Klan?) had any history of violence, and more than half of them were established after Mr. Trump took office.
* It appears there has been one incident of violence in 2020, when a Virginia KKK member drove a vehicle into a crowd of protesters, injuring two.
Okay, that makes more sense to me.
I don’t think that’s the underlying reason. Stupid people are in fact stupid - it is not incorrect to say they are stupid, but it is still hurtful. Fat people are in fact fat - it is not incorrect to say they are fat, but it is still hurtful in most situations. Therefore again, correctness has nothing to do with harm and malicious intent.
So I do not concede your point. To me a harmful opinion may be correct. If we ban opinions which are both incorrect and harmful, that creates a paradox. (Even if I did concede your point, you still face the same paradox)
What happens if someone questions whether an opinion is both harmful and incorrect, are we allowed to have a debate? If the opinion is either correct or harmless, debate is allowed. If the opinion is incorrect and harmful the debate is forbidden. But you can’t tell whether the debate is allowed or not until you answer the question, thus making the debate moot. A paradox!
The only solution I see is to have a moderator step in and decide the question without debate. Every single time someone asks whether an opinion is both harmful and incorrect. A list would need to be maintained of the opinions the moderators think are incorrect and harmful - it is unreasonable to expect members to use common sense if there is room for disagreement.
~Max