John Mace, I don’t want to start a whole different fight here, so just for the purpose of clarification; are you saying society doesn’t have any effect of evolution? I mean, one could certainly make the case that evolution moves too slowly to be strongly affected by (comparatively recent) civilization, and much less from society to society. But considering the strong evidence of superficial changes based on sexual and societal preferences, I think it’s fairly safe to say society is having at least some effect. Of course, I could be wrong, or maybe I just misinterpreted you.
I’m honestly not trying to pick a fight with you here, I swear to God, but every single thing you said in this post reads as a direct contradiction to every other thing you’ve said in this thread.
I mean, this part here:
What the hell does this mean? Transexuals deserve rights, but including transexuals in the gay rights movement dilutes the impact? What do you think we should do with transexuals, then? I’m honestly bewildered. How do we avoid diluting the impact of the gay rights movement, while also working to secure rights for transexuals? You say this whole thing was about you objecting to the word transexual. Well, then what was all that talk you had earlier about “delusions,” and “transexuality not existing?” Are these people delusional because they’re using a word you don’t think exists? Not a single damn thing you’ve said in seven pages makes a lick of sense, and I’m pretty sure it’s not because about three dozen posters in here who can’t read English all happened to show up in this thread at the same time.
Jesus Jackrabbit Christ, but trying to talk to you is frustrating.
Pssst! Jackmannii! Can I just say I’m quite enjoying your contributions to this discussion?
No one asked you to. I will continue to use the words I prefer, however, whether you like them or not.
Actually, people have offered pages upon pages of reason and evidence to convince you to consider your views. You have shown yourself completely unwilling to spend any time in introspection to try to figure out why you hold the views you do, whether those views are consistent with one another, and whether they’re actually useful views at all. The fact that you won’t engage in and can’t tolerate any honest discussion of the issue is sad; that you can’t stand people attempting to discuss it without developing a persecution complex says something about the sort of person you are.
I wish I could say I disagreed with this, because how sad a thing is that? But it sure looks like it’s true.
I think I’m the one who said he doesn’t seem like much of a progressive. And that’s not really the reason why I said it. The issue, to me, is not whether or not he disagrees so much as whether he can come up with any reason for his opinions. I think it’s a very conservative, anti-progressive mindset that informs his thinking on this issue at least - part of the idea of progressivism is to evaluate things on their merits rather than simply deciding that anything you don’t immediately understand or relate to is wrong. Conservatism is heavily based upon kneejerk reactions to anything outside your frame of reference; liberalism is fundamentally based upon not assuming that your feelings of what’s “right” or “real” are automatically correct.
You know what? Your little martyr act is getting old. A lot of people have devoted a lot of their time to gathering evidence and formulating arguments in the hopes that you could discuss the issue like an adult. You have yet to engage in anything approaching substantive discussion of any of this; if anything, you’ve been treated far better than you deserve because a lot of people here had an obviously erroneous belief that you were something more than a silly ideologue.
If you had, at any point, honestly and fairly looked at all the things everyone else in this discussion have shared with you, no one would have complained. If you don’t want to be treated as an old fool who goes around opining about things he has no understanding of, then stop acting like it. Why, elucidator, do you expect to be treated as something other than what you have shown yourself to be?
Your opinion on this matter has as much validity and as much worth as the opinions of creationists. And it has the same foundation. If anything, it’s amazing that you haven’t been mocked more for acting the way you have.
I have no idea why in the world you addressed this to me.
I never said anything about the definition of “gender”. You’re the one who keeps bringing that up. This is further evidence that you don’t care much about reality - you’re not even addressing the things I’ve said, but rather the things you think it would be convenient to you for me to say.
This has already been thoroughly disproven in this thread; examples have already been offered up of how very easily people can have a physical sex at odds with what is expected from their sex chromosomes. Look up Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.
Then ask yourself why you are attempting to rewrite reality to match up with your convenient, ideological definitions. The pernicious thing about you, Diogenes, is I don’t think you even know when you’re doing it. You’ve abandoned objective reality so thoroughly that you don’t even notice when you’re inventing things that are new and different anymore, whether it’s imputing imagined arguments to me, or pretending that sex chromosomes always establish a person’s sex.
Once again, you are completely off the mark. The fact that you construe my arguments - and I have argued nothing here except that elucidator is not using logically tenable reasoning to support the things he says - as ideology shows how confused your relationship to the world is. All I’ve said is that people should confront reality honestly, and I have attempted (with no success) to illustrate the logical problems with what elucidator has said. You have a long history of being a shrill, screaming lefty, and you become irrational when people disagree with you.
Me, I don’t care that much whether other people share my views or not. My only deal here is that I find it frustrating to watch someone engage in mindless, fallacious effort to avoid understanding reality on reality’s terms. That’s why I have argued this matter only through attempts to break through 'luci’s cloud of illogic. You can chalk up wanting to confront reality honestly as Ivory Tower, elitist, latte-driving Volvo-sipping nonsense if you like; in fact, I wouldn’t really expect anything else from you, Diogenes.
But it’s you who’s only capable of viewing this as a political issue. Me? The political aspect of this takes a major backseat for me; what I care about is the academic portion of the discussion.
Cite?
On the contrary. He has already been caught having completely ignored a cite offered his way; he has also refused to respond to arguments that, as far as I could tell, pretty thoroughly took apart the claims he made.
There’s a difference between honest disagreement and intellectual dishonesty. I know he’s your paw, but he’s way off-base in this discussion.
No one knows, in part because we probably haven’t even identified every type of intersexism (intersexuality?) The more obvious conditions tend to be the ones that are discovered first.
Sir! You have stated that my son’s argument is gay! Clearly, you can’t mean anything by that but to demean his humanity and relegate him to a contemptible status. Don’t try and tell me it isn’t what you meant, I know what you meant. You saying it isn’t what you meant merely proves that it must be so! You’re lucky I don’t know where to buy a horsewhip!
Try listening. Might help.
I’m very serious here, elucidator. Prior to this thread, you were one of my favorite posters, and I’d really like to find a way back to that opinion, but you’re not making it easy. I want to take what you said in your post to ellele at face value, but it simply doesn’t jibe with all the other stuff you’ve said in this thread. Help me out here, please. Answer some of the questions I asked in my last post. Or at least, answer this one: how do you think the gay rights movement in general should treat transexuals? When I earlier described your position as “stabbing them in the back,” I didn’t expect you to be insulted, because I really, honestly, truly did not see any other way to possibly interpret what you are saying. Since that was apparently wrong, what was I supposed to take away from that?
Ack! My ironymeter just exploded! Shit! There’s shards of glass and twisted bits of metal everywhere!
Once more, folks: using your irony meter near the Internet voids the warranty.
elucidator, you suggest that “diluting the message does more harm than good, it confuses the people you are trying to reach.” I think this is wrong, and harmful.
Steven Pinker talks about (and this idea is not original to him) the expanding circle of ethics: as humans expand their circle of entities to whom they have ethical obligations, life improves generally. When you go out from your immediate family to your neighborhood, then to your town, then to your country, then to all humanity–at each stage, life gets better for everyone. To the extent that there’s such a thing as moral progress it comprises humans expanding their ethical circle in this fashion.
I think that this same principle applies here. What you call diluting the message is what I call applying the principle equitably. The principle in question is that your sexuality is none of my goddam beeswax. If you’re gay, if you’re a furry, if you’re transsexual, if you’re a fruitarian, if you’re asexual—whatever does or does not float your boat is NoMGB. As long as no nonconsenting party is involved. NoMGB.
What other principle is important? Why should any particular sexuality be privileged by this principle? Sure, gay rights might be the first, by virtue of historical accident; but what ethical principle would make gay rights more important than, say, asexual rights? NoMGB.
We need to expand this; and in so doing, we don’t dilute the message, we strengthen it. We make it clear that, no matter what niggling little objection someone comes up with to gay rights (or fruitfucker rights), it doesn’t matter, because it’s NoTGB either.
It doesn’t dilute the message. It makes it consistent.
Daniel
I’m not sure what is meant by the phrase “society doesn’t have any effect on evolution”. Human intelligence and culture certainly can operate a lot like evolution by natural selection and can shield us from certain environmental factors that would affect almost any other animal differently. But the issues of sexual orientation and gender identification are most likely influnced heavily during fetal devolpment, at which point “culture” is a non-factor. If there’s one thing that intersex individuals have taught us, it’s that gender (or sexual identity/orientation) is not a societal construct that can be manipulated independently of biology.
Does that clarify things?
Daniel, I think (and maybe I’m still way off) that what elucidator is saying is not that transexuals shouldn’t have rights, but that they shouldn’t have a seperate term defining them apart from homosexuals in general. Like, we should just refer to everyone who isn’t totally straight as “gay.” I think what he’s saying is that, if we say, “Gays and transexuals should have the same rights as straights,” then people are going to get all confused over what we mean by “transexual” and decide not to give any of us rights.
Am I anywhere close to understanding that correctly, elucidator?
All right, I’ll trust you. Lord knows, none of us get through this life without needing more forgiveness than we can get.
As a group of people with whom you feel some special empathy. An empathy born of a mutual understanding of oppression and your desire that it should cease for all. That this is the goal of your undertaking: freedom, justice, all of that stuff. Welcome them in, the door is open, freak freely (its a hippy thing…you wouldn’t understand). Make it entirely clear that you believe that none is free until all are free. All, or none. If you, or the majority of you, agree with me that keeping the banners and such simple, as a tactical measure…then do so. If you have established sufficient trust, what’s the prob? Trust each other, what can go wrong? Having all these mutual interests in common, why not? If you don’t insist that everyone identify and is labeled, you could insist the opposite, that no one do so!
And if you don’t agree with me on the tactics, then you don’t. Your call, your rubber ducky. Then open up outreach to the Baptist Youth League…well, maybe think that one over.
I don’t know if the comparison is apt, but I have (always?) voted Democrat, but I am not a Democrat, and wouldn’t so declare. But I compromise for tactical reasons! Every fucking time! Because that is the reality on the ground, in a world universally uninterested in my helpful suggestions.
If I can, you can, she can. Are we not men?
Damn! Nailed it! Posolutely, absitively nailed it! Now, I wish I hadn’t wasted all that time and brain juice answering you!
Ah, well. Peace.
That’s some interesting stuff, Dan. Too much for now, dilithium crystals buckling. I will consider.
:: arms akimbo, foot tapping ::
Then why didn’t you just say so? :mad:
I thought I was arguing, but here you go - here’s some argument, and as it’s from, I hope, someone you don’t believe has been treating you like shit, I hope it will make some difference.
Let’s start with LGBT rights.
Trans people have not been abruptly added to the acronym. They have been there, unrecognized, for ages - back when a gay bar and a tranny bar were the same thing. The first person to throw a stone at Stonewall is reputed to have been Silvia Rivera, a transgendered woman working as a drag queen. This has continued to the present day: currently, the co-chair of my party’s LGBT federal and provincial committees is a Queer trans woman. All we’ve done in modern times is recognize a key concept, which is that trans people are a specific and important distinct community within the LGBT movement.
Your argument that 1) you acknowledge the need for trans rights and 2) trans rights should not be promoted as such seems to me to rest on one assumption: 3) trans rights will advance exactly as lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights advance, with no need for any specific inclusion. We can just never talk about the trans people, and they will somehow be grandfathered in. This is not true. As has been explained, trans and gender-variant people face a very wide range of significant challenges that do not face normatively-gendered LGB people.
However, we all want the right for our claim on a common humanity and our full participation in society not to be hampered by other people’s ideas about how people of a given sex ought to behave. Unfortunately, it is all too easy for the normatively-gendered LGB community to leave this behind and focus only on specifics that benefit only them - or only a subset of them, more commonly - but seem somehow easier.
In my opinion, that’s self-destructive. Seeking specific individual globs of rights without building the ethical framework that makes those rights solid leaves itself open to backlash. And a movement that gains rights only for its more popular members is a house with no foundation; it’s facile, counterproductive, and morally vacuous, especially since those in the movement who are already the highest placed in society frequently abandon the movement when they’ve gotten to a point where they feel comfortable - where the depredations only affect those safely below them on the echelon. A free society is one where it’s safe to be unpopular, as someone said, and the test of our rights is whether they apply to all of us.
Besides, with what I said about our history above, it would be – it is – so very ungrateful for non-trans people to turn around, freak out, and decide the trannies are bad PR. I do not want my human rights to be determined by focus group; and straddling the line as I do, it hurts my heart when I hear arguments like that, because I realize on some level it’s me they’re - you’re - talking about. I’m the one they think is dead weight. I’m not trans, but I am femme, genderqueer, and I have been told to my face that I need to be quiet and stop scaring the straight people by being who I am; my only function in the movement is as ballast. I refuse to accept that. Trans and genderqueer rights are human rights. It’s unethical, ungrateful, and unwise for the LGB community to leave the T behind.
Now, when you say you believe yourself to be an ally to the trans community, but deny the validity of the trans experience, that’s really rather incoherent. A huge part of trans rights simply is acceptance of trans people’s lives and identities; not second-guessing them, not asserting that their identity is delusional, not saying they just haven’t met the right therapist yet, but instead affirming them, acknowledging the control they have over their bodies and the grasp they have of their own identities and what’s best for themselves, and simply doing them the courtesy of accepting them as the prima facie authority on their own selves, as we do for most every other person.
It’s been hard to read what you’ve written about transgendered people, elucidator. It hurts. It hurts to think that if I were trans, that is the opinion you’d have of me: a blithe assertion that trans people are not only not worth fighting for, they’re not even worth learning about.
These aren’t some random people’s lives we’re dispassionately discussing, they’re our brothers and sisters - and for some of us here on this board, they’re us.
Okay, awesome. Glad we could work that out. Sorry for calling you a bigot.
Por nada. Never happens again, never happened at all.
Waiter, a shot of caveat! Small. “…or they won’t give them to us”. Of course they will, you’re well on your way. My only suggestion is in hope that it will arrive sooner. Period. A little democratic judo, is all. Maybe just a touch of canny skullduggery.
Matt, like I said to Dan, my brains are turning to cheese. You got some valid shit to say, but I can’t like, you know, relate. Manana?
:dubious:
Speak for yourself, pal.
Actually, I thought you were saying that it had been a treatment modality for transsexualism in the past. My brain fart. The larger point, which I may not have gotten around to articulating, come to think of it, was supposed to be that the efficacy of the current types of treatment would tend to suggest that the thing the subjects sought treatment for, actually exists.
That strikes me as being a measurable departure from some of the more absolute assertions in the OP, and I’m happy to take note of it.
Yeah, I suppose it does, at least for my somewhat limited personal needs. Thanks for taking the time.
P.S. Welcome back, Weird With Words! I’m looking forward to the pleasure of reading your further contribuitons to the Board.
He’s lying. Read his posts again. What happened to “I sure hope my kid’s not one of those freaks”? What happened to “it’s delusional mutilation”? No. He’s lying. That was never his entire point.