What you’re asking for is impossible. The circumstances will vary with each individual. Maybe one of them could explain their personal feelings, but that would just apply to them.
Your “this pushes people to vote for Trump” argument is total bullshit. They didn’t need an excuse - that’s what they wanted. They wanted Trump, so they voted for him.
Again and again you’ve explained that you would treat your trans neighbor, pregnant or not, with decency and respect. That’s a great thing. That’s all you’re being asked to do.
Why would you do so? Find that within yourself. That’s what you should tell your friends, whatever it is.
Why is that so hard? You’re already doing it… You just haven’t figured out how to explain it to your friends.
Oh I disagree. Positions have hardened and we have never been more polarized. People were far more anti-gay, anti-trans in the year, say, 2000, but we didn’t have this polarization then. So you can’t say that this is the fault of people who are doing the same thing that they always have. I don’t know why you dismiss this phenomenon. If you corner an animal, it will attack.
And although I personally have no problem going through the motions and calling a biological woman who identifies as male yet still wants to do the most female thing possible by bear a child a “pregnant man” for some, this is just the latest version of liberal insanity where they check out and decide to take a stand.
I don’t think it is proper in a society where we must get along for you or anyone to simply dismiss those feelings, as they were considered absolutely correct for millennia, and just demand that they do what you tell them. As I said, that doesn’t work for any other issue nor should it. Nobody gets to demand a way that I act. You must persuade. And due to the inherent logical inconsistency of the position, you are unable to persuade which gives them even more (to them) reason to believe that they are right.
Because to me, this is not a hill to die on. If a trans male neighbor of mine wants to be called Bob and bear a child, then it’s “Hi Bob, how’s the kid today?” I don’t feel as strongly about it as others.
Then that’s what you should say to your friends. If it doesn’t work for them, then I guess they feel so strongly that they’re not willing to treat their neighbors with decency and respect.
It’s really not. That is not how political debates work wherein one side says, “I win. I am taking my ball and going home.”
The issue is that they consider it to be like how you consider Mr. Stud Man. That they will be glad to be neighborly and loan tools and bring food over if someone is sick but they will not indulge in a fantasy like Mr. Stud Man or pregnant man.
According to Robert Winston (Baron Winston of Hammersmith) male pregnancies are an achievable goal.
I’d guess that artificially supported male pregnancies will be routine in the relatively distant future, somewhere between fifty years from now and a thousand years from now, although by that time many or most pregnancies may occur entirely outside the human body.
I support any and all kinds of morphological freedom, and any and all kinds of self-assigned gender status. A sufficiently advanced civilisation will have very few limits on reproductive and interpersonal relationships, and I think we should be as ready for this freedom as we can.
Why should we care what your friends think deep down? Sometimes people can’t be persuaded. That’s life. Sometimes there’s no point wasting time trying to persuade the unpersuadable.
First of all, this shouldn’t be a political debate at all. Treating people with respect used to be something that everyone wanted as an ideal (well, not racists, I guess, but maybe they didn’t consider Black people to be people).
Second, people change their names all the time. Meat Loaf changed his name officially to that, and expected to be called Meat Loaf, so your Mr. Stud Man example isn’t all that far fetched.
There have been many attempts, in this thread and others. You just stamp your foot and say that it doesn’t make sense to you (or your friends).
I’ve sidestepped these because I think deep down thoughts don’t really matter, only how we treat each other. But many folks have really dug into the details of gender identity.
Ah, not even a debate at all. That will win hearts and minds. And again, nobody has seriously engaged in this, perhaps because it is impossible to defend. You throw out terms like “treating people with respect” as if this is something we do at all times and in all situations. We don’t. There are lines that we draw where if someone does X, then that falls south of the no longer getting respect line.
Now, you sincerely believe that a pregnant man falls on the good side of the line. But you haven’t justified that. And going back as posters continue to do with the old “treat people with respect” line is simply not satisfactory.
Your final point is a complete non-sequitur. Because a professional singer can change his name, that means men can have babies? And you wonder why people aren’t able to understand this.
First, I said it shouldn’t be a political debate. Second, engaged in what? Trying to explain this to you, justify it, explain it? I mean, give me a break. Read this thread.
You’re the one who brought up changing your name as something that wouldn’t and shouldn’t be taken seriously by other people. People change their names all the time, and not just women changing their last name after getting married. It’s not always something extreme like Meat Loaf, but it happens all the time. It was your example, not mine. If it’s a non-sequitur, it’s your non-sequitur.
This thread is 133 posts long – about half of those are people patiently explaining some combination of why transmen may want to have a baby, why they should be treated with respect, why it’s no skin off your nose if they decide to have a baby, and so on and so forth. For you to claim that no one has seriously engaged this is ludicrous.
This quote was taken out of context. All human beings have the same rights. The question is whether one of those rights is a right to demand the rest of society to accept that I am whatever gender I choose, even when my actions are contrary to that.
I submit that pregnant men thus have identical rights to all other human beings in that none of us can demand that society ignore reality.
You know the saying “no one can make you ashamed but yourself?” That applies here. @Max_S feels shame not because someone has told him to “shut up and do it” but because he feels out of step with this emerging norm, agrees with it on some level, yet deep down is struggling with it. That’s his problem, not yours, @UltraVires. You feel that new societal take is wrong on some level so you don’t feel shame, you feel to some degree or other hostile towards it. That’s your problem, whenever it is a problem (there are places in this country where your view is the norm and having it really isn’t a problem).
Others have a different viewpoint. Me, I try not to hurt other people. That’s why I refer to people by their identified gender, because to do otherwise causes hurt to others. Personally, I don’t find doing this any more traumatic or “shut up and do it” than saying “hello”, “how are you?”, “please”, “thank you”, or other polite niceties we routinely do every day. I know numerous people who are not legally married but I don’t contradict their assertion of being husband and wife (or wife and wife or husband and husband or partners or however they wish to be referred to). I know people who prefer nicknames over the names they were given at birth (in some cases to the point they legally change their name) and I use their preferred names. I know people for whom religious practices I find ridiculous or pointless or even repugnant are very important and I don’t challenge them on it because I don’t want every interaction to be an argument.
Those of us who live in civilization actually do quite a bit every day to accommodate living next to other humans. Most of us are OK with that, because even if it sometimes inconveniences us in return others return similar courtesies to us. It’s what makes civilization possible. My rights end where yours begin, your rights end where mine begin. A lot of being polite is recognizing those borders. The rest is give and take between human beings to keep interactions civilized.
Right. It hasn’t been seriously engaged because such things could be said about anything. It is something that some people really want to do and they should have a right to do it. That is true of any debate about any law. Such an argument would be woefully insufficient on every other issue.
If you don’t think there have been serious efforts in this thread to address your OP question, then it’s quite clear that nothing could possibly satisfy you.
This is incorrect. You tried to do that with child molesters and murderers, and people immediately explained why they were different. You tried that with housing codes, and people explained why that was different. So, it obviously can’t be said about anything.
It was explained how there are obvious factual differences between those things, but not a legal or logical distinction. The only one mentioned was, and I said it in the OP, that it does not harm anyone to indulge in the idea of “pregnant men.” There could be an argument that such a thing does cause moral or societal harm, but I’m not the one making that. But I did make the point which hasn’t been rebutted that the “no harm to others” neo-Libertarian standard has never been the rule in the United States and I’m not sure why it is used to defend this issue as if it were.