It seemed to me to be “forgotten” from the beginning. Hence why I pointed out the actual problematic part. It’s not the attack on transphobes or Christian nationalist. Mock then all you like. What I consider a bad idea is the needless attack using reductive stereotypes on churchgoers.
If all Christians only went to church, prayed, and sang music, I don’t think anyone would have a problem. It doesn’t make sense to mock people for the part that is harmless. All it does is, well, create huge distractions like this one.
I mean, an actual transphobe couldn’t have deflected the issue better than this.
I am surprised you accept a duality between mind and body, but not between gender and sex.
You imply yourself that personality is a property of the mind, not the body. Surely you could identify a person’s personality as masculine or feminine without relying on sex characteristics; for example based on choice of words, point of view, handwriting style, choice of attire, hobbies, type of car, voice, etc. You may be mistaken and rely on unsavory or harmful stereotypes, but it is possible to assume a masculine or feminine personality without relying on bodily traits.
I understand the reluctance to identify transgender men as men and transgender women as women. Traditionally, ‘man’ means male sex; ‘woman’ means female sex; sex and gender are synonymous and both refer to the body (with hermaphrodite being synonymous with intersex). In the traditional schema there are connotations of masculine and feminine personality but these are only connotations (see effeminate men and masculine women); a “man in a woman’s body” is self-contradictory by definition, because a man is defined as having a man’s body.
I do not understand how you differentiate between mind and body but not gender identity and sex. Even under a traditional approach where gender equals sex, gender identity is the gender of your mind. Identity, in this context, is a property of the mind. Gender identity is a term of art from psychology, the study of the mind. A person who thinks they are a woman has a female gender identity by definition, even if that person would traditionally be assigned the male sex and gender. Gender dysphoria is defined as profound unease with a contradiction between gender identity (property of the mind) and biological sex (property of the body), which tracks well with this schema.
You differentiate between mind and body, you describe men who think they are women, but incomprehensibly you reject the concept of gender identity. What have I written that you disagree with?
Unless you are a solipsist, you also assume the existence of other minds. Unless you are a psychopath, you also assume, to some degree, to know how other people feel.
Is this (if even true) worse than the past where they were heavily encouraged to make sure nobody ever found out?
I’ll note here that in my statement “heavily encouraged” is a euphemism for the threat of a vicious beating, whereas in yours it is actually encouragement by people who actually want to help the person.
You’re the one who titled the thread so don’t blame other people is the term hatred is being used.
As for your stated principle that the only person who can know what you’re feeling is you yourself, how do you reconcile this with the way many transphobes feel they can override a trans person’s beliefs and dictate to them who they are? By your own principle, isn’t the trans person the best and only judge of who they are?
Or not even encouraged but required to endure sessions with a supposed mental health professional who was chosen because they’ll tell the child that they’re mentally ill, and further that they’re mentally ill for wanting the only treatment that might make them feel better and they mustn’t have it and are essentially wrong for even wanting it.
Statistical Argument Quality Control Check: Note that smallish absolute numbers make it easier to get changes in relative rates that can be described with superficially startling terms like “tripled” and “skyrocketing”.
For instance, according to your linked articles there was one individual referred to the RCH transition service in 2007, and 253 in 2017, and 300 projected for 2018, then 500 in 2020 and 800 in 2021. Wow, what an amazingly skyrocketing transition rate!
Except that when you consider that there were over 1.5 million children in Victoria in 2017 and over 1.6 million in 2021 (conservative estimates), you realize that that rate “skyrocketed” from less than 0.017% of the total minor population in 2017 to less than 0.02% of it in 2018, and less than 0.05% in 2021. In other words, fewer than five individuals out of every ten thousand children in Victoria are seeking to transition. Not as startling as it initially sounded.
And if a mere one additional individual per ten thousand seeks to transition this year, the 2022 number will likewise “skyrocket” from 800 total referrals to about 950. Which, again, looks startling until you remember that it means going from fewer than five individuals per 10K to fewer than six per 10K.
And given that the past fifteen years have seen general-population awareness and acceptance of transgender identity moving from “essentially zero” to “significantly non-zero”, it’s not at all surprising that within these still-quite-small numbers we’ve been seeing a lot of sudden growth.
Denying the concept of “Gender Identity” is a common strategy for TERFs, but it doesn’t make logical sense. You would think, from their telling, that there’s no reason why dresses or long hair or a muscular physique or what have you should be associated with one gender or the other. Everyone should be able to express themselves however they feel, regardless of traditional gender norms! “Masculine” and “Feminine” should be freely accessible by all people!
But
If you are a woman with a vagina, it is vital that you be protected from men with penises who will victimize you at every opportunity. Men will talk down to you, and oppress you, and dehumanize you and so you must have woman-only spaces to feel safe and protected. This, obviously, has nothing to do with societal expectations for men and women, or “Toxic Masculinity”, no it is simply the possession of a penis that makes you dangerous. If you don’t have a penis, you’re still dangerous because of your hormones. If you’re taking hormone replacement therapy, you’re still dangerous because of your genes, or perhaps because of the male upbringing you received prior to transitioning. But also, that male upbringing has nothing to do with gender identity because it is purely biological sex that we’re concerned with, not gender identity which doesn’t exist.
This is from a link Aspidistra posted back up around post 9, from a mother who detransitioned her kid, explaining how transgender ideology can damage a child. Emphasis in the original:
This is from someone explicitly arguing that there’s no such thing as “gender identity.”
Aha! You just figured out the 'phobes sneaky method. They know themselves of course, but someone who’s transgender doesn’t really know themselves and is therefore mistaken.
Stand by for a failure of logic in response to my mocking that asinine stance.
No, what you’re told is that “TERF” does not describe people who now style themselves “Gender Critical” because they actually have no interest in radical feminism or eliminating cultural gender differences and actually are attempting to enforce patriarchal mores by insisting men are biologically predators and women biologically prey.
In fact, ISTM that “Gender Critical” transphobes are using openly self-contradictory rhetoric about cultural gender differences.
On the one hand, GCs like the ones in the OP’s link claim that children are being “pressured” into transgender identity to try to get away from rigid gender norms. So, for example, a tomboyish girl thinks she “has to” be a boy in order to wear short hair or like football. Or a boy who doesn’t like short hair or football thinks he “has to” be a girl. If we just let everybody express themselves however they want and stop trying to fit them into conventional gender expression stereotypes, then nobody will be dysphoric about their biological sex anymore and “transgenderism” will just go away!
On the other hand, GCs freak right out whenever society actually does something to enable gender-neutrality and de-emphasize gender conformity, like defaulting to gender-neutral pronouns or using the term “people” instead of “women” or “men” when discussing, say, menstruation or penises.
Yes, I heard a lot of outrage over the term “people who menstruate” rather than “women” when discussing issues related to menstruation. (Even though it’s just practical.)
Exactly. There probably are compelling arguments for times when society should pay attention to sex differences (for one, your doctor should probably know what your biological sex is) but “it’s vitally important that people who menstruate only be referred to as ‘women’.” is not one of them.