No, at the time you made post #320 you had not yet come up with the claim that x=y (presumably you mean sexual orientation = gender identity), so I understood you to just be commenting on the general issue of whether identical twins could later develop different brain structures as a result of experiences (and using sexual orientation as a proxy in that context).
OK, so we’ll have to end it here. I think there’s no reason to assume that sexual orientation is a good proxy for gender identity as regards to this issue (or any other issue that I can think of offhand). So there we are.
Ahh, failure of imagination. The death knell of intellectual curiosity.
Perhaps this paper could help restart your imagination?
Oh, and while I’m providing links, here’s a link to a twin study of gender identity. Spoiler: same basic outcome as twin study of sexual orientation; i.e., results from a mix of genetic and “life experience”. Imagine that! (Or, possibly, don’t):
The model that best described the data included a significant additive genetic component accounting for 62% of the variance and a nonshared environmental component accounting for the remaining 38% of the variance…The findings
may also imply that gender identity may be much less a matter of choice and much more a matter of biology.
They use “may” twice in that sentence. Does that mean the findings MAY or MAY NOT imply that gender identity MAY or MAY NOT be much less a matter of choice…?
What’s the significance of the word MAY in that sentence?
Yeah, that’s a badly written sentence. Later they say:
The power in the present study was limited by the small sample size, although the power was sufficient to detect [that variation in gender identity has an appreciable heritable component]. However, because of the small sample size, we were unable to discriminate between competing models
So I think the word “may” is just a reference to the fact that a) it’s a statistical analysis, so they can’t make any pronouncements for certain, and b) there wasn’t enough data to get strong results, with the exception that they can show genetics play a role.
For transgender adults, I don’t really see a lot of burdens on society. If the worst case scenario that the conservatives can muster is that Caitlyn Jenner is using the women’s room and Chaz Bono is using the men’s room, then AFAIC, the burden is almost imperceptible. In that case I think that the psychological hangups of the conservatives should give way to far more substantive issues (psychological or otherwise) of transgendered. But I think things might be different for children.
So lets say you are a transgender girl and you want to join the girl scouts. Are you saying that there is no burden associated with letting that you into the girl scouts? You can argue that those neanderthals in Utah ought to let the transgender boys into the scouts and transgender girls into the girl scouts but that’s just your opinion. It forces the conversation a parent might have to have with a child when they are not really ready to deal with issues associated with gender and sexuality.
What about bathroom use in middle and high school? I don’t know what the answer is but just letting them use the other bathroom doesn’t seem like a satisfactory answer.
I agree that conservatives started to be more gay friendly when their children came out of the closet. I don’t think this same dynamic can occur with transgender any time soon. Almost everyone counts homosexuals among their family or friends. The same cannot be said of transgendered. In this way, transgender is a lot more like being black than being gay if blacks accounted for less than 1% of the population so you could live your whole life without personally knowing one.
Having kids is a widely recognized right. Being a girl in the girl scouts when you were born a boy is not.
These sort of flip irrelevant answers does nothing unless you are preaching to the choir and frankly the transgender choir is too small and you need to recruit more people into the choir not make fun of people who are not already in it.
Flip, perhaps, but hardly irrelevant. You have a right to have a child, yes. But you don’t have a right to always avoid complicated conversations with them. Having tough discussions comes with the deal, whether it’s about faith or sex or racism or politics. Don’t want to risk a conversation about something they “might not be ready for?” Don’t have kids.
My point was, explaining shit to your kids is your job as a parent. If explaining something to them is too hard for you, you are failing in your responsibility. “How do I explain this to my kids,” is a weak-ass, chickenshit argument for people who can’t take responsibility for being a parent. The next person who tries to use that bullshit to justify fucking over other people ought to have their kids taken away from them and given to somebody competent to the task.
Right. The only way toward wider acceptance of very small minority groups in a somewhat insular culture is to break down cultural barriers through statutory protections and education. Which will be perceived by some aggrieved members of a majority group which already feels threatened by changing demographics as “special rights” and “political correctness.” Until someday perhaps that perception is itself the minority view.
The same people who are currently convinced that gays have “special rights” -and can convince others of that- have a much harder time making the same argument about “the Jews” or “the n----rs”. (Unfortunately, since progress is never steady and demagoguery is louder than good sense, “the Muslims” are an easier target than ever in this country.)
The status quo does not require this conversation. The question was whether recognizing these rights would impose a burden and I identified a burden. If you want heretofore non-existent rights recognized, then your attitude towards concerns about these new rights cannot be “tough, deal with it, you deal with other things, deal with this too” You are the one seeking a change in the status quo. A change that needs fairly widespread buy in by the general population to have any chance of being more than a change in name only.
Yep, you would be an excellent advocate for transgender issues. “If you don’t agree with me we should take away your children!!! You fucking chickenshits”
I’m sorry that my questions and arguments are poking large gaping holes in your airtight worldview. I am pointing out that recognition of rights are not burden free so at least in some cases you have to make a case that goes beyond “how is it anyone else’s business” (remember, THAT is the point I was responding to)
I guess I have done that because noone seems to be saying that explaining transgenderism to a young child is not a burden.
We shield our kids from things like violence and death and sex and all sorts of shit like that because they are not ready for those conversations. Is that because all these chickenshit parents deserve to have their children taken away from them?
But never mind me. Just go ahead and say that anyone that disagrees with you deserves to have their children taken away. I’m sure the cause would be grateful for your full-throated child confiscating support. :rolleyes:
Wait, you think that the bigotry against trangenderism is a white thing?
WTF?!?
Statutory changes can only happen with voter support, you don’t really have that voter support so the notion of force feeding people on transgender rights is bass ackwards. You need some critical mass of popular support before you can get the statutory support. I agree that education and exposure are important. Much of the bigotry towards transgendered folks is merely ignorance.
I bet there is a lot of overlap between people who think blacks have special rights and people who think homosexuals have special rights.
For the record, the scouting organization have not directly addressed transgender issues but there is no currently articulated ban that I can find and at least the girl scouts seem to have embraced transgender girls.
Little League organizations don’t seem to discriminate against transgender kids (if rules exist then people are not really paying attention to them), after all its a co-ed activity for boys and girls so gender is really irrelevant.
But what about high school athletics. Are there athletic differences between transgender versus cisgendered boys and girls in high school?
ETA: but I live in a relatively liberal part of Virginia and things might not be this open in other parts of the country but at least there doesn’t seem to be a ban at the national level.
No, dumbfuck, that’s exactly what we’re telling you. “How do I explain this to my children!” isn’t a burden, it’s what being a parent means. If explaining shit to your children is too hard for you, then you should have thought of that before you had them.
No, we shield them because the parent isn’t ready for them. Real life isn’t going to hold off on death and violence because a kid is too young to process it. Grandma’s not going to live for another ten years just because a two year old isn’t “ready” to understand death, and when Grandma dies, it’s your job to explain what that means to your kid, to whatever level they’re capable of understanding. Jimmy’s not going to avoid gettting his ass kicked at school simply on the principle that six year olds aren’t ready to understand violence. And transgender people aren’t going to disappear, just because some dipshit out there can’t figure out how to explain it to an eight year old.
No shit. I’ve got a seven-year-old. Explaining sex to her was…not great fun. She looked at my wife and me in horror. “Did YOU guys do that?!” she asked. We nodded. “Ewwww! Why?”
Transgender is seriously easy to explain in comparison. I explained it, she asked a question or two, she moved on. No big.
And compare that to death, another big one. My three-year-old still doesn’t understand it, and regularly brings up granddad’s death in inappropriate ways, which is really hard on my wife. We try to help her figure out how to deal with it, but good lord, it’s nowhere near as easy as transgender is. Transgender is seriously a piece of cake for kids. It’s about as hard as explaining that not every grownup wants kids.
This is the sort of thing people dislike about discussing things with you. Read Stuff Better please.
Your read on the politics here is faulty. You don’t seem to be accounting for the existing statutory landscape (which even the OP, brilliant as he isn’t, has accomplished, simply by the nature of his complaint).
Largely through the demand of the electorate, protected classes already exist. T is included in federal civil rights protections along with LGB. No “force feeding” is needed in order to broaden protections in the states, only a very slight change in the makeup of legislatures so that they’re more representative of the electorate, not less. The reason we’re pushing education and exposure is to fight the retrograde tendencies of conservative state governments and to thump amenable brains with appropriate clue sticks.
But thanks for your concerns about tone and the relative ease of various arguments.
It would be too easy for me to gasp! in horror and say “You think homophobia is a white thing? WTF!?” Instead I’ll just say yeah, there’s overlap. That Venn diagram would still show two sets, one significantly larger than the other.
But being a girl in the girl scouts when you have become a girl…might be. That’s what’s under dispute. A hell of a lot of us believe it is a right.
You can’t just say, “No, that’s not a right.” You need some legal and moral justification. The legal justification is found in the Civil Rights Act – although several states are suing to overturn that inclusion. The moral justification comes from the really simple question: whom does it hurt?
Again, many of us hold that the harm done by excluding trans-girls from the Girl Scouts is greater than the harm done by including them. No one has yet demonstrated that girls are harmed by being in the company of trans-girls. It’s been averred a shit of a lot, but nobody’s ever actually shown it to be true.