No, its clear that you just don’t like people disagreeing with the websites that give your brain its marching orders. I have been refraining from insulting you too much but its clear that your mode of debate consists of exchanging insults. You have never contributed anything to any thread that wasn’t the recycled thoughts of some previous poster, you show an incredibly lack of intellectual curiosity or honesty. Of course you give a shit whether I support your position or not. You only ever insult people that disagree with you, thats pretty good evidence that you are just full of shit on that point.
You can decide to ignore me if you will but the fact that your brain can’t handle being challenged by different ideas tells me that you are either very young, very immature or just a stupid fuck. Probably the latter.
I was trying to say that your statement about transgender rights is at this point just your opinion. You say a trasngender girl has a right to use the girls room. Others say that non-transgender girls have the right to a bathroom that is devoted exclusively to anatomical females. You need more than a statement, you need a rationale. The primary rationale seems to be “its not really that big of a burden on the non-transgendered and a huge benefit to the trasngendered”
Uninspired routine, low technical difficulty, didn’t stick the landing. I’m saying about a 7.60. (But I think the Russian judge will be even harsher, FYI.)
No, what I don’t like miserable little shits like you treating the question about whether people I love should be treated like human beings as some sort of intellectual exercise.
Jesus, is that the best you can do? No wonder you’ve been refraining from insulting me. You suck at it.
“How do I explain this to my children?” isn’t a different idea, it’s one of the oldest excuses for bigotry and prejudice on the books. It was long in the tooth when people were trotting it out ten years ago to try to deprive me of my rights. Congratulations on giving it a new life, and aiming it at an even smaller and more vulnerable minority. You’re a paladin of ignorance, a champion to the slow of thought, a defender of the sullen and ignorant. You lift up the petty, and give hope to the backwards.
Yeah, that’s about right. It helps some people, and hurts no one. Also, it’s provided for in Federal Law. Also, the people creating rationales to oppose it are stupid and bigoted, and consistently fail to produce any reason other than “Ew, I think it’s icky.” They claim there is some harm from transexuals using the bathrooms of their trans-gender, but, exactly like those who claimed that gay marriage would “harm marriage,” they can’t show this.
High school age soccer players (U-15 on up) beat the women’s national team.
No.
I think you’re right about the incentives. I don’t see boys pretending to be girls for this purpose.
With 2.5 transgender girls per school, you might come across 1 transgender girl participating in competitive or varsity sports every 3.2 high schools.
And then we have perhaps one of the largest fallacies of the belief that transgender girls will dominate all other girls - just because one participates in competitive sports in high school doesn’t mean that one is 1) enthused or driven to train and win, 2) skilled enough at it, or 3) isn’t playing with others who are their peers or betters in the sport.
KCMO has one of the most liberal policies for transgender accommodation in the nation. I have and do work directly with their attorneys and counselors and facilitators there for transgender children. Over their 8 high schools, and over nearly 6 years of continuous accommodation, there has never been a case of a transgender girl (or boy) competing in sports who ever even was near the top of their events. As far as I’ve heard, they tend to compete about in the middle of the “pack” of their events.
So setting all else aside, setting aside everything about the medicine and mechanics, how significant of a threat are we talking about here? When I was 6th grade a kid I knew very well was already greater than 6 feet, and by junior high he was 6’5" and about 230 pounds of muscle. At the first track event we went to (I was a long-distance runner), he took the shot put and threw it like a softball, it was so light to him, shattering the district record. Because of his crazy genetics he was also able to break the records for discus too, as well as some weightlifting records. The reason for his size and strength was a hormone disorder, something allowed under the rules…sort of like a hormone disorder of a transgender girl. I also knew a cisgender girl Gretchen who was about 5’11 and massively built, who set several records, and would have made a clean sweep of most track events except she hated track and quit competing as soon as she could talk her parents into it. Was it unfair for her to compete? She was a cisgender girl, sure, but she also had a genetic difference of some sort which made her a relative giant (compared to us 9th-grade girls who were mostly 5’5" and under 150 pounds).
And even if you have an outlier every now and again in the future…so what? I cannot believe the amount of hang-wringing vapors conservatives have had over a (almost entirely) non-existent threat. All of the essay and articles opposing transgender children competing in sports just smack of throwing out FUD to try to marginalize a very vulnerable population, because they’re “icky.”
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OK I had to google some of those acronyms but I think I got it. So your saying that transgenderism is so rare that it is comparable in frequency with hormonal imbalances that give physical advantages. OK. I also agree that it is unlikely that someone will game the system using transgenderism as an excuse. I have to think about this a while. Perhaps I’m guilty of the transgenders are “icky” mentality but its different enough (and maybe I’m closed minded enough) that I have to think about how this affects other children.
Do you think that young children get confused by the concept of trangenderism or are they able to take it in stride without much confusion? What do you say to people who are concerned that this might create issues for younger children?
Yes, I agree. You can’t be objective about it and you are offended that I am being so clinical about it.
Yes, yes I do. I don’t normally do it but you were being pretty rude so I thought I’d give it a shot. Like I said, I suck at it, I haven’t had your practice.
Yeah, yeah, whatever. When “your people” were finally granted your rights, was part of the rationale “hey, we’re not bothering anyone, why the fuck do you care what we do in the bedroom” or was the rationale that society as a whole had to accept and integrate “your people” into their lives like we do with the disabled or racial minorities?
Because so far you have made a really good argument that you have an overblown sense of entitlement that permits you to behave like an asshole to anyone that doesn’t immediately agree with you on how we should change the world to accommodate “your people” We’re all supposed to agree with you before you manage to convince us or be branded as incapable of being convinced of anything that isn’t vile and bigoted. Good luck with that attitude. I suspect that people like you have done more harm to the cause of “your people” than all the Fred Phelps, Pat Robertsons and Marcus/Michelle Bachmans of the world combined. There is such a thing as being too much of an advocate for your cause (see PETA, Al Sharpton, feminists that say that all men are latent rapists). You make “your people” seem angry and irrational. You sound like a spoiled petulant child interjecting himself into an adult conversation.
The opinion of the department of justice is a novel construction. It was once the opinion of the department of justice that we could waterboard people during interrogation. I don’t know where this is going to end up and the tide of history seems to be moving in favor of transgender rights but there is going to have to be a lot of explanation and education of society generally to keep the tide coming in. If folks generally can’t have conversations about this with people who are open to the idea but aren’t already in the choir (like me) without insults then its going to be a difficult conversation to have. Or do you think you are going to be able to implement this change through sheer force of will without any conversation?
I agree that its a good rationale but that assumes the rationale is true. It is not axiomatic that there is no significant burden on the rest of society so it is entirely appropriate to test that rationale and you have to be able to defend it. If it turns out that there is a significant burden then you have to prove that the transgender rights are more important than avoiding that burden.
And while I don’t have any religious objections to anything that promotes love and happiness without creating suffering, at some point you are going to run into religious objections, and I’m not sure what form they will take but you are going to have to do better than yelling “bigot” at them.
Gee, ya think? Gosh, I hope that transgender people and other supporters of transgender rights have remembered to take that possibility into account. Good thing you reminded them.
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you are going to have to do better than yelling “bigot” at them.
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Whatever people are doing now seems to be working at least to some extent: visibility and acceptance of transgender people is higher than it’s ever been in the modern western world. A very long way to go still, natch, but it’s something.
If Trump wins and the next DOJ says the opposite, will you go along?
I think it’s important to construct a rigorous argument, not just win policies, or else they won’t stick. Poor arguments end up hurting more than helping because they assume the role of straw man and the good arguments never get a shot. Especially in court. So let’s work harder on this.
The first thing the other side is going to go after is the fact that the law says “sex,” but not “gender.” Gotta deal with that.
Given all the other shenanigans which are (uncommonly) in sports with doping, cheating, etc. I will never say it’s impossible someone would game the system. I can’t prove a negative in this case. And thus far we just are not seeing any transgender threat to women overall. I think the fears of “concerned citizens groups” protesting the inclusion of transgender athletes either haven’t gone through the math or thought about the details, probably because they’re just reacting.
I also will never say that it’s impossible that a “totally legitimate” transgender girl might choose to compete, and might dominate a local sport team. But given the outliers which already exist among high school athletes, and the incredible rarity of such a thing happening…I just cannot be concerned it’s a threat in any way.
IME, and I am not an expert on this specific issue, although I’ve helped work with a large number of youngsters, including young family members of transgender persons…the kids get it, and the kids are very accepting. The problem is the parents. A typical negative scenario (I’ve seen it SO many times) is a kid comes home from school, and mentions casually over dinner something like “my friend Brad is dressing like a girl now and says he’s[sic] a girl.” Then the parents detonate, and the kid picks up on this, because parents are the most important authority figure in their lives. Then the kid starts to not accept it.
Young girls will typically welcome young transgirls, and young boys welcome young transboys.
Yes, I agree, the issue is getting a public hearing in a way it has never gotten before. And some people think that the yelling insults and obscenities from the newly acquired soapbox is an effective way to advance the cause. The gay rights debate of the last few years was not won by the side screaming insults and obscenities, it was lost by them.
Pivotal moments (for me) in gay rights in recent years (for me at least) was watching conservative politicians demanding that questions about gays in the military be left up to the military until the joint chiefs said “We don’t have a problem with it. We are soldiers we do what we are told.” So then the [politicians said “well OBVIOUSLY the generals aren’t the real important litmus test, we should poll the troops” and the troops (other than the marines) supported gays in the military so the politicians tried to say that the only people that really counted was were the marine enlisted men.
Then there was the farcical Republican debates that year when a gay member of the military asked about gays in the military and the crowd started booing at him at a time when “support the troops” seemed to be on every bumper in America.
Similarly the conservatives tried to associate gay marriage with bestiality and that led to a fairly harsh backlash against the opponents of gay marriage.
Similarly the association of homosexuality with pedophilia shamed the Boy Scouts into not only allowing gay scouts but gay scout leaders.
It was in THAT environment when Obama was able to “evolve” on gay rights and support gay marriage as opposed to civil unions.
Most of the arguments from the pro-rights side asked “why not, what’s the harm?” rather than “fuck you and we should take away your children if you think that there might be some harm to your children” one of those approaches is much more likely to lead to a productive discussion (a discussion that MUST be had if transgender rights are to advance) than the other.
I can’t imagine the frustration that some people feel at the slow rate of progress on these issues. However, the progress is moving faster than it ever has before in history and while the progress needs to be pushed, some of the sentiments we have seen are much closer to shoving than pushing. YMMV.
Yes, most of us are fairly ignorant of the facts surrounding this teeny tiny sliver of our population (some Michigan study says its about 0.2%), and that includes me.
OK, I agree that it is not likely to be abused (frankly, taking undetectable steroids seems a lot easier than pretending to be transgender when you are not). And there doesn’t seem to be a wave (or even much of a ripple) of transgender girls dominating high school sports.
I’m probably a product of the relatively intolerant society I grew up in and if "icky is the word to describe the discomfort some of us feel around transgender issues then so be it. But there was a time (a few decades ago) when I thought gays were icky. We have to recognize that some large minority of people who voted for Obama had very racist views at some point in their lives. Don’t write us off. A lot of us are capable of “evolving” on these sort of issues. If you can’t get us to evolve, your other option is to wait for us to die of old age before you get societal acceptance of transgenderism.
I also think there might be a difference between the reaction that people have towards transgender boys versus girls.
How many threads do you have to participate in, how many personal stories and scientific cites do you have to be shown, before the ignorance is abated? Has it even been lessened and, if so, by how much? You say you are still ignorant of the facts, but surely that can’t be because of lack of trying on the part of those participating in these conversations.
The second. Are you really so dumb that you don’t think, “But, what about bathrooms and locker rooms?” wasn’t part of the homophobe rhetoric against gay rights?
What am I saying. Of course you’re that dumb.
Yeah, that’s another old bigot dodge. “Don’t get angry! Sure, people treat you like shit, question your worth as a human being, and actively work to strip you of your rights and protections as citizen of this country, but don’t get angry! It just makes your side look bad!” Fuck that cowardice. Nobody ever won their rights by being polite.
“strip you of your rights and protections as citizen of this country”?
I think it’s good that we make a decision to allow transgender people in restrooms of their gender, but you can’t just walk in and declare that that is a fundamental civil right. The burden is on you to explain that. So no, don’t get angry, because that only makes things worse. You’re in new territory here, so don’t act like you should be able to just walk in and win the debate and anyone who doesn’t agree, or, hey, just needs some time to let it sink in, is a hateful bigot to be bashed. Not everyone who is uncomfortable with this, or simply disagrees, is motivated by hatred or bigotry, and getting angry isn’t going to help you reach those people, it will only make them shut you out.
Been teaching-when the fuck is the learning going to start? After all the conversations, facts and cites given, Damuri Ajashi, an active participant who supposedly has been asking questions to gain knowledge, still claims to be among the ignorant on this matter. My dear friends who have been verbally assaulted and physically abused to the point of hospitalization have already bourn their share of the burden-it’s not their turn any more.