You’re a great poster too. I just hate the moderation that happened in that thread and I think @YWTF is getting a raw deal.
In my experience, YWTF has been very good at contextualizing these statements as part of a traditional female-specific biological/medical context and possibly with respect to participation in women’s sports. I recall nothing indicating any sort of discriminatory bias or transphobia.
As explained above by the mod, the topic ban was aimed at reducing the perceived frequency and hyper-focus on the subject, not because of any expressed or implied bigotry.
She has made thoughtful and well-documented posts. But she’s presented the same handful of links in an awful lot of places, and often it’s not on topic.
I need to apologize because I took her bait in that thread, and I posted a lot of off-topic material, too. But the topic was “how have things changed”, and she bent it into “oh noes, people are operating on children”. The vast majority of trans people are not children, and the vast majority of gender confirmation surgery is performed on adults, and we’ve spent a lot of pixels arguing about transgender children in the past. It would be nice if a transgender discussion could focus on other issues. And it is certainly my impression that she has pulled other trans discussions in the same direction many times.
I support the topic ban at least for a while.
(To be clear, I am just a poster on great debates, it’s not a forum that I moderate, and I was not part of the email discussion among the great debates mods.)
We worked together to discuss the best path forward and I’m sorry you hate the moderation.
It is true. These threads read very much like the “rational racist” threads used to read (with some of the same arguments! which makes it even more deja-vu-y). It would be nice to get some better ground rules around the topic rather than having to wade through the transphobia for over a decade.
I agree with this. And the topic ban was specifically for derailing threads. Seems totally in line with what’s been done in the past with posters who just can’t help themselves when it comes to certain issues.
Not even when she belittled another trans poster’s history with suicide?
Based on some responses, it’s clear that many posters don’t bother to read the cites. So repetition may be excused. Also, this is not a subject that tolerates much in the way of dissenting opinion by trans advocates. Assuming researchers aren’t looking to gain support from bigots, it should not be surprising that few of them are eager for the kind of negative attention this often draws.
I’m super confused. Explain to me how a discussion of the current medical approaches for helping gender dysphoric children is NOT a relevant part of the “how things have changed” conversation?
Twenty years ago, few people were seriously pushing for puberty blockers in children and mastectomies for teenagers. Now people are seriously pushing for these things, despite the lack of studies documenting their long-term effects. This is the direct result of the sweeping cultural shifts regarding transgenderism.
So our approach to transitioning kids is very much relevant to the topic. To take this topic off the table is to severely and artificially constrain the discussion so that the only reasonable answer to the OP’s question is “OF COURSE EVERYTHING IS BETTER NOW!” I guess that makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy inside, but it’s not a debate. It’s what you expect from a damn echo chamber, not a forum called Great Debates.
If you can point me to it, I’ll provide you with my take on it. But probably not in this thread as it doesn’t seem like the time or place to rehash it.
monstro, as I said in my TLDR post above, over a 1000 posts on this subject, dwarfing the rest of her posts looks like obsession. That alone is a decent reason for a topic ban.
Her posts along with a lot of others in the most recent thread were mostly off-topic.
You may be confused because you didn’t engage with this part of my post:
That topic, which has been extensively discussed in the past, was sucking the air out of any other aspect of the discussion.
That is 100% correct. Not in this thread please. It had nothing to do with our decision as I don’t think any of us were aware of it anyway.
It seems like every transgender thread eventually leads to “but what about the children” from YWTF, “but what about the term ‘woman’” from monstro, and “what about sports” from QuickSilver. No matter what the original topic, we always end up there. The fact that YWTF brings cites (the same ones ad nauseum) doesn’t change that. We can’t have a discussion without addressing the same points over and over. As others said, it’s exhausting.
Even threads that are not about transgender . . . like this one.
Perhaps it’s because we all agree that “trans-people are people” and should be treated as such, no more, no less, outside of some marginal areas that bare some scrutiny. Have I or any of the posters you mentioned ever lead you to believe otherwise?
Based on some responses, it’s clear that many posters don’t bother to read the cites.
A lot of her cites were posted in direct response to requests for cites. Yes, she posted a bunch of times, but that’s because people were asking her for fucking cites and–the horror!–she obliged them.
Her only crime, from what I can tell, is that she challenged posters on their positions. Challenging posters on their positions, as long as it is done respectfully, should be 100% allowable in Great Debates.
No, her “not a crime” was helping to derail 4 Transgender threads with over 1000 posts. That is what triggered a topic ban.
Not her position. Hell, I don’t know much of anything on this subject. I don’t have an opinion of her opinions.
So we’re penalizing people based on how many posts they generate now? Even if those “1000 posts” were in a thread that lasted multiple months and was a free-flowing discussion covering a range of topics?
Because that’s what it sounds like you’re saying. It sounds like you’re penalizing @YWTF because there was once a thread where she posted a lot and she said some things that some people didn’t like.
If you were afraid of the most recent thread transforming into another messy thread, you could have blown your fucking whistle and said, “Let’s get back to the OP, folks! No more discussion about kids and surgeries [or whatever topic you think she was derailing the thread with].” I still wouldn’t like this decision because I don’t agree that YWTF was derailing the conversation. But at least it would make some fucking sense and at least it would be consistent with how other controversial posters have been dealt with in the past.
It just feels like @YWTF is being singled out for no good reason.
I linked to 4 threads. I gave details. There are probably more threads for all I know. These were the ones I found. It appears 99% of her posts since we switch to discourse have been on one subject. This is why we have topic bans.
She’s not being singled out. She was acting like an astroturfer or someone obsessed. Either way, it would be best for her to not post in these threads for at least awhile.
And again, She can come back to us in a few weeks and we’ll probably remove the ban and then it is up to her to stay on-topic.
You know, in theory this should be fairly minor. No warning was issues. No suspensions. Just one specific topic she needs to stay out of for now.
Around 2008 when I couldn’t resist taking the bait from Climate Change deniers, if I was given a topic ban, I’m sure I would have been mad about it but I also would have kept up my other interests on the board.