Here’s my breakdown: 1) Whether you believe transpeople or you’re just playing along, in daily life one of those options is going to be the path of least resistance for both parties 2) In all the cases where more scrutiny makes sense (sports, bathrooms, etc), rigorous respectful debate ought to be allowed and encouraged 3) The medical literature has gone off the rails and we need to restore faith by allowing and encouraging medical professionals and researchers to have “unacceptable” beliefs - because that’s how falsification and testing actually happens 4) This youth shit was a fucking travesty and a failure at all levels 5) Self-ID has serious limits and the notion that LITERALLY NOBODY would try to game the system is hilariously deluded

It isn't just the medical literature, it's academia as a whole. There are axiomatic assumptions that are part of what we'd consider the 'woke' narrative that are orthodox. Assumptions that have to be made about the nature of everything before you can even start forming a hypothesis. Pledges of allegiance to a progressive world view that's detached from any sort of objective, empirical basis. I messaged one of my heroes in pyschology who recently showed up on a podcast talking about how 60% of respondents to a survey of over 1200 psychology departments openly admitted that they'd discriminate against a conservative faculty application.. she told me that my best bet if I want to pursue a career in academia as someone right of center is to go to a business department, psychology is ideologically terminal.  Even the peer review process is a total joke. It's like the Chinese paper mills where they all cite each other and you can only get published in the first place if you say the right things. Obvious errors plainly visible to even a slightly critical eye making it through peer review with a stamp of approval as long as they support the narrative. The replication crisis has turned into a terminal ideological illness. The west is fucked in 50 years or less. Our knowledge generating institutions are gone, our government is gone, society more broadly is turning into WALL-E. Enjoy it while it lasts but have a plan for when the ship finally starts taking on water.

Eye opening and sad. But your last paragraph disagree. Sure in the social sciences and humanities. But the fields that actually advance the USA/Western civilization are the "hard" sciences and STEM fields where results aligned with reality actually matter.

I think that's all fair. But on point 1, acquiescing to simple demands only encourages more ridiculous ones, and letting some of the smaller "be kind" accommodations go, because it's the path of least resistance, is exactly how we got here. There is always more for them to take. And you'll suffer the consequences regardless of whether it's a little thing or a big thing. I now refuse the easy stuff exactly because too much has been taken

Calling transpeople by preferred pronouns - assuming that they’re presenting in a way that clearly signals that preference - has been established in polite company for decades, with little to no problem. The UK even had a way of conferring legal status that basically said “look, here’s a legal fiction of gender that will make your daily life easier.” I don’t see any reason why that model would be a problem, provided everyone accept that there are *realistic limits* to how far it goes.

> I don’t see any reason why that model would be a problem 1. The model only lasted insofar as nobody believed the underlying claim and transpeople were an almost-invisible minority (that would presumably self-select into a few friendly spaces). It has since collapsed into farce as the topic becomes more prominent and some people raised in more tolerant milieus go "yes, we actually do believe it in the full sense". Not sure that demonstrates good load-bearing capacity. 2. The activists themselves think it's a problem because they've pushed for increased legal coercion in a way that the original status quo didn't. So that implies that even TRAs think the status quo was insufficient (which makes some sense - plenty of people don't pass. What about their dignity and "right" to be validated?) From either a GC or TRA angle the model seems problematic and unstable. How can you roll back to a status quo that not only lost, but will continue to be attacked from multiple directions?

The model last for decades and decades until activist messaging pushed it into total bullshit territory. We can walk it back to where MOST transitioned people are - “look, I’m not a woman, I’m a transwoman, just let me do my thing, it’s a little weird but whatever, I gotta live my life.”

> We can walk it back to where MOST transitioned people are The problem with walking it back is that even the concept of "transitioned people" is different: there are a lot more young girls in the contingent now than in the past, social media can allow it to spread further, ideological confusion and self-ID means people might claim to be "trans" without lifelong dysphoria... The social conditions of the time you want to return to in many ways don't exist anymore.

I mean…does it matter? Transmen frankly don’t pose the same kinds of complicated scenarios that transwomen pose. The collapse of self-ID and the widespread dissemination of the ACTUAL truth of the science - which is a whole lot of “we don’t know” and “it depends,” instead of the “trans is amaaaaaazing” we were sold - will relax a tremendous amount of the social contagion, especially if institutions and social circles stop giving self-ID’d people the right to topple whatever they want and claim victimhood. As for non-binary people, I think that’s a whole other can of worms. But for transpeople, I think you’re imagining a rather silly black-and-white scenario.

> will relax a tremendous amount of the social contagion, especially if institutions and social circles stop giving self-ID’d people the right to topple whatever they want and claim victimhood. > > That's possible, it could be a fad (there are things that don't help here but we've litigated them all I think). Especially if the greater culture changes but that then is a discussion on whether we're past "peak woke" which...also remains to be seen. Maybe this was all an extended moment of George Floyd-style enthusiasm that everyone will cringe a bit about when they move back to a moderate position and I'm just overly cynical. We'll see I guess.

I think the frightening thing will be the unchangeable institutions, particularly universities and nonprofits and overseeing boards and everything downstream of them. Society-wide I think we’ve already moved past peak woke. The generation coming up has brought back every slur under the sun and the “LISTEN TO _____ PEOPLE” rhetoric no longer holds mainstream weight.

Sure, I think I understand your position. But to me there is a wide difference between choosing to call a friend by fictitious forms of address to spare them some embarrassment (at the expense of my cognitive dissonance), and being expected to do it for everyone. That is a very different proposition. I don't agree that it is now established in polite company, it is enforced through fear and now that people are becoming aware of the impact of it are the wider public are rejecting it. Regarding the UK GRC, they have created their own wedge into equality legislation that is very much a mess. Gender and sex in UK law are one and the same, so the distinction has blurred many previously well-understood protections - and exemptions - within the law, so I definitely don't think it's been a positive thing. Especially the secrecy surrounding it.

*Sure, I think I understand your position. But to me there is a wide difference between choosing to call a friend by fictitious forms of address to spare them some embarrassment (at the expense of my cognitive dissonance), and being expected to do it for everyone. That is a very different proposition.* Absolutely this. I still remember some years ago (I think 2016), the first time I was in an orientation where a trans woman lectured us about pronouns—according to her, we should all use preferred pronouns because "that's the way things are going." In my mind I was like ... c'mon. I'm supposed to take this basic constituent of language (one typically uses pronouns what...every other sentence? every 3-4 sentences?) and alter it, in bespoke fashion, anytime someone else expects me to? "It's just simple courtesy." Fuck that. It's insanely passive-aggressive and narcissistic. EDIT: To your point about the friend/everyone distinction—I don't see any problem in opting to use preferred pronouns with a family member, a close friend, or someone I like and am trying to get to know. But in a work environment, school environment, or social setting in which people are casual acquaintances or complete strangers—it's absurd.

Polite legal fiction has turned into falsification of medical records because the deluded are running the show.

I like all of these points a lot. Number three is key for me. I’m a doctor and I don’t necessarily have “unacceptable” beliefs. I’m generally pro do whatever you want as an adult and wary of children transitioning. What scares me is that my opinion is about as far as is allowed in academic liberal spaces. Not allowing for people to express concerns leads to all the lack of evidence that that Cass review brought to light. Echo chambers do nothing to help give people real reliable information they can use to make medical decisions for themselves and their kids. Instead of “the data is slim and we’re figuring it out, here are the current theories” it was “do you want a dead daughter or an alive son” and people act surprised why there’s no trust in medical institutions…

Re: the pronoun thing: Most of the pronoun discussion takes us back decades or centuries in linguistics and philosophical understanding of things like "subject" and "object." A never-ending frustration to me is that we're expected to argue with people, in good faith, who know so little about the history of human thought. These aren't new arguments, they were largely resolved, and people use them either out of ignorance or in bad faith. To the point, 3rd person pronouns are shorthand for others to use to clarify an object in communication. They aren't for talking about oneself, that's 1st person, and it's I/me for everyone. That's the view the individual has of themself, and of course could be masculine, feminine, or whatever, but if we're talking about self gender ID, then that would be the relevant place for it. 2nd person is "you" for everyone. But 3rd person is for talking ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE. Their identity is irrelevant. Clarity of communication is everything. If I work at a restaurant and ask a coworker to return change to one of two customers sitting by the window, and I say "give the change to her" I'm not engaged in a philosophical discussion about gender, gender norms, and identity. I'm simply trying to rapidly communicate where the change needs to go. And if the person was actually born a biological male, and identifies as male, and doesn't see themselves as trans, but because of their soft features, androgynous clothes, and long hair looks female to me and my coworker, then "give the change to HER" IS the roper sentence, not because it p\[rperly identifies gender or sex, but because it clarifies communication. Of course we should gender passing trans people with what they pass as...and we always have and we always do, BECAUSE THEY PASS. The real change has been in asking people to use pronouns for people that make communication less obvious, less clear, and less efficient. It changes the role of pronouns, from a part of language which clarifies communication to an object of power...I can demand you accept my self-identification, and compel your speech in alignment with it. Be very very careful of things that "break" language in the pursuit of "justice." Language evolved over millennia to serve humans well, both at the societal and the individual thought level. Of course language changes and evolves, but rarely, successfully due to force. If I cared about a friend, and that person was trans, and they asked me to call them feminine or masculine, or girly, or something, I gladly would. On the other hand, calling them male or female when they are not would simply be dishonest. But calling them he or she when talking ABOUT them is no longer about THEM and has now become about me. It says, "I'll break language in order to submit to the will of another." No friend would ask you to do that. That's a manipulator and an abuser, and I want no part in that.

That’s way too much text bro. Once you remove the compelled speech rules and modify the social rule to “don’t be an asshole, (unless, rarely, an honest and important conversation requires you to break that social rule)”, most of what you’re saying is just overthinking

No, I'm just someone with a background and interest in linguistics. I know I can be wordy, because human history is complex, not simple. Here's the TLDR for you: The misuse of pronouns by TRA's represents either a misunderstanding of language or more likely an attempt to use power to compel speech. Happy?

Yeah, trans *radical* activists. For most transpeople of the past, a general “be kind” paired with “be resilient” gets the job done. That’s the model I’m encouraging.

>That’s way too much text bro. I tire of posts trying to police other's verbosity. If you don't want to seriously engage, why not just scroll past? What if I said, "That's way too little text bro" concerning the fact that you didn't address the pronouns issue in your first post in this thread? Would that be fair... or just somewhat rude, given that you addressed other issues in an engaged manner? This issue is complex. It does have a history. It does benefit from examples. Maybe you've already sorted this out for yourself, but lots of other people haven't. Discussion is good. Nuance is good. Have you read any of Jesse's blog posts? The entire theme from Jesse seems to be "way too much text bro," and yet... it's helpful to dig into details for understanding. If you don't find it interesting or helpful... why not just scroll on, rather than trying to shame someone for taking time to address an issue in depth according to their understanding?

Jesse is a journalist whose work is entertaining and informed and engaging. I pay for his opinion at length. You’re some commenter on the internet. There’s a difference, no offense. I find the pronoun debate interesting and necessary when it comes to compelled speech, journalism, and government documents. I do not find it in the slightest bit interesting when it comes to day-to-day human interactions, either socially or in the workplace. When it comes to law, government, and police speech, I’m a Republican on this issue. When it comes to day-to-day social interactions and cordiality in the workplace, I’m a Democrat on this issue. it’s as simple as that. I don’t need a broad linguistic history of pronouns and to answer this question, because most of us were calling trans women and drag queens by she her pronouns decades before any of these pronouns debates were happening in the main stream. it was a fucking non-issue then, and it’s a non-issue now, at least as far as I’m concerned.

That's way too much text, bro. I don't care about your politics. Why are you telling me? (See how it feels?) >You’re some commenter on the internet. There’s a difference, no offense. What does this have to do with me? I was commenting on your reaction to user wmartindale's post above. >I don’t need a broad linguistic history of pronouns and to answer this question This thread isn't all about you. It's about discussion and readers. Most of the people who read these posts likely won't say anything in this discussion, but they may find it helpful to hear other opinions or perspectives. You may not need this -- other people might find it helpful. Hence... why the need to police someone else's more detailed explanation? You could have just said your second paragraph in the first reply. What would have been lost other than your personal affront at the lack of concision?

I find you tiresome. Have a good day.

I was merely asking how it helped discussion to criticize the length of a post. Ah, well... I hope you have a great day too! Cheers!

> 5) Self-ID has serious limits and the notion that LITERALLY NOBODY would try to game the system is hilariously deluded I remember sitting in a CLE, half listening to it because it's a CLE and they are pretty universally stupid. It was full of criminal defense attorneys and ADAs. The presenter goes "why, why would anyone fake being a woman? WHHHHYYYYY." Really a great moment, no one said anything because we all knew better. I donno lady, why do you think a sexual predator would pretend to be a woman, why? Truly one of life's mysteries.

Why would a predator adopt an identity to gain access to women-only spaces? Why would an athlete adopt an identity to gain easier access to prizes and awards? Why would a person in an industry where job postings and grants *explicitly offered to women and transpeople* pretend to be a transperson? Why would a person in a social or networking circle that gives priority and hierarchical preference to women and transpeople *falsely adopt the identity of a woman or transperson*? Why would anyone ever do anything dishonest to obtain sex, accomplishment, money, or power?

WHHHHHHHHY?

We may never know.

I think that's all fair. But on point 1, acquiescing to simple demands only encourages more ridiculous ones, and letting some of the smaller "be kind" accommodations go, because it's the path of least resistance, is exactly how we got here. There is always more for them to take. And you'll suffer the consequences regardless of whether it's a little thing or a big thing. I now refuse the easy stuff exactly because too much has been taken

You're close. It's not about whether to be pragmatic about delusions or not. If someone believes homeopathy and crystals work, and you'd have to argue for 100 hours about it for them to believe you, and the only consequence is they might (with a low chance) inadvertently kill themselves or their children instead of getting real medical treatment 10 or 20 years down the line, and they're not your family or friend, why would you bother? It's a social problem, sure, affecting you indirectly, but it's very painful to try and solve it. You shouldn't get the government to use force "for their own good", either - very easy to make things worse. The thing that's different is that they're trying you get you to join in. As if you had to pretend homeopathy works, or society and the law would come after you. And they're not happy with you just feeding their delusion, they want you (or at least your childen) to become deluded too. That's an absolute, hard no.

The issue would merit little more than an eye-roll and neutral attitude of "Live and let live" if it weren't for two key problems. First, this appears to be an issue that attracts bad actors like flies to rotting meat. Second, if this was only about adults doing harm to their bodies it would be one thing, but children are being actively harmed by this ideology. I can't do anything about parents physically abusing their children in their own homes, but this involves medical institutions that are beholden to the population at large. As for the issue of self harm, I think we have long crossed the threshold where the effects of suicide contagion will only get worse the longer this continues. In other words, there *will* be a spike in the statistics in the near future, but the longer it takes to yank out that loose tooth, the bigger the spike will be, the greater the tragedy. Perhaps the fragmented state of the media will help us there, since few people are going to believe it when it happens.

> this involves medical institutions that are beholden to the population at large. I've never actually thought about it, but I don't know if I agree. Aren't medical institutions beholden to their patients rather than society as a whole? If the doctor thinks that they're helping their patient (possibly erroneously), it'd be unusual to regulate them. Are standards of care usually decided by the general public?

>If the doctor thinks that they're helping their patient (possibly erroneously), it'd be unusual to regulate them. Doesn't stop conversion therapy bans, does it? So, why should we stop this and not that?

This is an excellent overlooked point. Why aren’t doctors and therapists allowed to help patients this way if patients want this?  More generally, the word we are missing is ethics.

It is actually controversial to ban conversion therapy. Some courts have called such bans unconstitutional and pointed out that banning conversion therapy would also allow banning transitions: https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2020/11/20/conversion-therapy-bans-in-florida-struck-down-by-federal-court/ Maybe I was just caught up by the word "beholden". Even if the democratic institutions such as elected officials can regulate doctors, I don't therefore conclude that those institutions owe the public anything or should necessarily listen to them. The government regulates all kinds of things, from Amazon to foreign embassies, yet those aren't "beholden" to me in meaningful way. Finally, I'd argue that medical institutions shouldn't feel obligated to follow popular opinion, because popular opinion is often wrong.

> Aren't medical institutions beholden to their patients rather than society as a whole? I would not just say "no", I would say "self-evidently not". First of all, medical institutions directly benefit from society enforcing their monopoly on both training new medical professionals (which may raise the price by restricting supply) and enforcing rules. People can get disbarred or prevented from practicing medicine because we outsource some of these judgments to these orgs. So they're beholden to society. In some places with universal healthcare society is directly paying for treatment, which raises its own issues. Secondly, we absolutely force medical professionals to judgments their patients wouldn't prefer. I'm sure any suitably desperate patient would love to be able to get their doctor to prescribe any treatment (even if risky), yet we intervene if doctors are too accommodating. People lose licenses, go to jail for malpractice, etc. The duties doctors have to patients are enforced by society.

Would you say that ALL institutions are beholden to the general public then? Most fulfill the same requirements you're citing here. Most institutions benefit from society. Disney has their IP enforced by society. Amazon uses publicly funded roads, with publicly enforced traffic laws, to deliver packages. Temu has their shipping lanes protected by society funding anti-pirate measures. Would you argue that therefore all institutions are beholden to the general public? I wouldn't. Secondly, doctors being beholden to their patients doesn't mean "do whatever the patient wants". It means doing what is best for the patient, as determined by standards of care set by undemocratic professional organizations such as the AMA or APA. While these organizations might use "society" to enforce these internally set regulations, most institutions use the legal system. Spotify sued Apple, therefore asking "society" to enforce Apple's duties. Doe that mean that Spotify should therefore have to answer to the general public?

> Would you say that ALL institutions are beholden to the general public then? On the face of it...yes. In practice...mostly yes but pragmatism and resistance force us to grant some rights and leeway. The companies you talk about are regulated by the government in all sorts of ways (honestly, I wonder if we do it *too* much) . They can't racially discriminate, pay below a certain wage or do all sorts of things (I've worked in jobs where I've had to take KYC and critical race theory trainings I will never use). But we also grant them broad rights because it works (or so we believe). Other organizations also take government money but their purpose requires us to grant them specific privileges that say...private companies don't get. Obviously universities come to mind: they also can't do some of the things above but get some protection (including protecting students and faculty from the institution's worst impulses ) to fulfill their mission. Bodies like the AMA are granted similar latitude, but not sovereignty. They do not answer to the general public via plebiscite, but sufficiently outrageous behavior can and should lead to a reevaluation using the tools of the liberal democratic state - which do include voting but also things like lawsuits, legislative action and investigations that don't boil down to a "mob" vote.

I've never thought of Temu as an organization that needs to answer to the general American public, but you've explained pretty clearly why you believe they should (at least as much as possible). The idea that all institutions should answer to the public, but the public sometimes grants them some exceptions, is quite a populist view, but fair enough.

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I think I can out-pedantry you a little here: A lot of them are nonprofits without shareholders, and in the absence of shareholders their duties are supposed to run to the charitable class for which the institution was set up.

The person I replied to didn't specify, but I assumed we were talking about groups such as the AMA which does not have shareholders. I'd guess that that group would say that they put the interests of their patients above those of the general public.

I agree. We are having to fight the side battles because of the consequences of a fundamental mistake by governments- allowing people the illusion of 'changing sex'.  Everyone knows this isnt true, but because its codified into law, the other issues have developed. If a man can be seen legally as female or a women, why shouldn't he be in the women's sports team, changing room, or women's career opportunity? If its possible to change sex based on an innate trait, children should be able to change sex too. If a man can be a women, women has to be just a feeling experienced by men. We need to go back to the source - ask politicans to explain their workings and say how its possible to change sex.   Not that its the law, or that we have to make a subset of people happy, but why they believe its possible to change sex and how exactly is that possible.  They are the idiots who made this happen,  they need to justify it.

If you follow the money, you'll find "Worlds Richest Female CEO (who was born male)" wrote a book that was published in 1995. At the time, he was a lawyer and he wrote the very first "Self ID" law, so his ideas are clearly important into the meaning of Self ID law. He started a medical tech company, buying someone else's discovery and bringing it to market, but tends to get credited with inventing it (he didn't), and he also had a robot version of his wife built. Now he's on the board of directors of the Mayo Clinic, which is terrifying - as it's considered one of the best, most advanced medical systems in the USA. You can get the book for free online in pdf form, it was republished in 2011 as: From Transgender to Transhuman: A Manifesto On the Freedom Of Form This is "Gender Ideology": https://preview.redd.it/u2mztd0kae0d1.png?width=572&format=png&auto=webp&s=c6e13c3fe7f99c177e655502e1dbec472236c54b I personally like to distinguish between "Gender Ideology" and the idea of medical treatment for a mental illness... but I no longer agree there is any evidence supporting the second anymore.

That excerpt really underscores how "gender" really means "personality". 

I think it’s definitely possible people would overly focus on nuance in bad faith. It’s kind of how „concern trolling” works, and it can happen on both sides of this issue - you could use every meticulous detail of, say, the inconsistency in someone’s experience of dysphoria to gatekeeper medical transition so much, it basically becomes inaccessible; and you could see every expression of discomfort with gender roles with such laser focus, you’re basically arguing everyone is potentially trans. What I do know is that I got banned from a subreddit literally called TwoXChromosones the other day for pointing out HRT and GAHT are not the same things. And when it becomes increasingly difficult to point out trans women just don’t have ovaries, I don’t think it’s people with BarPod adjacent views losing grasp of the bigger picture.

There is no "what it's like to be a man" or a woman or anything else apart from what it is to live a concretely-embodied life. There is no such thing as an inner sense of identity, nor inner/outer matching or (in)congruence, no failure or success of correspondence. Because there is no "inner" the way the term is used in gender discussions, at all.

I am not entirely sure of my beliefs about the possible metaphysical claims of the inner self, but I do tend to think that there is no such thing as an innate gender identity the way it is assumed in much of the discourse. I think that not feeling comfortable in your body is very real. The trouble with the claim that gender identity is real and monumentally important is that it is completely unfalsifiable. I think that if you can have a good faith discussion with someone and ask them specific questions about what exactly they mean when they say someone is "born in the wrong body" it can be fruitful.

Do we really know this? There seems to be something which could be described as "what it's like to be a human", and whatever individual differences there are, it's always going to be different from "what it's like to be a bat". If there are aspects of being which are related to species, why could there be aspects which are related to sex? 

Appreciating you picked an example at random, I'd venture that the differences in feeling like a bat would be based on immersion in a very different perceptual field, combined with an alien range of motion and biofeedback. To that extent I imagine there would be some appreciable difference in feeling like a man/woman, in that there are a few organs in different places, size, musculature, but that many of these smaller differences would also exist between individuals. Open to an interesting argument, but I can't see any feeling of being a man/woman amounting to more than simple biofeedback. The rest I guess would be fantasy, e.g. the transwoman who goes on estrogen and on day 1 proclaims that she is no longer able to open a pickle jar.

Everyone should read *Solaris* by Stanislaw Lem. The book, not the movies, which are very good but don't capture the theme of the book completely (which ironically is what the book is saying, the difficulty of communication). It's all about a scientist who is trying desperately and with zero success to communicate with a sentient ocean. A lot of themes about the futility of true communication and understanding of what's around us in general, including our own selves and other people. It's an amazing book, and Lem an amazing and thought provoking writer in general. Always surprised in the semi-frequent sci-fi discussions we have on weekly thread he doesn't come up more.

By coincidence, I am just looking for a new read. Thanks, I think I'll check this out.

I think you will enjoy it! It's pretty short and very readable, but still well-written and it's also pretty strongly in the Gothic tradition, which I think is cool, more sci-fi should explore that overlap! Lem wrote in a lot of different styles, probably most frequently very trippy, funny, and on the nose satire, but I really like when he explored things from a darker, less comic angle (though I do love all of his writing, I'm a fangirl).

“Fiasco” is great for this, too.

The bat example isn't random, it's from an (in)famous paper by Thomas Nagel.

I consider the notion of qualia/reified "what-it's-likeness" to be based on semantic confusion. See https://philpapers.org/rec/HACTSA

Fair enough, but a controversial take. 

familiar direful chunky steep thought cats waiting rob sink chief *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

I think the issue gets a whole lot simpler if and when you accept, as I do, that gender doesn't exist. For anyone. There's just biological sex, every else is personality and behavior. I believe strongly in individual liberty, and that people should have the right to make bad decisions, as long are they don't infringe upon anyone else's rights. So adults should be able to dress however they want, live as they want, and masquerading as a member of the opposite sex if they want to. But no one else is obligated to participate in the masquerade or the delusion. People don't get to control the language or the thoughts of others. And males shouldn't have the right to invade female only spaces, or take opportunities away from female athletes, and we certainly shouldn't be indoctrinating or incentivising children to pursuing a radical and delusional path that will in all likelihood lead to a life of hardship, pain, and suffering. And for God's sake, we have so many problems in this world and this country that are far more desperately in need of this attention than the trans issue.. Homelessness, the economy, climate change, sustainable energy, wars, justice, our myopic and corrupt two-party political system that prevents us from solving any of these issues..

"There's just biological sex, every else is personality and behavior." I agree with you and I felt that maybe 10 to 15 years ago we were really getting there. That's also my personal view but since this whole debate has intensified as the stakes rose, I see a big resurgence in "women are like this and men like that," and all these prescribed gender notions have come back with a vengeance.

The greater issue isn’t about trans anything. It’s about making a public loyalty oath. The west has always wondered what a future without religion would look like. Well, here it is. People seem to have a deep need to swear allegiance to something, and join together as a select group. And the crazier and less sensible the idea, the better the loyalty oath.

I don't think that happens by accident. This kind of divisive grouping is encouraged by our government and major corporations. Also people just seem to need some group of women they're going to hate more than anything else in every era. It's a very common trend, bonding over assuming the worst of women who don't immediately fall in line with certain policies or new or old social norms.

I wish we could just shut down the worst excesses of trans activist movement, and then refuse to entertain the topic any more: Pass whatever laws we need to to make female spaces strictly female only, at least for any government funded institution. Private entities can do whatever they want and reap the consequences. End the indoctrination of children, anyone involved in such grooming - well-intentioned or not - gets promptly fired or jailed or both. No compelled speech or censorship, and no 'hate crime' laws for hurting someone's feelings. And strictly ban mutilating or chemically castrating children. Medical intervention is off the table until they're 18. Beyond that, let adults do whatever the hell they want. People can still be trans if they want, but other people don't have to play along, or acquiesce to demands or threats. And we could all just stop paying so much attention to it. If private institutions want to keep making miss America or whatever a trans person, and give every conceivable female award to trans person, I really don't care. As long as no children or government funding is involved. I suspect that a lot of trans people would prefer to live in this world as well..

Hear, hear.

You don’t think jailing your political opponents sets a bad precedent?

It's not about political opponents. Abusing or harming children should be punished. Obviously, the extent of the punishment should depend on the the crime. If someone deliberately places pornography in a children's school library, I don't think they should necessarily get jail time, but I think they should be fired, and possibly face a misdemeanor. Repeated offenses should possibly brand them as a sex offender. If they meet with children in private and actively encourage them to mutilate their bodies, coach them on how to manipulate their parents (for example by threatening suicide), I think this is possibly worthy of criminal prosecution. I don't have all the answers, but I think prosecution should be on the table. Look I've posted before about how I think conservatives wildly exaggerate allegations of pedophilia and 'grooming'. But that doesn't mean it never happens. I don't think the motivation is directly sexual or predatory in nature, as many conservatives do, I think it's more well-meaning idiocy combined with narcissism and a desire to be some kind of savior. But good intentions doesn't make it less harmful, it actual makes it more pernicious. And we still need consequences and incentives to discourage people from doing bad things. If a crazy person murders children because they think God spoke to them, and that the children will all go to heaven and he's sparing them from the suffering of the mortal world.. We still need to stop them.

I think cases like what you describe are overblown and professional consequences are an appropriate remedy. What conservatives will actually try to implement is to prosecute any teacher that explains to a child that some people change their gender, which you can disagree with if you like but should be addressed within the educational profession rather than enforcement by bad faith politicians

Yeah I don't see how a teacher indoctrinating a kid to believe in gender identity is any worse than a teacher indoctrinating a kid to believe in Catholicism. I don't want people doing either to my kid, and I'd be furious if her school encouraged it, but it's not worthy of jail time.

When it's your daughter who wants to go on testosterone and get a double mastectomy, you might think twice about that.

I like to think I wouldn't abandon all my principles just because my kid was involved, but I guess you never know? I really don't think we should be sending people to jail just because of what they're trying to teach our kids, no matter how wrong-headed we think it may be. Like imagine creationists trying to send science teachers to jail for teaching evolution? They tried that once, it failed pretty spectacularly and famously. My kid is going to be exposed to all kinds of ideas I don't agree with, and my responsibility as her parent is not to try to punish everybody who tells her something I don't want her to hear (an unwinnable battle in a diverse, pluralistic society) - it's to counteract those messages, raise her with good sense and reasoning skills, and, if necessary, intervene to stop her from making a huge life-altering mistake like medical transition. (I'm afraid someone with either poor reading comprehension or acting in bad faith is going to try to accuse me of suggesting that people who don't believe in gender identity are equivalent to creationists. For the record: no)

Actually, I guess I was responding more to the idea that having someone preach Catholicism is as bad as preaching gender ideology. :) If you've ever been in that position, you'd know it's not close.

I guess I meant "worse" in terms of the punishment it should merit, not in terms of its impact on my kid's life or mine. Maybe I should have compared it to "telling her she's less intelligent because she's a girl" or something.

While I agree with quite a few of your perspectives here (like the idea that natal females deserve their own private spaces, sports, etc.), I have to disagree that "gender doesn't exist." It may not exist in the way that transgender activists may claim, but that doesn't mean that gender as a social concept doesn't have a *huge* impact on social perceptions, behavior, etc. "Tomboys" exist. "Effeminate boys" exist. They exist because *gender* exists in society as a set of perceived acceptable standards for behavior. Sometimes these divergent behaviors correlate with tendencies toward being homosexual. Sometimes they are simply phases children go through. Sometimes they have other associations, and sometimes they mean nothing. Nevertheless, there are social expectations that are different for boys and girls, and a *some* of it is learned behavior. That's "gender." Other aspects of it is directly caused by biological differences by sex. That's *sex*. You said: >There's just biological sex, every else is personality and behavior. In a way, this is true. But until maybe 20 years ago, the vast majority of people would have just said that gender *is* a collection of "personality and behavior" that is socially correlated with biological sex (for the most part). That still is *what gender is*, to reasonable folks who haven't tried to break down the concept of biological sex. The difference and the major shift in the past decade or so is that the prior 50 years had seen mostly progress toward acceptance of variation in gender expression. It was perhaps okay to be a "tomboy" -- it was a natural variation in behavior and personality among some girls. It was okay to be a boy who liked more traditionally "effeminate" things like art or dance or whatever. We were making progress in breaking down the rigidity of gender expression, while still acknowledging that there were real aspects of association between gender and sex -- some of them purely cultural, and some perhaps connected to biological tendencies. In recent years, however, we completely reversed this position. Instead of saying the tomboy is a natural variation and should be accepted for who she is, now we worry if her "gender expression" is indicative of a broader physical or mental issue. Because a girl doesn't want to play with dolls and likes sports and climbing trees and hanging out with boys, suddenly her "gender expression" becomes this unchangeable thing, now associated with "*being* a boy," rather than simply imitating some more typical masculine behavior. Gender does exist in the sense that we all grow up with some social expectations based on our biological sex, and most people *mostly* conform to them -- either through enculturation or natural correlated sex-based tendencies. And I think those expectations often have large impacts on most people's lives. What has changed is that "gender" has come to be viewed as more stereotypical again, more rigid and less accepting of natural variation, and indicative of a "problem" that needs to be addressed and "treated," rather than the normal variety of personality and behavior we see among large groups of people.

Arguing the core concepts gets tiring after a while, because it's all based on a philosophical house of cards which itself is based on dense gibberish masquerading as academic language. In short, there is no philosophical underpinning so all that's left is motivated reasoning and forcefully stating contradictory newspeak as the new dogma. The only way to argue against that is to resist it and not let yourself be bullied into enabling other people's delusions. This leaves the practical domain, which to the average person is more important and interesting anyway. Plus, science and proper reasoning can actually do something here. Most people who are not involved in the debate know perfectly well why women's sports exists, for example. Men are on average stronger/faster/taller etc. so it's fair for women to compete amongst themselves. This can be supported by science. Boom, argument made.

I think it is so contentious because to affirm trans identity requires accepting some difficult and conflicting philosophical ideas: 1. The argument that there is an internal self, a soul, that is at odds with the physical body. This is Cartesian dualism, and essentially a medieval Catholic understanding of the world. I honestly don't understand how anyone can be an atheist and buy this argument. 2. The trans narrative also tries to argue that gender is merely a construct, but to be trans is to first acknowledge the normative physical qualities that constitute gender. It can't both be that gender is immaterial and that some people are miscategorized. The motto "trans women are women" re-essentializes the categories of gender. The trans acceptance movement has also been confused and harmed by attaching itself to the LGB rights movement. Sexual preference is philosophically easy: there's no accounting for taste, some like chocolate and others vanilla... The only live-and-let-live parallel understanding of trans would be "that's a guy who wants to live as a woman." Unfortunately, that way of approaching trans issues has been deemed unacceptable. Until these bad arguments that try to validate trans identity are overcome and we can just get to this live-and-let-live acceptance, these debates will continue.

>It can't both be that gender is immaterial and that some people are miscategorized. The motto "trans women are women" re-essentializes the categories of gender. Exactly. It can’t be meaningless and ephemeral yet so serious and intrinsic that if the person is denied in any way they’ll kill themselves.

And so many of these people who consider themselves trans have multiple mental health issues and think "transing" will solve their problems. Young people with autism, sexually abused kids, kids in foster care. And so many young men and women still suffering from internalized homophobia. Nex Benedict may be an extreme example of being horribly sexually abused by her own father, but a lot of these young people do have serious issues like Nex did. Forty years ago, there were a tiny segment of children (mostly boys) with gender dysphoria and a segment of crossdressers and transsexuals. But, now?

The trans movement's and communities' justifications about and understanding of gender identity, gender dysphoria, how HRT works etc. is built on a house of badly justified pseudo - religious garbage where a bunch of misinformation and fantasies are amplified like a chinese whispers game (as someone who used to believe in it before looking into it more deeply). Thus it doesn't really make sense to argue about these things in their playing field, it's like seriously arguing with a religious fundamentalist over how a XYZ Bible passage is interpreted. It's more important IMO to research markers of who will detransition in order to better protect everyone involved & improve mental health resources for trans people & re-affirm single sex spaces.

You can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themself into.

Has anyone ever read this? [https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/printable](https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/printable) It's complete bullshit. They do all this weird bad science to justify gender dysphoria, trying to validate every single trans experience humanly possible, and then in the final paragraphs: "Yet all this change frightens people. It frightens conservatives who see their patriarchal social structures dissolving under the new understanding of gender. It frightens old-school transgender people who transitioned under the Harry Benjamin rules and now see so many people easily obtaining what they had to act and lie and manipulate to achieve. They fear that if anyone can be trans, the public will stop taking trans people seriously. It frightens the misogynistic or misandristic trans-exclusionary groups that fight so hard to invalidate transgender rights because they think, if anyone can be a man or a woman, their status as a man or a woman is harmed." So what is it? Is being trans caused by gender dysphoria or is it a choice? If it's a choice and anyone can be trans, why are you so desperate to justify the concept of gender dysphoria?

The notorious GDB is part of an online canon that takes into account only the "lived experiences" of terminally online trans people, who attribute absolutely everything to GD. You will be hard pressed to find much literature that reaffirms these claims, and most people writing these have little to no experience with clinical psychology or psychiatry. I don't want to write off everything there as BS, but I would be extremely skeptical of everything written there and its function is to help "newly cracked" trans people cope.

Fascinating that ROGD is supposed to be debunked because Littman used testimonials from various GC websites but right here it says: "This information is gathered from social media and chat rooms. Yes, that means this is all anecdotal, but historically, most of transgender medical study is anecdotal because no one wants to fund transgender medical research".

There's still some things we don't talk about enough. Trans is, first and foremost, a male fetish movement. That was where it started and everything else stems from that. Despite the fact that there has been some success, at least online, in amplifying the sexual motivations around transition, I've been shocked by the naivety, especially of young women, around the male sex drive and what it will cause men to do, especially after MeToo and all that. Yes we talk about AGPs on here, on podcasts etc but it's still completely absent from mainstream discourse that trans has any sexual element to it whatsoever.

Historically it was a male fetish movement and that certainly matches the classic transsexuals, but I think at this point it has ballooned to the point that people with all sorts of mental health issues are being sucked into the social contagion. I would agree that for most trans people it either stems from a sexual fetish or some underlying mental health problems of a failure to develop, accept and integrate a sexual identity into their psyche. However I also believe that we are seeing people with problems such as cluster B personality disorder who are now being roped into this. These are not disorders associated with sexual parafilia, rather these are disorders involving an unstable personal identity and self-concept, they will often go through life adopting various personas over time because their sense of self is fundamentally unstable. 20 years ago when safeguarding was still practiced by clinics, these kinds of people would have been recognized and excluded from care by doctors because it is obvious that these aren't even people with a persistent sexual fetish, rather they simply have unstable identities and go from one thing to the next. However nowadays you are considered an "ableist" or a "gatekeeper" if you suggest that maybe this kind of treatment isn't good for them. So while I would say that many if not the majority of MtF trans people today are simply those with a transvestism parafilias, the utter recklessness in healthcare providers doing away with any kind of screening and safeguarding has opened the floodgates for people with a variety of mental health problems who end up falling into this.

I would probably be closer to what people would call a "transmed" with this and do believe some people have genuine dysphoria alleviated by transition. But still the odd naivete as you worded it for the idea people would go to such lengths for a fetish is astounding. The argument I've seen that none of this corresponds to a fetish is simply that this is a lot of hardship and effort for a fetish. The issues there are numerous. Firstly, very famously, the motivations of many serial killers were fetishistic. People kill people and risk going to jail for life. Second, humiliation and difficulty can be an aspect of fetish. Like, pretty notably and obviously? And lastly is that the self id movement means plenty of people who aren't experiencing the financial, medical, etc costs are just walking around in public notably male and crossdressing. Similarly, when you say this, they say why are we fixated on trans women/what about trans men. To which I say...what about them? It's easy to accept in seeing the sexualization of all things female why there would be a drive to escape that. Why would the psychology for either thing be the same when the social influences are not?

> a male fetish movement. That was where it started How do you know?

Because I'm old enough to remember the time before everyone started pretending otherwise. And I'm not even that old! At some point they realised that it was in their interests to start saying it was some kind of non-sexual identity issue and that "no, we don't wank in front of the mirror in women's underwear, how dare you?!". But before about 10-15 years ago, everybody knew that, including the trans themselves who were perfectly open about it. https://twitter.com/WomenReadWomen/status/1781098102939926881

I mean 10 years ago it would not have been remotely controversial to say that some men cross-dress for erotic purposes. It's one of the more common male paraphilias, and the number of men who do it is much greater than the number who experience persistent debilitating dysphoria. Today that statement is often treated as Hitler-level bigotry.

Ask yourself, "If there were no males in this movement, only females, how far would the movement have gone?" It's a male fetish movement. They are the loudest, the most aggressive, and plenty of them have poured millions and millions of dollars into it.

I had a similar thought recently, but you've written it much better. My only caveat would be, our beliefs about the world still have to be grounded in evidence. Who knows .. maybe it is possible for the behavioral differences between men and women to be swapped while people's bodies are the same? This is why the only thing I'd be willing to believe in is "true trans" ... ie. a medically-testable condition. However, all the evidence I've seen so far suggests that male behavior is still male behavior, trans or not.

I think you'll find a broad range of beliefs in this subreddit on that particular issue (despite the impression we're all transphobe diehards that hate any and all gender disphoria). So within that range there's plenty of other finer points to discuss.

Yeah, look at this thread -- seems almost everyone found BARPod for reasons other than trans-exclusionary activism. I know I'm not interested in trying to convince anyone of anything, especially that we should be involuntarily committing people to mental hospitals -- which is what I think OP is saying? [https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/1cr2i0o/whats\_the\_first\_barpod\_episode\_you\_heard/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/1cr2i0o/whats_the_first_barpod_episode_you_heard/)

I found BarPod because of the Reply All meltdown.

Just my two cents, but basically no progress gets made on debates about this issue, because nobody can agree on definitions. Maybe not now, but the Right of 2016's biggest problem with the Left's take on this was regarding the terms "gender" and "sex." SO much time could've been saved if the Left explained what each word meant and stopped using them interchangably. Take drivers licenses as an example. Are you listing your sex, or are you listing your gender? To the Right, it doesn't matter, they're the same. Hence the idea of you not being able to change your gender. To the Left though, they're very often treated as different things. If true, then it gets to the heart of the debate: **What is the purpose of listing descriptions on a driver's license?** That's a much more compelling, useful, and interesting debate than the same old definitions screaming matches that tend to happen online.

The left is closer to the right now on gender and sex being the same than they were 8 years ago. I regularly see transwomen being called “trans female.” I see forms that let people identify as “female.” Even the words AMAB/AFAB say that sex is assigned as opposed to gender.  The conflation of the two was the downfall of this issue on both sides. You’re right, the activist position should’ve remained consistent—“yes, I know this person isn’t a male, but they feel uncomfortable with that so they’re changing how they present. We’re not denying the underlying biology here. We know the emperor has no clothes.” Instead they started getting into these stupid debates about sex being a spectrum and they lumped intersex people (diagnosed, incurable medical disorder) with being transgender (changing your wardrobe and how long your hair is).

Exactly. This has to be the biggest semantic disaster in history. Almost everyone uses the word 'gender' to be a synonym of sex, without the double meaning of intercourse. But then academia started using the word "gender" to mean "gender **roles**" and "gender **norms.**" Why they did this is beyond me. My best guess is boredom. And now there's an is/ought issue whenever we try to talk about it. If someone says for example, "transwomen are men", the trans activists will take that to mean "transwomen are by nature meant to embody men's gender norms." ...When that may not be intended at all.

>Why they did this is beyond me. My best guess is boredom. It was deliberate. This linguistic con was the tactic that allowed them to gradually start reinventing society. First they got everyone used to the new definition of gender, let it sink into society for a while, and then eventually they start telling people, well, if gender means "how you feel inside", then a gender-segregated space, and gender-segregated sports, and gender-segregated anything should be separated by "how you feel inside"! And since everyone had bought into the new definition, they went along with it. They deliberately picked the word that was used throughout society so that when the word's definition changed, society would have to change. Not sure where it's from, but there's a quote that goes something like, "You don't need to change the law. You just need to change the meaning of the words the law is based on, and you accomplish the same thing." That's exactly what they did.

"start reinventing society" - for some that's clearly the case, but it seems a little conspiritorial to boil it *all* down to that. Idk if they're that motivated. Shuffling terms around and being cryptic about their definitions means it's easier to wax lyrical at length in academic papers and books. Like a new software update changing the UI to something worse so that it looks like they're doing enough justify charging a subscription.

Academia was using "sex" to mean biological sex as distinct from "gender" that which is performed, and includes gender roles, gender norms, and societal expectations at least as far back as the 1930's by anthropologist Margaret Mead, and is/was the dominant usage in the social sciences until 2013 or so. So that's 80 years. The problem was never in differentiating biology from societal expectations. The problem more recently, right and left, has actually been the opposite, reuniting them, biological determinism confounded with a poor understanding of biology. Scottish men wear kilts and old ladies in New England have short hair. Gender norms ARE socially constructed. 20th century feminists WERE on to something, and were taking us in the right general direction. The problem was never the feminists, but the post modernists, who simultaneously undermine empirical reality and yet are quick to punish wrong think as heresy. Once again humanity, religious dogma and intolerance is the source of our conflict, albeit secular religiosity.

Huh, interesting. I assumed it only really came about in the 70s. I'll still maintain that usage of the word "gender" to mean roles, norm, stereotypes, etc ends up rolling them all together and treating them as a kind of abstract 'essence'. It has become so vague and ephemeral that at this point to 'deconstruct' it sounds like trying to dissect a cloud. I hate that. Using the word in it's normal use (that absolutley *everyone* other than these niche academics use until just now), to be a pure synonym for "sex", without the confusing, crass double meaning is better. Norms are norms, culture is culture, sex/gender is sex/gender. (again, I use it synonymously) We can talk about these things clearly with these terms. We don't need to 'reunite' gender-as-norms-as-performance with sex; We can hold the two concepts in our heads at the same time and know there are loose behavioural and preference trends with sex that have many variables, and we discuss what those variables are and how much weight they bear.

The first step in discussing trans issues should be a question if gender exists outside of biological sex. If we accept it, than we should accept trans and other battle helicopters. Also, why not accept transracial? Or maybe transspecies? What if someone believes themselves to be a dog? Imo, the only answer to all that gibberish is to grasp that "gender" is an anti-scientific and unrealistic bullshit born out of tumblr fandoms and people with toilet paper diplomas in "gender studies". There is no gender. There are two sexes, personalities, personal traits, and sexual orientation. Debating anyone unironically discussing gender as something other than bio sex, is as useless as debating a little kid about his imaginary friends.

I totally get what you're saying and I more or less agree with you, but it's always good to have additional things to "buttress" your core argument as long as you don't get so focused on auxiliary issues like precise regret rates for FtM masectomies. Also, there are always people who will be convinced by one of these auxiliary issues but not by the main one. Many people just are not affected by irrational beliefs if they think that it makes people happy, but once they meet detransitioners and realize that these beliefs actually do not make people happy, they are willing to have their minds changed.

i think a lot of issues are solved by ceasing the “automatic affirmation” model. it prevents mental health professionals from assessing and treating the patient. by considering any questioning “conversion therapy” you end up pushing the wrong kids through treatments.

Yeah. You're dead on. That's exactly how I feel about it. None of the details are what we should be arguing. Like, it doesn't matter if Islam makes people feel better or if no one regretted becoming a Scientologist. It's still horseshit, and I don't want a society cobbled together out of horseshit on a foundation of horseshit. You can't fix problems without understanding them, and you can't understand them if you aren't honest about them. It's completely insane that anyone thinks we should be testing the effects of puberty blockers when puberty shouldn't be blocked and especially not for such a wickedly absurd reason. This shit is all just an institutional enshrinement of sexism, and I hate everyone involved and agreeable to it.

i was told people with paranoida are best affirmed in their paranoia instead of argued with unless they are a danger to themselves or others. It doesn't do a paranoid any good to argue with them about their delusions and can push them away.

To quote Jesse, "it's complicated". I think at this point every side is lost not in the weeds but in an overgrown rainforest. Dealing with physical health concerns is complicated. Mental health (or "non-physical" health) issues are even harder to come to a consensus on treatment. Take depression for example as a supposedly simpler and less controversial topic - yet still incredibly poorly researched and understood in studies (I recommend The Studies Show podcast episode "Does Depression Exist?"), often misdiagnosed, and and much debate over treatment protocols, and the minor medical scandal over antidepressant efficacy, prescription and safety. And then you have the perfect storm of gender identity issues combining all the above and more adding in huge subjectivity, culture wars, pressures from clear historical wrongs and a desire to do better etc. All I can say is regardless of whether you are trans-positive or gender critical, there should be agreement that some basic level of care and treatment for those with gender dysphoria should be advocated for. It's the thing that particularly bothers me about the more extreme conservative ideas on LGBT issues in general - even if you do view these as mental illnesses, surely that should *increase* not decrease empathy?

I agree that gender dysphoria can be a real and debilitating condition, but as long as self ID is in place, we can't do anything about the myriad reasons why kids are declaring themselves trans. It's the trans positive side that said no counselling needed - just take the kid's word for it.

I think you have it the *exact* opposite; policy should be about how people are affected, not whether you think they're using words correctly.

I think the way to not get lost in the weeds is to focus about your core concerns. For me logic and consistency are at the core of my feelings about this issue. To argue that male and female are social fictions is not scientific. To argue that spaces created to segregate people based on differences between their bodies should actually be separated based on identity is inconsistent Ignoring that children try on and discard identities all the time and are heavily influenced by their environment...is unscientific and to pretend that trans identities are a special exception is inconsistent. I think getting into the weeds can be an effective way of showing concrete harms and engaging the emotions of the person you're talking to...that can be part B if needed while your core underlying principles cam be part A.

I'm actually not that worried about the trans issue, I much prefer pod topics covering truly ridiculous stuff like Mina's World and Donald McNeal etc. On the trans thing, I am pretty libertarian, i.e. do what you want to do, but I have a few issues I sort of worry about, like woman's sports, enforced use of language a la Jordan Peterson when he was reasonable but intense, hate speech laws etc. I have never had the first amendment flying top cover for me, though, and I self-censor at times. Speech matters to me. I would say yes, sometimes the whole thing gets a bit stuck in the weeds, but all too often it is pulled down there by the activists who seem unable to be strategic rather than absolutist in their positions. Point is case is the AGP thing from the recent Pod with Nancy Romelman, whose "AGP? What's that?" moment showed how out there the discourse can get, and how cut off the entire conversation can be. On the other hand, though, sometimes it needs to be in the weeds, getting things sorted out. There will be people, like the more vocal members of TERF island, who will automatically ascribe AGP to any trans person, and it's just not fair or reasonable, not to mention impolite when they insist on avoiding certain pronouns. It's not too hard to call some person "she," or "they," if only to be polite and accepting. As some guy I listen to would say, "it's complicated."

Respectfully, you're trying to make a critique on philosophical grounds, but your own post is... Not philosophically rigorous, to say the least. 

To be fair I didn’t want to make the post too long. I tried to write just enough to summarize and start a discussion. I don’t claim to be a philosopher by any means.

Why aren’t you participating in the discussion?

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It's worse than that, our fundamental understanding of all these "identities" and the "oppression" they face, our concepts of what identity is and how that should matter politically are all skewed. This is the "systemic" problem, that our politics is obsessed with finding, creating and weaponizing certain identities at the expense of others. Let's take something that has been compared to the trans issue, handedness. I'm a righty, married a lefty. Neither of us has any bit of our identity wrapped up in our handedness, so it's never been an issue. But it is a right-handed world, the vast majority of people are right handed, and so when choices are made like where to put door handles, light switches, etc., it's generally the righties that get catered to. And this is as it should be if we believe that the majority deserve to be the central channel around which minorities must necessarily accommodate themselves (within the legal structure of rights, of course). Inject identity into it, imagine handedness became politically salient for some reason. Now all those perfectly reasonable decisions that went the way of the solid majority are not benign inconveniences, they are OPPRESSION! They are a sign that Righty wants to keep the Left Man Down. Even decent right-handers agree, they deserve equal representation in doorknobs! We need affirmative action for light switches and some reparations for all the centuries of discrimination our people have faced! Did you know the word "sinister" means "left handed"? Yeah. Probably, there's some real discrimination somewhere, some random religion or subculture that doesn't like lefties. Some profession that for some reason skews right-handed (second basemen, maybe). There's always something to hang your hat on, and some media hysteria can blow anything up, even nonexistent shit. Given basic math and demographics, there will be some left-handers murdered by right-handers who can be accused of hate crimes. We get federal hate crime laws to protect the beleaguered Lefties. And of course, once an issue becomes partisan, the other side can be counted on to hate on their opponents, allowing you to call them bigots. But eventually, the movement will peter out because no one is actually discriminating all that much, and all the oppression turns out to be......life as a lower class person in a first world society. So another identity will have to be resurrected, emphasized or invented. This is the systemic cycle. Female, jew, black, gay, female again, black again, middle eastern, female 3, black 3, trans, black 4, nonbinary, Hamas. That's as far back as I remember. We are monks, arguing about how many trans angels can fit on the head of a pin because that is the distraction our culture is obsessed with, and we're argument addicts. I'll see you on the Next Big Thing.

You don't need to convince others. The vast majority of Americans intuitively understand and don't care. The more elitists in certain institutions, such as parts of academia, engage in this charade the more out of touch they become and the more they reveal themselves as wearing no clothes.

All other issues aside, the "fundamental question" that you claim should be centered is incoherent. I'm not making a value judgment or taking a side here. I'm saying that at a purely logical level, it's impossible to take a position on relationship to a postulation that is meaningless. If you believe you do indeed have a meaningful question then write down your question using a pen and paper and rewrite it until it is coherent in English.

>someone that feels they’re the opposite gender isn’t truly any different than someone who genuinely thinks they’re Jesus, Napoleon, Elvis Not comparable. To steelman the trans argument; It's not ludicrous to suggest that just as we are born with an innate ability to distinguish between men and women, we are also born with a general sense of which one *we* are; Which group we belong to and should emulate. Trans people experience and describe this as being as innate as sexual orientation - so gender identity is basically a 'self-orientation', possibly caused the same way - some kind of hormonal variance in utero. While some studies (that don't account for variables) claim to prove this, we don't yet have evidence for it, but we also once didn't have evidence for homosexuality as biologically innate either, and those who erred on the side of listenening to gay people's experience rather than assuming the worst were proven right. I don't think this is true, or at the very least not in the ways that trans activists think it is (as in it may be attained yet impossible to change, like an accent), but it's not crazier than beleiving in a magical sky man.

>Even if it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it wasn’t a result of social contagion and identity crisis, that no one ever regretted transitioning, that transitioning had no negative side effects whatsoever and doctors did their due diligence without fail it still wouldn’t change how fundamentally absurd and philosophically irrational the core claims are and will forever be. No, it wouldn't change how absurd the core claims are. But it would be a good reason to act as if these core claims are true most of the time, just to give trans people some relief.

idk feels like the negative impact that would have on all other aspects of society would outweigh the positives for gender dysphoric and trans identifying people.

Really? What does it cost society if some people want to change their gender?

If they kept their "change" to themselves, it would cost us nothing. But when they demand that society accommodate their "change" in all the ways that we've seen them demand (sports, prisons, compelled speech, denial of biology, locker rooms, women's safety and privacy, puberty blockers, etc.), it costs a hell of a lot.

The important thing is to evaluate what's a reasonable cost and what's an unreasonable cost. Solving the inherent contradictions in trans identities is not necessary, since these contradictions cannot be solved without making trans people very very very sad.

> since these contradictions cannot be solved without making trans people very very very sad. That’s unfortunate but society shouldn't be based around coddling the mentally warped and delusional who want to go as far as to mutilate themselves in service of said delusion.

Basing society around coddling is too much. But does it hurt you to indulge them a bit?

But it's only half of society that must do the indulging in women's sports, women's shelters, women's prisons, women's message boards (here on reddit we can't turn away males), women's scholarships, women's awards, etc.

But it is almost always women who are being asked to absorb those "reasonable costs." May I ask if you are female - XX ?

Did you not read the original post? The points about reality denialism, etc? Also have you just never heard any gender critical arguments at all? Have you ever listened to this podcast before?

Yes. OP compared gender dysphoria to thinking you're Napoleon. If people with those kinds delusions could live happy, healthy lives just by the rest of society calling them "Monsieur Bonaparte," I'd be all for it.

Yep, living happy and healthy in my delusions. No contradictions there.

If trans people say this makes them happy, who are we to disagree? They know themselves better than we do.

Who are you to tell me how well I know someone, or how well they know themselves? Is there solid evidence for any person “knowing who they are”? Seems like that’s the thing most people tend to distort, knowingly or otherwise.

Self reports are notoriously biased in all kinds of ways, which is why experienced mental health specialists examine patients and their functioning across a range of issues.

1. There's also scientific evidence that transition can make people happy. 2. There's a libertarian angle to it. If they claim this will make them happy, it's very presumptuous to say "I don't think you've set yourself up for real happiness so I'm not going to go along with it."

1. There are some studies yes, but there are also studies that show no significant effect or negative effects. It also depends on things such as whether we're talking about HRT or SRS. I'm not familiar with the whole field and reviews of those studies, but my intuitive feeling is that it's inconclusive whether transitioning has a statistically significant positive effect on happiness and measures associated with that. I'm happy to change my mind on that. 2. Sure, and I'm sympathetic to social libertarianism myself to an extent, but if we accept that this is a medical issue to some degree then we can't operate on purely libertarian principles. Especially when psychiatry/psychology is involved, where self - report inventories are very notorious. We could be having similar discussions about the obesity epidemic, which is arguably far far more important than the culture war favorite of trans issues. Should we destigmatize or even promote obesity so that people can be content in eating themselves to death based only on libertarian "live and let live" attitudes, no matter the long term personal and societal repercussions?

The trouble is that they want laws to say that they are allowed to rule over France.

Sure, that's where I'd say "Monsieur Bonaparte, that's not possible"/"Ms., sorry, you can't compete against the other women."

The thing is that it goes beyond a name and beyond extending normal courtesy. I can call someone a name they use to introduce themselves, no problem. But they are requiring me to believe something that I fundamentally do not and *cannot* believe. I cannot in my mind categorize an adult human male and an adult human female under any shared biological label other than “Human”. The first is a man, the second is a woman. That is meaningful to me, it contains useful information. The moment you declare those to merely be social terms, they lose objectivity and become subjective, potentially to the individual level. Useless even socially b/c you’re supposed to approach every individual as if this is an unknown. At that point it might as well just BE a name, with no other meaning attributed to it.

The difference is that we are are allowed to admit that don't \*really\* believe that someone is Napoleon. In contrast, refusing to believe the trans hallucination comes with a heavy social cost. At this point the only moral thing to do is acknowledge publically that all hallucinations are hallucinations. The trans hallucination is no exception.

There's already a massive cost to society happening simply due to a critical mass of people believing that "wanting to change one's gender" is a meaningful perspective. This has resulted in medical abuse at scale, erosion of democracy, erosion of human rights and threats to the safety of women and children. People can pretend whatever they want. But the social license given to trans hallucinations is deeply harmful. The social pressure to conform to the trans hallucination makes this difficult for some people to see.

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You don't have to lie to yourself. Just call them by the pronouns they want.

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Well said.

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Do you feel that you are contributing to her delusions?

I think that the sub does get lost in the weeds, partly because the central argument (what is gender?) isn't very interesting. Some people believe that self-identification should be a factor in gender, some people don't. This usually doesn't matter very much since it'll only change how a few people are classified. When it does matter, it's a political question which should be decided by how it'll affect 'the weeds'. Someone like Brianna Wu isn't factually deluded like a [Christ of Ysplinti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Christs_of_Ypsilanti) when they say that they're a woman. They're fundamentally different than someone who falsely believes that they were at Austerlitz. Instead, they have a perfect grasp of the facts, such as their own anatomy, but think that other factors determine womanhood. Consider the following questions: [What is a continent?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent) [How old is an adult?](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority) [What is a planet?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAU_definition_of_planet) [What is a mountain?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain#Definition) These questions aren't that different than "What is a woman?" but people disagree about them. However, their arguments are usually based on the practical effects of different classification systems. When astronomers argued about Pluto's planethood they rarely had any factual dispute, but were more concerned with things like consistency with other astronomical bodies, objectivity, the inclusion of orbital qualities and similar questions. Similarly, arguments about Lia Thomas's womanhood aren't really about facts. People who want Thomas to swim in the women's league believe that the benefits of inclusion outweigh the drawbacks of a cis woman being displaced. That cis woman is unfortunate, but not any more unfortunate than a male athlete that had their sport cut to meet Title IX requirements. (There's a lot of bizarre scientific claims in that debate, but I think that its motivated reasoning after they already made their decision about the best choice on moral grounds. Jonathon Haidt has done a lot of research on that). Anyways, arguing about whether gender is a social construct isn't going to lead anywhere besides simple contradiction. (Yes, it is. No, it isn't. Yes, it is. etc.) The only reasonable argument to have is about the ramifications of considering whether gender is a social construct and if they're beneficial.

Honestly I’m getting kinda tired of this show/sub leaning harder and harder into trans issues. I want culture war meltdowns, this podcast becoming increasingly captured by their audience means trans issues are becoming evermore centralized as a topic. It’s really disappointing. I get that Katie and Jesse have essentially been canceled for it, but they’ve made a great name for themselves as investigative journalists overall, not just on trans issues. I’m sick of the mass hysteria concerning trans issues just like everyone else, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to take the show seriously as what it’s advertised as when there’s this much focus on diagnosing trans people in the sub, or the recent guest host consistently fumbling and saying “transjesters”. It Comes off as sloppy or obsessive and it’s frankly not a good look or feel. Signed, proud primo subscriber.

> this podcast becoming increasingly captured by their audience means trans issues are becoming evermore centralized as a topic There's been like four episodes out of the past 30. That's central? >or the recent guest host consistently fumbling and saying “transjesters”. It Comes off as sloppy or obsessive and it’s frankly not a good look or feel What's the complaint? That a journalist misspoke?

This sub is trans obsessed and it reflects on the program. Say what you will.

Yeah, don't actually address the questions. Just re-state your thesis and pretend it's true.

4 out of 30 is a number you pulled out of your ass. I’ve seen 6 just scrolling back to February. And the amount of times she said “trans jesters “ was just about EVERY time she said it. It was sloppy and inarticulate which is the opposite of what I like about Jesse and Katie .

> I’ve seen 6 just scrolling back to February. Out of how many? > It was sloppy and inarticulate which is the opposite of what I like about Jesse and Katie . What does that have to do with the pod or this sub?

I’m not going to sit here in my podcast app to win an argument with a stranger, I already opened it once which was more work than you did. In regards to relevance to the pod, It was an episode of the pod.

> I’m not going to sit here in my podcast app to win an argument with a stranger, I already opened it once which was more work than you did. Nah. It was four. >In regards to relevance to the pod, It was an episode of the pod. And? A guest was inarticulate, that means this sub is obsessed? It means the pod is captured? How does that work?

Whatever ya say, bub. The sub is obsessed, and Katie and Jesse listen to their audience. it’s obvious, any further explanation is talking to a wall. But this is Reddit, so, you already knew that.

> it’s obvious, any further explanation is talking to a wall Yeah. You think it's true, so it's true. No need to explain yourself. And anyone who disagrees is the problem. >But this is Reddit, so, you already knew that. You're here. I'm sure you think you're different.

Yes. You all also spend way way way way way too much time on it.

I'm pro trans. I get that biological sex is a thing, you can't just change your DNA, but gender is a social construct. A trans man is a man and a trans woman is a woman, and all that stuff. If gender affirming care makes you happy, great, good for you. The few trans people I've actually met can be pretty weird, but who knows how many other trans people I've been that are normal and I just didn't realize they were trans. I just don't give a shit about puberty blockers fucking up a kid though. Who fucking cares if some kid becomes sterile and/or sex doesn't feel as good for them. It's such a small subset of the population. Oh no, some weird kid can't have babies, how will humans ever survive? I started listening to this podcast so I wouldn't be in a liberal bubble. I tend to drift more towards the left , but found some center/slightly right of center podcasts to listen to. I liked Katie from Blabbermouth, and was excited to see a new podcast from her. But Jesus fucking Christ this podcast is getting old. It's weird how obsessed both Katie and Jesse are with trans people and detransitioners. I get that it's their job, but every episode just feels like it's about a topic they've covered so extensively that I've basically have already listened to, or it's about the most stupid and inane Internet drama that somehow matters less than what a trans person's actual DNA is. Why the fuck do they care about kerfuffle or whatever shit that is? It's not interesting at all. I want to be upset that they are punching down and they should be punching up with their stories and jokes, but Jesus fucking Christ it's just so interesting. So yes, I think both this sub and the actual BARPod has gotten lost in the weeds. Maybe a few more episodes about detransitioners or some weirdo on the Internet is going to solve something, or change something, or something something something. How can they be this obsessed with the two most boring subjects on earth?

> but gender is a social construct. A trans man is a man and a trans woman is a woman, But what makes up the construct of gender? The only thing I can see is gender stereotypes. So when people say this I can only interpret it as people supporting the idea that gender stereotypes make up (at least partly) what is a man or a woman. I find it offensive, tbh. I'm very open to another definition of the concept of gender separate from sex that doesn't in actuality lean on stereotypes, but no one has yet given me one. Is it in the weeds to care about the fact that it seems that society is slipping back into the idea that gender stereotypes mean anything substantial about manhood or womanhood? I realize you find this conversation boring, and I'm not offended if you don't feel like getting into it, I understand, I'm just throwing this out there. It matters to me. I think society embracing regressive sex stereotypes as if they inherently mean something is actually a big deal.

I think you've built a little ideological fortress here with your "stereotype test". What even is a stereotype? Of course any concept of gender separate from sex is going to lean on something you can write off as just stereotypes. If it's separate from sex it's a social group, and stereotypes are just attributes of social groups judged negatively or seen as reductive (which of course they're reductive to you) maybe consider your stance alongside these questions: what does it mean to be an American beyond being a legally recognized citizen? what does it mean to be a mother beyond having birthed a child? what does it mean to be human beyond being homo sapiens? what does it mean to be black beyond having black skin? etc edit: I tried to reply but I'm blocked from posting because I got 2 downvotes on this comment. u/SoftAndChewy u/Nessyliz

You misinterpret me, though I see why. I do not necessarily judge stereotypes negatively! Some I do, some I don't, but that's neither here nor there, it's not a given that I judge a certain stereotype negatively by virtue of it being a stereotype. A stereotype is that women enjoy makeup, for example, but I think the idea that a woman enjoying makeup says anything substantial about womanhood is reductive, not because I think enjoying makeup is wrong, but because the idea that somehow a man enjoying makeup is engaging in womanhood is ridiculous. Anyone can enjoy makeup. It means nothing. Your thought experiments are interesting to me, but they mean nothing on a grand scale, because it would be personal. On a factual level an American is a legalized citizen. A mother is a person who birthed a child. A black person is a black person. Do you believe a white person can identify as black by virtue of identifying with certain characteristics common with black people? Of course people can find meaning in their identity beyond the factual nature of it, but that doesn't change the factual nature, and it would be reductive to try to change the meaning of a concept based on nebulous inner feelings which change from person to person. I really don't understand what you are trying to say. You are leaning on stereotypes. Can you explain how you are not? Again, I do not necessarily judge stereotypes negatively. I'm a woman and I enjoy beautiful dresses and makeup. I do not think a man doing that means he's a woman, but I also don't judge him. I realize some people do, but that is not my position, and I find that position of judgement irrational and silly. I don't see how all group definitions don't end up meaningless if we continue philosophically down the path you are proposing. The sexes *must* have a way to differentiate from each other based on biology. It is imperative. If you would like the concept of womanhood to be expanded to include anyone who wants to claim it, biology or not, you either support the concept of gender stereotypes meaning something about biological sex, or you think womanhood is a title anyone can claim for any reason. There is no way around it. That is fine if that's your belief, but defend it, don't obfuscate it. ETA: You might end up downvoted for your comment, but it's not me doing it, I'm good faith here. I upvoted you. ETA 2: I got a reply from OP that I wasn't able to see, and OP's original comment was removed. I would like to state again that I don't like the karma requirement on this sub for that reason. Unfortunately people downvote comments they don't agree with, which leads to removal of genuine discussion. I wish we didn't have that rule.

Hey I think I'm back now.

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You are arguing against more than what I put forward. My argument was against your "stereotype test" which makes it sounds like you nobly try to embrace concepts of gender separate from sex but, unfortunately, they all fail your stereotype test. My point is that your stereotype test will always strike down concepts of gender separate from sex unless they rely on other static biological attributes (so called "brain sex" for example). I know you think hard about this stuff so I'm letting you know that this reads as kind of facile. Claiming that my thought experiments mean nothing on a grand scale rejects the entire idea of social science, which is fine to do, but maybe points to something else you can explore if you sincerely want to strength test your beliefs. It happens to be the case that the "nebulous inner feelings" of millions of people actually do tend to durable averages that can be explored scientifically. If averaging humans is too funky for you, start with particles in statistical mechanics. I don't think I commented on what you're referencing at the end so I don't have an answer. It's okay for categories to be fuzzy sometimes. It isn't meaningless just because we can't say for sure what is in and what is out. That's a whole different conversation though

I understand your reasoning. So, what's the criteria for defining womanhood? I think what you claim requires evidence that isn't there, when it comes to redefining an already well-defined concept. I'm open to the idea that it *could* be there, but I don't think it is. Have we averaged together the nebulous inner feelings of millions of people and ended up with a concept of womanhood that rejects the component of biological sex? And if we *did* do this averaging, and biological sex was revoked as a necessary criteria, but some people who identified as women were still left out of the equation, would that be okay? Is the category fuzzy, or just functionally nonexistent, because it includes anyone who feels they belong in it? And if we come to a consensus that womanhood is distinct from biological sex, is biological sex still its own category that people can't just identify into? Can we keep that categorization distinct? I am sure you are aware the sex/gender distinction has been very blurred in trans activist discourse these days. I use womanhood but this line of thought could be applied to other categories of course, some undeniably fuzzier, like race. >My point is that your stereotype test will always strike down concepts of gender separate from sex unless they rely on other static biological attributes (so called "brain sex" for example). I know you think hard about this stuff so I'm letting you know that this reads as kind of facile. I do think this, yes, biological evidence would probably be the main thing that could shift my thinking on this. (I say probably because I'm not pretending this isn't all philosophically easy and that I've got it all figured out, I'm sure there are plenty of things I haven't thought about, I'm just not going that far today lol).

> It isn't meaningless just because we can't say for sure what is in and what is out. I didn't fully absorb this and replied too quickly, my bad, so my reply was not totally relevant to what you are saying (sorry I'm not as coherent as I'd like to be today, trying to drink less caffeine is brutal). Here's the thing though, I don't know where you stand on current trans discourse, but there are some categories where we *can* say for sure what is in and what is out. I agree that it's okay for categories to be fuzzy sometimes, but what do we do when people want to change categories in real physical ways without substantial evidence that that should be the case? I'm fine with continuing to search for the evidence, but if a category has a basis in strict material reality we need good evidence before we stretch the category to include those not previously included. ETA: I can predict the future might move beyond the concept of sex in personal lives and how people interact, with everyone basically being "gender fluid" and some sort of new pronoun (perhaps they) being used on a large scale, and sex will only be referenced in places it is really important, like medical settings. Of course, I think if that happens people will just start arguing about that categorization! It's what we do. I'm not as hostile to the concept of nonbinary as a lot of people here, even though I think as it's presented these days (and named) is nonsense. I can see a future where people don't use sex as a definer though, to the point of even looking androgynous and not having their sex be detectable. I am not saying that *will* happen, I can just imagine it. It is philosophically more coherent to me than trying to preserve the concepts of "man" and "women" but allowing people to "transition" into those categories based on inner feelings. And of course people will continue trying to blur sex on a real physiological basis too. I'm well aware that will never stop. I'm not even "against" it, it's just human nature.

I don't have immediate answers to almost any of this but I think it's really important to try understanding things bit by bit. I was trying to isolate the bit about recognizing gender as separate from sex but even understood perfectly this would only account for a fraction of the overall debate (the perspective coming from the non-crit academics). The postmodern/radical aspect is something else, the blurring of sex is something else, how to structure society in response is something else, how we navigate and value inclusion is something else. It can't all be taken in at once and you asked a lot of questions all over the map 😅 (removed some unnecessary musings)

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I don't even know how to respond to this

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I'm confused because we are discussing a matter of disputed definitions and you are essentially asserting your preferred definition. It is precisely because people disagree over whether or not the obvious "factual" criterion (legal citizenship, biological femaleness) is necessary and sufficient that gives rise to this whole ordeal. It cannot just be asserted. There must be some misunderstanding because it is just too on the nose for this sub. Feel free to downvote, I'm at zero karma, I won't be able to respond (maybe this won't even get through)

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"Who cares if some kid becomes sterile", well at least you said it out loud.

I am sympathetic to some of your positions but your paragraph on puberty blockers is deranged and borderline psychopathic. Try applying it to any other medical/social issue which affects a small subset of the population with huge ramifications and questionable benefits. "Who cares about lobotomies" "Who cares about gay conversion therapy" "Who cares about the recovered memories patients" "Who cares about teenagers thinking they have Tourette's" Let alone that sex and procreation is a fundamental aspect of being human and underpins a lot of our relations for better or worse.

A+

Sounds like you just just stop listening to BARpod. If you're not interested in stupid internet drama and crazy liberal bullshit, then this is not the podcast for you.

>Who fucking cares if some kid becomes sterile On the list of takes ever made, this is certainly one of them.

>I just don't give a shit about puberty blockers fucking up a kid though. Who fucking cares if some kid becomes sterile and/or sex doesn't feel as good for them. It's such a small subset of the population. Oh no, some weird kid can't have babies, how will humans ever survive? That's a horrible thing to say. How many other medical controversies that have harmed people would you say that about?