To think the way MN lets anti trans extremists hijack a tragedy is pretty despicable

The media should be completely honest when reporting when a person is male or female and not use their pretend gender. Crimes must be reported to the correct sex.

OP seems to have gone very quiet. Is there any chance you have read all the information you have been provided with and realised the errors of your thinking? @Blu3Shoes

We can live in hope.

Not only was Dorgan someone with a transgender identity who had very poor mental health that doesn’t seem to have been treated with helpful therapy, he also, just like Jesse Strang posted on social media about his anger with clear pointers to his mental health.

While it is no relief to his family and his other victim’s family, at least the media this time was immediately clearer about the sex of the shooter. Leaving no one in doubt and no discussion needed as to whether it was a male shooter.

Chilling warning signs before 'narcissistic' trans dad 'shot ex-wife and kids' in hockey game bloodbath.

Awful. Trans women are not women. They are men and continue to display male pattern behaviour.

So hes a family anhilatot aswell as a massive shooter.

@Blu3Shoes another mass shooting by a transwoman in less than a week.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15565931/amp/Hockey-shooting-Rhode-Island-Robert-Dorgan-transgender.html

How many before we are allowed to ask the obvious question, whether believing yourself to be of the opposite sex might be an indicator of mental health problems so severe it can lead to tragedies such as these?

Its kind of funny, only there have also been people claiming voting should be public, and then we have people going round making lists of who isnt willing.to support their right thinking campaign, and we have a young man - brain dead or killed - at a demonstration in France, and increasing numbers of people who are overt about justifying violence.

More extremist approaches, more intolerance.

I'm still utterly scunnered how many apparently rational people are openly happy to suppport the Palestien Action Elbit people, despite their use of violence.

I think perhaps Mill makes the same mistake in his generic characterisation of some peoples as "barbarians", although I guess the lack of shared language and imperialist context made it harder for even the best thinkers of his time to breach that gulf of understanding.

If you listen to the In Our Time episode, the guests address this. It[s the first one with new presenter Misha Glenny, and I think he did a good job.

I’m not going to vote Reform but if I was so inclined all the pious ‘vote Reform and Farage will turn you into handmaids’ guff would make me more determined. We’re fully functioning adults capable of reading manifesto’s and deciding for ourselves thanks. Feeding us overexcited hyperbole like we are total morons isn’t going to change who we vote for.

Being gender critical is not an "ideology" any more than atheism is an ideology.

@Blu3Shoes are you reading these really interesting responses or just popping into the ignore box?

I have now watched this interview and this post is even more enlightening in the hypocrisy that it shows now.

A person who has shown little knowledge or understanding of the issues, using this clip to shame a poster by posting a soundbite from an interview that discusses how social media and 'charlatan' gender clinicians have played such a huge part in misinforming parents and children about treatments.....

How children's mental health issues are not being appropriately treated and with the right support most children would grow out of questioning their gender. How Dr Cass has had clinicians come up to her and state how relieved they are that they can now treat their patients distress without being labelled as 'transphobic' if they don't simply affirm the patient's identity and instead take an exploratory approach.

Well done OP. Well done.

You posted a clip that showed just how much pressure clinicians have faced in treating children to provide them with the care they need, rather than the treatments that some groups have demanded be the standard. All because discussion was deemed as 'transphobic'. Or like your terminology, 'anti-trans'.

PS (sorry, stuck in a café slowly recovering from feeling ill before I crawl homewards, and distracting myself - on a roll now...)

I guess that explains what many of us see as the despotism of trans ideology: you must use pronouns, you mustn't debate the societal implications of this awful attack etc., and if you do, you're to be silenced etc.

And all that is selective and value-based, as opposed to the simple matter of "right versus wrong" the OP would have us believe. I mean, pronouns-wise, why is society not just as up-in-arms about Mill's use of the generic "he", a potentially distressing reminder of women's status as sub-human chattels until just the last few decades (not really an exaggeration at all) of human civilisation? The US still sometimes bans books for less. For society's part, I actually think it's a quiet reminder of how far women do still have to go. Meanwhile, though, for my part, it's simply bc I'm open to his ideas, regardless.

It all comes back to the same thing.

Open debate matters.

Reading on, he's not perfect, though (I mean, what is? again - very few things are simple, and anyone who suggests something is should be viewed with some suspicion, in IMO!) Interestingly, there's also this in the list:

“Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.”

And there's the rub - the conception of certain groups as barbaric. Again, going back to human pack mentality, I think a society defines itself more by who and what it isn't, than what it is (it feels like there should be a word for this?) And so to validate itself, it must in-validate the Other.

This is, again, an indication of how desperately important the open exchange of ideas is, though. I think it's arguably fine to in-validate the Other by first understanding, and then, in so doing, meaningfully opposing their ideas. But in not even making that attempt, there's an implicit presumption of the Other's own "barbarity" - ie. their incapacity to so much as formulate their own ideas or to reason at all, and, as such, their lack of what makes us human; of humanity. Ad hominems like some of those we see levelled at so-called "TERFs" above implicitly dehumanise them in this abstract sense, at least (is ad hominem then a misnomer?! 😁)

I do see that kind of characterisation in the OP's posts in words like "hate", "diatribe", "zero thoughts", "rush to" etc., and the resistance to engaging. It conceptualises people who are actually sharing thoughtful ideas - even if the OP finds these ideas hugely problematic - as merely emotional and instinctual, ie. lacking reason, uncivilised, barbarous etc.

I think perhaps Mill makes the same mistake in his generic characterisation of some peoples as "barbarians", although I guess the lack of shared language and imperialist context made it harder for even the best thinkers of his time to breach that gulf of understanding.

We don't have those excuses.

NB. Thanks (and sorry!) if you read this far. Could be waaaay off the mark with Mill. Kind of just thinking aloud.

Gosh, I read that ages ago, and found it compelling. It depresses me to think how little we've progressed, in a sense: what he wrote seems more relevant than ever nowadays. I just googled "best quotations" from it or similar for a refresher, and from the very start of the list, it may as well have been written for this thread and these issues. I started posting those which stood out, and realised I was posting almost all of them. Here's a culled list!

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

“the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner.”

“Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think…”

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2387235-on-liberty

Edited to bold some of the key elements in a rather heavy post! (Although, again, I had to resist the temptation to just bold everything 😂).

Posting another soundbite, that of Dr Cass this time, instead of engaging in depth with the topic of the thread is really highlighting the OP’s lack of ability to have a coherent discussion.

If a poster can only reply to discussion using soundbites that sound strong until you look behind the phrase being used, they are showing how susceptible they are to superficial and emotional cues to inform their thinking.

I think that is why this OP started this bullying thread. It is like they attempted to create a soundbite of their own making. The trite repetition of different soundbites without any substance to score some kind of political win.

While in essence it just exposed the tactics of those who wish to shut down discussion using whatever means they think will work. Most likely using tactics that has worked on them in shutting down any further seeking of understanding, if they ever felt that need for understanding. After all, questioning is to be quelled in some groups to maintain support for issues that are only supported with philosophical belief and not material reality. It obviously has worked in the cases of some people.

@Blu3Shoes I suggest you listen to the recent episode of In Our Time on John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. It is very interesting on the value to society of the diversity of opinion.

I would add that you don’t even have to be a Reform voter, one opinion that certain self righteous posters think is suspicious and they’re trying to trip you up and “out” you as a secret Reform troll/Trump supporter. It’s very funny.

Great post @Catiette

I agree Catiette.

If discussion is treated as offensive and shameful, it inhibits developing a depth of understanding. And that is needed to counter misinformation.

By making “trans” untouchable a massive mess has been created. The Cass report noted that trans-identifying children generally had a number of additional mental health diagnoses - and so it was with the killer. I read a post on X that he’d written to Reddit after being in a psychiatric hospital. The police have said they visited his home for mental health purposes.

So what happens now - do people backtrack and accept that “trans” can be a manifestation of severe mental health disorders in children and let psychologists/psychiatrists do their job, rather than calling exploration conversion therapy?

Or will others pretend there’s nothing to see here?

I really think you are plonking whatever you can down in an attempt to see what sticks.

I think by now it is becoming clear you cannot engage with this topic with any depth of knowledge.

There have been a number I've seen like this recently, eg. some really unpleasant (sweary and dehumanising) generalisations about "Reform voters". I find it frightening to see how confused people are by 1) the distinction between a different political view and hate, and 2) abusive language and attitudes being unjustified in any context, whatever your "opponent" may be saying or believing. It's all very Cultural Revolution-ny, this conviction that, "If I'm on the side of right, I can do no wrong...". It amazes me that such posters don't stop to consider that they may not be on the side of right, and - more likely - there may be no such thing. Life usually just ain't that simple, people - and, also (call me naive, but I do think) most people aren't fundamentally unpleasant or inclined to "hate".

I do think we're all very susceptible to a pack mentality (kind of a societal imperative, innit), so I think the thing that really signifies for me if someone's been swept up in empty prejudice ("hate") versus is engaging with a difficult issue, is often reflected in the language they use. Thee more emotive - hyperbolic - the less their thinking seems to be built on careful reason, and the more likely it is to be a bit more instinctual group-think.

Applying this test to this thread, the trends were pretty unambiguous.

It's difficult, cos that emotive instinctual group think may (appear to? genuinely? humans are complex!) arise from the very best of motivations... but so did Communism and any number of other twentieth century disasters. Open debate is our safeguard against this - which, to come full circle, is why I do think this particular issue needs to be debated.

To whip up hate?

Can't you engage with the actual question? Why are these trans identifying children not getting appropriate mental health support?